It's a long story and Count Rossi had a tough job. As he was walking up the stairs in Rome's Palace of the Cancelleria his neck was slit and this is where it happened. This stone was marked where his blood was spilt. The assasin got away and was never caught.
The previous Prime Minister, Count Mamiani had resigned. Mamiani had said that it was obvious that supreme spiritual and temporal powers could no longer be combined in one man and were not reconcilable in any consistent policy. The Pope meanwhile possessed these powers and had to attempt to reconcile them while everything was falling apart.
"Count Pellegrino Rossi became papal Prime Minister. A professed free-thinker, Rossi was a promoter of sorts, a speculator and a political opportunist who had adventured behind many scenes in Switzerland and France. His first act was an unpopular one, the placing of a French commander over the papal troops. He addressed himself then to the task of overhauling the Vatican financial structure and entered into correspondence with the Rothschilds...On November 15, 1848, Count Pellegrino Rossi was assasinated. The Pope linked Rossi's death to the violent demonstrations outside the Quirinal and he feared for his own life. He and his newly appointed successor to Rossi, Giacomo Cardinal Antonelli, fled in disguise to Gaeta where Pius IX accepted the protection of the King of Naples and quarters in the royal palace. He left a triumvirate of cardinals in Rome, charged with responsability for Vatican affaris."
-Shepherd of Mankind by William E. Barrett, p. 32.
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