Prisoner of the Vatican Read Online Free PDF Page A

troops out of Rome, they thought, they would eventually find some pretext to annex it. 4
    In all matters involving relations with other states, the pope relied heavily on his secretary of state, the powerful and controversial Giacomo Antonelli. Something of a lady's man despite being rather ugly, Antonelli was as arrogant and severe with his underlings as he was solicitous and charming with foreign diplomats and aristocratic visitors. One of Pius's biographers, Adolph Mundt, described him in typically unflattering terms: "Antonelli is a tall, thin man who wears on his dark, yellowish face, a savage expression but one that is, at the same time, demonically astute. His long head resting on his shoulders brings to mind that of a bird of prey." Antonelli's biographer, the American Frank Coppa, while painting a much more positive picture, stresses his lack of friends, his relentless self-control, and his insistence on formality, having even his parents and brothers address him as "Monsignor" and preferring them to refer to him as "His Eminence." 5
    Returning from a trip to London just after the Convention of September was signed, Odo Russell was surprised to find that Antonelli and others of the Curia remained optimistic about the future. The cardinals, wrote the British envoy, "laugh in anybody's face who mentions the departure of the French troops from Rome." When Russell reminded the prelates that they had, a few years earlier, been similarly convinced that the Austrians would never leave Lombardy, nor that Victor Emmanuel would ever dare seize any of the Papal States, they stood their ground. Napoleon III, they insisted, could never leave the pope "in a helpless condition to the Piedmontese and the tender mercies of his subjects, the Catholics of France and of the whole world will not stand it." 6
    Antonelli, it turned out, had some reason for his optimism, as Russell discovered a week later when he again met the secretary of state. As was often his custom, Antonelli took the British envoy by his arm for a walk as they chatted. The French emperor, Antonelli told him, had recently conveyed a message through the papal nuncio in Paris.
    "Tell the Pope," Napoleon had said, "to be calm, to trust in me and to judge me by my deeds and not by my words."
    From this conversation and from other sources in Paris, Antonelli assured Russell, "it has become evident that the Convention of 15 September has several meanings, one put upon it at Turin and the other at Paris publicly and officially, whilst a third interpretation, and the only correct one, exists in the Emperor Napoleon's mind. Much as I have thought about it, I know not what His Majesty's ultimate plans may be.... But one thing becomes clearer than it ever was before to my mind, namely that he does not intend Italy to unite."
    Russell remained skeptical. Was it really the French emperor's intention to see the new Italian state dismantled?
    Antonelli tried to explain: "First of all the Convention contains in itself the destruction of the unity of Italy, for it reserves the Temporal Power to the Pope and deprives Italy of Rome, and Italy can never be a united nation without Rome. Secondly, the Convention declares Florence to be the future capital of Italy, that is, it forms the great political center of Italy in the north. Now the North did not require any other capital than Turin while it waited for Rome. The danger to unity is in the south." 7 Had Naples been declared the capital, Antonelli explained, the South might have been placated. But by making Florence the new capital, he argued, "the Convention leaves the South free to fall off, separate and constitute a southern Kingdom." Clearly, said Antonelli, "Napoleon imposed Florence on the Italians as their capital so that Naples might be free to act for herself and Italy become a Confederation divided into three, namely a northern and southern Kingdom and the Holy See in the center." To make the plan palatable to Victor Emmanuel,