Roman Republic (1798–1799)
The Roman Republic (Repubblica Romana) from 1798–1799 was a subsidiary republic in Italy established by exporting the French Revolution , formed from the Papal States , proclaimed on February 15, 1798 , dissolved in September 1799 .
prehistory
The papal state had been in constant conflict with revolutionary France since 1789, which abolished clerical privileges as part of the feudal order, declared church property national property, and converted priests to the status of elected state officials with an oath; a large part of the clergy emigrated, Pope Pius VI. In 1791 declared the state church order of France to be invalid.
The papal enclave of the county of Venaissin with the city of Avignon in southern France was occupied by the French as early as 1791, five years later other parts of the papal state came under French control; In 1796, during the First Coalition War, Bonaparte's northern Italian army invaded the papal legations of Bologna and Ferrara and Romagna south of the Po . In the Treaty of Tolentino on February 19, 1797, the Papal States ceded these areas to the French Transpadanic daughter republic (also Venaissin with Avignon to France). In November 1797, the Republic of Ancona was split off. After the murder of the French military attaché in Rome and a formal declaration of war, the French troops under General Louis-Alexandre Berthier took Rome on February 10, 1798 , whereupon the Roman Jacobins or patriots who were committed to the revolution proclaimed the republic on February 15; the pope fled to Siena (Duchy of Tuscany ), in early March Ancona was reconnected. On March 20, 1798, the republic received a constitution modeled on the French Directory .
Constitution and Political Reality
Constitution
Utilizing the extensive powers which the French city commandant paradoxically owed as a result of his confirmation of the acts of sovereignty on behalf of the Directory , a variant of the French "Constitution of the Year III" of the Directory was imposed in Rome, as in the other Italian republics (March 1798) . As its name suggests, the executive power consisted of a Directory, a collegial government of five directors, who in Rome, however, carried the title of consul (console) . The legislature was formed by two chambers, the tribunate and the senate , with the former only accessible to a limited group of the population, namely those over 40 years of age married and widowers.
Both chambers were to be filled through indirect election , whose electors had to dispose of real estate. The tribunate was responsible for the election of the consuls, with one member of the government standing for election annually in order to hold this office for five years. The Senate, however, had the right to compile a list of proposals for each election, from which the Tribunate had to fill the consulates or other offices to be appointed. Only the tribunate was able to introduce legislative proposals which, on the other hand, were subject to the veto of the Senate. While the two chambers were not allowed to form joint committees , the consulate was even prohibited from communicating with the legislature other than by correspondence. The judiciary was completely independent of the other two powers and was selectable at all levels.
In addition to the appointment function of the two chambers, a strict separation of powers was established in the constitution, in that neither the consuls could dissolve the chambers , nor the legislature could remove the government, which was to develop enormous political explosive power. The Roman had an almost socially conservative element in common with all versions of the directorate constitution . The skepticism towards too many democratic freedoms and activities became clear throughout the document, since in its original French version of 1795 it had resolutely renounced any socially equitable principles of Jacobinism . In this sense, the civil rights “were only granted to Romans who were able to write, who paid land or poll tax, served in the National Guard and pursued a regular profession”, and a catalog of civic duties was added.
Changes in the regulations in relation to the French model can be drawn from experience with the constitutional type and special requirements of the occupation regime explain. On the one hand, the Roman consuls, for example, had been strengthened in financial policy terms, so that ultimately all Italian directorates were given a stronger role within their constitutions.
On the other hand, Article 368 of the Roman Constitution contained a provision that some historians even transfigured into the sole “principle” of the sovereignty of the Roman Republic: “According to this, the French military commanders had the right to enact laws and appoint all important ones until a friendship treaty was signed Carry out state offices yourself. ”( Elm ) Furthermore, since February 23, 1798, a civil commission ( commissione civile ) of the French directorate oversaw all non-military decisions of the consulate until, at the end of the republican phase, it formed the actual government under Article 368. Although this total reservation has often been exploited, its mere existence cannot undo the factual and independent legislative and organizational activity of the republic in the short period of its existence. In general, there was no need for the Paris Directory to intervene constantly in Roman conditions, since the constitution had long since established a regime that would not stray too far from the Paris political line. In its entire construction, the constitution served to moderate the political process: general suffrage for a socially limited citizenship, which, via landowners , sent a legislature within which the decision-making authority lay with the representatives of the established bourgeoisie - here the state-supporting function was in any case narrow Clearly to find medium-sized companies.
Church and religious policy
Can be mentioned in an illustration of the republican phase of the history of the Papal States , the religious policy of the new regime and the situation of the Church under him. It is noteworthy that the Atto del popolo sovrano of February 15 expressly placed the papacy under the protection of the republic, as it was an expression of the attitude of Roman revolutionaries. The relenting of the French Directory in this matter reveals the ideological rift between the French and Italians and led to the fact that the final constitution did not contain any state church law: it was feared that the Pope would pose a threat to the existence of the republic and he was removed from the Vatican. All other cardinals were also expelled, so that only one apostolic legate remained in Rome.
Nevertheless, the further religious policy of the revolutionary regime appears moderate: A commissione ecclesiastica was set up, which should deal with church reform and the democratization of the clergy . Instead of a comprehensive dismantling of the ecclesiastical institutions, the intention was their social disempowerment or "their gradual displacement from public life and their subordination to the democratic state " ( Elm ). The above-average number of clergy in the country was intended to be reduced by expelling foreign clergy and abolishing monasteries (approx. 340), with numerous other church properties also being affected by the "nationalization". Sermons were increasingly censored or their content prescribed directly. A “cult of freedom”, analogous to the veneration of reason in France in 1793/94, was introduced, which was immediately expressed with countless trees of freedom throughout Rome, so that scoffers soon compared the city to a small wood. Although Christian processions were quickly banned, historians noted that "the forms of traditional liturgy and popular piety, albeit in a modified form, lived on in the republican festival culture ." ( Elm ) However, this sacralization of the republican must also be considered a root of the traditional (in the Christian sense) justified resistance against the republic. An order of January 1799, in which any collaboration between clerics and rebels was threatened with death, must be regarded as an alarming indication of the oppression of the republic .
The decline and end of the republic
Pressures and causes of decline
The decline of the Roman Republic took place in the run-up to the military reconquest of Rome by the second coalition , because it failed internally due to numerous hurdles, some of which are to be named here as examples. The situation faced by the first consulate seemed anything but favorable. The political climate was shaped by legal or factual exclusion, if the republic was finally established, if not against the will of the majority, at least according to the wishes of a minority. Citizenship, and therefore the right to vote, has only been granted to a minority of the people and elections themselves did not take place after the election committee was suspended in January 1799.
The political class found itself in an awkward position, because the conquerors had initially maintained a democratic system, and yet a significant part of the sovereignty remained with them - a contradiction that was difficult to overcome. Since the power conflicts between the French civil and military authority were carried out by the civil commission and the city commanders in Rome, and there was an almost ongoing domestic political dispute between the consulate and the tribunate, the system blocked itself within a short time In the event of a conflict between the powers , both the government and the legislature could not be recalled or dissolved. Paris responded to the tensions between its representatives with regular exchanges between the commanding officers. The consequence of this muddled situation was a series of consular crises, as the disputes erupted at the central organ of the republic.
In the first week of the state, two of the five consuls resigned because the civil commission could not find candidates for another two consulates. In September of that year, the French civil authorities had to change the entire government because the consuls had refused to give a public account of the allegations, after justified allegations by the largest newspaper in the republic. An instruction from the board of directors to dismiss unpopular tribunes connected with the scandal was not carried out.
In addition to sometimes massive enforcement difficulties of the government in the province of the Republic, the fully authorized only by sending special commissioners and Republican and French troops could be reasonably resolved, the regime was plagued in the form of the ailing economy and their finances the heritage of the Papal States . Since both the threat of national bankruptcy and French contributions were taken over by papal rule, only a comprehensive economic and currency reform could have stabilized the coup . Agrarian reform, which should therefore have formed the core of a republican social policy, did not make progress because of ideological trench warfare in the tribunate and the senate.
It was also not possible to consolidate the currency through cover through the sale of national goods, which repeatedly led to a loss of tax revenue. Irregularities and unfair practices in the sale of the biens nationaux also earned the regime bad press. The annonary system had to be reintroduced in a modified form in early 1799 to avert a famine and some unpopular papal taxes were again levied in parts of the republic, which led to the first serious riots. In addition to these first anti-republican unrest, some municipalities sought to break away from the new state entirely ( municipalismo ), even though the borders of the republic (and the Italian republics to one another) had never been precisely defined.
The end of the republic
The domestic political problems were accompanied from the beginning by a latent and successively growing uprising movement (the insorgenza ), especially in the countryside. These repeated local uprisings, however, are not a phenomenon that could be limited to the republican time, but began as early as 1789 as a general revolt against the traditional structures. More concrete manifestations anti-republican resistance is found in the "sanfedistischen" movement: "All over Italy, in Piedmont, in central Italy and in the south, was in 1799 originated in the country from the common people and the farmers an anti-French guerrilla" ( Elm ) which paved the way for the advance of the Austro-Russian coalition troops in the spring and in Naples, under Cardinal Ruffo, were even able to overthrow the Parthenopean Republic , which emerged briefly from a French attack in January. Above all, radical patriots (known as giacobini ), and Jews fell victim to the insurgents, who soon organized regular marches. When the unrest began to spread from the countryside to the city, the Roman tribunate and consulate had finally outmaneuvered each other. City Commander General Garnier announced the state of siege for Rome on June 11th and suspended the constitution of the Repubblica Romana . The French ambassador Bertolio immediately took over government power with a council of ministers after a tribunal committee had tried to remove the consuls with Garnier's help.
The route to central Italy was soon open to the coalition troops with the victory in the Battle of the Trebbia (June 19, 1799). On June 23, the French troops left Naples for the north; on September 19, Rome was given up in general military retreat. On September 30, 1799, the Neapolitan army marched into Rome under King Ferdinand I and, in the days that followed, installed a provisional government made up of former officials of the republic. As in Naples, here too, in and out of the population to bloody revenge attacks on representatives of the former Republic as well as a tribunal in which nobility and clergy but immunity enjoyed. After a Russian army had also reached Rome, the new Pope Pius VII moved back into the Eternal City on July 3, 1800.
literature
- Veit Elm: The revolution in the papal state. A literature review of recent research on the prehistory and history of the Repubblica Romana (1798–1799) . In: Contributions to Church and Cultural History , Vol. 13, Bern / Frankfurt a. M. 2002, ISBN 3-631-38827-6 .
- Bernard Gainot: Una rivoluzione difficile. La Repubblica romana del 1798-1799 . In: Annales Historiques de la Révolution Française , 329, Numéro 329.AHRF, Sommaires et résumés 1998-2004.
- Richard Wichterich: His fate was Napoleon. Life and time of the Cardinal Secretary of State Ercole Consalvi 1757–1824 . Heidelberg 1951.