Roman Republic (1849–1850)
- See also ancient Roman Republic and Roman Republic (18th century).
The Roman Republic was a short-lived (four months) state established in February 1849 when the theocratic Papal States were temporarily overthrown by Carlo Armellini, Giuseppe Mazzini and Aurelio Saffi.
According to the Roman Republic's constitution, all religions could be practiced freely and the pope was guaranteed the right to govern the Catholic Church. Under the regulations of the Papal States at that time, Judaism could be practiced freely by those who were born Jewish and not baptized, although Jews were still in many respects discriminated against; all other religions besides Catholicism and Judaism were forbidden except to visiting foreigners. Additionally, the Constitution of the Roman Republic was the first in the world to abolish capital punishment in its constitutional law [citation needed].
The Constitution of the Roman Republic is available (in Italian) at:
http://www.domusmazziniana.it/materiali/costirep.htm
and at:
http://www.cronologia.it/storia/a1849b.htm
The PRINCIPI FONDAMENTALI guaranteed religious liberty under ART 7 and the spiritual indipendence of the pope, as head of the Catholic Church, under ART 8.
TITOLO I abolished the death penalty under ART 5 and established free public education under ART 8.
History
Birth of the Republic
On 15 November 1848, Pellegrino Rossi, Minister of Justice of the Papal Government was assassinated. The following day the residents of Rome filled the streets, where various groups demanded a democratic government, social reforms and a declaration of war against the Empire of Austria. Pope Pius IX left Rome disguised as an ordinary priest, and went to Gaeta, a papal fortress in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, where he allowed the formation of a government led by archibishop Carlo Emanuele Muzzarelli. The government issued some liberal reforms which Pius IX rejected and designed a new government, established in Gaeta.
Without a local government in Rome, popular assemblies decided to issue universal elections on the following 21 January 1849. Since the pope had forbidden Catholics to vote at those elections, the resulting constitutional assembly had republican inclination (in each and every part of the Papal States more than 50% of the potential voters went to the polls)(refactored from elections). The Constitutional Assembly proclaimed the Roman Republic February 8. When news reached the city of the decisive defeat of Piedmontese forces at the battle of Novara, the Assembly proclaimed the Triumvirate, of Carlo Armellini (Roman), Mattia Montecchi (Roman) and Aurelio Saliceti (from Teramo, Papal States), and a government, led by Muzzarelli and composed also by Aurelio Saffi (from Forlì, Papal States). Among the first acts of the Republic, there was the proclamation of the right of the Pope to continue his role as head of the Roman Church. The Triumvirate passed popular legislation to eliminate burdensome taxes and give work to the unemployed.
Giuseppe Garibaldi formed the "Italian Legion" with many recruits coming from Piedmont and the Austrian territories of Lombardy and Venetia and took up a station at the border town of Rieti on the border with the Kingdom of Two Sicilies. There the legion rose to about 1000 and gained discipline and organization.
The Pope asked for military help from Catholic countries. Saliceti and Montecchi left the Triumvirate; their places were filled by Saffi and Giuseppe Mazzini, the Genoese founder of the journal La Giovine Italia, who had been the guiding spirit of the Republic from the start. Mazzini won friends among the poor by confiscating some of the Church's large landholdings and distributing them to peasants. He inaugurated prison and insane asylum reforms, freedom of the press, and secular education, but shied away from the "Right to Work," having seen this measure fail in France.
However, the government's policies (lower taxes, increased spending) meant the government had trouble with its finances and had to resort to inflating the currency in order to pay its debts. Runaway inflation might have doomed the Republic entirely on its own, but it also faced military threats. The Piedmont was at risk of attack by Austrian forces, and the Republic's movement of troops in the area was a threat to Austria (which was certainly capable of attacking Rome itself). But the Roman Republic would fall to another, unexpected enemy. In France, President Louis Napoleon, who would soon declare himself emperor Napoleon III, was torn. He himself had participated in an insurrection in the Papal States against the Church in 1831, but at this point he needed the endorsement of the French Catholics. Though he hesitated to betray Italian liberals, he decided to send troops to restore the Pope.
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, and 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 triumphal entry into Rome at last, on April 27, and by the arrival on the 29th 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 also Goffredo Mameli, who had tried to form a common state joining Roman Republic and Tuscany, and who died of a wound suffered in the defence of Rome.
The siege began in earnest on June 1, and despite the resistance of the Republican army, led by Garibaldi, the French army entered Rome June 29, reestablishing 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 supported the Papal administration in Rome until the end of 1866.
Notes
Template:Ent Deotto, Paolo, "La Repubblica Romana: un'utopia del 1849 che farà l'Italia unita", Cronologia. Template:It icon
External links
- George Macaulay Trevelyan, "Garibaldi's defense of Rome" excerpts from Garibaldi and the Thousand, 1910
- Keith Frye, "'Roma o Morte'": the Siege of Rome—1849", 1997 A detailed account.