Ivanoe Bonomi. Mazzini, triumviro della Repubblica
romana. (2d ed., Milan, 1946).
Domnico Demarco. Una rivoluzione sociale: La repubblica
romana del 1849. (Naples, 1944).
G. Demarco. Pio IX e la rivoluzione romana del 1848-49. (Modena, 1947).
Giuseppe Leti. La rivoluzione e la repubblica
romana. (2d ed., Milan, 1948).
Luigi Rodelli. La Repubblica romana del 1849, con
appendice di documenti,. (Pisa, 1955).
JGC revised this file
(http://www.ohiou.edu/~chastain/rz/romanrep.htm) on
October 25, 2004.
Please E-mail comments or suggestions to
© 1999, 2004 James Chastain.
ROMAN REPUBLIC 1849 (February 9, 1849 - July 3, 1849): Faced
with growing popular agitation after the assassination of his
Prime Minister Pellegrino Rossi, Pope Pius IX left Rome on
November 24, 1848, for the protection of King Ferdinand II of
Naples at Gaeta. On December 29, 1848, the provisional
government, established after the Pope's departure, called for
the election on January 21, 1849, of a constituent assembly to
prepare a constitution for the newly established Roman Republic,
but so to word it that it could be extended to all of Italy once
unity was achieved. It also decreed universal manhood suffrage
for all males over twenty-one and declared any male over twenty-five
eligible for office. Elections saw a large turnout of
voters, despite a papal edict censuring the convocation of a
constitutional assembly and forbidding participation in the
elections. The assembly convened on February 5, 1849. Four days
later, it abolished the temporal power of the pope and proclaimed
the Roman Republic. It then proceeded to designate a ruling
Triumvirate as executive. It also made Giuseppe Mazzini an
honorary Roman citizen and invited him to come to Rome. Shortly
after his arrival on March 5 he was elected to the Triumvirate
together with Aurelio Saffi and Carlo Armellini. The republican
government faced a threefold task: to introduce needed socio-economic
and political reforms, to redact a constitution suited
to the immediate needs of the republic, but which could be
extended to a future united Italy, and to prepare a defense of
the republic against the pope's supporters. The last proved to
be the most urgent. The Catholic powers of Europe responded with
troops to the pope's appeal from Gaeta for help in putting down
his rebellious subjects and restoring his temporal power.
Austrian forces threatened the Roman Republic's northern borders.
The French Second Republic, now under the firm control of the
conservatives and its newly elected president, Prince Louis
Napoleon Bonaparte, dispatched an expeditionary force which
landed at the Roman port of Civitavecchia at the end of April.
Neapolitan troops, led by their king, massed to the south, and
Spain disembarked four thousand soldiers at Gaeta in preparation
for marching on Rome. With French troops a few kilometers from
Rome in Civitavecchia, tortuous negotiations ensued between Roman
republican leaders and the French. Finally, after two months the
French began their attack on the capital. Outnumbered and
outgunned by superior French forces, Rome put up a brave but
futile resistance which ended on July 1, 1849. Despite the
battles raging on the city's perimeters, the assembly continued
to discuss the provisions of the constitution and on July 1
approved it. Written by the only Italian assembly elected by
universal suffrage in 1848-49, the Roman charter was truly the
people's constitution. At noon on July 3 it was solemnly
proclaimed in the Campidoglio, Rome's city hall.
That evening French troops entered the city. Garibaldi led a
small detachment of his men north towards Venice to help in its
defense, but pursued by Austrian troops, he barely escaped with
his life. Other republican leaders avoided arrest and
imprisonment with the help of foreign passports given them by the
American and English consuls in Rome. Mazzini remained
unmolested in the city until the middle of July, after which he
returned to his foreign exile. Meanwhile Pope Pius IX appointed
a Commission of Cardinals to govern Rome while he remained under
the protection of King Ferdinand II. The commission abolished
all republican measures, instituted a repressive regime, and
worked to root out the last vestiges of radicalism. Pius IX
finally returned to Rome in April 1850 guarded by a French
garrison. Thus ended what some historians consider to be the
most advanced experiment in republicanism and representative
government in Italy during 1848-49.
Emiliana P. Noether
Bibliography