Though his former comrades demanded his death, Sverre gave him full pardon. The king's desperate position was indeed sufficient guaranty of the sincerity of Thorstein's repentance. The whole country, outside of Tröndelag, was now in the hands of the rebels. The royal fleet was burned, and even many of the veteran Birchlegs had deserted. Then, as the final crushing blow, came the bull of Pope Innocent III., laying the country under interdict, prohibiting the celebration of public worship and the administration of the sacraments, in all those parts of the kingdom that yet remained faithful to Sverre. If the vicar of Christ had contented himself with hurling the thunderbolt of divine wrath against the king, he might perhaps have achieved his destruction. But the Pope, finding that the bull of his predecessor had been practically ineffective, aimed this time to affect the popular conscience, and he addressed to it certain arguments which showed how completely he had allowed himself to be deceived by Sverre's enemies. In his bull he described the king in a manner which must have appeared absurd to those who knew him; he attributed to him crimes which all knew that he had never committed; and exposed thereby--not Sverre's wickedness, but his own fallibility and partisanship. The king, instead of meekly submitting to an unfair sentence, felt, therefore, justified in coming forward in his own defence. He wrote or caused to be written, under his immediate supervision, a polemical brochure, in which he reviewed his relation to the Church and ably defended his conduct. The behavior of the clergy he subjected to a scathing criticism, showed the inconsistency of their position, as the partisans of Baglers, and exposed the true motive of their actions. The author's shrewdness, ability, and learning are manifest in every page, and the lucidity of expression and the plain common-sense arguments seem to reveal the well-known personality of Sverre. That it had the effect of preventing many from leaving him, who otherwise might have been frightened into desertion, is very probable. The disloyal clergy had, however, better facilities for reaching the people than the few who were yet faithful, and they improved their opportunity in inciting the peasants to an unreasoning, fanatical hostility to the excommunicated king. The Pope, in the meanwhile, was active in stirring up foreign enemies against him, and wrote the most urgent letters to the kings of Sweden and Denmark, exhorting them to merit the gratitude of God and his vicar, the Pope, by destroying the sacrilegious monster, Sverre. Happily, these exhortations had no effect; for King Knut of Denmark had his hands full at home, and King Sverke of Sweden was rather favorably inclined toward his neighbor.