Pius VI. died in 1799, refusing with his last breath to disturb the Church in Europe by sanctioning the Jesuits, even in Russia. After his death the Venetian senator Rezzonico was sent by the ultramontane party to St. Petersburg to ask the protection of Paul for the forthcoming conclave; and the only meaning we can attach to this embassy is that the schismatical Tsar was to counteract the intimidation of the Catholic monarchs and enable the cardinals to elect a pope who would restore the Society. By this time the French Revolution had run its tragic course, and the ex-Jesuits were loudly proclaiming everywhere that it was the natural development of the forces which had demanded the suppression of the Society; that, if these wild and devastating forces were not to wreck civilisation in Europe, they must be recalled to put a check on them. There was a growing disposition to listen to their plausible sermon, or at least to perceive that if the Jesuits were restored on condition that they checked the new spirit, they might prove a powerful auxiliary to the legitimate monarchs. The Bourbons had been swept from France; Charles III. had gone the way of his fathers and D'Aranda was powerless; Naples was beginning to desire a fence of Jesuits to protect itself from the northern pestilence. The Tsar was greatly flattered by the proposal that he should assert his power in the metropolis of Christendom, but it is difficult to find that he had any material influence. Portugal and Austria alone still resisted the design of restoring the Society, and Austria was fully occupied in meeting the troops of Napoleon. Hence the cardinals had little difficulty in securing the election of Chiaramonti, who, as Bishop of Tivoli, had openly expressed his reluctance to carry out the brief of suppression. Pius VII. was now a feeble and retiring old man, a former member of the Benedictine Order: a strange figure to place upon a throne which was presently to be exposed to such violent storms. But Napoleon was not yet Emperor, and the Papacy was still a quiet and puzzled spectator of the extraordinary developments in Europe. Within six months of his election Pius VII. received from the Tsar a pressing request for the approval of the Society, and on 7th March 1801 he solemnly recognised its existence in Russia. We shall see presently that the Russian fathers had already, with the connivance of Pius VI., sent a colony into Parma, at the request of the duke, and that various groups of thinly disguised Jesuits had appeared in different parts of Europe. The Jesuits had now a substantial hope of recovering their power.