Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/374

 THE THRONE IN THE TIME OF STORMS

Strip the fisherman from the Holy Land Of his king's sceptre and, bid him as before Unravel his net on the naked sand.

But again Radetsky defeated the Piedmontese at Novara on March 23, 1849, anc ^ ^ station was completely reversed. Charles Albert abdicated, Lombardy and Venice were once more incorporated into the Austrian monarchy, and the aversion of the great powers to a unified republican state was favourable to the policy of the Pope and his Secretary of State, Cardinal Antonelli. While Garibaldi and the followers of Mazzini retained control of Rome, Pius conferred in Gaeta with the representatives of the powers whom he had petitioned for aid. The military intervention was entrusted to France. Austria occupied the northern section of the Papal States, and the French ex- peditionary forces under Marshal Oudinot forced Garibaldi after a sharp fight to surrender Rome on June 30th. But the "liberal Pope" was now a thing of the past. Pius sighed and said that the peoples were not yet ripe for liberalism. It was not difficult for Antonelli to lead a heart thus thoroughly converted along his own way. On July i4th, the Papal sovereignty was re-established, after the French had tried in vain to solve the constitutional problem. A motu proprio (September i2th) almost completely abolished constitutional liberties. It was not until April i2th, 1850, that the Pope returned. His hair had turned grey.

The Austrians continued to occupy the Romagna and Rome, and this gave the revolutionary party a pretext for further warfare against the Papal government. Victor Emmanuel II had succeeded his father, Charles Albert, in Piedmont. There alone the constitutional idea had prevailed and reforms had benefitted the army and the country. In so far as ecclesiastical policy was concerned, the ministers Siccardi, Santa Rosa and Cavour enforced their liberal ideas. The canonical courts were abrogated, civil marriages were recognized, monasteries were suppressed. All these things were omens of the impending struggle against the temporal power of the Pope, and against them the Curia protested in vain. During the same year (1850) Pius restored the Catholic hierarchy in England and erected an archbishopric at Westminster. This victory over the No Popery movement and its

ENGLISH