In the Life of Pope Pius VII. Miss Allies has given us a picture of rare beauty and deep interest. We think, however, that the title of the book has not been well chosen. It is not a biography of Pius VII., but a history of the efforts of Napoleon Bonaparte to make the Papacy an appendage and support of the vast empire which he had founded with his sword. The materials for the narrative have been drawn chiefly from the Mémoires of Cardinal Consalvi and the Memorie Storiche of Cardinal Pacca, both of whom were witnesses of the facts which they relate. The author is also greatly indebted to the recent work of d’Haussonville, L’Eglise Romaine et le Premier Empire.
The shock of the Revolution of 1789, which unsettled everything in Europe—ideas, customs, laws, government—could not possibly have left the church undisturbed. In France the goods of the clergy were declared to belong to the nation. The churches were turned into temples of Reason, the convents converted into barracks, the priests who remained faithful to their consciences guillotined or sent into exile. The new republic, “one and indivisible,” aspired to be also universal, and soon the clash of arms resounded throughout Europe. Napoleon, at the head of the army of Italy, gained those brilliant victories which kindled in his heart the flame of an all-devouring ambition. He was ordered to march upon Rome, and he wrote to Cardinal Mattei: “Save the pope from the greatest of evils; be persuaded that I need only the will in order to destroy his power.” Pius VI. was in consequence forced to sign a treaty in which he gave up a considerable part of his territory, and in the following year (1798) the French republic invaded Rome. The reign of the popes was declared to be at an end; the Holy Father was dragged away into captivity, and in August, 1799, died at Valence. The following November the cardinals met in conclave in Venice under the protection of Russia, England, and Turkey, and elected Barnaba Chiaramonti, who took the title of Pius VII., and on the 3d of July, 1800, entered Rome amidst universal demonstrations of joy. Just two months before Bonaparte had led his victorious troops across the Alps, and, having triumphed over Austria, had a Te Deum sung in the cathedral of Milan for the deliverance of Italy from infidels and heretics—the Turks, namely, and the English. Shortly afterwards he informed Pius VII. of his wish to open negotiations for the arrangement of religious matters. The First Consul was preparing to assume the purple. “I did not usurp the crown,” he said; “it was lying in the mire: I picked it up. The people placed it on my head.” He felt, however, that an empire founded upon “blood and iron” could not dispense with the moral support of religion. He therefore determined to enter into a Concordat with the pope. This resolution, we are bound to believe, sprang purely from political and selfish motives. Whilst fortune smiled upon him Napoleon cared for religion only so far as it served his ambitious ends. To Menon, in Egypt, he wrote: “I thank you for the honors you have paid to our prophet.” In India he would have been for Ali, for Confucius in China, and in Thibet for the Dalai Lama. Consalvi was despatched to Paris to enter into articles of agreement with the First Consul. When the cardinal presented himself before Bonaparte, he turned abruptly upon him and said: “I know what brings you to France. I wish the negotiations to begin at once. I give you five days, and, if at the end of that time matters are not arranged, you must return to Rome; for my own part, I have already provided against such a contingency.”
After many discussions the First Consul declared that he was ready to ratify the Concordat. Joseph Bonaparte, Bernier, and Crétet were to sign for the French government, and Consalvi, Spina, and Caselli for the pope. At the appointed hour and place they all met. Bernier held in his hand what he said was the Concordat, and, as the cardinal claimed the right of signing first, he attempted to get him to affix his signature without looking at the document; but a glance showed Consalvi that a spurious paper had been substituted, and he refused to sign his name. The Concordat was to be proclaimed at a public dinner on the following day; so the discussions were reopened and continued through the whole night, but no satisfactory conclusion was reached. The hour for the dinner arrived, and when the cardinal entered the banquet-hall Bonaparte called out to him in a mocking tone:
“So you wish to break with me, Monsieur le Cardinal? Well, be it so! I have no need of Rome! I have no need of the pope! If Henry VIII., without the twentieth part of my power, was able to change the religion of his subjects, how much more able am not I! In changing the religion of France I shall change it in all Europe, in all places where my power is felt. When will you go?”
“After dinner,” replied the cardinal with seeming unconcern. This outburst of wrath was meant to frighten Consalvi: Bonaparte had really no intention of breaking so suddenly with the pope. Again negotiations were begun. The Concordat was signed, and Joseph was deputed to take it to the First Consul to obtain his placet; but the great man tore the paper into a hundred pieces. Finally, however, he yielded, and the public exercise of religious worship was again permitted in France.
But when Bonaparte published the Concordat, he added to it the “Organic Articles,” by which many of its provisions were practically annulled; and he was even guilty of the falsehood of making it appear that these articles were part of the convention with Pius VII. He was resolved to rule the consciences of men in the same absolute way in which he commanded his army. The bishops were required to submit all their official documents to the prefects of the departments. To prelates who were particularly zealous pastorals were sent, made to order by the central bureau at Paris. A bishop was not permitted to appoint or remove a priest without Bonaparte’s permission. Public worship was placed under the supervision of the police.
On the 16th of May, 1804, the senate voted that Napoleon should assume the title of emperor. Two months before, with premeditation and in cold blood, he had had the Duc d’Enghien assassinated at Vincennes; and this stain upon his name made him the more anxious to receive the imperial crown from the consecrated hands of the pope. A middle course was not open to Pius VII. He had either to accept Napoleon’s invitation or to declare himself his enemy.
With the understanding that the “Organic Articles” should be repealed, and that the constitutional clergy should make their retractation in his hands, the pope set out for Paris. In his long journey he was permitted to stop but twice, and upon his first meeting the new emperor he was treated in the most uncivil manner.
On the eve of the coronation Pius VII. received a visit from Josephine. She came to unburden her heart to him. The church had never blessed her marriage with Bonaparte, and she felt that this would probably be her last opportunity to have this matter arranged. The pope declared that he would not assist at the coronation unless the marriage was first contracted according to the rite of the church. The duplicity of Napoleon had deeply wounded the Holy Father, and the emperor’s wrath could not shake the pope’s firm resolve. During the night preceding the coronation, therefore, Cardinal Fesch performed the marriage ceremony in the chapel of the Tuileries in the presence of two witnesses. When the moment for the coronation came, Napoleon took the crown from the altar of Notre Dame, and himself placed it on his head. He had given the Holy Father his word that there should be but one coronation; in violation of this promise he had himself crowned a second time in the Champ de Mars. He crammed for his interviews with the pope, in order to astonish him by his knowledge of church history. Already he was pondering over the thought of keeping the Holy Father in France. The archiepiscopal palace was to be fitted up for Pius VII. and reserved exclusively for the Pontifical Court. When this was intimated to the pope, he replied that it had not been unforeseen; before leaving Rome he had signed a formal abdication, in case he should be forcibly detained in France. The document was in Palermo in the hands of Cardinal Pignatelli; the emperor might imprison Barnaba Chiaramonti, the simple monk, but not Pius VII., the Vicar of Christ.
The subject was dropped. The petty jealousy and dread of rival power or popularity which was so marked a feature in Napoleon’s character could not be concealed whilst the Holy Father remained in Paris as an independent sovereign. He was not allowed to celebrate pontifical Mass at Notre Dame on Christmas day; and he was hurried off to Mâcon before Easter, and thence continued his journey back to Rome, having refused to assist at the ceremony of Napoleon’s coronation at Milan as King of Italy.
Jérome Bonaparte, a younger brother of Napoleon, had married a Protestant girl in the United States, and the emperor, who wished his brothers and sisters to make matrimonial alliances with the most powerful families of Europe, applied to the pope to annul the marriage. Pius VII. declared that he had no power in the case. Napoleon sought revenge by meddling still further with the affairs of the church in Italy, and by taking forcible possession of Ancona, a portion of the papal territory. The Holy Father protested in a letter dated the 13th of November, 1805, which Napoleon did not find time to answer till January 7, 1806. In those two months he had brought to a close one of his most brilliant campaigns, had conquered the emperors of Austria and Russia, and dictated terms to all Europe.
In reply to the protest of the Holy Father Napoleon wrote to his ambassador at Rome in the following style: “The pope has written me a most ridiculous, a most foolish letter. These people thought I was dead.… Since these idiots do not object to the possibility of a Protestant occupying the throne of France, I will send them a Protestant ambassador.… I will change nothing outwardly, if people behave themselves with me; but otherwise I shall reduce the pope to be bishop of Rome. Really, nothing is so wanting in sense as the court of Rome.”
Only the Emperor of Russia and the King of England he declared were masters in their own states, because they had no pope to trouble them.
A month later (February, 1806) Pius VII. received another letter from Napoleon.
“Your Holiness,” he wrote, “must profess the same regard for me in the temporal order as I profess for you in the spiritual order. All my enemies must be your enemies. That an Englishman, a Russian, a Swede, or a minister of the Sardinian king should henceforth reside in Rome or in any part of your states is entirely unfitting. No vessel belonging to any of these states should enter your ports.”
The Holy Father replied that he was unable to assent to demands which were opposed to the character of his divine mission, “which owns no enmities, not even with those who have departed from the centre of unity.” Napoleon attributed the pope’s firmness to the counsels of Consalvi, and he determined to drive him from office. “Tell him,” he wrote to his ambassador, “that but two courses remain open to him: always to do what I wish or to quit the ministry.” He also informed the cardinal that none of his movements were unknown to him, and that for the first compromising act he should answer with his head; he would have him arrested in the streets of Rome. “These priests,” he said, “keep the soul for themselves and throw me the carcass.”
All this storm of imperial rage had broken upon the Head of the church because he had dared defend the honor of a Protestant girl, the daughter of a simple American citizen, against the attacks of the most terrible monarch of Europe.
Napoleon’s dream was to found a great western empire like that of Charlemagne, and for the accomplishment of this design he saw that the co-operation of the pope was necessary. He was therefore willing to defend the pope on condition that he should become his tool and lend himself as an obedient slave to his ambitious projects. But when he saw that there was no hope of bringing Pius VII. to accept his views on this subject, he began to govern the church after his own fashion. The bishops and priests who did not conform to his wishes were thrown into prison or forced to keep silence. He had his victories proclaimed from the pulpits; he furnished pastorals and exhortations in which it was made to appear that he was the defender of the faith, fighting against infidels and heretics; he recommended that prayers should be said that “our brothers, the persecuted Catholics of Ireland, might enjoy liberty of worship.” “Inform M. Robert, a priest of Bourges,” he wrote, “of my displeasure. He preached a very foolish sermon on the 15th of August. L’Abbé de Coucy is a great worry to me. He keeps up too great a correspondence. I wish him to be arrested and put into a monastery.… It is really shameful that you have not yet arrested M. Stevens. People are too sleepy; else how could a wretched priest have escaped?… I see from your letter that you have caused a curé of La Vendée to be arrested. You have acted very wisely. Keep him in prison.” All religious newspapers—save one, the Journal des Curés, whose publications were strictly supervised—were suppressed. “No priest,” said Napoleon, “should bother his head about the church except in his sermons.” A special Sunday each year was set aside to commemorate the coronation and the victories of the Grande Armée; and in the sermon preached on that day particular mention was to be made of those who had fallen at Austerlitz. M. Portalis was charged with the preparation of a new imperial catechism, which was published in August, 1806. The children of France were taught that “the honor and the service of the emperor is one and the same thing as the honor and service of God”; that those who were wanting in their duty to Napoleon rendered themselves worthy of eternal damnation; and that God had given the crown not only to him, but to his family. The French bishops submitted in silence to this orthodox imperialism.
The next step was to deprive the pope of his temporal power. As Pius VII. had refused to enter into the emperor’s plans for the founding of a great western empire, he was to be imprisoned. Napoleon had just annihilated the wonderful troops of Frederick the Great, and from his palace at Berlin he once more dictated terms to the Holy Father. “Let the pope,” he wrote, “do what I wish, and he will be repaid for the past and the future.”
All Europe, save England, was lying helpless at the feet of the conqueror; and that the pope should continue to defend the interests of a Protestant country against the power of a second Charlemagne was an impossible supposition.
But Napoleon was now so great that he refused to enter into personal correspondence with Pius VII.; so he wrote to Eugene Beauharnais, the Viceroy of Italy, with instructions that he should communicate his letter to the pope.
“They say,” wrote the emperor,” that they want to publish all the evil that I have committed against religion. The idiots! They ignore, then, that there does not exist a spot in Italy, Germany, or Poland where I have not done more for religion than the pope has done evil.… What does Pius VII. mean by denouncing me to Christendom? Does he imagine that their arms will fall from the hands of my soldiers?… Perhaps the time is not far off when, if this meddling in my affairs does not stop, I shall acknowledge the pope to be nothing more than bishop of Rome, holding a rank in all respects similar to my bishops.… In two words, this is the last time that I consent to treat with these wretched priests of Rome.”
The pope replied to these insults in a letter full of meekness and humility, in which he declared that he had refused Napoleon nothing which his conscience would permit him to grant. Napoleon gave orders for the occupation of Rome by the French troops under General Miollis; and the army passed in through the open gates of the city on the 2d of February, 1808. The pope was a prisoner. The Neapolitan cardinals were carried off by force; and in March all who were not natives of the states of the church were ordered to leave Rome. The dethronement of the pope was proclaimed with the sound of the trumpet, and his dominions were declared irrevocably united to the kingdom of Italy. The Holy Father signed the bull of excommunication, and in the night of the 5th of July, 1809, General Radet broke into his apartments, arrested him and Cardinal Pacca, hurried them into a closed carriage, and drove out of Rome through the Porta Pia, accompanied by a detachment of gendarmes. The pope, who was ill and weak, was driven in great haste through Italy to Savona, a fortified town near Genoa, where he was imprisoned.
Europe was dumb, the press was silent, and people dared not even express sympathy for the Holy Father. Napoleon tried to make the world forget that there was a pope; but he himself was often reminded of his existence. Many dioceses were without bishops, and the pope refused to confirm those who had been appointed, so long as he was deprived of his liberty. The emperor had some of the highest dignitaries of the French church to write to the prisoner of Savona to represent the evil consequences of this refusal; but to no purpose. All the cardinals were summoned to Paris to grace the Imperial Court. The Penitentiaria and Dataria were also removed thither. Napoleon sent a circular to the bishops, ordering them “to suppress the prayer to St. Gregory VII., and to substitute another feast for that of this saint, whom the Gallican Church cannot recognize.” Everything was “to be organized as if no pope existed.” No priest was to be ordained without the emperor’s permission. “Give orders,” he wrote, “to the prefect of the Taro department to choose fifty of the worst priests at Parma and fifty of the worst at Piacenza.… Let them embark for Corsica.”
The time had now come when Napoleon was resolved to be divorced from Josephine. He consulted the Archbishop of Bordeaux and his clergy on the subject. Their reply was unfavorable, and he summarily dismissed them and had the vicar-general and the superior of the seminary deprived of their offices. One day, after a very silent repast with the empress, he broached the subject to her. She fell fainting to the floor; the emperor summoned the chamberlain and had her carried to her apartments. Her adieu to sovereignty was effected under trying circumstances. A grand reception took place at the Tuileries on the evening of her departure. She assisted at the funeral of her worldly greatness, and the fate of Napoleon was decided at the same moment by a few hurried words spoken by two courtiers as they were leaving the imperial presence. Negotiations for the marriage of Napoleon with the Grand Duchess Olga, sister of the Czar of Russia, were all but concluded. That night M. Floret, the first secretary of the Austrian Embassy, whispered to M. de Sémonville that the emperor might easily have the hand of Marie Louise of Austria. This was related to Napoleon; the alliance with Russia was broken off; and two years later came the retreat from Moscow, when the arms fell from his soldiers’ hands. But to espouse a daughter of the Catholic house of Austria it was necessary to obtain not only a civil but also a religious divorce from Josephine. No other authority than that of the pope, Cardinal Fesch declared, would be otherwise than “uncertain or dangerous” on the subject; but to apply to the captive of Savona would be useless. Napoleon therefore created an ecclesiastical tribunal for the occasion, over which his uncle, Cardinal Fesch, was appointed to preside. The emperor first attempted to make it appear that his marriage with Josephine in 1804 was invalid, because it had taken place without witnesses or deed; but the cardinal was able to show that this was not true. He next alleged as a cause of illegality the absence of the parish priest; but the faculties conferred upon Fesch by Pius VII. more than supplied this deficiency. As a last resort Napoleon declared that he had never consented to the religious marriage, thus openly confessing that he had deceived Josephine, Cardinal Fesch, and the Holy Father. This statement, however, was probably an after-thought and false, which is not surprising in an habitual liar like Napoleon. The tribunal was threatened with the anger of the emperor if it kept him waiting beyond a certain day. As it had been created only to do his bidding, his marriage with Josephine was declared null; but let us remark that the Holy Father had nothing to do with this business; he was not even consulted, as he had already given proof of what might be expected from him in the case of Jérôme Bonaparte and Miss Paterson. Nearly all the cardinals were at this time living in Paris. Fourteen of them gave it as their opinion that the divorce had been rightly granted; thirteen others asserted that the tribunal was incompetent, and that the case should have been submitted to the pope. In consequence they determined not to assist at the marriage of Napoleon and Marie Louise. When Cardinal Fesch reported this to the emperor, he got into a fit of rage. “Bah! they will not dare,” he exclaimed; and when Cardinal Consalvi, the leader of the thirteen, came to a public audience at the Tuileries eight days before the ceremony, Napoleon came up to him, stopped before him, gave him a thundering look, and passed on without speaking a word. As he entered the chapel of the Louvre for the wedding he wore an air of triumph; but his countenance grew dark when he perceived the thirteen were not there.
“Where are the cardinals?” he asked in an irritated tone.
“A great number are here,” was the reply.
“Ah! the fools; but they are not here,” said Napoleon with another glance at the empty seats. “The fools, the fools!”
He declared that it was his intention to cause the resignation of these individuals, and that henceforth they were to be deprived of the Purple. In this way arose the title of Black and Red cardinals. The property of the thirteen was seized and their income went to swell the public treasure, whilst they were sent to different provincial towns and placed under surveillance.
The difficulty as to the appointment of bishops to vacant dioceses had not been settled. In May, 1810, Napoleon despatched two cardinals, most favorable to his pretensions, to Pius VII., whom he still held a prisoner in Savona, to persuade the pope to confirm the bishops appointed by the emperor; but the Holy Father was immovable. Napoleon thereupon resolved to make his own bishops and dispense with the papal confirmation. Cardinal Fesch, who had accepted the title of Archbishop-elect of Paris, now refused to take possession of his see without the approval of the pope.
“I can force you to obey me,” said Napoleon to his uncle.
“Sire, potius mori,” replied the cardinal.
“Ah! ah! potius mori—rather Maury. Be it so. You shall have Maury.” Cardinal Maury accepted, and in a few days his vicar-general was arrested and sent to the dungeon of Vincennes, where he remained till the fall of the empire. About the same time Vincennes opened its gloomy gates to Cardinals di Pietro and Gabrielli. This was in 1811. Pius VII. had been in prison for two years. Napoleon now ordered his jailers to treat him with greater severity. No person was allowed to see him without the emperor’s permission; and for violating this regulation some priests from Marseilles were thrown into a filthy dungeon. All letters to and from the Holy Father were submitted to the inspection of the keeper of the prison.
“It is useless for the pope to write,” said Napoleon; “the less he does, the better it will be.… The less that which he writes reaches its destination, the better.… I trouble myself very little as to what he may do.… Let him be told that it is distressing for Christendom to own a pope so ignorant of what is due to sovereigns, but that the state will not be disturbed, and good will be effected without him.”
On the 8th of January, 1811, experts sent from Paris entered the episcopal palace at Savona, where the Holy Father was confined, opened his doors and drawers, searched his correspondence, unsewed his clothes, and broke open his desk, in order to discover something that might incriminate him. They even took away his breviary and the Office of the Blessed Virgin. He was also ordered to deliver up the Ring of the Fisherman; but, justly suspecting that it would be used for fraudulent purposes, he broke it in two and handed the pieces to Napoleon’s agent. A moral terrorism reigned over the religious world in France and Italy. The emperor’s vengeance pursued even ladies who gave alms to the Black cardinals. The cardinals, bishops, and priests who had spoken against his tyranny were in prison; the rest remained silent.
Napoleon now called a National Council to devise measures for governing the church without the assistance of the pope. The French bishops had for the most part been kept ignorant of the precise nature of the trouble between himself and Pius VII., and he intended by this new move to impress upon the mind of the Sovereign Pontiff that he could nor rely upon the support of the bishops. First, however, a deputation was sent to the pope to urge upon him the pressing necessity of conforming without further delay to the will of the emperor. Pius VII. was at this time in very feeble health, and Napoleon did not hesitate to bribe his physician, Dr. Porta, that he might inform the members of the deputation of the most favorable opportunity to take advantage of the weak and suffering state of the Holy Father to wring from him the desired concessions. For some days those who surrounded him were able to attest the presence of all the symptoms of madness.
“You will have seen,” wrote his jailer to the Minister of Worship, “by my last letters that the uncertainty of the pope when he is left to himself goes to the length of affecting his reason and his health. At present the mental alienation has passed off.”
Still, the bishops sent by Napoleon to Savona were obliged to return without the pope’s signature to the document of concessions. The National Council was opened on the 17th of June, in the Cathedral of Notre Dame, under the nominal presidency of Cardinal Fesch. The opening discourse was delivered by Mgr. de Boulogne, Bishop of Troyes, who spoke in eloquent and burning words “of the Supreme Head of the episcopate, without whom it resembles a branch separated from the tree and withered, or a vessel tossed by the waves without rudder or steersman.”
“This see may be removed,” he said, “but it cannot be destroyed. Its magnificence may be taken away, but never its strength. Wherever this see shall establish itself it shall draw all others around it.” These words fell like burning coals in the midst of the assembly and produced great emotion. The effect had not died away when the Bishop of Nantes arose to comply with the formality of asking each prelate whether it pleased him that the council should be opened. “Yes,” answered the Archbishop of Bordeaux, “saving the obedience due to the Sovereign Pontiff, to whom I bind myself and whom I swear to obey.” Then Cardinal Fesch in a loud voice read the oath as prescribed by a bull of Pius IV.: “I acknowledge the Holy Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman Church to be the mother and mistress of all other churches; I promise and swear perfect obedience to the Roman pontiff, the successor of St. Peter, Prince of the Apostles, and Vicar of Jesus Christ on earth.” One by one the bishops bound themselves irrevocably to the cause of Pius VII. Napoleon was furious and berated his uncle for “getting up one of his scenes.” Two laymen were appointed to be present in his name at all future meetings of the bishops.
Some of the courtier prelates drew up a fulsome address to Napoleon, a kind of treatise on state theology, which they presented to the members of the council for their signature. Mgr. de Broglie, Bishop of Ghent, declared he would never sign it. Another bishop proposed that “the liberty of the pope” should be demanded. This was received with a confused murmur of applause; but Cardinal Fesch, who dreaded the wrath of his nephew, declared that the time was inopportune for such a request. Napoleon, unable longer to restrain himself, ordered the council to put an end to its “idle debates.” He gave the members eight days to devise an expedient for providing bishops for the vacant sees. As a sign of his displeasure he refused to receive the council officially at the Tuileries. The bishops, he said, had “acted as cowards.” In answer to the demand to find an expedient for providing bishops for the vacant sees without the confirmation of the pope, the council declared that it would first be necessary to send a deputation to consult Pius VII. This declaration was carried by Fesch to his imperial nephew. He was received with an outburst of anger. Napoleon would soon show the bishops their place. When the cardinal attempted to reason with him, he rudely stopped him: “What! theology again! Where did you learn it? Be quiet; you are an ignoramus.” He threatened to dissolve the council and organize a system of state religion, but finally drew up a decree himself, in which he falsely asserted that the pope had made the desired concessions. The bishops were deceived, and, with two exceptions, voted in favor of the decree. A little reflection, however, convinced many of them of the fraud which had been practised upon them, and they recalled their votes. Suddenly, on the 11th of July, Napoleon dissolved the council. The following day, at three o’clock in the morning, Mgr. de Broglie, Mgr. de Boulogne, and Mgr. Hirn, who had taken a prominent part in opposing the decree, were arrested in their beds and carried off to the prison of Vincennes. In August five cardinals and eight bishops, partisans of the emperor, were sent to Savona to make still another effort to win over Pius VII. to Napoleon’s plans. The Holy Father, who was so closely guarded that no one was allowed to see him except his bribed doctor and the jailer, was in total ignorance of all that had passed in the National Council. For five months, from September, 1811, to February, 1812, these cardinals and bishops used every argument and artifice to induce the pope to sign the decree of the council.
Their efforts were successful. Pius VII., worn out with importunities, feeble in body and in mind, wrote the brief of adhesion. But Napoleon was not satisfied. He was already organizing his army for the fatal Russian campaign, and he wrote to his Minister of Worship the following instructions: “I send you the original papal brief. Keep it and communicate its contents to nobody. I wish to find the bishops in Rome on my return, to see what we can do.… The truth is, the church is experiencing a crisis.” His victory over Russia was, in his imagination, already an accomplished fact; he would return the undisputed sovereign of all Europe, would gather the bishops in Rome, and would give to the church, as he had given to the state, a Code Napoléon.
On the 24th of January, 1812, the Holy Father wrote to him in the most unaffected and simple manner, and begged to be permitted to consult disinterested counsellors and to have free communication with the faithful. Napoleon disdained to answer this letter, but sent through his Minister of Worship the following notification to the deputation at Savona: “His majesty deems that it is unfitting to his dignity to answer the letter of the pope.… His majesty pities the ignorance of the pope, and compassionates a pontiff who could have played so great a part, but who has become the calamity of the church.… His majesty understands these matters of ecclesiastical jurisdiction better than the Holy Father.… If the pope cannot make a distinction which is simple enough to be grasped by the most uncultivated seminarian, why does he not voluntarily descend from the papal chair and leave it to a man who is less feeble in mind and better principled than he?” And now, just as he was setting out on the Russian campaign, he ordered that Pius VII. should be transferred from Savona to Fontainebleau.
The Holy Father was unwell, but to this no attention was paid. Just before reaching the Mont Cenis he fell dangerously ill. The journey was not interrupted. A bed was fitted up in the carriage and a surgeon procured, who, with the instruments that might be needed, accompanied him. When they reached Fontainebleau nothing was prepared, and the pope had to pass the first night in the porter’s lodge. A Guide-book of Paris, published at this time, informed the French that they possessed a “papal palace” in their capital. But the end was drawing near. On the 24th of June, 1812, Napoleon crossed the Niemen at the head of an army of five hundred thousand men. As he reached the opposite bank his horse stumbled and fell. His fatalism led him to consider this a bad omen. The Russians fled before him, and, after the victories of Smolensk and Borodino, he rode into Moscow on the 15th of September. It was silent as a desert, and the Kremlin, where he took up his residence, was like a tomb. At midnight from a hundred quarters the flames burst forth, and in the lurid light of the burning city the army began the fatal retreat. The weather, which had been fine, suddenly grew cold; sleet and snow and rain beat with merciless fury upon the men, from their benumbed hands their arms fell, and by the roadside they laid down to die. On the 18th of December Napoleon arrived, a fugitive, in Paris. In this one campaign he had lost 250,000 men, half of whom had died of cold and hunger.
With the beginning of the year 1813 he wrote to Pius VII. and begged him to believe that his feelings of respect and veneration were independent of circumstances. Shortly afterwards he went to visit the Holy Father at Fontainebleau, and upon their first meeting for eight years he embraced him with every mark of affection. The health of the pope was wretched, and advantage was taken of his weak condition to obtain still further concessions.
Upon the promise of Napoleon to liberate the imprisoned cardinals, bishops, and priests, Pius VII. signed the Concordat of Fontainebleau—an act which he almost immediately recalled, and which he never ceased to regret. When the faithful Pacca, after so long a separation, was at length admitted to his presence, he expressed his admiration for the pope’s heroic constancy.
“But finally,” cried out the Holy Father in anguish, “we have sullied our conscience. Those cardinals dragged me to the table and made me sign.”
Pius VII. was still held a prisoner, and Napoleon acted as though the Concordat of Fontainebleau still existed. He appointed bishops, imprisoned priests, and drafted seminarians to fill up his decimated regiments.
The victories of Lutzen and Bautzen were more brilliant than important. In August, 1813, the Emperor of Austria declared against his son-in-law. Then came the crushing defeat of Leipsic, and Napoleon was slowly driven back upon France, closely followed by the allied armies. Orders were sent to remove Pius VII. from Fontainebleau, and a few days later the war was raging at the very gates of the palace which he had so recently occupied. Finally, on the 10th of March, 1814, when all hope was lost, Napoleon signed a decree which restored his dominions to the pope. Since his removal from Fontainebleau Pius VII. had been driven about through various parts of France, closely guarded; but now that he turned his face toward Rome, his journey assumed the appearance of a triumphal procession, and at length, on the 24th of May, 1814, the Feast of Our Lady, Help of Christians, he re-entered the Holy City amid the universal enthusiasm of his people. Just one month before, in the palace of Fontainebleau, Napoleon signed the decree which declared his empire at an end; and, a fallen sovereign, he passed out in silence through the ranks of the men whom he had so often led to victory.
In his last meeting with Josephine he took her hand and said: “Josephine, I have been as fortunate as any man upon earth. But in this hour, when a storm is gathering over me, I have in the wide world none but you upon whom I can repose.” And in St. Helena he said to Caulaincourt: “If I live a hundred years, I shall never forget those scenes; they are the fixed ideas of my sleepless nights. I have had enough of sovereignty. I want no more of it; I want no more of it.”
It is not easy to form a just estimate of the character of Napoleon. We have heard veterans who had fought at Austerlitz and Lutzen declare that when he rode along the line his glance did so blind the eye that they could not look upon him; and they thought so. This light of glory still enshrines his memory and dazzles us, to prevent us from seeing him as he was. No one has ever doubted his surprising strength; his almost incredible power to bear labor, whether of body or mind; his wonderful intellect, which grasped things with equal ease, in general and in detail; his unequalled ability to organize an army, a nation, or a continent; his courage, which rose superior to the most crushing defeat.
But with these great endowments he had a coarse and selfish nature. He was as ready to lie as to tell the truth. No act that was expedient was bad. His ambitious ends sanctified all means by which they could be attained. Dissimulation, deceit, hypocrisy, betrayal of friends, imprisonment, murder, assassination, he was ready to use indifferently as his purposes demanded. Without moral convictions himself, he believed others equally devoid of them. To assign conscience as a reason for anything was in his eyes pretence and hypocrisy. The religious scruples of the pope and cardinals he held to be mere obstinacy and ill-will. When Pius VII. declared he had not the power to annul the marriage of Jerome with Miss Patterson, Napoleon saw in this only a desire to take revenge for the way in which he had been insulted at the coronation. After having persecuted bishops and priests, keeping many of them in prison, during his whole reign, he had the impudence to declare in St. Helena that the priests were all for him as soon as he allowed them to wear violet-colored stockings. He was the coarsest reviler and insulted all whom he feared or hated. The pope and the cardinals were “idiots and fools”; the republicans were “mad dogs and brigands”; the King of Prussia was “the most complete fool of all the kings on earth”; the Spanish Bourbons were “a flock of sheep”; De Broglie, the Bishop of Ghent, was “a reptile”; the priests who disapproved of the Concordat were “the scum of the earth”; and of the philosophers he said: “Je les ai comme une vermine sur mes habits.” His conduct towards women was coarse and contemptuous. They ought to know nothing and were not fit to have opinions. He told Madame de Staël to go home and knit her stockings; the greatest woman was she who had the most children—he wanted soldiers. He did not conceal his contempt for men. “Every year of my reign,” he said in St. Helena, “I saw more and more plainly that the harsher the treatment men received, the greater was their submission and devotion. My despotism then increased in proportion to my contempt for mankind.” From 1804 to 1815 he sacrificed to his mad ambition not less than five millions of men. Several thousand French subjects were shot merely for desertion. Each principal town had its place aux fusillades. The prisons of France were filled with his victims. A more thorough tyrant than he never lived. Liberty of all kinds was odious to him. He hated all whom he could not enslave. To be free was to be his enemy. While he reigned men spoke with bated breath, the press was fettered, and the church was in chains. In his own family he was a despot; he gave his brothers crowns, but only on condition that they would become his slaves; and when Lucien thought that even royal honors might be bought at too dear a price, he was forced to leave France.
His jealousy was surpassed only by his vanity. “Go,” said he to his soldiers, “kill and be killed; the emperor beholds you.”
He had a barbaric love of vulgar display, and this was one of the passions which impelled him to his bloody wars. No man ever had less heart. If he loved any one, it was Josephine, and her he sacrificed without a pang. Remorseless as destiny, which was his god, he trod out with the iron hoof of war right and life, and where he passed there was wailing and desolation as after pestilence. In his last illness on the desolate rock of St. Helena he spoke with reverence and feeling of religion. From the hands of the priest sent to him by Pius VII. he received the sacraments of the church. For six years he had held in cruel confinement Christ’s vicar, the gentlest of men; for six years he himself pined in living death on the barren island of St. Helena. It was the 5th of March, 1821, that he died. On the tomb of St. Peter Pius VII. offered up the divine Sacrifice for the repose of the soul of Napoleon.
[75] The Life of Pope Pius VII. By Mary H. Allies. London: Burns & Oates. 1875.