Disillusion came in 1848, the year of revolutions all over Europe. In Rome, the Pope responded to the dangerous revolutionary fervour by establishing an elected municipal government, and in March agreed a new constitution for the Papal States with an elected chamber capable of vetoing papal policy.
As the demand for the expulsion of Austria from Italy turned into a war, more and more Italians treated it as a Crusade, and called on the Pope to lead it. Pope refused. As father of all the faithful, he declared, he could take no part in making war on a Catholic nation: he would send no troops against Austria. He condemned the idea of a federal Italy led by the papacy, urging Italians to remain faithful to their princes.
Overnight, from being the most popular man in Italy, he became the most hated. Rome became increasingly ungovernable, and in November 1848 his lay Prime Minister, Pellegrino Rossi, was murdered on the steps of the Cancelleria. The Pope fled.
Rome erupted into revolution, and Garibaldi and Mazzini established themselves at the head of a fiercely anti-clerical republican regime. From Gaeta, Pio Nono called on the Catholic powers to restore him, and in July 1849 French troops duly took possession of Rome on his behalf. He himself re-entered Rome in April 1850. He never recovered from his exile of 1848, and for the rest of his life remained convinced that political concessions to democracy merely fuelled the fires of revolution. The liberal honeymoon was over.
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