On the 17th of May, Napoleon issued, from Vienna, his final decree declaring the temporal sovereignty of the Pope to be wholly at an end, incorporating Rome with the French empire, and declaring it to be _his_ second city; settling a pension on the holy father in his spiritual capacity--and appointing a committee of administration for the civil government of Rome. The Pope, on receiving the Parisian senatus-consultum, ratifying this imperial rescript, instantly fulminated a bull of excommunication against Napoleon. Shortly after some unauthentic news from Germany inspired new hopes into the adherents of the Pontiff; and, disturbances breaking out, Miollis, on pretence that a life sacred in the eyes of all Christians might be endangered, arrested Pius in his palace at midnight, and forthwith despatched him under a strong escort to Savona. The intelligence of this decisive step reached Napoleon soon after the battle of Wagram, and he was inclined to disapprove of the conduct of Miollis as too precipitate. It was now, however, impossible to recede; the Pope was ordered to be conveyed across the Alps to Grenoble. But his reception there was more reverential than Napoleon had anticipated, and he was soon reconducted to Savona. This business would, in any other period, have been sufficient to set all Catholic Europe in a flame; and even now Buonaparte well knew that his conduct could not fail to nourish and support the feelings arrayed against him openly in Spain and in Southern Germany, and suppressed, not extinguished, in the breasts of a great party of the French clergy at home. He made, therefore, many efforts to procure from the Pope some formal relinquishment of his temporal claims--but Pius VII. remained unshaken; and the negotiation at length terminated in the removal of His Holiness to Fontainebleau, where he continued a prisoner, though treated personally with respect, and even magnificence, during more than three years:--until, in the general darkening of his own fortunes, the imperial jailer was compelled to adopt another line of conduct.