the Pope.

X. The Council of 1811.--The Concordat of 1813.

Similar to the Russian expedition, this is the great and last throw
of the dice, the decisive and most important of his ecclesiastical
undertakings, as the other is in political and military affairs. Just
as, under his leadership, he forces by constraint and, under his lead, a
coalition of the political and military powers of his Europe against
the Czar,--Austria, Prussia, the Confederation of the Rhine, Holland,
Switzerland, the kingdom of Italy, Naples, and even Spain,--so does he
by constraint and under his lead coalesce all the spiritual authorities
of his empire against the Pope. He summons a council, consisting of
eighty-four bishops that are available in Italy and in France. He takes
it upon himself to drill them, and he makes them march. To state what
influences he uses would require a volume[51110]--theological and
canonical arguments, appeals to Gallican souvenirs and Jansenist
rancors, eloquence and sophisms, preparatory maneuvers, secret
intrigues, public acting, private solicitations, steady intimidation,
successful pressures, thirteen cardinals exiled and deprived of their
insignia, two other cardinals confined in Vincennes, nineteen Italian
bishops conveyed to France under escort, without bread or clothes. Fifty
priests of Parma, fifty of Plaisance, besides one hundred other Italian
priests, sent away or confined in Corsica. All congregations
of men in France--Saint-Lazare, Mission, Christian Doctrine,
Saint-Sulpice--dissolved and suppressed. Three bishops of the
council seized in bed at daylight, put into a cell and kept in close
confinement, forced to resign and to promise in writing not to carry on
correspondence with their dioceses; arrest of their adherents in their
dioceses; the Ghent seminarists turned into soldiers, and, with knapsack
on their backs, leaving for the army; professors at Ghent, the canons of
Tournay, and other Belgian priests shut up in the citadels of Bouillon,
Ham and Pierre-Chatel.[51111] Near the end, the council suddenly
dissolved because scruples arise, because it does not yield at once to
the pressure brought to bear on it, because its mass constitutes its
firmness, because men standing close together, side by side, stand all
the longer. "Our wine in the cask is not good," said Cardinal Maury;
"you will find that it will be better in bottles." Accordingly, to make
it ready for bottling, it must be filtered an