Sixty-nine years ago, on a September day, the armies of Vittorio Emanuele II marched toward the gates of Rome. The city's weary old ruler, Pope Pius IX, ordered his Papal zouaves not to fire upon the invaders. He shut himself up in the Vatican, there to remain to the end of his days. The House of Savoy moved into the Quirinal, which had belonged to the Popes. Pius IX and four of his successors, unceasingly protesting their "despoliation," remained in voluntary imprisonment until the Lateran Treaties of 1929. They and their partisans to Roman society, "Blacks" as opposed to...
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