Cardinal Caprara was sent as legate to Paris, and his experiences moderated the Pope's satisfaction. He was quite unable to resist the election of the constitutional bishops (the clergy who had adhered to the Republican Constitution, which Rome severely and naturally condemned) and he could not wring from them a formal acknowledgment of their errors. But these matters were soon thrust out of mind by fresh events in France. On May 18, 1804, Napoleon was elected Emperor, and he invited Pius to come to Paris to crown him. There was a natural hesitation at Rome to flout the Bourbons and their allies by such a recognition of Napoleon, but the long delay was not in substance due to that political scruple; nor was it in any serious degree due, as some writers say, to the recent execution of the Duc d'Enghien, which appears little in Papal documents. Consalvi persuaded the Pope to bargain with Napoleon: to stipulate for the abolition of the Organic Articles, the punishment of the constitutional clergy, and the return of the three Legations. As before, the diplomacy of Consalvi was boisterously swept aside by Napoleon, and on November 2d the aged Pope set out for Paris. Not a single definite promise had been made, and it seems, from later language of the Pope, that either he or Consalvi regarded the journey with grave distrust. Pius left behind him a document authorizing the cardinals to choose a successor, in case Napoleon violently detained him in France. We may ascribe this foresight to Consalvi, as throughout these earlier years Pius appears to be merely the agent of the wishes of the cardinals.
Napoleon must have noted with satisfaction the ease with which his constant trickery escaped the Pope's eye. On November 25th he, in hunting dress, with studied casualness, met the Pope on the open road at Fontainebleau, arranged that he should himself sit on the right in their joint carriage, and drove him into Paris by night. Every detail had been carefully planned with a view to the avoidance of paying unnecessary honour to the Pope. Pius noticed nothing, and wrote enthusiastically to Italy of Napoleon's goodness and zeal for religion; and indeed the enthusiasm of the faithful Catholics of Paris, when they found a venerable Pope blessing them from the balconies of the Tuileries, might well seem to him to indicate a triumph after the dark decade that had passed. Disillusion came slowly. Josephine, who now knew that she was threatened with divorce, confided to the Pope that there had been no church-celebration of her marriage with Napoleon, and Pius refused to crown them until it took place. Napoleon thundered, but the Pope had a clear principle and the difficulty was met by trickery. Cardinal Fesch was permitted by the Pope to marry them without witnesses, and Napoleon pointed out to friends that he was taking part in the ceremony without internal consent. On the following day, December 2d, the coronation took place at Notre Dame, and Napoleon at one stroke annihilated the prestige of the Pope by crowning himself and Josephine with his own hands.
Another wave of disdain of the Pope passed through foreign lands: "A puppet of no importance," said even Joseph de Maistre. Pius remained gentle and patient. He had still to win the reward of his sacrifices: to induce the Emperor to restore the Papal States, to modify the Organic Articles, to abolish the law of divorce, enforce the observance of Sunday, and reintroduce the monastic orders. The cardinals had drawn up a pretty program. Napoleon suavely refused every proposition, and sent one of his officers to suggest that Pius would do well to settle at Avignon, and have a palace at Paris. Pius, now thoroughly alarmed, refused emphatically to stay in France, and disclosed that he had arranged to give him a successor if he were detained. And Pius returned to give the cardinals a roseate account of the resurrection of religion in France and the goodness of the Emperor. When he refused, shortly afterwards, to crown Napoleon King of Italy at Milan, there were those who admired his firmness. It is more likely that he acted on the advice of the disappointed cardinals.
Up to this point Pius VII. had given no indication of personality. One must, of course, appreciate that the restoration of the Church in France would seem to him an achievement worth large sacrifices, yet his childlike joy in Napoleon's insincere caresses, his utter failure to detect the true aims and the trickery of the Emperor, and the entire lack of plan or efficacy in his protests, must have convinced Napoleon, as they convinced hostile Royalists, that he was a mere puppet. He cannot possibly have had the measure of ability with which Cardinal Wiseman would endow him. The same conclusion is forced on us by a consideration of the second part of his relations with Napoleon. Isolated from his abler cardinals, he, like a child, bemoans his inability to form his judgment, and stumbles from error to error. But ten years of defeat have taught him that he is dealing with an enemy of religion, and he reveals a certain greatness of character in his resistance.
In the spring of 1805 the Emperor asked the Pope to dissolve, or declare null, the marriage which his brother Jerome had contracted in America with a Miss Paterson, a Protestant. Pius was eager to do so, if ecclesiastical principles yielded the slightest ground for such an act, but, after a long examination, he was obliged to refuse. Napoleon began to speak of him as a fool. The summer brought war with Austria once more, and in October the French troops marched through the Papal States on their way to Naples, and occupied Ancona. When Pius protested (November 13, 1805), the Emperor scornfully replied—after an interval of two months—that if its Papal owners were not able or willing to fortify Ancona, he must occupy it: that the Pope and the cardinals prostituted religion by their friendly relations with English and Russian enemies of France: and that he would respect the Pope's spiritual sovereignty, and expected from him respect for the Emperor's political sovereignty.[343] On February 13, (1806) Napoleon wrote more explicitly. The Pope must close his harbours against the English, expel from Rome all representatives of the enemies of France, get rid of his bad counsellors (Consalvi), and remember that Napoleon is Emperor of Rome.[344] Pius, after consulting the cardinals, replied that the "Roman Emperor" was at Vienna, and that the Papacy would not be drawn into a war between France and England. To the French representative in Rome the Pope used a very firm language; he would die rather than yield on what he conceived as a matter of principle. When, some time afterwards, Napoleon annexed Naples, and the Papacy protested that it was a Papal fief, Napoleon rightly gave Consalvi the credit for the opposition and forced him to resign. He had in 1802 restored Benevento and Pontecorvo to Rome: he now gave the former to Talleyrand and the latter to Bernadotte.
It must seem an idle practice to seek apologies for Napoleon's conduct, but we do well to conceive that each man was justified in his procedure. Napoleon was wrong only in his pretexts and his methods. He was no orthodox Catholic, and had no illusions about the sacred origin of the temporal power. If the Pope chose to be a king, he submitted to the laws of kings. The Papacy undoubtedly thwarted the work of the Emperor in Italy and aided his enemies. Cardinal Pacca says in his Memoirs that Pius wrote him that he "risked everything for the English."[345] Common opposition to Napoleon brought about a remarkable approach of Rome and England, and the Quirinal had hopes of advantage for the Church in England. The Papal ports were of great service to the English fleet, and therefore of great disservice to the French.
Pius VII. seems never to have realized the elementary fact that Napoleon was not a Christian. He relied too long on the orthodox fiction that, because the Pope was the successor of Peter in spiritual matters, any temporal power taken from him was taken from "The Blessed Peter." Napoleon did not share that illusion, and it is singular that he waited so long before consolidating his Italian kingdom by absorbing the Papal States. The year 1807, when Napoleon was busy with Prussia, passed in recriminations. Pius would, he said, show them that the substitution of Cardinal Casoni as his Secretary of State for Consalvi made no difference. He seemed to be finding his personality, but there were fiery cardinals like Pacca still with him.
In January, 1808, Napoleon ordered General Miollis to occupy Rome, and presently he expelled from Rome all cardinals who were not subjects of the Papal States. Pius, during the night, had a protesting poster fixed on the walls. On April 2d Napoleon annexed Urbino, Ancona, Macerata, and Camerino: on the foolish pretext (among others) that Charlemagne had bestowed those provinces on the Papacy for the good of Catholicism, not for the profit of its enemies. Pius sent a long and dignified protest to all bishops in his dominions and broke off diplomatic relations with France. Gabrielli had succeeded Casoni in counselling Pius, and the French now made the singular mistake of arresting Gabrielli and substituting Pacca—a fiery and inflexible opponent of Napoleon. In August Pacca came into violent collision with the French and they went to arrest him. He summoned the Pope, and Pius personally conducted him to the protection of the Quirinal. In the solitude of the Quirinal they prepared for the last step and drafted an excommunication of Napoleon.[346] At length on June 10, 1809, they received Napoleon's declaration that the Papal States were incorporated in his Empire, and the Bull of excommunication (Quum Memoranda) was issued. It did not name Napoleon, and it was at once suppressed by the French, but General Miollis considered that a conditional order for the arrest of the Pope, which Napoleon had sent, now came into force. At three in the morning of July 6th the troops broke into the Quirinal. When General Radet and his officers reached the Audience Chamber, they found the Pope sitting gravely at a table, with a group of cardinals on either side. For several minutes the two groups gazed on each other in tense silence, and at length Radet announced that the Pope must abdicate or go into exile. Taking only his breviary and crucifix, the Pope entered the carriage at four o'clock, and he and Pacca were swiftly driven through the silent streets, and on the long road to Savona. They found that they had between them only the sum of twenty-two cents, and they laughed.
Pius reached Savona on August 16th (1809), and was lodged in the episcopal palace. He refused the 50,000 francs a year and the carriages offered by Napoleon. He refused to walk in Savona, and spent the day in a little room overlooking the walls, or walking in the scanty garden of the house. He had no secretary and his aged hands trembled, but pious Catholics conspired to defeat his guardians (or corrupt his guardians) and his letters and directions went out stealthily over Europe. His cardinals were removed to Paris, and when Napoleon divorced Josephine and married Marie Louise (April 1, 1810), only thirteen out of the twenty-seven cardinals refused to attend the ceremony. Pius still declined to enter into Napoleon's plans. Metternich sent an Austrian representative to argue with him, but the Pope would not yield his temporal power, and he demanded his cardinals. Cardinals Spina and Caselli, of the moderate party, were sent to persuade him, but the mission was fruitless. Napoleon, who was sorely harassed by the Pope's refusal to institute the new bishops, tried to act without him, and made Maury Archbishop of Paris. Pius sent a secret letter to the Vicar Capitular of Paris, declaring that the appointment was null, and Napoleon angrily ordered a search of his rooms and the removal of books, ink, paper, and personal attendants.
At last, in June, 1811, the strategy of Napoleon succeeded. The Archbishop of Tours and three other bishops presented themselves at Savona with the terrible news that Napoleon had summoned a General Council at Paris and expected the bishops to remedy the desperate condition of the French Church—there were twenty-seven bishops awaiting institution—independently of the Pope. Pius still refused to submit, but day after day the prelates and the Count de Chabrol harrowed him with descriptions of the appalling results of his obstinacy, and on the tenth day they hastened to Paris with the news that Pius had consented on the main point: he would institute the bishops within six months, or, if he failed to do so, the Archbishop would have power to institute them.