The times of supreme violence had not yet come, and the emperor himself had not perhaps foreseen to what extremities he would be led, by the aggression he had just committed, and the underhand struggle he had been maintaining for three years against the conscientious will of an unarmed old man. However, the habitual roughness of his arbitrary proceedings did not fail to manifest themselves from the beginning. Champagny had been ordered to declare to the Cardinal de Bayanne that the French soldiers established at Rome would remain there until the Pope should have entered into the Italian Confederation, and should have consented to make common cause with the powers composing it, in every case and against all enemies. "This condition is the _sine qua non_ of his Majesty's proposal. If the Pope does not accept it, his Majesty will not know how to recognize his temporal sovereignty. He has decided to transfer the power of Rome into secular hands." At the same time, and as a necessary commentary on these imperious injunctions, the foreign cardinals in the pontifical states received orders from Napoleon to quit Rome. The Neapolitan cardinals, to the number of seven, had up to that time refused to take an oath to King Joseph. At the first news of the measure which threatened them, the Pope ordered them to remain near himself, "for the service of the Holy See;" they were seized in their houses, and conducted to the frontiers of the kingdom of Naples by gendarmes. On March 10th the same order was addressed by the emperor to the vice-King of Italy for fourteen new members of the Sacred College. "Let Litta return to Milan; let the Genoese return to Genoa, the Italians to the kingdom of Italy, the Piedmontese to Piedmont, the Neapolitans to Naples. This measure is to be executed by fair means or foul. Since it is the cardinals who have lost the states of the Church by their evil counsels, let them return every one to his own place." Cardinal Casoni, till recently Secretary of State to the Pope, and Cardinal Doria Pamphili, now officiating--the one born at Sarzana, the other a Genoese-- were prevented by this interdiction from living in the Roman States. Alquier, the minister of France, was quietly recalled to Paris; a simple secretary of legation remained at Rome to represent the diplomatic service. General Miollis well seconded the intentions of the emperor with regard to the Holy See. Against the advice of his counsellors, the Pope sent to Cardinal Caprara an order to quit Paris. "Violence has been resorted to," wrote Pius VII. to his easygoing legate, "even to laying hands on four of our cardinals and conducting them to Naples in the midst of an armed force; an excess which only requires the violation of our own personal freedom for the scandal to be complete. We cannot, by the residence of our representative with the French Government, give occasion for thinking any longer that we are not deeply wounded by the persecution