THE LAST CRUSADE

1867

The French leave Rome—­Garibaldi’s Arrest and Escape—­The Second
French Intervention—­Monte Rotondo—­Mentana.

The words of Victor Emmanuel to the Venetian Deputation contained a riddle easy to solve:  what was meant by the ‘completion’ of Italy was the establishment of her capital on the Tiber.  In most minds there was an intense belief in the inevitability of the union of Rome with the rest of Italy, but no one saw how it was to be brought about.  What soothsayer foretold Sedan?

In the first period after the war, domestic difficulties fixed the attention of the Italian Government on the present rather than on the future.  An insurrection at Palermo assumed threatening proportions owing to the smallness of the garrison, and might have had still more serious consequences but for the courage and presence of mind shown by the Syndic, the young Marquis di Rudini.  Crime and poverty, republican hankerings, the irritation of the priesthood at recent legislation, and most of all, the feeling that little had been done since 1860 to realise the millennium then promised, contributed to the outbreak which was quelled when troops arrived from the mainland, but the ministers were blamed for not having taken better precautions against its occurrence.  Another stumbling-block lay in the path of Ricasoli, namely, the application of the law for the suppression of religious houses, and the expropriation of ecclesiastical property.  After an unsuccessful endeavour to cope with it, he dissolved the Chamber, but the new Parliament proved no more willing to support his measures, which were of the nature of a compromise, than the old one, and he finally resigned office.  He was succeeded by Urban Rattazzi, under whose administration a measure was passed which, though drastic in appearance, has not prevented the re-establishment of a great many convents of which the property was bought in under the name of private individuals.  Every Catholic country has seen the necessity sooner or later of putting a check to the increase of monasticism, but it may be a matter of regret that in Italy, the toleration granted to the learned community of Monte Cassino was not extended to more of the historic monasteries.  The abstention of the Clerical party from the voting urns deprived them of an influence which, on such points as these, they might have exercised legitimately and perhaps beneficially.  To that abstention, the disequilibrium of Italian political life, from first to last, is largely due.

The time allowed to the French under the September Convention for the evacuation of Rome expired in December 1866, and at the opening of the new year, for the first time since 1849, the Eternal City was without a garrison in the service of a foreign Power.  While executing their engagement, the French Government took occasion to say that they kept their hands perfectly free as concerned future action.  The anomalous