Mrs. Charles MacVeagh, Fountains of Papal Rome — Monte Cavallo
“ Sixtus V died in the Quirinal Palace. His pontificate had lasted but five years, and it remains to this day one of the most memorable periods in the development and power of Rome. Never had Pope done more for his people; yet, when he came to die, the Romans had already forgotten the benefits of his pontificate and remembered only the severities. ”
Mrs. Charles MacVeagh, Fountains of Papal Rome — Monte Cavallo
“ When the golden charm was broken by the outbreak of the Revolution in Palermo and the murder of Pellegrino Rossi in Rome, the frightened pontiff, turning from an angry people, whom in the nature of things he could not possibly satisfy, appealed to the most reactionary of all the Italian powers, the King of Naples, or "Bomba." Then the Quirinal witnessed the last act which the papacy was to play within its precincts. The Pope and one attendant escaped from the palace by a small side door in the garden wall and fled across the frontier to Gaeta, on Neapolitan territory. ”
Mrs. Charles MacVeagh, Fountains of Papal Rome — Monte Cavallo
“ All the poor of Rome felt that they had lost a friend and benefactress, the like of whom would not come again. Later, when Prince Borghese wished toknow the names of those who had drawn the funeral car, he was only told that they were Romans ! Up the slopes of Monte Cavallo in February, 1798, came with their tricolored cockades the soldiers of the French Revolutionary Army. They entered the Quirinal and called upon Pope Pius VI to renounce the temporal power. The eighteenth-century pontiff calmly refused to comply with this preposterous demand. ”
