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Updated: May 19, 2025
The Piedmontese on their side had defeated General Lamoriciere at Castelfidardo, and were invading the States of the Church.
In France the government showed its revolutionary leaning by forbidding a subscription which was undertaken for the purpose of presenting a sword of honor to Lamoriciere. It did even worse than this. It meanly persecuted the vanquished soldiers of the Holy See, as well as those who had hastened to fill their places. This was pure revenge.
The French Emperor let Lamoricière go, as he was glad to get him out of the way. The Duke de Persigny told his master that the gallant general would make trouble for him in Italy, and, as Napoleon turned a deaf ear, he suggested that Lamoricière should be ordered to garrison Rome while the French regular troops were sent to protect the frontier.
Lamoricière went home, declaring that he took his defeat less to heart than the cruel disillusions he had undergone in Rome. Some one proposed that he should go to the rescue of King Francis, but he answered that his wish had been to serve the Pope, not the Neapolitan Bourbons. On the 20th the King of Sardinia, at the head of his army, marched into the kingdom of Naples.
Some fell among Arab tribes who plundered them; others were overtaken by Lamoricière. The blow was, on the whole, irreparable in its effects upon the influence of the Sultan. Every day brought tidings of the defection of some great tribe. The ranks of his enemies were swelled by large contingents of Arabs. Worse things were in store for the brave man contending with ill-fortune.
Lamoriciere continued in command. In 1836 the Zouaves again took the hill of Mouzaia. This time they razed its fortifications even with the ground, and returned to Algiers, where they remained during General Clausel's first and unfortunate expedition into Constantine, the eastern province of French Africa. In 1837 the second expedition was made, and in this the Zouaves took part.
The action of the Sardinian government, in sending its soldiers against the legal banditti whom Lamoricière had sought to drill into the semblance of an army, which was a direct attack on the Pope, and the subsequent employment of those soldiers, and of the Sardinian fleet, against the forces of Francis II., were model pieces of statesmanship, and worthy of the great man whose name and fame have become indissolubly associated with the redemption of Italy.
His incessant care for the good organisation and perfecting of our military forces, and the pains he took to select the most deserving men from their ranks without a shadow of favouritism or regard for birth such men as Lamoriciere, Cavaignac, Canrobert, and MacMahon and to advance them to the highest positions, had been appreciated by the public. All this was pour demain, for the morrow.
The National Guards were then introduced by Lieutenant Roche, and entered the court of the Tuileries by the gate of the Rue de Rivoli, their muskets shouldered, with the stock in the air. At the same moment the abdication of the King was declared. General Lamoricière had resigned. The Ministry was dissolved.
I say this in the face of the fact that one has only to step across the cathedral of Nantes to stand in the presence of one of the purest and most touching of modern tombs. Catholic Brittany has erected in the opposite transept a monument to one of the most devoted of her sons, General de Lamoricière, the defender of the Pope, the vanquished of Castelfidardo.
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