Roman Republic (19th Century) - History - French Siege

French Siege

On April 25, some eight to ten thousand French troops under General Charles Oudinot landed at Civitavecchia on the coast northwest of Rome, while Spain sent 4,000 men under Fernando Fernández de Córdova to Gaeta, where the Pope remained in his refuge. The French sent a staff officer the next day to meet with Giuseppe Mazzini with a stiff assertion that the pope would be restored to power. The revolutionary Roman Assembly, amid thunderous shouts of "Guerra!, Guerra!", authorised Mazzini to resist the French by force of arms.

The French expected little resistance from the "usurpers". But republican resolve was stiffened by the charismatic Giuseppe Garibaldi's long-delayed triumphal entry into Rome at last, on April 27, and by the arrival on April 29 of the Lombard Bersaglieri, who had recently driven the Austrians from the streets of Milan in "modern" house-to-house fighting. Hasty defenses were erected on the Janiculum wall, and the villas on the city's outskirts were garrisoned. On April 30, Oudinot's out-of-date maps led him to march to a gate that had been walled up some time before. The first cannon-shot was mistaken for the noon-day gun, and the astonished French were beaten back by the fiercely anti-clerical Romans of Trastevere, Garibaldi's legionaries and citizen-soldiers, who sent them back to the sea. But despite Garibaldi's urging, Mazzini was loath to follow up their advantage, as he had not expected an attack by the French and hoped that the Roman Republic could befriend the French Republic. The French prisoners were treated as ospiti della guerra and sent back with republican tracts citing the Article V of the most recent French constitution: "France respects foreign nationalities. Her might will never be employed against the liberty of any people".

As a result Oudinot was able to regroup and await reinforcements; time proved to be on his side, and Mazzini's attempt at diplomacy proved fatal to the Roman Republic. A letter from Louis Napoleon encouraged Oudinot and assured him of French reinforcements. The French government sent Ferdinand de Lesseps to negotiate a more formal ceasefire. Neapolitan troops sympathetic to the Papacy entered Roman Republic territory, and de Lesseps suggested that Oudinot's forces in their current position might protect the city from the converging approach of an Austrian army with the Neapolitan force: the Roman Triumvirate agreed. Many Italians from outside the Papal States went to Rome to fight for the Republic: among them was Goffredo Mameli, who had tried to form a common state joining Roman Republic and Tuscany, and who died of a wound suffered in the defense of Rome.

The siege began in earnest on June 1, and despite the resistance of the Republican army, led by Garibaldi, the French prevailed on June 29. On June 30 the Roman Assembly met and debated three options: to surrender; to continue fighting in the streets of Rome; to retreat from Rome and continue the resistance from the Apennine mountains. Garibaldi made a speech in which he favored the third option and then said: Dovunque saremo, colà sarà Roma. ("Wherever we may be, there will be Rome").

A truce was negotiated on July 1 and on July 2 Garibaldi, followed by some 4 000 troops, withdrew from Rome for refuge in the neutral republic of San Marino. The French Army entered Rome on July 3 and reestablished the Holy See's temporal power. In August Louis Napoleon issued a sort of manifesto in which he asked of Pius IX a general amnesty, a secularized administration, the establishment of the Code Napoléon, and in general a Liberal Government. Pius, from Gaeta, promised reforms that he declared motu proprio, that is, of his own volition, not in answer to the French.

The Pope did not return to Rome itself until April 1850, since the French were considered liberals all the same, and the Pope would not return until assured of no French meddling in his affairs. French soldiers propped up the Papal administration in Rome until they were withdrawn at the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, leading to the subsequent capture of Rome and annexation by the Kingdom of Italy.

According to Raffaele De Cesare:

The Roman question was the stone tied to Napoleon's feet — that dragged him into the abyss. He never forgot, even in August 1870, a month before Sedan, that he was a sovereign of a Catholic country, that he had been made emperor, and was supported by the votes of the conservatives and the influence of the clergy; and that it was his supreme duty not to abandon the pontiff. For twenty years Napoleon III had been the true sovereign of Rome, where he had many friends and relations Without him the temporal power would never have been reconstituted, nor, being reconstituted, would have endured."