for the security of the numerous members of it who were living in those very countries with which the emperor was then at war. He said that the head of the Church ought to be a minister of peace, and not to take part in a war which has not religion for its object; that if some of his predecessors had not always abided by this rule, he at least should not follow their exam- ple. Napoleon, however, insisted, and an angry corre- spondence was carried on between the two courts for about two years on this subject of contention, the neu- trality cf the Papal States being all the while merely nominal, as the French troops marching from and to Naples crossed and recrossed it at their pleasure, and the French also kept a garrison at Ancona, the only papal port of any importance. By degrees they ex- tended their posts all along the Adriatic coast, and gar- risoned the various ports. Some time after a body of Erench troops, coming from Naples, passed through Rome, ostensibly to proceed to Leghorn ; but they sud- denly turned out of the main road and surprised in the night the town of Civita Vecchia, of which they took military possession. In all these places they confis- cated whatever English property they could find. The papal troops at Ancona, Civita Vecchia, and other places were ordered to place themselves under the direction of the French commanders, and some officers who re- fused to do so were arrested and kept in confinement. Napoleon in the mean time found fresh grounds of quar- rel with the pope, lie wished to declare the marriage of his brother Jerome with an American Protestant lady null ; but Pius refused, saying that although the Church abhorred marriages between Catholics and heretics, yet if they were contracted in Protestant countries accord- ing to the laws of those countries they were binding and indissoluble. [ Letter of Pius VII on this impor- tant subject in Artaud, Vie du Pope Pie VII (Paris, 1826). J He next accused the pope of dilatoriness in giving the canonical institution to the bishops elected to vacant sees in the kingdom of Italy. Eugene Beau- harnais, viceroy of the kingdom of Italy, wrote an able and conciliatory letter to the pope, in order to bring about an arrangement; and the pope was induced to invite the bishops elect to Rome in order to receive the canonical institution, when a threatening letter came, written by Napoleon from Dresden after the peace of Tilsit in the summer of 1807, in which he said that "the pope must not take him for a Louis le Debon- naire ; that his anathemas would never make his sol- diers drop their muskets; that he, Napoleon, if pro- voked too far, could separate the greater part of Europe from the Roman Church, and establish a more rational form of worship than that of which the pope was the head; that such a thing was easy in the actual state of people's minds," etc. ; and he forbade Eugene to cor- respond any longer with the pope, or send the bishops elect to Rome, for, he said, " they would only imbibe there principles of sedition against their sovereign."
Matters were now brought to an open rupture. A French force under general Miollis entered Rome in February, 1808, and took possession of the castle and the gates, leaving however the civil authorities undis- turbed. The pope was prevailed upon to send cardinal de Bayanne as his legate to Paris, to make a last effort at reconciliation ; but the cardinal had not arrived at his destination when a decree of Napoleon, dated April 2, 1808, united the provinces of Ancona, Macerata, Per- nio, and Urbino to the kingdom of Italy. Fresh re- monstrances on the part of Pius were answered by threats of further hostile measures on the part of Na- poleon, unless the pope entered into an offensive and defensive league with the kingdoms of Naples and Italy, and by a declaration that "the pope would lose his temporal sovereignty and remain bishop of Rome as his predecessors were during the first eight centuries, and under the reign of Charlemagne" (Note de M. de Champagrty, Ministre, des Affaires Etrangeres a son Eminence le Cardinal Capara. April 18, 1808). The
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war which began Boon after in Spain prevented Napo- leon from occupying himself with the affairs of Borne, which remained in a state ol una rtainty amid frequent clashing between the French military authorities and
; civil officers, rhe papal territory, impover- ished as il was by the 1"-- ol its fines! provinces, was obliged i" paj the French troops whicb garrisoned the towns thai still nominally belonged i<> the pope. All the disaffected and the turbulent, trusting to French I ■ ... openly insulted the papal government The
pope remained confined to bis palace on the Quirinal, with bis Swiss guard at the pan-, not wishii s pose himself to violence by venturing out. On Maj 17. L809, Napoleon, who was then making war against Austria,] from Vienna, in which be re-
sumed the grant of bis illustrious predecessor Charle- magne, and united the remainder of the Roman states to il"- French empire, leaving t<> the pope bis palaces and an income of two millions of franca. < >n June 10, 1 xi Hi, the pope issued a bull ol excommunication against all the perpetrators and alienors of the invasion of Rome and of the territories of the Holy See. The bull was affixed to the gates of the principal churches of Rome and in other public places. The text of the bull is given by cardinal Pacca, in Ids Memorie StoHche, Ap-