Protestantism is assured, and that Roman Catholic populations will bow down before them as the only divinely appointed exponents of the true apostolic faith. Pius VII was encouraged by the success of the Jesuits, and endeavored first to make them available in France to promote the interests of the papacy. Finding Louis XVIII submissive to his authority, he proposed to him a Concordat with provisions intended to destroy the Gallican liberties, and bring France into the condition struggled after so hard by Boniface VIII; that is, of absolute submission to the papacy in temporal as well as spiritual affairs. Louis XVIII was weak enough to agree to this Concordat, manifestly under Jesuit influence. But the Roman Catholic people of France were not so easily entrapped as the pope and the king had supposed; and the latter soon learned that even his royal authority was not sufficient to enforce this odious measure. He was compelled, therefore, by the force of public sentiment, to abandon it, although France still submitted to the presence of the Jesuits. The failure of the Condordat, however, was a sore defeat; but defeat only incensed the passions of Pius VII. The hatred of the Jesuits in Germany was shared alike by Protestants and Roman Catholics. These two bodies of Christians agreed that they would unite in maintaining freedom of worship; that is, they would return to the old order of things, which existed before peace and harmony had been disturbed by the Jesuits at their first appearing in Germany. They signed a Concordat to that effect, and sent it to Pius VII for his approval, intending that he should realize how easy it was for Christians to live together in harmony, notwithstanding differences of religious belief prevailed among them. The importance of this movement can not be overestimated. If the pope had thrown his great influence in its favor, its beneficial results would have been universally felt. But Pius VII, seeming not to know that such a union among Christians was possible, positively and peremptorily refused his assent to this just and liberal arrangement, declaring that it would "compromise his temporal and spiritual power." All classes of German Christians--howsoever they otherwise differed--rebuked his illiberality, and adhered to their conciliatory course towards each other. Pius VII, realizing the necessity of fulfilling his obligation to the allied sovereigns, and of keeping the Jesuits in the active service of the papal and imperial cause, became intensely excited at this German persistence, and expressed his indignation in strong language. His course is thus explained by Cormenin: "He rallied around him the kings of the Holy Alliance, declared a terrible war against liberal ideas, fulminated excommunications against the Democrats of France, the Illuminati of Germany, the Radicals of England, and the Carbonari of Italy,"[163] which includes everything that tended, at that period, towards liberalism and popular government.