NAPOLEON
691
NAPOLEON
ish priests, not only in obedience to instructions, but
also out of patriotism, preached against England, and
exhorted their hearers to submit to the conscription.
The splendour of the Napoleonic victories seemed,
by the enthusiasm with which it inspired all French-
men, to blind the Catholics of France to Napoleon's
false view of the manner in which their Church should
be governed. He had reorganized it ; he had accorded
It more liberal pecuniary advantages than the Concor-
dat had bound him to; but he intended to dominate it.
For example, in 1S06 he insisted that all periodical
publications of a religious character should be consoli-
dated into one, the "Journal des cures", published
under police surveillance. On 15 August, 1S06, he in-
stituted the Feast of St. Napoleon, to commemorate the
martyr Neopolis, or Neopolas, who suffered in Egypt
under Diocletian. In 1806 he decided that ecclesiasti-
cal positions of importance, such as cures of souls of the
first class, could be given only to candidates who held
degrees conferred by the university, adding that these
degrees might be refused to those who were notorious
for their "ultramontane ideas or ideas dangerous to
authority". He demanded the publication of a sin-
gle catechism for the whole empire, in which catechism
he was called "the image of God upon earth", "the
Lord's anointed ", and the use of which was made com-
pulsory by a decree dated 4 April, 1806. The prisons
of Vincennes, Fenestrelles, and the Island of Sainte
Marguerite received priests whom the emperor
judged guilty of disobedience to his orders.
The. Great Victories ; Occupation of Rome ; Impris- onment of Pius VII {1805-09).— Min 1805 relations between Pius VII and Napoleon became strained. At Milan, 26 May, 1805, when Napoleon, as King of Italy, took the Iron Crown of Lombardy, he was of- fended because the pope did not take part in the cere- mony. When he asked Pius VII to annul the mar- riage which his brother .lerome Bonaparte had con- tracted, at the age of nineteen, with Elizabeth Pater- son of Baltimore, the pope replied that the decrees of the Council of Trent against clandestine marriages ap- plied only where they had been recognized, and the reply constituted one more cause of displeasure for the emperor, who afterwards, in 1806, obtained an annul- ment from the complaisant ecclesiastical authorities of Paris. And when Consalvi, in 1S05, complained that the French Civil Code, and with it the divorce law, had been introduced into Italy, Napoleon for- mally refused to make any concession.
The great war which the emperor was just then commencing was destined to be an occasion of conflict with the Holy See. Abandoning the preparations which he had made for an invasion of England (the Camp of Boulogne), he turned against Austria, brought about the capitulation of Ulm (20 October, 1805), made himself master of Vienna (13 November), de- feated at Austerlitz (2 December, 1805) Emperor Francis I and Tsar Alexander. The Treaty of Pres- burg (26 December, 1805) united Dalmatia to the French Empire and the territory of Venice to the Kingdom of Italy, made Bavaria and Wurtemberg vassal kingdoms of Napoleon, enlarged the mar- gravate of Baden, and transformed it into a grand- duchy, and reduced Austria to the valley of the Dan- ube. The victory of Trafalgar (21 October, 1805) had given England the mastery of the seas, but from that time forward Napoleon was held to be the absolute master of the Continent. He then turned to the pope, and demanded a reckoning of him.
■To prevent a landing of Ku.'fsian and English troops in Italy, Napoleon, in October, lM),j, hail ordered Giouvion Saint Cyr to occupy (lie papal city of .Vncoiia. The pope, lest the powers hostile to Napoleon might some day reproach him with having consented to the employment of a city of the Pontifical Stales as a b;use of operations, had protested against this arbitrarj' ex- ercise of power: he had complained, in a letter to the
emperor (13 November, 1805), of this "cruel affront",
declared that since his return from Paris he had "ex-
perienced nothing but bitterness and sorrow", and
threatened to dismiss the French ambassador. But
the treaty of Presburg and the dethronement of the
Bourbons of Naples by Joseph Bonaparte and Mas-
sena (January, 1806), changed the European and the
Italian situation. From Munich Napoleon wrote two
letters (7 January, 1806), one to Pius VII, and the
other to Fesch, touching his intentions in regard to
the Holy See. He complained of the pope's ill-will,
tried to justify the occupation of Ancona, and declared
himself the true protector of the Holy See. "I will
be the friend of Your Holiness", he concluded,
"whenever you consult only your own heart and the
true friends of religion." His letter to Fesch was
much more violent: he complained of the refusal to
annul Jerome's marriage, demanded that there should
no longer be any minister either of Sardinia or of
Russia in Rome, threatened to send a Protestant as
his ambassador to the pope, to appoint a senator to
command in Rome and to reduce the pope to the
status of mere Bishop of Rome, claimed that the pope
should treat him like Charlemagne, and assailed "the
pontifical camarilla which prostituted rehgion". A
reply from Pius VII (29 January, 1806), asking for the
return of Ancona and the Legations let loose Napo-
leon's fury. In a letter to Pius VII (13 February),
he declared: "Your Holiness is the sovereign of Rome
but I am its emperor; all my enemies ought to be
yours"; he insisted that the pope should drive Eng-
lish, Russian, Sardinian, and Swedish subjects out of
his dominions, and close his ports to the ships of those
powers with which France was at war; and he com-
plained of the slowness of the Curia in granting ca-
nonical institution to bishops in France and Italy. In
a letter to Vesch he declared that, unless the pope
acquiesced he would reduce the condition of the Holy
See to what it had been before Charlemagne.
An official note from Fesch to Consalvi (2 March, 1806) denned Napoleon's demands; the cardinals were in favour of rejecting them, and Pius VII, in a very beautiful letter, dated 21 March, ISO'",, remonstrated with Napoleon, declared that the pojje had no right to embroil himself with the other states, and must hold aloof from the war; also, that there was no emperor of Rome. " If our words", he concluded, "fail to touch Your Majesty's heart, we will suffer with a resignation conformable "to the Gospel, we will accept every kind of calamity as coming from God." Napoleon, more and more irritated, reproached Pius VII for having consulted the cardinals before answering him, de- clared that all his relations with the Holy See should thenceforward be conducted through Talleyrand, or- dered the latter to reiterate the demands which the pope had just rejected, and replaced Fesch as am- bassador at Rome with Alquier, a former member of the Convention. Then the emperor proceeded from words to deeds. On 6 May, 1806, he caused Civit<\ Vecchia to be occupied. Learning that the pope, before recognizing Joseph Bonaparte as King of Naples, wished .Joseph to submit to the ancient suzerainty of the Holy See over the Neapolitan Kingdom, he talked of " t h(^ spirit of light -headediiess" (esprit lie rcrliiir) which prevailed at Home, remarked that, when the iiope thus treated a Bonaparte as a vassal, he must be tired of wielding the temporal power, and directed Talleyrand to tell Pius VII that the time was past when the pope disposed of crowns. Talleyrand was informed (16 May, ISOti) that, if Pius VII would not n'cognize .hisepli, Napoleon would no longer re<-ognize I'ius VII as a temporal prince. "If this continues". Napoleon went on to .s.ay, "I will have Consalvi taken away from Rome." He sus- pected Consalvi of having sold himself to the English. Early in June, 1806, he seized Bencvento and Ponte- corvo, two principalities which belonged to the Holy
