ws that beset the dwindling patrimony
of St. Peter were correspondingly deepening. The Tablet of Baha'u'llah,
addressed to Pius IX, precipitated its extinction. A hasty glance at the
course of its ebbing fortunes, during those decades, will suffice.
Napoleon I had driven the Pope from his estates. The Congress of Vienna
had reestablished him as their head and their administration in the hands
of the priests. Corruption, disorganization, impotence to ensure internal
security, the restoration of the inquisition, had induced an historian to
assert that "no land of Italy, perhaps of Europe, except Turkey, is ruled
as is this ecclesiastical state." Rome was "a city of ruins, both material
and moral." Insurrections led to Austria's intervention. Five great Powers
demanded the introduction of far-reaching reforms, which the Pope promised
but failed to carry out. Austria again reasserted herself, and was opposed
by France. Both watched each other on the Papal estates until 1838, when,
on their withdrawal, absolutism was again restored. The Pope's temporal
power was now denounced by some of his own subjects, heralding its
extinction in 1870. Internal complications forced him to flee, in the dead
of night and in the disguise of a humble priest, from Rome which was
declared a republic. It was later restored by the French to its former
status. The creation of the kingdom of Italy, the shifting policy of
Napoleon III, the disaster of Sedan, the misdeeds of the Papal government
denounced by Clarendon, at the Congress of Paris, terminating the Crimean
War, as a "disgrace to Europe," sealed the fate of that tottering
dominion.

In 1870, after Baha'u'llah had revealed His Epistle to Pius IX, King
Victor Emmanuel II went to war with the Papal states, and his troops
entered Rome and seized it. On the eve of its seizure, the Pope repaired
to the Lateran and, despite his age and with his face bathed in tears,
ascended on bended knees the Scala Santa. The following morning, as the
cannonade began, he ordered the white flag to be hoisted above the dome of
St. Peter. Despoiled, he refused to recognize this "creation of
revolution," excommunicated the invaders of his states, denounced Victor
Emmanuel as the "robber King" and as "forgetful of every religious
principle, despising every right, trampling upon every law." Rome, "the
Eternal City, on which rest twenty-five centuries of glory," and over
which the Popes had ruled in unchallengeable righ