The war was not the sudden ebullition of frenzied fear; it was a carefully prepared campaign. It was launched only when every circumstance seemed favorable to its success. France and Austria were helpless to oppose it; England and Italy were full of encouragement; the Protestants of Germany were excited by the spectre of infallibility; the Liberals welcomed it as a rebuke against their old enemy, Conservatism; the Holy Father himself was closed in behind the walls of the Vatican, a prisoner, and therefore without the prestige of governmental influence. At the beginning of 1871, the Catholic Church in Germany stood alone without an influential friend in the world. It was then that cowardice raised its hand to strike; it was the act of a ruffian felling with a blow of his mailed fist the woman whom robbers had left half dead by the roadside. If the Catholics were to blame in any manner, it was only because they had permitted themselves to be cajoled in advance by the smiles and hypocritical advances of Bismarck and his henchman, though it is true, they had every right to expect a grateful treatment from the new Empire. In 1870, Peter Reichensperger, one of the most prudent leaders of the Catholic party, advised the Bavarian Diet to join the Prussian alliance, through the trust he had in that State at the moment. Even Bishop Ketteler was deceived when he beheld the comparatively fair treatment of Catholics in the Rhenish province, whose proximity to France rendered it advisable that they should not be discomforted, though at the same time the Polish subjects of Prussia, at the other end of the Kingdom were complaining of political aggressions against their religious liberty. Bishop Ketteler, however, was soon compelled to avow his mistake. "It was a great fault on our part," he writes, "to have believed in the stability of the Prussian Constitution, in the rights which it plainly allowed us. We were culpable for having believed that, in Prussia, justice could triumph over the inveterate prejudice against Catholics, and over party feelings. We were deceived; but our fault is not of the kind that should cause us to blush." The Catholics had, indeed, just reason to expect favorable treatment. They had been repeatedly assured that it would be accorded to them. In 1870 the Emperor, replying to an address from the Knights of Malta from the Rhenish Provinces and Westphalia, had uttered the significant words: "I regard the occupation of Rome by the Italians as an act of violence; and when this war is ended, I shall not fail to take it into consideration, in concert with other sovereigns."