The Roman Republic of 1849
First of a 4-part series

Probably the most renowned phase of the Italian Risorgimento—Italy’s achievement of independence and unification— occurred in 1860 when Giuseppe Garibaldi led his “1,000” (i Mille) to miraculously liberate not just Sicily, but the southern half of the Italian peninsula. When joined with King Vittorio Emanuele’s victories in the north, Garibaldi’s triumph unified virtually all of Italy.

A decade before this, however, there was a battle that, even though it ended in defeat, lives just as vividly in Italian hearts. This was the battle to defend the short-lived, but seminal Republic established in Rome in 1849. The struggle included not only Garibaldi, but also that other giant patriot, Giuseppe Mazzini. As G.M. Trevelyan says in his history, Garibaldi’s Defence of the Roman Republic:
• That there should ever have been a time when Mazzini ruled Rome and Garibaldi defended her walls, sounds like a poet’s dream. (Trevelyan, Intro p. 3)

But it was no dream. As Mazzini makes clear in his writings, the 1849 battle for Rome in the face of hopeless odds was needed to drive home to Italians not just the dream of liberation, but its inevitability:
• To the many other causes which decided us to resist, there was in my mind one intimately bound up with the aim of my whole life—the foundation of our national unity. Rome was the natural center of that unity, and it was important to attract the eyes and reverence of my countrymen towards her... (Trevelyan, 112)

To understand what happened, some acquaintance with the events of 1848 is necessary. Due partly to crop failures in 1845-7, and partly to ideas of liberation among the middle classes, popular uprisings rocked Europe’s monarchies in 1848, forcing many rulers to either flee or grant concessions.

Prince Metternich was forced to resign as Austria’s foreign minister; King Louis Philippe fled France and a Republic was declared; similar revolts took place in Krakow, Berlin, Prague, Budapest, Madrid and elsewhere. In Italy, insurrections shook all the major territories. In January, citizens protested Austrian rule in Lombardy by refusing to smoke or play the lottery—thus denying the Austrians needed taxes.

Soon Sicily revolted against the Bourbon King Ferdinand, who then granted his Kingdom of Two Sicilies a constitution. Tuscan revolts in February led to a constitution and a provisional government. Later in February, the newly-installed Pope, Pius IX (Pio Nono), surprised the Papal States by initiating reforms and granting a constitution there as well. Despite the concessions, however, tensions grew.

An insurrection in Milan starting on March 18 resulted in the famous five days (cinque giornate) of street fighting that expelled the Austrian garrison and Marshal Radetzky’s army. With Daniele Manin leading a similar revolt in Venice, King Charles Albert of Sardinia/Piedmont concluded that Italy’s struggle for unification was at hand, and declared war on Austria. All Italy seemed to be in revolt against her foreign rulers.

It was at this point that the two revolutionary exiles, Mazzini in London and Garibaldi in Uruguay, returned to their homeland to join the struggle. They met in Milan sometime in the summer of 1848. Mazzini had gone there in April hoping to inspire the Milanesi to form a Republic, but after offering Charles Albert his services, became increasingly disenchanted with the King’s timidity. Garibaldi, too, had offered his services to Charles Albert on July 5, but the King wanted to get rid of this uncontrollable firebrand and passed him on to Turin.

En route, Garibaldi stopped in Milan, where he was offered a Generalship and asked to defend Bergamo. Mazzini took up a rifle and joined Garibaldi’s troops at Bergamo, but both were so disgusted with King Charles Albert’s easy defeat by the Austrians (at Custoza July 25, 1848) and the subsequent armistice that Garibaldi issued a proclamation:
• “The king of Sardinia may have a crown that he holds onto by dint of misdeeds and cowardice, but my comrades and I do not wish to hold on to our lives by shameful actions.” (Alfonso Scirocco, Garibaldi: Citizen of the World, Princeton U Press: 2007, 145)

Garibaldi’s legionnaires were then hunted by both the Austrians and a force sent by Charles Albert to capture him. By the end of August, after daring battles in Luino and Morazzone, an exhausted Garibaldi took refuge in Switzerland, where Mazzini had earlier fled, and then in his hometown of Nice (Nizza).

Garibaldi was soon ready to renew his efforts, deciding in October that Sicily, now at war with King Ferdinand (christened “King Bomba” for his attack on Messina), was ripe. A stop at Livorno interrupted his plans when patriots there asked that he lead a revolution in Tuscany. Though this, too, failed for lack of recruits, Garibaldi then thought to aid Daniele Manin in Venice, but was once again detained, this time by Liberals in Bologna begging him to lead their revolt against Papal rule.

Just as matters were coming to a head, stunning news arrived from Rome: On November 15, the Pope’s minister, Pellegrino Rossi, was murdered. Luigi Brunetti, son of Rome’s populist “leader” Ciceruacchio, had stabbed the minister on his way to Parliament. Rome, and most of Italy, had been simmering with resentment against Pio Nono—once hailed, not least by Mazzini and Garibaldi himself, as Italy’s potential savior, the one whose troops could put an end to all foreign rule.

Just as his 12,000 soldiers were joining Charles Albert in Lombardy, however, the Pope recalled them with his infamous “Allocution” of April 29, 1848. It declared, among other things, that the Pontiff was not the least inclined to wage war against Austria (a Catholic power). The Romans who had placed their hopes in Pius IX were beside themselves with rage, venting it by attacking the Quirinal Palace and firing on the Swiss Guards. So petrified was the Pope by these demonstrations that on November 24, he disguised himself as a humble priest and fled south to the protection of King Ferdinand. Then, from his safe fortress in Gaeta, the Pope refused all overtures for negotiations and demanded unconditional surrender to his temporal rule over Rome and all the Papal States.

Seeing his opportunity, Garibaldi set out for Rome with his Italian Legion, now 500 in number—including the cavalry of Angelo Masina. Passing through the Papal States, they settled in the village of Rieti to await developments, which were not long in coming. Republican leaders put together a Provisional Government. Then in February 1849, when a Constituent Assembly was summoned, Garibaldi traveled to Rome and, as a member of the Assembly, made a speech urging quick action. He was given a command, though not of the whole army as he had hoped. Rather, he was made a lieutenant colonel in the Roman army, but with authority only to defend Porto San Gregorio on the Adriatic. Like Charles Albert, Rome’s leaders clearly wanted to keep him at a distance.

Still, Garibaldi remained ready—recruiting more troops as well as outfitting his legion— as Rome’s government, on February 9, declared itself a Republic. Its Fundamental Statute of Four Articles announced that: the Papacy was deposed from temporal authority, though the Pontiff was granted full independence regarding his spiritual power; the form of government was to be a popular democracy; and the resulting Roman Republic was to join the rest of Italy towards a common Italian nationality.

The new republic had put Italy’s foreign rulers on notice: their days were numbered. As the revolutionary priest, Ugo Bassi, had demanded weeks earlier, “Choose now— Garibaldi or Pius IX! Italy or continued slavery!” Romans had now chosen Italy (though not Garibaldi as yet). They had also chosen Mazzini, one of their first acts being to make him a Roman citizen (he’d never been in the city).

When he did arrive on March 5, Giuseppe Mazzini was not only welcomed as Rome’s latest and greatest citizen, he was named a triumvir—one of three men to rule the city. Mazzini then set out organizing the government, and marginalizing the criminal elements that had been threatening to pervert democratic rule. As Trevelyan notes, Mazzini replaced the unruly elements with “a spirit of tolerance and liberty almost unexampled in time of national danger.” Mazzini put it thus to the Assembly: “We must act like men who have the enemy at their gates, and at the same time like men who are working for eternity.”

It was the first of these two objectives that induced the Roman government to finally turn to Garibaldi. The enemy was indeed at the gates. Pius IX, faced with the end of his temporal rule, had called for help not only from the hated Austrians, but also from the Spanish and the French. That the Austrians and the Spanish came to his aid was not surprising. But that the French—the initiators of revolution against despotic rule— would do so was met with near disbelief. As the American, Margaret Fuller, wrote in one of her letters:
• The interference of the French has roused the weakest to resis- tance. “From the Austrians, from the Neapolitans,” they cried, “we expected this; but from the French—it is too infamous; it cannot be borne;” and they all ran to arms and fought nobly. (May 6, 1849)

Nonetheless, the French President Louis Napoleon saw an opportunity to regain some of the influence France had lost when the Pope chose Naples as a refuge, and to curry favor with French Catholic voters in the future. And when the Austrians won a total victory in the battle of Novara (Charles Albert had decided to try war with Austria again; even more soundly defeated on March 22-23, 1849 at Novara, he resigned his throne to his son, Vittorio Emanuele) the French president ignored his republicanism and joined in the race to be the first to “liberate” Rome. As justification, he used words similar to these used by the Pope in his April 20 Allocution:
• Who does not know that the city of Rome, the principal seat of the Church, has now become, alas, a forest of roaring beasts, overflowing with men of every nation, apostates, or heretics, or leaders of communism and socialism? (Trevelyan107)

Rome’s Republic was portrayed not as a movement for liberation, but as a plot hatched by foreign agitators and terrorists. By getting there first, the French would be the liberators.

Accordingly, the French Army, consisting of some 10,000 troops under General Oudinot, landed at Rome’s seaport, Civitavecchia, on April 25. Within days, they would be at the gates of Rome, expecting an easy victory over the “cowardly” Italians.

What Oudinot did not count on was the genius and charisma of Giuseppe Garibaldi, now elevated to general. With skills honed in South America, and in guerrilla war against the Austrians, Garibaldi was at the height of his powers. Though he would have preferred to fight a guerrilla war in the Italian hills, he yielded to Mazzini’s urging that Rome had to be defended at all costs (even though both knew it was futile). When he arrived in the city on April 27, Garibaldi was met by the citizens of Rome in a manner befitting a god, or, at least, one of the Caesars:
• “He has come, he has come!” they cried all down the Corso. (Trevelyan, 111)

In the next two days, he supervised the preparations for the coming siege, mainly digging trenches and fortifying villas near the expected point of attack. Never standing on ceremony, he rode round the city encouraging the diggers—which even included elegantly-dressed women— himself. Later, one Italian artist related their first encounter:
• I had no idea of enlisting. I was a young artist; I only went out of curiosity—but oh! I shall never forget that day when I saw him on his beautiful white horse...He reminded us of nothing so much as of our Saviour’s head in the galleries. I could not resist him. I left my studio. I went after him; thousands did likewise. He only had to show himself. We all worshipped him; we could not help it. (Trevelyan, 119)

Nor was it only the great warrior who elicited such sentiments. Margaret Fuller, in describing Mazzini’s March 8 visit to her Rome apartment, used similar language in her letters, one to her friend Marcus Spring:
• I heard a ring; then somebody speaks my name; the voice struck me at once. He looks more divine than ever, after all his new, strange sufferings. Freely would I give my life for him....

With two such leaders and an aroused citizenry facing thousands of battle-seasoned French troops, the battle for Rome could not help being legendary.

Continue to the Second Part

Lawrence DiStasi
copyright © 2011

Lawrence DiStasi is the author of Mal Occhio: The Underside of Vision, The Big Book of Italian American Culture, and Una Storia Segreta: The Secret History of Italian American Evacuation and Internment During World War II. DiStasi and novelist Dorothy Bryant will be speaking at the Museo Italo Americano in San Francisco on March 6, 2011, 2 pm in a program called “Two American Women of the Risorgimento.” Bryant, author of Anita Anita!, will speak on Anita Garibaldi; DiStasi will speak on Margaret Fuller Ossoli. Both women were in Rome in 1849.

Please RSVP to the Museo at (415) 673-2200. Space is limited.