On the 30th of March, 1849, Louis Napoleon succeeded in getting a favorable vote from the assembly upon the following proposition: "If for the maintenance of the integrity of the Kingdom of Piedmont, and for the preservation of the interests and honor of France, the executive power shall deem it necessary for the enforcement of its negotiations to occupy temporarily any given point in Italy, the national assembly shall lend him its cordial and effective support."[B] A short time after, Napoleon dispatched to Rome a force under the command of Oudinat, with secret instructions to reseat the pope on his apostolic as well as temporal throne. On the 30th of April the French republican army opened fire on the Italian republicans defending Rome. The French were repulsed. When the news of the disaster to the French forces reached Paris it threw the country into a state of delirium. Scarcely anybody not in the conspiracy had suspected that the innocent looking measure presented to the assembly by the president of the republic really authorized the declaration of war against Italy; and no one so much as imagined that "a given point in Italy" meant Rome, or that "the interests and the honor of France" required the restoration of the principle of absolutism in Italy. But it was too late; the assembly had been caught in a trap. The disgrace and the defeat were matters of fact which could not be undone. [B] _L'Eglise et La France._ O. Jouvin, page 22. A moment ago I called attention to the double role of the church. I now ask you to see how the church was trying to drag the French nation into the same insincerity and duplicity. Think of a nation which had created the Revolution, which had overthrown the monarchy, and had inscribed upon its banner "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity"--think of such a nation going to war against one of its neighbors for following its example! The creators of liberty were urged to become its assassins. Into this ludicrous, absurd, nay, infamous role, was the French republic dragged by Napoleon and the power that had made him president of the republic. Americans beware!