Punch: Punch (38.1860)

1« PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. Apsil 7, 1860.

NATURAL IMPATIENCE.

THE SPEAE OE ACHILLES.

The Spear of Pelides alone could heal the wounds it had made,
i Rust from the steel was a potent cure of the stab. We had thought
the weapon had vanished, like the Troy it menaced; but, happily, it is
| in Rome.

On Monday, March the 19th, in the year of Grace 1860 (the record
is worth pasting into your Newgate Calendar) his Holiness, Pope
Pius the Ninth, exasperated, beyond priestly endurance, with his
Roman children, and their children, at length let loose his dogs. The
j long-suffering martyr had borne a great deal, and in cursing Revolution
had foamed himself int o several epileptic fits, without calling for blood;
| but there was a limit to the vexation of his righteous soul. So he
resolved to chastise his children.

The Corso, in Rome, was crowded with them. It was evening.
The Papal Gendarmes, on foot and on horseback, issued forth from
Mount Citorio, to execute the vengeance of the Holy Father. They
charged the unarmed multitude, hewing furiously right and left. (We
take the words of the Times' correspondent, an eye-witness, and him-
self nearly murdered by the Holy Father’s soldiers.) The people fled
in wild terror. Men were cut down on all hands, but there was a cry
to “ spare the women.” It was answered by the same yell that was
raised in other days by a priest of Rome, when soldiers hesitated to
destroy the innocent with the guilty. “Kill them all!” And the
Pope’s hounds seem to have done their work well. Here is the
detailed report of the Holy Father’s dealings with his children on
Monday, March 19th

‘‘Many of the wounded were conveyed to the hospitals: some to the apothe-
caries’ shops. There were coachfuls of wounded, bruised, bleeding, and swooning
women. I saw one picked up in a doorway, with an ugly gash in her left breast;
not far from it a child with a deep cut in the neck, to all appearance almost lifeless.
One Mazzotti was left on the ground with two sabre-cuts ;.a student (Cekapia)
had received two broadsword cuts and a stab in the left arm. Another student
(Zaccaleoni) was fallen upon in the Vicolo dello Sdrucciolo, and knocked down by
three blows with a loaded bludgeon ; a priest, near the Cafe San Carlo, received a
thrust of a sabre, and was felled to the ground with the butt-end of a horse-pistol.
One De Angelis was pierced by three sword-thrusts ; Rossi, a merchant, had a
severe sabre-cut in the neck. The American Vice-Consul is laid down with a severe
stab in the side ; a German Artist with a deep dagger-wound in the arm ; a nurse
and baby were both struck with the same weapon in the carriage where they sat;
j another sword-cut struck both the legs of a lady seated in another carriage, wound-

ing them severely; another lady who had fainted, and in that state was being
carried inside the entrance to the Bernini Palace, was struck in the breast with a
Gendarme’s broadsword.”

Why, indeed, should the women be spared ? Are they not the wives
and mothers of the wicked Romans ? And why should the babies be
spared ? Are they not imps of sin against Pope Pius ? Let us hear
a little more.

“ The foreman of the grocer Gefo, in Canestrari, received three sword-strokes on
the head, and a thrust in the body ; he is dying. A student from Perugia is dead,
in consequence of two cuts and two thrusts; dead, also, is the fruitseller near San
Carlo, of three sabre-cuts, which he received as he was descending the steps of the
Church of San Carlo, where he had been attending the afternoon service. The
lamplighter of the Apollo Theatre, who had taken shelter under the bench before a
wine-shop, was cut down dead on the spot; his body exhibited six deep cuts. A
child was killed in its mother’s arms. The son of a poultryman in the Via della
Croce was also murdered ; and the same fate befell the son of a tinman at St. Elena ;
one Benedetto, the father of five children, was numbered among the dead. Two
of the servants of the Sacred Apostolic Palaces, both old men, were playing at
draughts in the cafe near the Church of Jesu e Maria ; a Gendarme rushed in, cut
down the two players to the ground, and then went on hewing with such blind
fury as to break into several pieces the marble chessboard they were playing at.
Two artists, who came from the Borghese Gallery, were both wounded in the head.
Guida, a clerk in the Torlonia bank, was struck down in the Via Babuino, wounded
in the neck. Ghirelli, a man strongly attached to the Government, was wounded
near the Palazzo Muti, where he lives.”

This was the work of the Spear of Achilles, wielded by the Pope,
on the Nineteenth of March. Ten days pass, and the healing comes.
On the Twenty-ninth of March we have this announcement

“ To-day the act of major excommunication pronounced against those who have
either promised to aid, or who have counselled rebellion, invasion, or usurpation in
the Romagna, has been published.

“ The act has been posted up in several quarters of Rome.”

Major Excommunication. All who desire Italian freedom,—all in
whose worldly and evil bosoms is rankling wrath against the Holy
Pather for the deeds that have been told,—they are all cut off from the
Church of Rome. And what better thing could happen to them, than
to be at once and for ever—as it may be hoped they are—cut off from
a blasphemous Institution, wickedly miscalled a Church, whose Chief
strews the streets with the mangled bodies of women and children ?
Out of a Church whose High Priest offers human sacrifices! Out let
them go, with deepest joy, being freed from the loathsome pollution
of such a communion! Excommunicated men, women, and un-
slaughtered children,—for once be thankful to the Holder of the Keys!