he believed anything, that the same destiny which had made France the centre of the modern world had also appointed him to sit on the throne and carry out the projects of Charles the Frank, to rule all Europe from Paris, as the Cæsars had ruled it from Rome[401]. It was in this belief that he went to the ancient capital of the Frankish Emperors to receive there the Austrian recognition of his imperial title: that he talked of 'revendicating' Catalonia and Aragon, because they had formed a part of the Carolingian realm, though they had never obeyed the descendants of Hugh Capet: that he undertook a journey to Nimeguen, where he had ordered the ancient palace to be restored, and inscribed on its walls his name below that of Charles: that he summoned the Pope to attend his coronation as Stephen had come ten centuries before to instal Pipin in the throne of the last Merovingian[402]. The same desire to be regarded as lawful Emperor of the West shewed itself in his assumption of the Lombard crown at Milan; in the words of the decree by which he annexed Rome to the Empire, revoking 'the donations which my predecessors, the French Emperors, have made[403];' in the title 'King of Rome,' which he bestowed on his ill-fated son, in imitation of the German 'King of the Romans[404].' We are even told that it was at one time his intention to eject the Hapsburgs, and be chosen Roman Emperor in their stead. Had this been done, the analogy would have been complete between the position which the French ruler held to Austria now, and that in which Charles and Otto had stood to the feeble Cæsars of Byzantium. It was curious to see the head of the Roman church turning away from his ancient ally to the reviving power of France--France, where the Goddess of Reason had been worshipped eight years before--just as he had sought the help of the first Carolingians against his Lombard enemies[405]. The difference was indeed great between the feelings wherewith Pius the Seventh addressed his 'very dear son in Christ,' and those that had pervaded the intercourse of Pope Hadrian the First with the son of Pipin; just as the contrast is strange between the principles that shaped Napoleon's policy and the vision of a theocracy that had floated before the mind of Charles. Neither comparison is much to the advantage of the modern; but Pius might be pardoned for catching at any help in his distress, and Napoleon found that the protectorship of the church strengthened his position in France, and gave him dignity in the eyes of Christendom[406]. [Sidenote: The French Empire.] [Sidenote: Napoleon in Germany.] [Sidenote: The Confederation of the Rhine.] [Sidenote: Abdication of the Emperor Francis II.] [Sidenote: End of the Empire.]