There was then but one sovereign in Europe who held himself in readiness to respond willingly to such a call as this--who kept a large standing army in preparation to overrun and desolate any country whose people were trying to establish their own national freedom. This single sovereign was the Emperor of Austria, at whose imperial court the Jesuits were always welcome and favored guests, and every pulsation of whose heart beat in unison with their doctrines. He readily accepted the invitation of the pope, and sent a large army to protect him and to desolate all Italy if his crown could not be saved in any other way. What a spectacle! A great nation not assailed, not even offended, sending an immense army of conscripts--made mere machines by the relentless system of European military discipline--to hold in perpetual bondage populations whose only offense was the desire to establish their own constitutional government! The conflict was between the papacy and the Roman Catholic people of Italy--not between them and the Church. They had no fault to find with the Church, but desired only to separate the Church from the State by transferring the crown of temporal sovereignty to a king who would wear it under the restraints of a written constitution, and not leave it on the head of the pope, who claimed that it conferred absolute authority upon him by virtue of the divine law. They accepted in good faith all the teachings of the Church; but rejected the doctrine of the papacy and the Jesuits that it was a necessary part of the faith that the pope should be an absolute king over them and their children forever. And it was for this--nothing more--that Gregory XVI, near the middle of the nineteenth century, invoked the aid of a Roman Catholic army to make war upon Roman Catholic populations and punish them as heretics, by desolating their country, for desiring to be free!