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religion was really very much upon a par with that of those around him, and that his temper defied contradiction. Had a refusal, therefore, come from Rome, to assist at the imperial coronation, not only present advantages might have been lost to the church, and future hopes foreclosed, but even the very existence of the papacy might have been abruptly terminated. Thus the pope's journey to Paris, though deeply humiliating to him personally, in spite of the gay gilding scattered so profusely upon it, and embarrassing besides to all under papal prejudices out of France, might fairly be considered, in a choice of evils, as the less.

§ 5. Pius, however, had among his objects in view, in gratifying Napoleon, some of a character merely temporal, and his very flattering reception at the French court inspired him with hopes of succeeding in them. As a sovereign prince, he could never cease to regret that three legations in Romagna, ceded by the treaty of Tolentino, remained in the power of France. Nor did he despair, from the sacrifices that he had made, and the cordial manner in which they were received at Paris, of recovering from imperial generosity at least this portion of the papal territories. Some of his more discerning statesmen entertained no such opinion. They remarked, in all the professions and civilities by which he had recently been greeted, a studious abstinence from every thing that bore upon mere politics. The French court was most anxious to treat the pope with profound respect, and to meet his wishes upon spiritual affairs: upon temporal, it seemed unwilling to enter. Pius was not, however, convinced by this ominous silence, that his eagerness to rule where former popes had ruled must prove unavailing. Shortly after his return to Rome, he despatched, accordingly, a memorial to Paris, particularizing the losses undergone by the papal see, and admonishing the emperor to emulate the glory of Charlemagne, and restore the severed territories. He received a very civil answer, expressing earnest wishes for the extension of his religious authority, and even intimating a desire to confer temporal advantages upon him, if any opportunity of doing so should arise; but treating actual arrangements as irrevocable, and any diminution of the kingdom of Italy as wholly out of the question. In

October, 1805, he felt still more forcibly the hopelessness of occupying any higher position than that of the most dignified of Napoleon's vassals, and the most effective of his tools. The Austrian war made Ancona, the most important fortress in the papal states, of great value to France, and her troops took possession of it without any hesitation. Vainly did Pius remonstrate. He was coolly told in reply, that although sovereign of Rome, Napoleon was its emperor. This announcement of an intention to treat him as a mere viceroy, the pope met with great propriety, denying that Rome owned even temporal obedience to any earthly power but his own, and utterly refusing to make any declaration of war against nations embroiled with France, whether Romish or protestant. Such language proved highly offensive at Paris, and French troops successively occupied the whole papal territory, holding even Rome itself in a sort of siege. Pius now talked of retiring to the castle of St. Angelo, and of waiting there with gates strongly barred, but with no other preparation for resistance, until French cannon should force an entrance. He was, notwithstanding, pressed with fresh demands, amounting to a complete surrender of his rights as a sovereign prince; and remaining stedfast in his refusal, Rome was occupied, on the 2nd of February, 1808, by a large body of French troops. Within a few days afterwards, the papal court was officially informed that this occupation would continue until his holiness joined the emperor in a league offensive and defensive. Such junction being refused, the government of Rome was regularly assumed by France on the 2nd of April, and the pope was confined as a prisoner in the Quirinal palace. He still remained wholly unsubdued, exhibiting a picture of virtuous resignation that will do him immortal honour. Napoleon's great successes, however, were proof against any warning from this resistance. On the 17th of May, 1809, he issued a decree formally annexing Rome to the French empire, and declaring it a free city. This conclusive aggression extorted from the pope a bull of excommunication against Napoleon, and all concerned in his own dethronement, but carefully restricting his thunder to spirituals; an improvement upon such bulls as issued by former popes, and pretending to depose obnoxious princes,

that shows a wiser and a better spirit in modern times". Still there was enough in this fulmination to awake uneasiness. It evidently had some weight upon the public mind in Rome, and might create embarrassments elsewhere. Hence Miollis, the French commander in that city, seeing any recal of the bull utterly hopeless, became anxious for the pope's removal. In concert, accordingly, with Murat, at Naples, he gave the necessary orders to general Radet, on the 4th of July, 1809. A strong battalion arriving the next day from Naples, the Quirinal was surrounded at ten on that very night, by three regiments. Thirty men silently scaled the garden walls, and posted themselves under the palace windows; fifty more entered the house itself through the window of an uninhabited room, and the gates being thrown open, Radet entered at the head of his troops. These various movements, however, consumed the night, and it was not until six o'clock in the following morning that the pope, awakened by strokes of hatchets forcing the interior doors, became sensible of his situation. He prepared for instant death. Calling for the ring, a present from queen Clotilda, worn by his predecessor when dying, he turned his eyes upon it with a mild serenity of expression, and ordered the doors to be thrown open, to prevent farther violence. Radet immediately entered, and found him surrounded by a few prelates, all evidently prepared for the worst, and certain to meet it like christians. By such a spectacle, the revolutionary soldier was almost unnerved. With countenance and voice betraying deep emotion, he told the aged pontiff, that his own painful duty was to require of him the renunciation of all his sovereign rights, or in case of refusal, to conduct him to general Miollis, who would give directions for his ultimate destination. With the utmost calmness, Pius firmly refused to make the desired renunciation, and after a few hasty preparations, he was placed in a carriage, by the side of his able minister, cardinal Pacca, and escorted out of Rome by a powerful body of French cavalry. At Florence, the two were separated, and Pacca was sent to Grenoble by another way. From that place, an especial order of Napoleon's trans

⚫ Coote, 321.

ferred him to the state prison of Fenestrelles in Savoy. There he was kept a close prisoner until the beginning of 1813, when the unparalleled disasters of the Moscow campaign drove Buonaparte upon the forlorn hope of conciliating the pontiff, and his illustrious friend Pacca was allowed to join him at Fontainbleau, with a view to forward the imperial designs. To that place Pius himself had been recently removed, and he was detained there until Napoleon's overthrow in 1814. He had previously spent three years at Savona, whither he was transferred from Grenoble, and the cause of his removal from that place was intelligence that an English frigate was cruising in the Gulph of Lyons, with a view to his escape. At Savona he was not actually in prison, but always under strict observation. To the seizure of his person, Buonaparte protested at St. Helena that he was not privy; and such, probably, is the literal truth. But his whole subsequent conduct proves incontrovertibly that he approved of the act after it was committed, and hence, there can be no doubt, that it was in strict conformity with his own instructions, although his agents might have been intentionally allowed considerable discretion in the execution of them. The captivity of Pius required, in fact, no slight caution, and hence it was obviously convenient to shift the responsibility of it, as much as possible. In spite of the scoffing spirit upon all serious subjects fatally prevalent, even in France, a pope who was a prisoner strongly moved popular pity and veneration. When Pius first was taken to Grenoble, the French people crowded around him with the warmest demonstrations of respectful affection. On the Italian side of the Alps, he was more than once under the necessity of exerting his personal influence to prevent attempts at a rescue'.

§ 6. The earliest measure of much general importance, which followed the return of Pius to Rome, was the revival of the Jesuits, or more properly, their re-organization as a religious order, capable of indefinite extension. As masses of individuals, more or less connected together, they had never been extinct, and in two recent instances, they had already been formed into national communities. The emperor Paul

7 Alison, vii. 615.

obtained papal authority for their revival in Russia, in 1801, and in 1804 they were revived in Sicily, at the suit of king Ferdinand; a patronage but moderately flattering in either case. These concessions the pope, by a bull issued in August, 1814, extended to his own states, and to all others. He authorized, accordingly, Thaddeus Borrozowski, general of the order, to re-unite its members into one community, for the purpose of employing themselves in education, and in clerical duties. The publication of this bull was followed by an act, ordaining the restitution of the funds which formed a patrimony for the Jesuits, and compensation for such of their property as had been confiscated'. The reasons assigned for a measure so decisive as the restoration of an order which had been generally obnoxious, in Romish countries even, but a few years before, were solicitations from persons of every class', and the obvious duty of employing a body so "vigorous and experienced to row the bark of St. Peter, tossed by continual storms 3." This metaphorical language has been interpreted as meant for protestantism; which unquestionably was the original mark that Jesuits aimed at. The papal party, however, interprets it as meant for infidelity. Nor is this view unreasonable. England, a protestant state, had been mainly instrumental in the pope's restoration, and of dangers from her creed he had long possessed very little leisure to think. But he had seen a great deal of the dangers caused by infidelity. He therefore naturally thought most of the evils from that quarter, and reasoned that they were more likely to be diminished by the combined efforts of a combination admirably organized and skilfully directed, like the Jesuitic order, than by the desultory move

Hist. of the Jesuits, i. 10. Butler's Hist. Mem. iv. 355. 1 Hist. of the Jesuits, i. 11. 2 Butler's Hist. Mem, iv. 355. Hist. of the Jesuits, i. 10.

"The order of the Jesuits," says Villers, "the most important of all the orders, was placed in opposition to the Reformation, and it acquired a preponderance proportioned to the enormous mass which it was intended to counterbalance. It is with reference to the same great object of opposing the Reformation, that the present pope'

(1816) "has declared that he should deem himself guilty of a great crime towards God, if, amidst the dangers of the christian republic, in other words, of the cause of popery, he should neglect to employ the aids which the special Proridence of God had put in his power.” Ibid. ii. 396.

5 "It is in vain that the advocates of his holiness will contend that he desired the aid of the Jesuits against infidelity; for where is the danger to be apprehended from infidelity now Ibid.

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