Montefiore failed to gain an audience with the Pope, and was received by Cardinal Antonelli only on 28 April. Montefiore gave him the Board of Deputies' petition to pass on to the Pope, and said that he would wait in the city a week for the pontiff's reply. Two days later, news reached Rome that fighting had broken out between Austrian and Piedmontese troops in the north—the War of 1859 had begun. While most foreign dignitaries fled Rome as quickly as possible, Montefiore waited in vain for the Pope's response; he finally left on 10 May. On his return to Britain more than 2,000 leading citizens—including 79 mayors and provosts, 27 peers, 22 Anglican bishops and archbishops and 36 members of parliament—signed a protest calling the Pope's conduct a "dishonour to Christianity", "repulsive to the instincts of humanity". Meanwhile, the Church quietly had Edgardo confirmed as a Catholic in a private chapel on 13 May 1859. Edgardo was by this time no longer in the Catechumens but at San Pietro in Vincoli, a basilica elsewhere in Rome where Pope Pius had personally decided the boy would be educated.