This opinion of the Committee of Public Safety so far influenced the Directory, that, until he replaced Championnet in Italy, Macdonald was never entrusted with an independent command. Soon after this mortification in Holland, the convention for a peace between France and Austria was held at Leoben, and on its conclusion he repaired to Cologne, and, quitting the army of the Rhine, joined that of Italy, where the bright star of Napoleon was now in the ascendant. By the nature of his frontier service Macdonald had hitherto little or no correspondence with the future Emperor, who having also imbibed the suspicions of the Directory, was long in discovering the worth or relying on the fidelity of the only Scottish soldier in his service. Macdonald appeared in Italy too late to bear any part in the first events of the campaign of 1797, when the armies of the aggressive republic marched to spread their new political principles throughout the Italian peninsula; but in the following year he was at the invasion of the Papal States, with the terrible Massena and with Berthier, who proclaimed the republic at Rome, on which the Pope fled to Florence. One of the early measures of the French generals was the suppression of the English, Scottish, and Irish colleges, all the effects in which were seized and the students dispersed. To the Pope they sent a tricoloured cockade and the offer of a pension, to which he made the following reply:-- "I acknowledge no uniform save that with which the Church has adorned me. My life is at your disposal, but my soul is beyond your power. I cannot be ignorant of the hand whence the scourge proceeds which chastises the sheep and afflicts the pastor for the errors of his flock; but I submit to the Divine will. Your pension I need not. A staff and scrip are sufficient for an old man who must pass the remainder of his days in sackcloth and ashes. Rob, pillage, burn as you please, and destroy the monuments of antiquity, _but religion you cannot destroy_: it will, in defiance of your efforts, exist to the end of time!"