When it
became known in Germany that the pontifical troops were hastening to the
legitimate defence of Italy it affected the public feeling generally,
and the name of Pius IX was branded with censure, not by laymen only,
but by some bishops and high ecclesiastics. Monsignor Viale, nuncio at
Vienna, and Monsignor Sacconi, nuncio at Munich, were assiduous and
eager in detailing the sinister reports touching Rome and the Pope, and
colored them in such a way as to create an apprehension of schism, the
most serious one that could rise for a pope--and that pope, too, Pius
IX. He had before this been greatly troubled by the proclamation of
General Durando; still he had hoped that the Italian League would be
shortly concluded, and that, when he had furnished the quota of troops
that might be due from him as a temporal sovereign, he would then have
been able, in the capacity of pontiff, to use those good offices which
he considered requisite to assure the consciences of Catholics.
Even the news of some reverses to the Italian arms in Lombardy failed to
awaken a proper feeling among the inhabitants of Central and Southern
Italy, and Farini thus censures the slothfulness and vanity of his
countrymen: "Few gave credit or importance at the time to this and other
sinister intelligence; the greater part of those who beheld the first
marvellous smiles of fortune relied upon the star of Italy, and thought
the Empire was dismembered.
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