Alexander closed his short and earnest Pontificate on April 21, 1073. Hildebrand, in his capacity of archdeacon, took stringent measures for the preservation of order, or the coercion of the Imperialist faction; yet, when the voice of the people demanded that _he_ should be Pope, his troops made no effort to secure an election according to the decree of 1059. He was conducting the funeral service over the remains of Alexander, on April 22d, when the cry, "Hildebrand bishop," was raised. He protested, but Cardinal Hugh Candidus, one of the most versatile clerical politicians of the time and afterwards the Pope's deadly enemy, stood forth and insisted that the cry was just. Hildebrand was seized and conducted, almost carried, to the church of St. Peter in Chains, where he was enthroned, as he afterwards wrote to Abbot Didier,[204] by "popular tumult." It is not certain, but is entirely probable, that he sought the imperial ratification. We may conclude that he did this, since, when he was consecrated on June 30th, the Empress Agnes and the imperial representative in Italy were present. In the letters which Gregory issued to his friends throughout Europe immediately after his election he observes that the strain and anxiety have made him ill. We can well believe that when the hour arrived for him to mount the throne of Peter, instead of standing behind it, he felt a grave foreboding. No man had ever yet ascended that throne with so portentous an idea of its prestige and responsibility, and no Pope had ever confronted a more disordered Christendom. There had been good men at the Lateran for thirty years, yet in the eyes of Hildebrand they must have seemed idle, timid, and ineffective. A Pope must wear out his body and lay down his life in the struggle with triumphant evil: must smite king or prelate or peasant without a moment's hesitation: must use every weapon that the times afforded--excommunication or imprecation, the spear of the Norman or the sword of the Dane, the staff of the ignorant fanatic or the tender devotion of woman. "The Blessed Peter on earth," as Hildebrand called himself, had a right to implicit obedience from every man on earth, on temporal no less than on spiritual matters. Kings were of less consequence than the meanest priests. If kings and dukes resisted his grand plan of making the whole of Christendom "pure and obedient," why not make their kingdoms and duchies fiefs of the Holy See, to be bestowed on virtuous men? Why not make Europe the United States of the Church, governed despotically by the one man on earth who was "inspired by God"? If anathemas failed, there were swords enough in Europe to carry out his plan. That, literally, was the vision which filled the feverish imagination of Gregory VII. when he looked down from his throne over the world.