“Archbishop, I have power to make you pope if I choose. If you will promise me six favors which I shall ask of you as pope, I will confer upon you that dignity.” The astonished and overjoyed archbishop threw himself at the king’s feet, saying, “My lord, it is for you to command, for me to obey. I shall be always ready to do your will.” “The six special favors I have to ask are these: first, that you will reconcile me entirely with the Church, that I may be pardoned for my arrest of Pope Boniface VIII.; second, that you will give me and all my supporters the communion; third, that you will grant me tithes of the clergy for five years, to meet the expenses of the war in Flanders; fourth, that you will destroy the memory of Boniface VIII.; fifth, that you will confer the dignity of cardinal upon Messrs. Jacobo, Piero, and others of my friends. The sixth favor I reserve for the proper time and place: it is a great and secret thing.” The archbishop, having taken the most solemn oaths to grant these requests, ascended, by the intrigues of the king, the papal throne, with the title of Clement V. He became as obsequiously the servant of the King of France as any slave is submissive to his master. The king and his pope joined hands to oppress and rob the world. “His Holiness Clement V. was, therefore, the thrall and servant of Philip le Bel. No office was too lowly or sacrifice too large for the grateful pontiff: he became, in fact, a citizen of France, and a subject of the crown. He delivered over the clergy to the relentless hands of the king. He gave him tithes of all their livings. As the Count of Flanders owed money to Philip which he had no means of paying, the generosity of the pope came to the rescue; and he gave tithes of the Flemish clergy to the bankrupt count, in order to enable him to pay his debt to the exacting monarch. The pope did not reduce his own demands in consideration of the subsidies given to those powers: he completed, indeed, the ruin the royal tax-gatherers began; for he travelled in more than imperial state from end to end of France, and ate bishop and abbot and prior and prebendary out of house and home.”[203] Christendom, then miserably poor, became impoverished by their exactions. These imperial robbers turned to the Jews, and robbed them mercilessly. The unarmed peasantry could present no resistance to the steel-clad warriors mounted on powerful chargers; which steeds were also caparisoned in coats of mail. These knights, in their impenetrable armor, could plunge upon almost any multitude of the peasantry, and disperse them like sheep when wolves rush into the fold. But it is not always that the battle is to the strong. We can often see in history the indications of God’s retributive providence. There were seasons when these proud knights fell before their despised victims.