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insulted, and robbed, the bishops exiled, Catholic writers jailed, Catholic journals ruined, priests denounced and tormented, monasteries closed and desecrated, and religious women torn out of their violated cells. These are the tides by which you claim our confidence and our gratitude."
Cavour's followers interpreted his legacy thus: a state free of the Church. Assembled by the Pope on Pentecost Sunday, 1862, the College of Cardinals and the three hundred bishops who had gathered for the canonization of the Japanese martyrs of 1597, declared it neces- sary that the temporal power of the Holy See, which had been ordained by Providence, be upheld. Cardinal Antonelli responded to all the antecedent French attempts at negotiation with a non possumtts; but this answer was not in accord with the will of the nation. Nearly 9000 priests requested the Pope to surrender the temporal power and thus took up a position contrary to that of the Pentecostal Assembly. During the same summer Garibaldi attempted to conquer Rome, and the Peoples' Party agitated against France. Napoleon, forced to reckon with the clerical protest in France, concluded the September Convention of 1864 with Victor Emmanuel. By this Italy pledged itself to concede to the Pope what remained of the Papal States, and France agreed to evacuate Rome within two years. But when the last French troops were withdrawn toward the close of 1866 and when Austria lost the war with Prussia, Italy broke the treaty. With the secret consent of the government, Garibaldi's soldiers attacked the Papal States. Then Napoleon's troops returned in 1867 and, using their new rifles for the first time in a battle, defeated the insurgents at Mentana with the help of Papal troops. A French garrison in Civita- vecchia protected the Pope and his territory until the war of 1870. When Napoleon was overwhelmed at Sedan, the Papal States also ceased to exist. The Piedmontese received encouragement from Prussia and prepared to lay siege to the Eternal City. Count Ponza di San Martino brought from Florence a letter from the King which stated that the soldiers were marching to guarantee the security of the Pope and requested that in return he remove the alien militia for the sake of the peace of the countty and also of the independence of the See on the Tiber. The King declared that he addressed this petition to the heart of the Holy Father "with the loyalty of a son, with the
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