The
entry of the Italian army into Rome by the breach in Porta Pia has cast
the grand defence of 1849 into the background of rash attempts and
futile failures. In these brief pages we give merely the outline of the
drama in which Garibaldi was one of the leading actors. The men who
desired a republic did not exist as a party in Rome previous to the
flight of the Pope. But there existed a strong national anti-Austrian
party, who, as they had worshipped Pio Nono (Pius IX) when he "blessed
Italy" and the banners that the Romans bore upward to the "Holy War,"
now execrated him inasmuch as he had withdrawn his sanction to that war
and had blessed the Croats and the Austrians who were butchering the
Italians in the north. Convinced of the impossibility of favoring the
independence and unity of Italy, and remaining at the same time the
supreme head of the Universal Church, Pio Nono fled for protection to
the King of Naples; there he declined to accept from the King of
Piedmont his repeated offers of protection or mediation, and appealed to
Austria alone to restore him pope-king absolute in Rome.
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