PART 3 OF 10: HISTORICAL CONTEXT II – September 11, 1870: Cadorna's Proclamation and the End of an Era
If September 11, 1860, had marked the beginning of the siege on the Papal States, exactly ten years later, on September 11, 1870, history accelerated towards its epilogue. On that day, from his headquarters in Terni, General Raffaele Cadorna issued a message destined to go down in history: the Proclamation to the Romans.
It was not a simple military communiqué. It was a political act of immense significance. Cadorna, commander of the IV Army Corps of Italy, solemnly declared that the army of King Vittorio Emanuele II was not entering the Roman provinces as an enemy, but as a liberator. His task, he stated, was to guarantee order and the inviolability of the national soil, inviting the population to collaborate. In fact, it was the final ultimatum to Pius IX: the Kingdom of Italy was about to take what it considered its own by historical and geographical right: Rome.
The Invasion and the March on Rome
That same September 11, Italian troops, numbering about 60,000 men, crossed the border near Orte and Civitavecchia. The resistance of the Papal State was symbolic: just over 13,000 soldiers, including the loyal Pontifical Zouaves commanded by the Swiss general Hermann Kanzler, could not stop the tricolor tide. The march towards the Capital was rapid and almost bloodless. Cities surrendered one after another: Viterbo, Civitavecchia, Frosinone.
September 20 and the Breach of Porta Pia
Nine days after the Proclamation, on September 20, 1870, Italian bersaglieri opened a breach in the Aurelian Walls near Porta Pia. In a few hours, Rome was conquered. The temporal power of the Popes, lasting over a millennium, ceased to exist. Pius IX declared himself a "prisoner in the Vatican", giving rise to the so-called Roman Question, which would only be resolved with the Lateran Pacts of 1929.
The Date of September 11: A Symbolic Choice?
Why did Cadorna choose precisely September 11 to issue the Proclamation and begin operations? Certainly, there were strategic reasons: the fall of the Second French Empire (which occurred on September 4, 1870, after the defeat at Sedan) had left the Pope without his powerful protector, Napoleon III. The path was clear.
However, for those who see a subtler plot in history, the recurrence of the date of September 11 (already used in 1860 for the invasion of the Marche) suggests a precise will. For the secular and Masonic forces of the Risorgimento, September 11 seemed to be the ill-fated date for the Papacy, the day destined to begin the work of secularizing Italy.