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Updated: May 22, 2025
This, as has been seen, he could not do. It was tantamount to the abdication of his sovereignty. That he did reform, however, wisely and efficiently, Count de Rayneval has abundantly shown. His measures of reform were large and liberal, and, in the judgment of eminent statesmen, left little room for improvement.
On the 14th of May, 1856, M. de Rayneval, then French ambassador at Rome, a warm friend to the cardinals, and consequently a bitter foe to their subjects, thus described the Italian people:
The report of Count de Rayneval was before the world, and so important a state paper could not have been unknown to a statesman who interested himself so much in European affairs generally, and those of Rome in particular.
He threw down his pen with an air of discouragement, and showed me the two following quotations which he had inscribed on the title-page of the book: "Every independent State should suffice to itself, and assure its internal security by its own forces." Count de Rayneval; note of 14th May, 1855. "The troops of the Pope will always be the troops of the Pope.
Messrs. de Rayneval and de Corcelles wrote to the same effect, and communicated to the French Government the resolution of the Sovereign Pontiff to seek the protection of Austria, or even to repair to America, rather than submit to the constraint with which he was threatened.
"Count my functionaries," he says: "I have 14,576 laymen in my service. You have been told that ecclesiastics monopolize the public service. Show me these ecclesiastics! The Count de Rayneval looked for them, and could find but ninety-eight; and even of those, the greater part were not in priests' orders! Be assured we have long since broken with the clerical régime.
I know not what are "the qualities which constitute the greatness and power of other nations" as, for example, the Austrian nation, but I know very few qualities, physical, intellectual, or moral, which the Italians do not possess. Are they "devoid of energy," as M. de Rayneval declares? I should rather reproach them with the opposite excess.
Count de Rayneval had been a long time at Rome, first as Secretary of the Embassy of King Louis Philippe, and afterwards as Plenipotentiary of the Republic, before he was appointed to represent the Emperor Napoleon. None could be better qualified to give a luminous report of the state of matters at Rome.
A memorial which he presented to M. de Vergennes upon the dangers of the treaty of commerce then entered into with England gave offence to M. de Calonne, a patron of that treaty, and particularly to M. Gerard de Rayneval, chief clerk for foreign affairs.
M. de Rayneval tells us, they are "entirely wanting in military spirit." No doubt he echoed the opinion of some Cardinal. Indeed! Were the Piedmontese in the Crimea, then, wanting in the military spirit? M. de Rayneval and the Cardinals are willing to admit the courage of the Piedmontese, but then, they say, Piedmont is not in Italy; its inhabitants are half Swiss, half French.
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