Two Years in the Pontifical Zouaves

Following the formation of the kingdom of Italy in 1860, the new Italian government, led by its King, Victor Emmanuel II, turned its attention to the city it intended to make its capital, the Eternal City, Caput Mundi, Rome. One major obstacle stood in their path, the Papal States, under the leadership of Pius IX and under the protection of French soldiers sent by Emperor Napoleon III. For the Italian nationalist leader Giuseppe Garibaldi, a ferocious anticlerical who had an uneasy alliance with the monarchial Italian government, the Papacy would no longer be allowed to hold back Italy's progress into the modern world. As French commitments to preserve the independence of the Vatican waned, it increasingly fell to one of the most remarkable military units in the history of modern Europe to protect the center of Western Christendom. This unit was the Papal Zouaves, soldiers and officers from all over the world drawn by their Catholic faith to fight on behalf of the Pope against an Italian government which was ruthless in enforcing its authority. They came from as near as Switzerland and Belgium and as far away as Canada and China. This is the memoir of one of the, and Englishmen named Joseph Powell. His story is a chronicle of one of the most tragic clashes of church and state, and how ancient institutions fought to protect their existence against the ruthless waves of modernity.