In the papal conclave held from 14 to 16 June 1846, Giovanni Maria Mastai Ferretti was elected to succeed the recently deceased Gregory XVI as pope. He took the name Pius IX and had the longest pontificate since Saint Peter. 50 of the 62 members of the College of Cardinals assembled in the Quirinal Palace, one of the papal palaces in Rome and the seat of two earlier 19th century conclaves. The conclave was the last to elect a ruler of the Papal States, the extensive lands around Rome and Northern Italy which the Catholic Church governed until 1870. Conclave divided over how to rule the Papal States It was the issue of the government of the Papal States that was to prove central to the 1846 conclave. The College of Cardinals was split into two factions. The conservatives wished to see a continuation of papal absolutism in the governance of the Papal States, a continuation of the hardline policies of Pope Gregory XVI and his right-wing Secretary of State, Luigi Lambruschini, while the liberals wished for some measure of moderate reform and favored two candidates in Tommaso Pasquale Gizzi and Giovanni Maria Mastai Ferretti. A fourth papabile was Cardinal Ludovico Micara, the Dean of the College of Cardinals, who was favored by the residents of Rome itself but he never gained support among the cardinals. Lambruschini himself was the leader of the conservatives while Tommaso Bernetti, who had served as Pro-Secretary of State under Pope Leo XII and the early part of Pope Gregory XVI's reign, was the leader of the liberal faction. Lambruschini received a majority of the votes in the early ballots, but failed to achieve the required two-thirds majority. Cardinal Mastai Ferretti reportedly received 15 votes with the rest going to Lambruschini and Gizzi. Cardinal Gizzi was favored by the French government but failed to get additional support from the cardinals and the conclave ended up ultimately as a contest between Cardinals Lambruschini and Mastai-Ferretti. In the meantime, Cardinal Bernetti reportedly received information that Karl Kajetan von Gaisruck, the Austrian Archbishop of Milan, was on his way to the conclave to veto the election of Mastai-Ferretti and realized that if Mastai-Ferretti was to be elected he had to convince the cardinals within a few hours or accept the election of Lambruschini. Bernetti then on his own initiative personally convinced the majority of the electors to switch