Prisoner of the Vatican Read Online Free PDF

Antonelli added, Napoleon was willing to allow a Savoyard prince, perhaps even one of the king's own sons, to become king of Naples.
    Antonelli then surveyed the hazards ahead. Napoleon's true intentions, he admitted, could not fully be known. But whatever Napoleon had in mind, the pope would pursue the same path, for he could follow no other. He would denounce those who sought to take the papal lands from him, and he would insist on the return of the Papal States.
    "In the coming struggle, we may be beaten and submerged," said Antonelli. "I am the first to admit that it is possible, nay, I will say even probable, but we will do our duty towards the Holy Church like honest men knowing that when God in his mercy allows these trials to pass His Church will rise again as she has ever done before and her enemies will be dispersed and confounded."
    On his way home, Russell ran into Prince Altomonte, a former minister in the court of the deposed king of Naples. Asking the prince what he thought of the new Italian treaty with France, Russell was surprised to hear him parrot Antonelli's view. Napoleon did not want Italy to unite, he said, and the Convention, by securing the pope's temporal rule over Rome and imposing Florence, the capital of northern Italy, on the Italians, had left Naples free to secede as long as its Bourbon throne was occupied by a prince of the House of Savoy." 8
    Such optimism sprang from another source as well, for tensions in Europe were high, pitting Prussia against Austria and both against France. The one thing that all of these antagonists shared was an opposition to the rise of a strong, united Italy that could compete with them for influence. War seemed imminent, and for those in the Vatican there was reason to believe—or, at least, to hope—that the belligerents would see to it that the Italian kingdom was soon cut down to size.
    In mid-January 1865, Antonelli discussed just such a prospect in a conversation with the British envoy. "Like the Pope," Russell reported in his dispatch to London, "Antonelli hopes in a European war to set matters right again in the Holy See!" 9
    Yet, by the time of Russell's New Year's audience with the pope the following year, he found the pontiff—known for his rapid mood changes—despondent and frustrated.
    "How is it," Pius asked him, "that the British can hang two thousand Negroes to put down an uprising in Jamaica, and receive only universal praise for it, while I cannot hang a single man in the Papal States without provoking worldwide condemnation?"
    "His Holiness," Russell recounted, "here burst out laughing and repeated his last sentence several times holding up one finger as he alluded to hanging one man, so as to render the idea still more impressive."
    This and other aspects of their encounter left the British envoy uneasy. While the seventy-three-year-old pope appeared to be in excellent health, his conversation, Russell reported, "bore the unmistakable signs of the approach of second childhood." The pontiff's ministers feared his growing irritability and were loath to say anything that might upset him. And so, Russell concluded, "notwithstanding the proverbial goodness and benevolence of Pius IX, he seems to inspire them with unreasonable apprehension and inexplicable terror." 10
    A few months later the pope was in a better mood, having new reason to believe that a European war would soon lead to the restoration of the Papal States. Fighting had begun in June 1866, pitting Austrian forces against Prussia and Italy. The Italians had joined Prussia in an attempt to seize the disputed lands held by Austria on the northeast of the Italian peninsula. But the war was not going well for them, and on June 24 the Austrians pulverized the Italian army at Custoza, near Verona.
    "The war absorbs every other interest," Russell reported from Rome, "and the success of the Austrians at Custoza fills the Papal party with unbounded joy." 11
    But the cardinals'