Soldier Emperor:
The Pope’s Divisions, Part One
By Mike Bennighof, PhD
February 2025

Our soldiers defended themselves like soldiers of the Pope; they all knelt down, throwing down their weapons, and asking . . . for an absolution in articulo mortis. - Voltaire, Candide

In 1792, the French Legislative Assembly, the revolutionaries’ instrument of government control, declared war on most of Europe, including the Papal States. Popes had held temporal authority in central Italy for over one thousand years, since the Donation of Pepin in 751. Over the previous centuries, the pope’s divisions had fought neighboring Italian states in the seemingly-endless Italian Wars. They did not have the best military reputation, as Voltaire attests.

Since 1378, as a result of the Great Schism (a 39-year period when two separate lines of popes claimed to rule the church) the Papal States also included Avignon and the Comtat in France. Following the wars of the 16th Century, and a few donations by devout secular rulers, by the late 1700’s the Papal States stretched across central Italy, including the regions known currently as Latium (the area around Rome), Umbria, Marche, and parts of Romagna.

Giannangelo Braschi had been elected pope in 1775, at the age of 58. As chief of the Vatican Treasury, he had a reputation for rooting out corruption and had apparently been given his cardinal’s hat in 1773 to cool his crusade for financial ethics. He emerged as a surprise candidate, thanks to his stance on the Society of Jesus, suppressed by Clement XIV in 1773. Pro-Jesuits believed he would restore the order; anti-Jesuits believed that he would continue Clement’s policy. Once elected, the new Pope Pius VI released imprisoned senior Jesuits, but did not restore their order or their property.

Instead, he continued his crusade against corruption, by this point endemic in the Papal government on down to its lowest levels. The papal army had reached its maximum strength during the War of the Spanish Succession, when the pro-Bourbon Pope Clement IX raised a force of 25,000 men in 1708. That army had been a corrupt as it was ineffective; committed to action against the Austrians, the pope’s divisions lasted less than two months before Clement had to acknowledge the Habsburg claim and demobilize his forces.

The Papal States (in yellow) in 1792.

That started a steady decline, and by 1791, papal forces numbered about 6,500 men. The pope’s person came under the protection of the famed Swiss Guard (127 men) and another 104 guard cavalrymen. A light infantry company of 130 men garrisoned Avignon, known to the locals as “the cowards.” Fortresses and cities within the Papal States each had a garrison of varying size. Rome hosted a guard regiment of 750 (in addition to the Swiss mercenaries) and Ferrara an infantry regiment of 860 men. The Papal Treasury had its own troops, about 1,400 men all told.

In theory, the Papal States could call on about 77,000 militiamen (falling under the regular army’s control), backed by nine artillery companies (officially part of the treasury troops, apparently to limit opportunities for graft). The Health Department had its own battalion of about 600 men recruited in Corsica and deployed to enforce plague barriers and public health ordnances.

Despite the pope’s anti-corruption zeal, his army gained a reputation for cowardice and petty venality. They did not train often, and when they did, they followed outdated forms predicated on parade-ground formations. Their duties centered on non-military functions: tariff enforcement, tax collection, policing.

The same wave of Enlightenment social and political change that brought on the French Revolution also challenged the primacy of the pope over the Roman Catholic Church. Pius VI separated the American church from that of England, keeping with his concepts of papal supremacy; the new republic actually proved less of a challenge than the old royal governments of Europe, which looked to expand their powers. Secular rulers like Joseph II of Austria wanted more control over clerical appointments within their realm, while the clergy themselves sought more independence from Rome. Royal absolutism and papal absolutism could not exist side-by-side, despite efforts of groups like the Jansenists (followers of a heresy that denied the doctrine of free will) to bridge the gap.

That conflict would help draw the pope, in his role as temporal ruler, into conflict with the French revolutionaries. The papal enclave at Avignon in southern France had been a sore point with French rulers for decades; both Louis XIV (twice) and Louis XV had briefly annexed the territory. Pro-revolution town dwellers in Avignon role in June 1790, kicking out the papal legate and calling for union with France. Rural pro-pope counter-revolutionaries restored papal government, the two sides (the Red, pro-Revolution faction, and White, pro-papal) continued to trade mob attacks and assassinations.

In September 1791 the French Constituent Assembly voted to annex the papal enclave, pending a referendum by the inhabitants. A month later, rumors spread that the Madonna in the Chapel of the Cordeliers (a begging order) just outside the walls of Avignon, had begun to shed miraculous tears, apparently in reaction. A White mob gathered in the chapel, enraged by reports that the Red faction had seized church cash and silverware. The commune’s secretary, Nicolas Jean-Baptiste Lescuyer, went to the chapel and climbed to the pulpit to assure the crowd that no thefts or seizures had occurred. The crowd dragged him from the pulpit and beat him to death on the altar steps.

The Red mayor, Jean Duprat, and his brother, local National Guard commander Etienne, called out the militia and took sixty men and women to the long-abandoned papal palace in the center of town. There they massacred their prisoners, tossing the bodies into a cesspit at the foot of the palace’s Icehouse tower. Finally, in July 1793 French troops entered the enclave (not coincidentally, just after Pius VI declared the guillotined French King Louis XVI a martyr, opening the path to sainthood), and a month later the annexation became formal.

The Pope's soldiers, seen in a 1797 French caricature.

Pius VI reacted with a flurry of moves, most of them fairly useless: renovating outdated fortifications, and building a new galley for his navy. He did authorize Lt. Col. Francesco di Paola Colli to recruit and train professional gunners for the papal artillery, and acquire modern weapons, and also directed the expansion of the Swiss Guard by hiring more mercenaries. And in late 1792, he also hired a retired Austrian general, 68-year-old Alberto Graf von Caprara, to reform and command his army. Caprara had been born in the Papal States (in Bologna) and seen extensive service; his younger brother, Cardinal Giovanni Caprara, had been papal nuncio to Vienna and would later crown Napoleon as King of Italy.

The very concept of a pope militant (like 16th Century warrior-pope Julius II) went against the instincts of many within the church. “The Pope,” wrote Cardinal Secretary of State Francesco Zelada, “as Common Father of the faithful, must strive for the conversion, not the death, of him who has become an enemy of Religion and of the Church, and for this purpose must not use arms other than those given to him by his supreme spiritual authority.”

Alberto Caprara at first tried to draw on the papal militia for added manpower, calling up five thousand men and assigning them to new battalions in the existing branches of the papal forces. Between draft riots and poor performance, the mild reform had clearly failed, and Caprara presented the pope with a radical program in March 1793, which Pius VI approved.

The new papal army would be trained by Austrians, officered by Austrians, organized like the Austrian army and paid on the Austrian scale with a new code of military justice modeled on that of the Austrian army. All of the assorted papal units would be melded together to form three regiments, each of two field battalions and one garrison battalion, plus two grenadier companies. In addition, there would be two separate battalions, two cavalry squadrons, and two artillery batteries (each Austrian-pattern battalion had its own artillery, in addition).

Initially, all would be at reduced strength (about 9,000 men total), and built up as new recruits replaced the former soldiers and militiamen, most of whom were considered hopeless. Pius VI instituted new taxes to pay for the army; resistance slowed the buildup but the early stages appeared promising when Caprara died suddenly in September 1793.

His second-in-command, Pietro Gaddi, was a long-time Papal officer who had commanded the old Guards regiment in Rome. Gaddi scaled back the program, but continued to recruit and train new troops along Austrian lines. A small program to increase the Papal Navy also proceeded, with the new galley cancelled and replaced by two new 20-gun corvettes, named San Paolo and San Pietro. These would help suppress piracy, which enjoyed a resurgence as warring nations’ navies were diverted from commerce protection.

Click here to order Soldier Emperor right now.

Global Empires
      Soldier Emperor
      Soldier Emperor: Indian Empires
      Journal No. 40: Byzantium Eternal
Retail Price: $205.97
Package Price: $160
Gold Club Price: $128
You can experience the Global Empires Package right here.

Sign up for our newsletter right here. Your info will never be sold or transferred; we'll just use it to update you on new games and new offers.

Mike Bennighof is president of Avalanche Press and holds a doctorate in history from Emory University. A Fulbright Scholar and NASA Journalist in Space finalist, he has published a great many books, games and articles on historical subjects; people are saying that some of them are actually good. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama with his wife and three children. He misses his Iron Dog, Leopold.

Want to keep Daily Content free of third-party ads? You can send us some love (and cash) through this link right here.