France -- Civilization; France -- Politics and government; France -- Social life and customs -- 19th century
through a remnant of virtue it inserts a suspensive clause in the
decree, apparently a reservation,[51112] but the decree is passed as
ordered. Like the foreign regiment in an army corps which, enlisted,
forced into line, and goaded on with a sharp sword, serves, in spite of
itself, against its legitimate prince, unwilling to march forward to
the attack, meaning at the last moment to fire in the air, so does it
finally march and fire its volley notwithstanding.
Napoleon, on the other hand, treats the Pope in the same fashion, and
with like skill and brutality. As with the Russian campaign, he has
prepared himself for it long beforehand. At the outset there is an
alliance, and he concedes great advantages to the Pope as to the Czar,
which will remain to them after his fall; but these concessions are
made only with a mental reservation, with the instinctive feeling
and predetermination to profit by the alliance, even to making an
independent sovereign whom he recognizes as his equal, his subordinate
and a tool; hence, quarrels and war. This time also, in the expedition
against the Pope, his strategy is admirable,--the entire ecclesiastical
territory studied beforehand, the objective point selected,[51113] all
disposable forces employed and directed by fixed marches to where the
victory is to be decisive, the conquest extended and the seat of the
final dominion established; the successive and simultaneous use of every
kind of means--cunning, violence, seduction and terror. Calculation of
the weariness, anxiety and despair of the adversary; at first menaces
and constant disputes, and then flashes of lightning and multiplied
claps of thunder, every species of brutality that force can command;
the States of the Church invaded in times of peace, Rome surprised and
occupied by soldiers, the Pope besieged in the Quirinal, in a year the
Quirinal taken by a nocturnal assault, the Pope seized and carried off
by post to Savona and there confined as a prisoner of state almost in
cellular seclusion,[51114] subject to the entreaties and manoeuvres of
an adroit prefect who works upon him, of the physician who is a paid
spy, of the servile bishops who are sent thither, alone with his
con-science, contending with inquisitors relieving each other, subject
to moral tortures as subtile and as keen as old-time physical tortures,
to tortures so steady and persistent that he sinks, loses his head, "no
longer sleeps and scarcely speaks," falling into a senile condition and
even more than senile condition, "a state of mental alienation."[51115]
Then, on issuing from this, the poor old man is again beset; finally,
after waiting patiently for three years, he is once more brusquely
conducted at night, secretly and incognito, over the entire road, with
no repose or pity though ill, except stopping once in a snow-storm at
the hospice on Mount Cenis, where he comes near dying; put back after
twenty-four hours in his carriage, bent double by suffering and in
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