The
size of the crowd disposes at once of the idea that the persons who
composed it were bribed to be present; and the attempt to identify the
action of the French troops with that of the Papal gendarmes, is upset by
the plain and simple fact, that the French patrols were on the Porta Pia
road, and not in the Corso at all. Indeed, if the whole matter was not
too serious to laugh at, there would be something actually comical in the
notion of the friends of order, or any person in their senses, stopping
to applaud the gendarmes as they trampled their way through the helpless,
screaming, terror-stricken crowd, striking indiscriminately at friend or
foe. The statement has this value, and this value only, that it gives
the formal approval of the Government to the brutal outrages of the Papal
police.
For a time the Pro-Papal party were in a state of high exultation. A
popular demonstration had been suppressed by a score or so of Pontifical
troops. The stock stories about the cowardice of the Italians were
revived, and the more intemperate partizans of the Government asserted
that the support of the French army was no longer needed, and that the
Pope would shortly be able to rely for protection on his own troops
alone. There was in these exultations a certain sad amount of truth. I
am no blind admirer of the Romans, and I freely admit that no
high-spirited crowd would have submitted to be cut down by a mere handful
of gendarmes.
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