These
soldiers were men of various European nationalities belonging to that
Roman Catholic party which was determined to maintain intact the
temporal rule of the Pope as against the wishes of the vast majority of
Italians, themselves Roman Catholics, who desired to substitute for that
rule the constitutional sovereignty of King Victor Emmanuel. The
Italians were willing enough to remain under the spiritual headship of
the Roman Pontiff, but they would not have a temporal power upheld by
foreign soldiers. The moment was, like many others, a very critical one
in the history of Italy. Garibaldi was victorious in Naples. The Papal
forces, composed chiefly of Germans and French, under Lamoriciere, were
holding the inhabitants of Umbria and the Marches who were longing to
join the national movement. Indeed, some of the most influential men of
those provinces, among others Marquis Filippo Gualterio of Orvieto, had
already come to Turin to obtain the intervention of its Government and
protection from the Papal troops, whose foreign extraction rendered them
odious to the people.
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