Prussia, and the French troops at Rome were hastily summoned home. Upon the overthrow of the French Monarchy and the establishment of the Republic, Victor Emmanuel was informed that France would no longer sustain the Papal power. The Italian government at once gave notice to the Pope that Rome would henceforth be considered a portion of the kingdom of Italy, and forthwith an Italian army entered the city, which by a vote of 133,681 to 1,507 joined itself to the Italian nation. The family was now complete. Rome was the capital of a free and united Italy. July 2, 1871, Victor Emmanuel[1] himself entered the city and took up his residence there.
End of the Temporal Power of the Pope.—Through the extension of the authority of the Italian government over the Papal states, the Pope was despoiled of the last vestige of that temporal power wherewith Pepin and Charlemagne had invested the Bishops of Rome more than a thousand years before (see p. 404). The Papal troops were disbanded, but the Pope, Pius IX., still retained all his spiritual authority, the Vatican with its 11,000 chambers being reserved to him as a place of residence. Just a few months before the loss of his temporal sovereignty a great Ecumenical Council of the Roman Catholic Church had proclaimed the doctrine of Papal Infallibility, which declares decrees of the Pope "on questions of faith and morals" to be infallible.
Conclusion.—Although there has been much antagonism between the Vatican and the Quirinal, that is, between the Pope and the Italian government, still reform and progress have marked Italian affairs since the events of 1870. A public system of education has been established; brigandage has been suppressed; agriculture has been encouraged; while the naval and military resources of the peninsula have been developed to such an extent that Italy, so recently the prey of foreign sovereigns, of petty native tyrants, and of adventurers, is now justly regarded as one of the great powers of Europe.
- ↑ In the early part of the year 1878 Victor Emmanuel died, and his son came to the throne, with the title of Humbert I., the second king of Italy.
