Clement XIII became indignant when he found himself unable to counteract the general prejudice existing against the Jesuits, and, with strange infatuation, allowed his passions to obtain complete mastery over him. He fulminated anathemas against the Kings of Portugal, Spain, France, the Two Sicilies, and the Duke of Parma and Placencia, and threatened them with excommunication if they did not cease their opposition to the Jesuits. He even went so far as to send papal troops against the Duke of Parma to bring him to obedience by military coercion. But the other powers were not alarmed by the sound of the pontifical thunder, and the Kings of France, Spain, Portugal, and Naples promptly pronounced against the pope, and prepared to punish him for marching an army against the Duke of Parma, whose policy towards the Jesuits was the same as their own. Even Louis XV was induced by Choiseul, his minister, to unite upon this point with the other kings. Thereupon, the King of the Two Sicilies invaded the papal province of Beneventum with an army, intending thereby to teach the pope that he was transcending his legitimate powers as head of the Church. The bull of the pope was torn up at the courts of Portugal, Spain, and Parma, and by the Parliament of Paris. The excitement became general, and Clement XIII was awakened from his apparent sense of security by the mutterings of the storm gathering upon all sides of him. He was brought to realize, possibly for the first time, that even he, with all the powers of the Church in his hands, was unable to drive back the waves then dashing against the papacy, and threatening to ingulf it. In this emergency he sought aid from Maria Theresa, the Empress of Austria, with the hope that, with the assistance of so strong a power, he could make successful resistance to those combined against the Jesuits. But the empress, having cause to complain of the treachery of the Jesuits to her, declined to comply with this request, and went a step farther by annulling one of the important papal bulls which had been published in her dominions. The clouds, already lowering over the head of Clement XIII, then thickened more rapidly than ever, and the struggling pope, finding himself everywhere deserted by the strong powers--all of which had hitherto been united in favor of the Church--became so humbled in his pride as to declare that "_he was ready to make concessions_;" that is, to do something--anything--to arrest the declining fortunes of the papacy. Thus humiliated, "_he implored the clemency of the sovereigns_," begging them, as we may suppose, to relax their grasp upon him on account of their veneration for the Church. But it was too late. The impracticable demands of the Jesuits had brought on such an issue between the spiritual and the temporal powers as to leave no ground for concessions on the part of the sovereigns, so long as they were persisted in. They were bound to