In the heady days of the spring of 1847 Rome saw new kinds of celebration. After Pius IX’s cardinal secretary announced that elections would be held to choose a council to advise the pope, a huge crowd with torches assembled in the Piazza del Popolo and then streamed slowly down the Corso to the Quirinal Palace, where they lit fireworks. When Pius appeared on the balcony they shouted vivas and went down on their knees to receive his blessing. A few days later an open-air popular dinner was held in the ruins of the Baths of Titus, overlooking the Colosseum, where an effigy of Romulus, Remus and the she-wolf was set up. There was music and speeches, including one by a novelist who recounted events in Rome’s history and made particular reference to the moment when, at the castle of Canossa, the ruler of Germany, King Henry IV, was forced to beg forgiveness from the pope. (The Austrians afterwards complained.)
The following July, after trouble broke out between cowherds and some of Rome’s Jews, there was an equally notable celebration. The inhabitants of Regola and Trastevere, who were old enemies of the city’s Jews, wanted to avenge the cowherds but the populist leader Ciceruacchio persuaded them instead to make a pact of friendship with the Jews. That same night 2,000 Romans entered the Ghetto singing and carrying torches in what was, by all accounts, a remarkable moment of reconciliation. The following spring there were more celebrations in the Ghetto, after Pius ordered the walls to be demolished.
During the months that followed Rome was on a political seesaw. In October, as Prime Minister Rossi tightened the reins of Pope Pius’ power, the mood changed and sbirri – the papal beagles – led an attack on the Ghetto which saw three days of plundering and burning. Within weeks Rossi was dead, the pope had fled and in February Romans joined in celebrations of their new republic. Two months later, on 30 April 1849, it seemed all was about to change again, as General Oudinot led his army towards Rome.
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The French did not expect much trouble. As has been seen, Louis Napoleon had been following papal pronouncements from Gaeta and he assumed that the Romans were impatient to be freed from oppressive rule by foreign revolutionaries such as Garibaldi and Mazzini, and that they would welcome French troops as liberators. Wary of antagonizing French radicals, his instructions to General Oudinot were both optimistic and unclear, as he hoped to pull off something of a magic trick by installing a reactionary prince without himself seeming too reactionary. Oudinot was not to recognize either the Roman Republic’s ruling Triumvirate or the Roman republican assembly, yet he was to treat members of each with polite respect. The task of the French was to bring about reconciliation between the Romans and their pope, who was to be reinstated but was to keep the constitution he had granted his people. If the Romans resisted, though, Oudinot was to use force.
General Oudinot, like his president, anticipated a quick and easy policing operation. Revolutionary movements had crumbled with little resistance everywhere else in Europe and this one promised to be no different. Oudinot felt the best tactic was to strike quickly before the Romans had had time to respond to his arrival. He organized his forces at Civitavecchia as quickly as he was able and then marched them east towards Rome. According to his intelligence reporters he had many supporters among the clergy in the Borgo. His map of the city showed there was a gate in the walls – Porta Pertusa – at the top of the Vatican Hill, which would be the perfect place to break in and unite with his Roman allies. If there were a hitch, his soldiers would march down to the Porta Cavallegieri where his intelligence told him that friendly clerics would open the gate. He did not bother to bring scaling ladders, or heavy siege guns that would slow him down, making do with light field guns that would be enough to break open Porta Perusa’s doors. He did not waste time stopping to examine the city’s defences but marched straight for the Vatican. Military professionalism led him to send out a column of troops to protect his right flank, though it seemed doubtful they would be needed. The whole business should all be over in a few hours and Oudinot looked forward to dining that evening in Rome.
On the other side of the walls that same morning the American sculptor and writer William Wetmore Story took a stroll round the city and would have agreed with Oudinot’s assessment. He wrote in his notes, ‘All the streets deserted, gloomy and morose, as before some terrible thunderstorm.’ There were no women to be seen and the shops were all closed, ‘with here and there a door half open and revealing the form of a soldier peering out’. Story had heard rumours that the Roman National Guard ‘are nearly unanimous in desiring the return of the pope and the abolition of the Triumvirate and the Republic, and that they will not fight’.46
One could understand the Romans having a sense of buyers’ remorse, as their situation was far from promising. The city’s defenders outnumbered the French army but not greatly, while compared to Oudinot’s disciplined, well-trained troops they were a very mixed bag, and most had little or no military experience. Included among them were 1,400 Roman volunteers who had fought the Austrians the previous year and so had some battle experience, though it had largely consisted of defeats. Others did not even have this. There were 2,500 Papal troops and carabinieri, and also recent Roman volunteers: 1,000 National Guards – the citizen army created by Pius IX – together with 300 students and several hundred Trasteverini, armed with knives and shotguns. A force of Lombards led by Giacomo Medici who did know how to fight were unable to do so. They had fallen into the hands of the French at Civitavecchia and to extricate themselves had given their word of honour that they would not take up arms against them, at least for the present.
Garibaldi in Rome with his servant, Aguyar.
It is doubtful how well any of these elements would have fared without the help of another force that arrived just three days before Oudinot appeared outside Rome. If Garibaldi was viewed with suspicion by Mazzini, he had an ally in the Roman Republic’s minister of war, Giuseppe Avezzana, and when news came that the French had landed at Civitavecchia, Avezzana hurriedly sent word to him at Rieti. Two days later Garibaldi and his legion of 1,300 entered Rome. They quickly caused a stir as, with their long hair and beards and their small felt hats, they looked like no ordinary soldiers. Some of the officers, who had accompanied Garibaldi all the way from Montevideo, had American saddles and wore their famous red shirts. Most striking of all was Garibaldi himself in his trademark poncho, accompanied by a giant freed Brazilian slave named Aguyar who was his helper and bodyguard. And yet, even though the new arrivals had an invigorating effect on Rome’s defenders, few of them had much fighting experience. Several hundred were students and artists.
Fortunately, luck was with the Romans. It came in the form of Oudinot’s plan of the city. When French scouts came in sight of the walls of Borgo they were greeted with two surprises. The first was a sharp blast of gunfire, which told them they were not going to be welcomed as liberators after all. The second was the fact that Porta Pertusa, which Oudinot intended to break open with his light field guns, was walled up, which it had been for years. Oudinot’s plan was badly out of date.
Still Oudinot was not discouraged. He sent a column of troops down the hill towards Porta Cavalleggeri, which, his intelligence told him, would be opened by friendly clerics. For good measure he sent another column around the walls on the north side in the direction of Castel Sant’Angelo. His decisions were poor. His soldiers were already tired, having been marching all morning in heavy uniforms beneath the hot spring sun, and now they had to pick their way down steep paths, heaving their field guns under withering fire from the walls. Those who managed to reach the Porta Cavallaggeri discovered no friendly clerics, and the gate remained firmly closed, while they found themselves caught in an indent in the walls, exposed to fire from both the north and the east. Lacking scaling ladders, a few tried to climb the walls using spike nails before Oudinot ordered them back. The assault had lasted barely an hour.
Yet the battle was far from over. To the south, in the grounds of the Villa Pamphili gardens, just in front of the city wal
ls, Garibaldi learned of Oudinot’s setback and decided to attack. Three hundred students and artists, none of whom had experienced battle till now, clambered over the wall of the gardens into a deep lane beyond. Just as they did so a column of a thousand French troops, which Oudinot had sent out to cover his flank, came into sight. The artists and students charged, briefly pushing the French back before themselves being chased out of the lane and back into the park.
French troops under Lieutenant-General Charles Oudinot make their first attack on Rome near the Porta Angelica, engraving from Illustrated London News, 19 May 1849.
So began a furious struggle. The rest of Garibaldi’s legion joined in but were repelled, and clusters of the students and artists took refuge in outhouses in the gardens, where they struggled to hold out. Garibaldi, realizing that the fight was going against him, sent word to Colonel Galletti, who commanded 800 troops in the Gianicolo walls just to his rear. These were the Roman volunteers who had fought the Austrians the previous year. Eager to make up for their earlier defeats they joined the fray and their numbers and enthusiasm soon told. Garibaldi, whose presence had an inspirational effect on his troops, personally led charges through the woods and copses of the gardens. The French were forced to retreat to an area of vineyards beyond the lane and for a time each side fired at the other. The deadlock was finally broken by the Roman side, in their most courageous action of the battle. They jumped down into the lane into a fusillade of French fire and then charged up to the vineyard. After a hand-to-hand struggle with bayonets the French turned and ran. Several hundred were captured.
After the battle came disagreements. Garibaldi, who was injured by a bullet to his side, had wanted to pursue the French and drive Oudinot into the sea, but he was overruled. Mazzini did not want to aggravate the French, with whom he still hoped to reach an accord. Garibaldi was left feeling resentful. Yet there was no denying that the Roman Republic had had a great victory. Its mixed bag of forces had defeated a professional army and Rome was saved, at least for now. The Romans were exultant and a little surprised at themselves. That night the city was lit up with candles burning in every window and the streets were filled with cheering crowds. They had reason to be proud. Despite the pope’s claims that the Republic was ruled by a dictatorship of foreigners, the great majority of the soldiers who had defeated the French were Romans.
For a time it seemed Mazzini’s republic might have saved itself. The French threat had barely been staved off when an even larger enemy force advanced on Rome – 10,000 Neapolitan troops led by King Bomba – but after suffering two crushing defeats by Garibaldi they fled back south, and in the middle of May there was new cause for hope. Oudinot offered a truce and a French envoy, Ferdinand de Lesseps, arrived in Rome to negotiate an accord with the Triumvirate. De Lesseps, who had expected to be dealing with radical, anticlerical terrorists, was impressed by Mazzini’s moderation. The French soldiers who had been captured in the battle in the Villa Pamphili Gardens were treated kindly and were given a sightseeing tour of Rome before being returned without condition to Oudinot. Church property and clerics had not been harmed and even those who Mazzini knew were plotting against his Republic were left at liberty. After two weeks of talks De Lesseps and the Triumvirate reached a deal. The question of the restoration of the pope was put off for the moment, but it was agreed that the French would occupy positions around Rome to protect the city from the Austrians.
Unfortunately the negotiations were a sham. Louis Napoleon saw it as a matter of national pride that French arms be vindicated and, unknown to De Lesseps, his talks were intended all along to distract the Romans while Oudinot waited for reinforcements. The very day after the De Lesseps accord was agreed Oudinot declared the truce was over. By now his forces had doubled and he had 20,000 men backed by engineers and siege guns, with more on the way.
Oudinot, determined not to be caught out in another attack, then played a second trick on the Romans. He had noticed – as had Garibaldi – that Rome’s Gianicolo defences hinged on a single spot: a four-storey country retreat, the Villa Corsini, that lay just inside the Pamphili Gardens. Situated on a high knoll, it overlooked the city walls from only a few hundred yards away. In the weeks since the victory on 30 April Villa Corsini should have been fortified with earthworks and guns, and that it had not been was the fault of General Roselli, Mazzini’s ploddingly respectable military commander. When Oudinot ended his truce he promised, with deliberate vagueness, that he would not attack ‘the place’ before Monday 4 June, so that any French still in the city would have time to leave. On the evening of Saturday 2 June, Roselli paid a visit to the garrison around the Villa Corsini – a pitiful 400 troops without guns or trenches – and told them to get a good night’s sleep as there would be no attack on them that night.
Just a few hours later French soldiers poured through the Pamphili Gardens. General Oudinot had employed a verbal trick that would cause lasting bitterness on the Roman side. He claimed he was free to attack the Villa Corsini as it was outside ‘the place’. Despite brave resistance by the defenders the villa was quickly taken. Garibaldi, who had only just returned from campaigning against King Bomba’s Neapolitans, and was convalescing from the bullet wound he had received on 30 April, hurried up the Gianicolo Hill to organize a counter-attack. So began the second battle for Rome, though in effect it was over before it began, as everything was against the Italians. To attack they had to make their way to a small gate in the wall of the Pamphili Gardens, beyond which they found themselves at the pointed end of a funnel-shaped space with no cover of any kind, where they faced furious French fire from the Villa Corsini. It was a killing ground.
Matters were not helped by Garibaldi, whose skills lay in open, guerrilla warfare rather than close fighting of this kind. He would have been wiser to wait until his guns had had time to batter the Villa Corsini to rubble, but instead he ordered wave after wave of attacks, that were more like suicide assaults. Still those involved did not flinch from doing as they were ordered. Among them were the Lombardy Bersaglieri who had been unable to fight in the previous battle because they had given their word of honour to the French. Torn apart as they charged the villa, they knelt down in the open and fired at the building, towards enemies they could not see, yet each one kept his place till their losses had become so great that their commander, Manara, sounded the retreat. Several times the Italians managed to drive the French from the villa but the building was impossible to defend from the other side and was soon retaken. By the end of a day in which the Italians lost many of their finest troops, they had to accept that the position too was lost.
From this moment anyone with the faintest military knowledge could see that the city faced certain defeat. It could only be a matter of time before the French would break through, while the Roman Republic could expect no help from outside. Along with France, Austria and Naples, its declared enemies now included Tuscany, and Spain had landed troops south of the city. Britain and the United States both regarded Mazzini’s republic warily and had no desire to become involved. Even The Times was no friend. The newspaper’s correspondent, who was embedded with Oudinot’s forces at Civitavecchia, took his hosts’ view of the conflict and told his readers that Mazzini’s Rome was in the hands of dictatorial foreigners, ‘who rob and assassinate under the name of liberty’, and that ‘three or four priests who had the courage to appear in public have been butchered in open day, and their flesh, cut up in morsels, thrown into the Tiber’.47
Hopeless though their situation was, the Romans fought on. Their battery on the ancient hill of broken amphorae, Monte Testaccio, fought artillery duels with French guns on the Gianicolo. From a bastion beside Porta San Pancrazio a band played the Marseillaise to shame the French, though without success. Oudinot’s forces tried to distract the Romans by lobbing shells into the city from batteries south and north of the Aurelian Walls. Fortunately, the damage done to Rome’s buildings was relatively light and the greatest victim of the bombardment was Po
pe Pius IX, who would be resented for it for many years. Two balls that struck St Peter’s were sent to him in Gaeta and when a shell came down Romans shouted, Ecco un Pio Nono (‘Here comes another Pius the Ninth’). Romans put out fizzing shells with pans of water and threw them into the Tiber.
At times the bombardment could be beautiful. In a melancholy moment towards the end of the siege, the American writer Margaret Fuller, who had become a passionate supporter of the Roman Republic and who helped tend wounded soldiers in the Quirinal Palace – now being used as a hospital – described watching shells fall at night: ‘’Tis pretty, tho’ a terror, to see the bombs, fiery meteors, springing from the horizon line upon their bright path to do their wicked message. ’Twould not be so bad, meseems, to die of one of these …’48
Margaret Fuller showed the lie of Pius’ claims that Rome was in the hands of militant foreign terrorists. She had never known the city so safe, she wrote, and had often walked through its streets alone without once seeing violence. Bar occasional hissing, even the French in the city were left in peace. Romans were content to mock their enemies, which they did, as ever, via their talking statue Pasquino, who now spoke through a satirical magazine, Don Pirlone.
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