The Corso,
without doubt, was unusually and densely crowded; the footpaths swarmed
with passengers, and, what was peculiarly galling to the Government,
after the failure of the Carnival, there was a double line of
aristocratic carriages passing up and down; still everything was
perfectly peaceable and orderly. At the hour of the _Ave Maria_ the
crowd was at its fullest, and this was the time selected for the outrage.
In a scene of general terror and confusion it is impossible to ascertain
exact details of the order in which events occurred, but I believe the
following account is fairly exact.
There were a great number of the Pontifical police, or _sbirri_, as the
Romans call them, scattered in knots of two or three about the Corso;
there were also several mounted patrols of the Papal gendarmes. The
police did everything in their power to excite the people, hustled the
crowd in every direction, used the most opprobrious epithets, and pushed
their way along with insulting gestures. There are various stories
afloat as to the immediate cause of the outbreak; one, that as a patrol
passed the crowd hissed; another, that a cry was heard of "Viva Vittorio
Emmanuele!" and a third, the Papal version, that on a young man of the
name of Barberi being asked by a gendarme why he wore a violet flower on
his coat, he answered rudely, and, on the officer trying to arrest him,
his comrades pulled him away.
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