OCCUPATIONS OF THE APOSTOLIC PALACES.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IX, Issue 446, 28 October 1881, Page 7

OCCUPATIONS OF THE APOSTOLIC PALACES.

(From the London Tablet.) At this time, when the possibility of the flight of the Pope from Home is being discusf-ed, some account of previous occupations of the Vatican and the Quirinal Palaces will be interesting. The first occurred Februarj 16th, 1798. The French Democrats had entered I Rome to assist the Italian Democrats, whose leader. General C<tvoiip on February 15tu, 1798, went to the Vatican to announce to Pins iv! the advent of the revolution and to advise him to recognise the sovereignty of the people. The Pope replied "that his sovereignty came from God and not from man, and that it was out of his power to renounce it, that at his age, (he was th n eighty) he had nothing to fear, and that he was ready to suffer whatever those who had the power might inflict on him." The day after they resorted to force. The Vatican was besieged, the guards were disarmed, the Pontiff was taken away a prisoner ; the officials of the Court were all driven out, seals weie placed on the doors of the greater number of the apartments. The Commissary of the public possessed himself of the vast edifice, even to the priceless library, valuable antiquities, and objects of art. The second occupation occuned in the year 1809 on the night of the 6th of July at the Palace of the Quirinal, then occupied by Pius VII. The Pope had been morally a prisoner since the 2nd of February, when the French had placed eight pieces of cannon before the great gates of the Quirinal, and on the 7th of April had committed terrible outrages in the Palace itself ; many of the disaffected Noble Guard were arrested, and it was intimated to the Captain of the Swiss Guard that he and his men should look for support to the new Government. Pius VII. remained always within the Palace until the 6th of July, when the French scaled the walls at the great gateway in the Via Panetteria, took the Holy Father prisoner and with him Cardinal Pecca, and conveyed both away from Home. The Quirinal was then declared the property of NapoUon I, and great works were undertaken to convert it from a Papal residence into an Imperial Palace. But on the 4th of May, 1814, it began again the Papal resuleuce as before. The third occupation was also of the Quirinal, and occurred on the 16th of November, 1848. This time it

miarht be more properly called an assault than an occiuation, for Mazzini had not the courage to enter the Apostolic Palace and call it his own. They ha<i Bet fire to the gateway on the Porta Pi a, and by a Bhot fired from the campanile of St. Carlino they had killed Mejr. Palraa beside the Pope. This holy man was remark ible for hi 1 * piety »nd gentle manners. Cannon were then brought on in the Piazza M >nte Cavallo, and pointed at the Quirinal. It was a cirio is coincidence that one of tnes • cannon was named " St. Peter," having been cast some time previously for the defence of the city (Storia della Kivoluzione di R ima, Firenze, 1869). Another curious coincidence was that (as now) there were two comets visible ; on the 17ih of November, 1848. Pius IX., clad in the ordinary cassock of a priest, abandoned the Quirinal and made his escape from Home and repaired to Gaeta, where a legate sent by the King of Sardinia came to offer homage to him, and to confer with him ns to the best mean-* of restoring that very temporal power that he same Government was in the course of a few years to destroy ; an ancestor of the Minister Mancini who has exerted hi-nself of late years, to the utmost of his power, to injure the Church, wrote then to c mdole wiih the Holy Father, and to assure him of the fidelity of Piedmont (Farini. Lo Stato Romano, Vol. 11l p. 190). The fourth occupation occurred iv Novemb r, 1870, and was preceded by a grand demonstration, similar to those now taking place in Rome against the Guarantees, mobs paraded th<» Corso, the Piazza di Spigna, and Monte Cavallo, shouting, " Vo.'liamo il Quirinale," but were dispersed by the military; nevertheless, two days later, viz., on the 7th November, G^neril la Marmora informed the Cardinal Secretary of State that " the ' Ymncil of the Minis'ry. after mature deliberation, had decide*! that Quirinal should become the property of the State." Then the Holy Se- having r< fused to cede it, they called in a blacksmith (one Giuseppe Capanna) and forced the locks. The Gazxetta Ufficiale del Rpgao <£ Italia announced on the 10th of November : " Yesterday at midd iy ihe King took possession of the <«Juiriual." The same jou-nal may one day announce the same sacrile /■ions occupation of the Vatican 1