Europe hailed his accession with delight. The pulses of the rising monster, Revolution, were beginning to beat, and the nations were growing afraid, they knew not yet of what; but all eyes were turned to Rome, as to the rock where the safety of the world was anchored. The advent of a man like Pius VI., firm as adamant, who could brave death, not merely for the faith, but for every tittle of principle which the uttermost integrity of the faith included—a man whom his enemies likened to Moses for his meekness, and to Solomon for his strong wisdom; who lived like an anchorite and officiated with the splendor of the prophet king, who loved the beauty of God's house and the place where his glory dwelt—the advent of a priest like this to the papal throne gave joy all over Christendom.
Pius VI. was elected on the 15th of February, 1775. Seldom has the weight of that unearthly crown fallen more heavily on its wearer's brow than it fell on that of the new pontiff. In the temporal order he saw before him a mountain to be uplifted; in the spiritual order no far-seeing eye could fail to detect the ominous signs of the coming storm. Pius lost not a moment in designing and carrying out vast schemes of material improvement in his dominions. In those days the Pontine marshes were swamps of poison that had hitherto defied all petty attempts at reclaiming them.
“How do you live in this dreadful place?” inquired a traveller of one of the inhabitants of the dismal soil.
“Signor, we do not live; we die!” was the answer.
Pius VI. declared that henceforth they should live. Colossal works were set on foot, and, if the pestilential marshes were not radically purified, they were so much improved as to justify the people in proclaiming the energetic pontiff as the worker of that miracle. During his pontificate the draining was so successful that Pius himself declared this alone was ample reward for all his sufferings. The port of Ancona was repaired, and its entrance adorned with a light-house; works of art were sought for, revealed, and cherished. Spiritual works were founded and fostered with royal munificence and paternal care. The Christian Brothers were called to Rome and a noble school built for them, on the front of which was inscribed the title so glorious and so dear to the Vicar of Christ: “Pius VI., the Father of the Poor.”
But not even the wisdom and prestige of this ideal pontiff could suffice to shelter him from the tempest that was slowly but steadily travelling towards the Holy City. The infidel philosophers of France and Germany had done their work; they had sown, and now the time had come for reaping. Austria first showed symptoms of disaffection. Joseph II., who was too cowardly to rescue his own sister[165] from the hands of the torturers, had become the tool of his minister, Kaunitz, whose delight it was to worry the pope with the small artillery of a cunning and treacherous diplomacy. These weapons, however, were not the ones that could move Pius VI. They glided off from the shield [pg 757] of his unalterable patience, humility, and truth like arrows from a marble surface. Nor could the weak monarch withstand the charm of the saintly pope when he came within its influence. He rallied to his side when he visited Rome in 1783, and promised to be faithful to him. But it was a broken reed, the friendship of the vacillating Joseph.
Spain, Tuscany, and Venice next came to sadden the Holy Father's heart and strengthen his growing fears. His gentleness held them captive for a time; but they too were of the tribe of broken reeds. When friends prove false, then is the time for the treason of foes to flourish. Catherine of Russia, the woman with the wily head of the snake joined to the cruel heart of the tiger, came with honeyed words of reverence to tender offers of service, nay, even of allegiance, to Pius. A far-sighted woman, this tiger queen who was stealing into Poland, and sucking the nation's blood, as she crawled into its heart. Then there was Frederick of Prussia, more honest than many a self-styled son of the church in those days; he was grateful to the prince who first assigned him his title of king. Gustavus III. came to do homage to the man who had drained the Pontine marshes, and made a noble road through that region, so long the tomb of all who dwelt within its poisonous area. Pius received these marks of courtesy with his accustomed gentle grace; he knew what they were worth, and was grateful without being beguiled. They were, in truth, the last rays of the sun that was soon to set in darkness over his reign, and to close it in sufferings unparalleled for fourteen centuries in the annals of the church.
France was to give the signal, and she was now ready. France, that had so often raised the standard of the church, and defended it with the blood of her fairest chivalry—France was to sound the war-cry hounding on the fanatics to the destruction of her own purest glory. The Reign of Terror was inaugurated. The Constituent Assembly had decreed the civil constitution of the clergy. Bishops were no longer to be what they had hitherto been; they were henceforth to be the nominees of an unbelieving mob; the beautiful structure of the spiritual hierarchy was to be destroyed. To legalize the crime, an oath was exacted from the priesthood; those who refused to take it—and their name was legion—were deprived of the pittance allotted them by the state, and turned away to starve. Sixty thousand preferred starvation to the bread thus bought at the price of perjury. Of one hundred and thirty-eight bishops, four only took the oath. Monasteries were dissolved; scandals arose on all sides. The papal nuncio, Cardinal de Bernis, was insulted and compelled to fly from Paris. The pope was burned in effigy. Thus did France sound the tocsin that was to herald in the earthquake—“a great horror of darkness and shakings of the world, and a cup of trembling which all the nations shall drink.” Faith is being driven out, and “philosophy” is riding in like a conqueror on her ruins. Peace and the brave pageant of virtue and all goodly things are banished, and in their place enter decay and chaos and unbelief; and then the Revolution is ready. The world is wheeling round, humanity is going mad, nothing is stable on the earth—nothing but the rock of Peter, against which [pg 758] the storm beats in foolish and impotent rage. Pius raises his voice above the whirlwind, and those who hearken hear it: “God is unchangeable. Truth is immutable. The church can make no compromise. Let us stand faithfully by the cross. God will save his own and redeem his word.” Avignon exhibited a hecatomb of murdered priests. On the 24th of October, 1791, over two hundred were butchered in the Glacière of that city. In September of the following year three bishops and three hundred priests were on one day massacred in Paris. Numbers fled to Rome for protection. The fragments of the altar and the throne met in the Eternal City—Mesdames de France and the King and Queen of Sardinia, proscribed prelates and priests; and Pius opened his fatherly arms to all. This shelter was, however, soon to be torn from them.
On the 15th of February, 1793, the commandant of the French fleet at Naples walked into the Roman consulate, and ordered the consul to hoist the red flag and the cap of liberty over the building. The consul refused; a row ensued; blood was shed. The French government declared itself insulted, and threatened the pope in violent language. Meantime, the Directory succeeded to the Convention, and people drew a long breath, and hoped a change had come for the better. But, as Carnot said: “If now there was less blood shed, there were more tears.” The guillotine was still erect, and its work only slackened because the arms of the executioners were weary. The republican armies were progressing in their triumphal marches. Italy still remained to be conquered. Bonaparte was entrusted with the expedition. A series of victories brought him quickly to the gates of Rome. He proposed the most humiliating conditions to the Sovereign Pontiff. Pius was summoned to cancel every bull, brief, and pastoral that the Holy See had issued from the beginning of the Revolution to the present time. The pope firmly refused to comply. Bonaparte was at first full of insolent fury, and threatened to annihilate Rome and the Vatican. He relented, however, not out of deference to Pius, but to show his defiance of the home government, and drew up a treaty of his own invention, which, ruinous as it was, the Holy Father meekly signed, in order to save his people and prevent bloodshed. This treaty of Tolentino, as it was called, secured to Bonaparte the sum of thirty-one millions of francs, sixteen hundred cavalry horses, and a portion of the Romagna. The Roman treasury was drained by this monstrous ransom; the people were starving, the misery was terrible. Pius was broken-hearted, but his courage, fed by a faith that was anchored in God, never faltered. His conduct all through these dreadful days was that of a saint. He found his only solace in prayer and in fortifying the faith of his suffering flock. But he had as yet only tasted the first drops of his chalice. The Directory had resolved to get possession of Rome. A pretext must be created, since Pius would not furnish even the semblance of one, for breaking the iniquitous treaty, which had thus far secured to him the integrity of the Holy City. General Duphot was fired on by the Roman troops acting in discharge of their duty. Berthier was at once ordered to leave Ancona, where he was stationed with the French army, and to march on Rome and encamp under [pg 759] its walls. His first step was to issue a proclamation exciting the citizens to revolt, insulting and calumniating the pope and his government, and announcing himself as the liberator of an oppressed people. He entered the city next day, and took possession by placing seals on the museums and galleries, which were “henceforth the property of the grande nation that had come to set free the Roman people.” A tree of liberty was planted on the capitol; tricolor flags floated on the public monuments, and tricolor ribbons decked the ears of Marcus Aurelius' horse. The Holy Father was outraged in his own house; his furniture was taken from him, and his jewels; he was despoiled even of his pontifical robes; his private library, a valuable collection of 40,000 volumes, was seized and sold to a dealer for 12,000 crowns. The deliverers of Rome crowned these proceedings by inviting their victim to wear the tricolor cockade by way of a badge of authority from France. Pius VI. replied with majestic meekness: “I can wear no livery but that with which the church has clothed me.” This answer was distorted into an insulting challenge to the French government, and Haller immediately received orders to convey the pope by force out of Rome. Pius gently pleaded his age and many infirmities, and entreated the poor grace of being allowed to die in the midst of his people. “Oh! for that matter, you can die wherever you are,” was the brutal retort, and measures were commenced for carrying him away by force, in case he made any resistance. This was not likely; but the old pontiff's heart was breaking. “God's will be done!” he murmured. “Let us bow to whatever he sees good to ordain!”
Forty-eight hours were all that was allowed him to prepare for this sudden departure. He devoted the short time entirely to the affairs of the church and to the performance of his religious duties. The night of the 20th of February was fixed for the departure. It was late when Haller brusquely entered the Holy Father's room, and found him prostrate before the crucifix, bathed in tears. “It is time to go,” he said, and the French escort entered and rudely hurried the old man down the Vatican stairs and into the carriage that was waiting for him. In it were seated his physician and his groom of the chambers, and two other officers of his household. The people followed the carriage, loudly lamenting, and invoking all blessings on their beloved pastor. At Viterbo many French priests flocked round him with the Italian crowds, and fell on their knees for a last benediction. The first halt of the travellers was in Tuscany. The Directory would fain have sent their august prisoner to Sardinia, but they were deterred in this by fear of the English government, and so proceeded to Sienna, where for three months the Augustinian convent had the privilege of harboring the persecuted Vicar of Christ. Whilst here the finger of Providence showed visibly its protecting care of him. The Holy Father had just left his room one morning when the ceiling fell in, and crushed everything beneath it; the house was violently shaken by an earthquake, and suffered much damage. This event forced Pius to seek hospitality at the Monastery of Chartreuse, in Florence, where he arrived on the 2d of June. Here some tender consolations awaited him. The Grand Duke of Tuscany came frequently to the feet of his venerated pastor, [pg 760] to assure him of his loyal attachment. The King and Queen of Sardinia also gathered round him, driven from Rome, where they had been so lovingly welcomed on being robbed of the throne which the saintly sister of Louis XVI. had adorned so nobly. Her husband had ever been a devoted son of the Holy Father, and now declared that the sight of his serenity in the midst of trials so overwhelming was enough to make him forget his own sorrows.