The Pope, returning empty-handed from the coronation, had firmly refused to grant a divorce for Jerome Bonaparte, who had pusillanimously expressed repentance for his American marriage. In the Austerlitz campaign the Pontiff preserved an absolute neutrality. But the papal territories were nevertheless desecrated, since Bernadotte was made titular prince of Ponte Corvo, and Talleyrand, the unfrocked and married bishop, created prince of Benevento. French soldiers seized Ancona on the plea of maintaining it against the English heretics and pagan Turks. The Roman ports were declared shut to all enemies of France. It is credibly reported that Napoleon contemplated having himself crowned as Western emperor in St. Peter's, but whether this be true or not, he demanded recognition as Emperor of Rome, and exacted the expulsion of Russians, English, and Sardinians from the Papal States. The Pope pleaded that for the Emperor of the French to be recognized as Roman emperor would destroy the papal power (p.~397) in all other lands, and obtained a respite by dismissing from his office as secretary of state Consalvi, who headed the opposition. The title was unimportant compared with the reality, and this Napoleon set about securing still further by erecting Holland into a Napoleonic kingdom. Schimmelpenninck, Napoleon's stanch supporter, was still grand pensionary, and at a wink from the Emperor a deputation of Dutch officials came to Paris. Their chairman, Verhuel, was informed that his country was to receive a new executive in the person of Prince Louis; otherwise Napoleon could not, at the peace, hand back her colonies; that as to religion, the new king would keep his own, but every part of his kingdom should have the same right. The constitution should remain unchanged. The delegates protested, and pleaded the treaties of 1795 and 1803, which guaranteed Dutch independence; but the Emperor stood firm: either Louis as king, or incorporation with France. On May twenty-fourth, 1806, the "High and Mighty States" ceased to exist, and on June fifth a new king, much against his will, was added to the great vassals of the Empire. It was a sorry office, foredoomed both to disgrace and mortify its occupant; being, from the imperial side, little more than that of a stern customs-collector defying Great Britain on one hand, and on the other that of an economic tyrant compelling a proud people to commercial degradation by intolerable restraints on their natural activities. Louis Bonaparte was not of stern material; his irregular life, his morbid sensibility, his boundless self-esteem, his sensuality, each separately and all combined, rendered it impossible for him to play his assigned rôle. His personal pose was to transcend the official, to be king of his people, to be caressed by his court and the nation; to go his own way, in short, indifferent to the hand from which he had fed.