Lightning Man_ The Accursed Life of Samuel F. B. Morse - Kenneth Silverman [53]
Hopes for a new order soared in the Italian states, too. These hopes threatened not just the city of Rome but also the far larger region governed by the Pope, spread across the country from Venice to Naples. The zeal of the Italian insurrectionists was fed by the declared readiness of Lafayette and other French liberal politicians to block any attempted intervention by reactionary Austria, which governed the north of Italy. Austria at the time was a formidable power, a conglomerate of kingdoms, duchies, and earldoms personally possessed by the Hapsburg dynasty, which in addition presided over the union of German states.
Morse welcomed the historic moment as a contest between New World republicanism and an Old World alliance of kings, a “great contention … between liberty and despotism throughout Europe.” But the uprisings left him vulnerable in Rome, much as he had been years before in London. “Persons are frequently missing,” he observed, “no one knows what has become of them.” By mid-February, a year after his arrival, news reached Rome that rebels in Bologna had proclaimed the United Provinces of Italy, set up a provisional government, and declared the Pope’s temporal power at an end. Within a few days other cities revolted: Ravenna, Ferrara, Perugia, Urbino.
Morse recorded in his diary the growing alarm in Rome over a possible invasion by revolutionary forces, or insurrection from within. “The streets are filled with the people,” he wrote, “who gaze at each other inquisitively, and apprehension seems marked on every face.” As both an American and a painter, he feared for his safety. Some opponents of the uprisings blamed them on forestieri, foreigners such as himself. The galley slaves and lower-class Trasteverini were rumored to have been secretly armed by the government in order to massacre all foreigners in Rome. Artists were particularly suspected of being liberals. Near him in the Corso, soldiers took two French artists into custody; a Swiss artist had reportedly been roused from bed at midnight and imprisoned.
And the tension steadily increased. “A proclamation was issued last night requiring all persons to be at home in the evening,” Morse noted on February 15. “Arrests occur every night of suspected persons,” he wrote four days later; “I was told that not less than 8000 passports had been granted to leave Rome within a few days. Rome begins to look like a deserted city.” Those in flight included nearly all the Americans in Rome.
Morse closely followed events at the Vatican, to see how Gregory XVI dealt with the threat to his temporal power. High-ranking persons in the Church, he heard, had been arrested, among them the secretary of a cardinal; deserters from the Pope’s army had been captured and executed. Rumors circulated that to quiet the popular unrest, Gregory was disposed to grant a constitution—was even prepared to resign his mighty office. However much Morse despised the papacy, he admired Gregory’s willingness to sacrifice his dignity for the public good: “he is entitled to great respect for his personal character.”
On February 24 dependable reports arrived that a revolutionary army from the provinces was approaching Rome. Morse decided to flee north, and next day went to get his passport visaed. The consul advised him that the roads outside Rome were militarized and risky, infested with brigands: days before, a courier had been shot five times in the head. Just the same Morse packed up his trunk, painting case, and portfolio, and set off for Florence.
His escape from the Pope’s domain into Tuscany was nerve-wracking. He traveled by vettura, a slow-moving carriage capable of making only three or four miles an hour.