Napoleon dissented from the opinion of the Government. In point of moral effect, a reconciliation with the Pope would have been of great advantage to France, and have tended to reunite her with other Catholic nations, and diminish the horror with which she was regarded as sacrilegious and atheistical. Even the army of the Holy See was not altogether to be despised, in case of any reverse taking place in the war with the Austrians. Under these considerations, he prevailed on the Directory to renew the negotiations at Florence.[241] But the French commissioners, having presented as preliminaries sixty indispensable conditions, containing the same articles which had been already rejected, as contrary to the conscience of the Pontiff, the conferences broke up; and the Pope, in despair, resolved to make common cause with the House of Austria, and have recourse to the secular force, which the Roman See had disused for so many years.[242] It was a case of dire necessity; but the arming of the Pope's government, whose military force had been long the subject of ridicule,[243] against the victorious conqueror of five Austrian armies, reminds us of Priam, when, in extremity of years and despair, he buckled on his rusty armour, to oppose age and decrepitude to the youthful strength of Pyrrhus.[244] Yet the measures of Sextus indicated considerable energy. He brought back to Rome an instalment of sixteen millions of stipulated tribute, which was on the road to Buonaparte's military chest--took every measure to increase his army, and by the voluntary exertions of the noble families of Rome, he actually raised it to forty thousand men, and placed at its head the same General Colli, who had commanded with credit the troops of Sardinia during the campaign on the Alps. The utmost pains were taken by the clergy, both regular and secular, to give the expected war the character of a crusade, and to excite the fierce spirit of those peasantry who inhabit the Apennines, and were doubly disposed to be hostile to the French, as foreigners and as heretics. The Pope endeavoured also to form a close alliance with the King of the Two Sicilies, who promised in secret to cover Rome with an army of thirty thousand men. Little reliance was indeed to be placed in the good faith of the Court of Naples; but the Pope was compared, by the French envoy, Cacault,[245] to a man who, in the act of falling, would grasp for support at a hook of red-hot iron.[246] [Sidenote: INVASION OF THE PAPAL TERRITORIES.]