It is true the storm had not entirely subsided. Napoleon again broke forth from captivity, and the Holy See for a moment trembled lest new outrages might yet be perpetrated against the Church. But before the danger could have been brought to its accomplishment, the newly arisen Napoleon was again overthrown at Waterloo, June 18, 1815, after which he was exiled beyond all hope of return, to the lonely island of St. Helena, where he died on May 5, 1821, after six years of penance.
Peace now settled upon the troubled Church. Religion once more dried the tears of sorrow, and the Pope, restored to the love of his faithful people, began to give his attention to arts nobler than that of war; the raising up of Catholic peoples in the knowledge of that God, Who, after purging them in the land of bondage, had overwhelmed their enemies and brought them to newer and richer prospects in the land of promise.
CHAPTER IV.
Anti-Christianism In Rome.
THE HOLY ALLIANCE.
Pius VII. re-entered his capital May 24, 1814. In the meantime the princes of Europe had remade the map of Europe; but in spite of all hopes of permanent peace, their efforts only served to sow more widely the seeds of trouble and revolution. The Congress of Vienna, in session from November 1, 1814, to June 9, 1815, was, through the triumph it accorded to Protestantism, a triumph for the Revolution. That coalition was termed the Holy Alliance. Never was appellation more misleading, for the work of those princes only compromised the interests of religion, and put back for generations the empire of peace. Religious indifference had become the first article of the international code and the first requisite in the profession of diplomacy.
Pius VII. found the Eternal City despoiled of its artistic treasures, and he hastened to supply the deficiency made by Napoleon. He set to work to reorganize his kingdom. He replenished the impoverished treasury; he published civil, commercial, penal and legal codes, and regulated the taxes, re-established the Society of Jesus, and entered into Concordats with Bavaria, France, Sicily, Piedmont, Russia and Austria. Comparative peace settled upon his domains so that when he closed his eyes in death on August 20, 1823, the fortunes of the Papacy in Italy were apparently secure.
Nevertheless, even in his day, the storm was already rumbling and the first threats were heard of that war which was later to wrest the temporal power from the hands of his successor, Pius IX. In the forests of Italy, in the fastnesses of the Abruzzi, among the woods of Calabria, in the mountains of Sicily and in the caves and valleys of the Appenines, a new spirit was in the mold taking shape.