All Europe, save England, was lying helpless at the feet of the conqueror; and that the pope should continue to defend the interests of a Protestant country against the power of a second Charlemagne was an impossible supposition. But Napoleon was now so great that he refused to enter into personal correspondence with Pius VII.; so he wrote to Eugene Beauharnais, the Viceroy of Italy, with instructions that he should communicate his letter to the pope. “They say,” wrote the emperor,” that they want to publish all the evil that I have committed against religion. The idiots! They ignore, then, that there does not exist a spot in Italy, Germany, or Poland where I have not done more for religion than the pope has done evil.… What does Pius VII. mean by denouncing me to Christendom? Does he imagine that their arms will fall from the hands of my soldiers?… Perhaps the time is not far off when, if this meddling in my affairs does not stop, I shall acknowledge the pope to be nothing more than bishop of Rome, holding a rank in all respects similar to my bishops.… In two words, this is the last time that I consent to treat with these wretched priests of Rome.” The pope replied to these insults in a letter full of meekness and humility, in which he declared that he had refused Napoleon nothing which his conscience would permit him to grant. Napoleon gave orders for the occupation of Rome by the French troops under General Miollis; and the army passed in through the open gates of the city on the 2d of February, 1808. The pope was a prisoner. The Neapolitan cardinals were carried off by force; and in March all who were not natives of the states of the church were ordered to leave Rome. The dethronement of the pope was proclaimed with the sound of the trumpet, and his dominions were declared irrevocably united to the kingdom of Italy. The Holy Father signed the bull of excommunication, and in the night of the 5th of July, 1809, General Radet broke into his apartments, arrested him and Cardinal Pacca, hurried them into a closed carriage, and drove out of Rome through the Porta Pia, accompanied by a detachment of _gendarmes_. The pope, who was ill and weak, was driven in great haste through Italy to Savona, a fortified town near Genoa, where he was imprisoned.