One branch of literature alone acquired an influence which it had not before possessed--the youngest of all the branches, which had hitherto been of no importance, but which soon became a power--the newspaper. The well-known _Journal des Débats_ was started to begin the attack upon Voltaire and to provide the prevailing ideas of the day with an organ. The French clerical press employed every possible means to attain its end. In exactly the same spirit which led it, after the Franco-Prussian war, to dub Voltaire "the miserable Prussian," it now searched his letters for passages which might convict him of treachery to his country. In one of the letters to the King of Prussia the great Frenchman's detractors discovered the offensive phrase: "Every time I write to Your Majesty I tremble as our regiments did at Rossbach;" and they hoped with the aid of quotations such as this to irritate the victor of Jena with the philosophers of the school of Voltaire. They emphasised the fact that, according to the testimony of contemporaries, the principal cause of the faintheartedness shown by the French army in the war with Frederick was the fanatic admiration of its officers for that king, a feeling which actually prevented their believing in the possibility of defeating a general who shared and favoured the convictions by which they themselves were inspired. In place of drawing an inference from this favourable to the convictions or ideas in question, the clerical party drew one unfavourable to the persons who, like Voltaire, had promulgated these ideas in France; they denounced them as traitors to their country. The following utterance of the editor of the _Journal des Débats_ gives us some notion of the general tone of that paper: "When I say the philosophy of the eighteenth century, I mean everything that is false in legislation, morals, and politics." The Neo-Catholics had another newspaper entirely in their hands, the _Mercure de France_, the most notable contributors to which were Chateaubriand and Bonald. The authors who formed the remnant of the army of the eighteenth century attempted to combat the influence of these powerful journals, but with little success. In former days the whole energy of the contending parties had been expended in winning over the reading public, or the nation, to their respective sides; now the desire of both was to win the favour of the mighty potentate. The _Journal des Débats_ endeavoured to stir up the Emperor's wrath against "philosophy." "The philosophers" tried to make him angry with the _Journal des Débats_. The clerical party denounced the philosophers as destroyers by profession, who, as such, must inevitably hate Napoleon, the great master-builder. The philosophers accused the clericals of intending, as soon as the Emperor's building was completed, to hand over the keys of it to another.