ent to Magdebourg; at Ghent, the very young
or those not fit for military service are put in Saint-Pelagie; the
rest, two hundred and thirty-six in number, including forty deacons or
sub-deacons, incorporated in an artillery brigade, set out for Wesel, a
country of marshes and fevers, where fifty of them soon die of epidemics
and contagion.--There is ever the same terminal procedure; to Abbe
d'Astros, suspected of having received and kept a letter of the Pope,
Napoleon, with threats, gave him this ecclesiastical watchword:

"I have heard that the liberties of the Gallican Church are being
taught: but for all that, I wear the sword, so watch out!"

So behind all his institutions one discovers the military sanction, the
arbitrary punishment, physical constraint, the sword ready to strike;
involuntarily, the eyes anticipates the flash of the blade, and the
flesh is feels in advance the rigid incision of the steel.

VIII. Administrative Control.

Changes in the ecclesiastical hierarchy.--Motives for
subordinating the lesser clergy.--The displacement of
assistant priests.--Increase of episcopal authority.--Hold
of Napoleon over the bishops.

Thus is a conquered country treated. He is, in relation to the Church,
as in a conquered country.[5194] Like Westphalia or Holland, she is a
naturally independent country which he has annexed by treaty, which he
has been able to include but not absorb in his empire, and which remains
invincibly distinct. The temporal sovereign, in a spiritual society,
especially such a sovereign as he is,--nominally Catholic, scarcely
Christian, at best a deist and from time to time as it suits,--will
never be other than an external suzerain and a foreign prince. To become
and remain master in such an annexed country it is always advisable
to exhibit the sword. Nevertheless, it would not be wise to strike
incessantly; the blade, used too often, would wear out; it is better to
utilize the constitution of the annex, rule over it indirectly, not by
an administrative bureau (regie), but by a protectorate, in which all
indigenous authorities can be employed and be made responsible for the
necessary rigors. Now, by virtue of the indigenous constitution, the
governors of the Catholic annex--all designated beforehand by their
suitable and indelible character, all tonsured, robed in black,
celibates and speaking Latin--form two orders, unequal in dignity and
in number; one inferior,