The final conquest of the Pope by the party of universal reaction could only be effected by his isolation from all but one set of influences; this is precisely what happened at Gaeta.  There are reasons for thinking that his choice of the hospitality of the King of the Two Sicilies, rather than that of France or Spain or Sardinia, was the result of an intrigue in which Count Spaur, the Bavarian minister who represented the interests of Austria in Rome after that power withdrew her ambassador, played a principal part.  Even after Pius arrived at Gaeta, it is said that he talked of it as the first stage of a longer journey.  He had never shown any liking for the Neapolitan Bourbons, and the willingness which he expressed to Gioberti to crown Charles Albert King of Italy if his arms were successful, was probably duly appreciated by Ferdinand II.  To save the Pope from absorption by the retrograde party, and to avoid the certainty of a foreign invasion, Gioberti, who became Prime Minister of Piedmont in November 1848, was anxious to occupy the Roman states with Sardinian troops immediately after the Pope’s flight, when his subjects still recognised his sovereignty.  Gioberti resigned because this policy was opposed by Rattazzi and other of his colleagues in the ministry.  It would have been a difficult role to play; Sardinia, while endeavouring to checkmate the reaction, might have become its instrument.  The failure of Gioberti’s plan cannot be regretted, but his forecast of what would happen if it were not attempted proved to be correct.

Soon after the arrival of his exalted guest, King Ferdinand with his family, a great number of priests, and a strong escort, moved his residence from the capital to Gaeta.  The modified Constitution, substituted for the first charter after the events of the 15th of May, was still nominally in force; Parliament had met during the summer, but the King solved the riddle of governing through his ministers, on purely retrograde principles, without paying more heed to the representatives of the nations than to the benches on which they sat.  Prorogued on the 5th of September, Parliament was to have met on the 30th of November, but when that date approached, it was prorogued again to the 1st of February.  ‘Our misery has reached such a climax,’ wrote Baron Carlo Poerio, ’that it is enough to drive us mad.  Every faculty of the soul revolts against the ferocious reactionary movement, the more disgraceful from its execrable hypocrisy.  We are governed by an oligarchy; the only article maintained is that respecting the taxes.  The laws have ceased to exist; the Statute is buried; a licentious soldiery rules over everything, and the press is constantly employed to asperse honest men.  The lives of the deputies are menaced.  Another night of St Bartholomew is threatened to all who will not sell body and soul.’  Ferdinand only waited till he had recovered substantial hold over Sicily to do away with even the fiction