s. On March 15, the Nationalists of Rome
declared against the Pope. The National Guards joined in the movement. The
Papal troops had to be called out to put down the revolt by force of arms.
The hordes of Roman lazzaroni or beggars profited by the confusion to
commit hideous crimes. The Pope created a high council and Chamber of
Deputies with privileges of limited legislation, the Pope retaining his
full veto power on whatever they might decree. But on April 29, after the
Jesuits had been expelled from Sardinia, Pio Nono turned his back on these
reforms, and returned to the conservative policy of his immediate
predecessors in the chair of St. Peter. His definite refusal to declare
against Austria provoked another insurrection at Rome. This time the revolt
grew to such proportions that the city had to be subjected to bombardment
by artillery.

[Sidenote: Spread of the revolution]

[Sidenote: Democratic governments spared]

In the meanwhile a revolution of far more serious proportions had broken
out at Paris. Successful from the start, the contagion of its example had
spread from France to most of the various principalities of Germany, to
Austria, Bohemia and Hungary, and thence to almost every quarter in Europe.
Few other events afford so striking an illustration of the modern
cosmopolitan spirit that had arisen in Europe during the first half of the
Nineteenth Century. The great revolutions of England, of America and of
France, in previous times, affected the rest of humanity only long after
their occurrence. The overthrow of Charles X. in 1830 gave rise to more or
less abortive revolutions in Belgium, Italy and Poland, as well as some of
the smaller German States. But the French February revolution of 1848
spread instantly to all the civilized communities of the world, except
Switzerland, Great Britain, and the United States of North America. The
exemption of these three countries, where alone true democratic forms of
government prevailed, was in itself a revelation of the general discontent
of European peoples. Other explanations in plenty have been given, every
one of which contained its measure of truth. To Polish refugees the
upheavals of this year have been in part attributed. The rise of the new
national spirit in literature was revealed in Italy and Germany as well as
among the Magyars, Slavs and Greeks. The apparently epidemic character of
the movement found another explanation in the improved means of transit