Convention of September

CONVENZIONE di SETTEMBRE. — Italo-French diplomatic act signed in Paris on 15 Sept. 1864 with the aim of finding a solution, if only a temporary one, to the difficult Roman question. It arose from the tortuous diplomacy of Napoleon III and the sincere desire of the Italian moderates who, following lines of policy already glimpsed by Cavour, wished to gain time to unite the country in spirit and administration. On the other hand, the failure of the ideal attempts made in the summer of ’64 to resolve the Venetian question necessarily spurred the Minghetti cabinet to seek any kind of modus vivendi with regard to Rome, while Napoleon III increasingly felt the need to escape from the contradictions into which he had entered as early as 1849, by pursuing two contradictory policies side by side: the decidedly liberal one and the pro-papal, or Catholic, one.

Italy undertook not to invade the Papal territory, reduced to Latium alone, and also to prevent, by force of arms if necessary, any insurrectionary attempt there; France undertook gradually to withdraw its troops from the Papal State within a maximum period of two years. Moreover, the Italian Government did not oppose the establishment of a Papal army, including volunteers from every country; it was to begin negotiations to assume the share of the public debt corresponding to the former ecclesiastical territories annexed, and, by a secret guarantee protocol, was to transfer, once the C. itself had been approved by Parliament, the capital to wherever it deemed best—in substance, from Turin to Florence.

As was to be expected, the C. satisfied no one, and its articles, drafted in language that was in any case highly elastic, were interpreted in whatever manner best suited each party. Meanwhile, however, the Pope, although great interests of his were at stake, was the last to learn anything about it, and did not fail to express all his justified resentment, including through the diplomatic démarches of Antonelli, from which it emerges that the directives of Vatican policy on the matter were those of the most absolute reserve. The ambassador in Rome, De Sartigès, received from the Secretary of State an unequivocal refusal to take official note

(phot. Ficarelli)