d clarified, so as to get
rid of the bad elements which disturb it and cause fermentation. Many
Opponents are in prison, many have retired from their dioceses, while
the rest are brought to Paris and cunningly worked upon, each member
in turn, apart and confined, tete-a-tete with the Minister of Worship,
until all, one by one, are brought to sign the formula of adhesion.
On the strength of this, the council, purged and prepared, is summoned
afresh to give its vote sitting or standing, in one unique session;
through a remnant of virtue it inserts a suspensive clause in the
decree, apparently a reservation,[51112] but the decree is passed as
ordered. Like the foreign regiment in an army corps which, enlisted,
forced into line, and goaded on with a sharp sword, serves, in spite of
itself, against its legitimate prince, unwilling to march forward to
the attack, meaning at the last moment to fire in the air, so does it
finally march and fire its volley notwithstanding.

Napoleon, on the other hand, treats the Pope in the same fashion, and
with like skill and brutality. As with the Russian campaign, he has
prepared himself for it long beforehand. At the outset there is an
alliance, and he concedes great advantages to the Pope as to the Czar,
which will remain to them after his fall; but these concessions are
made only with a mental reservation, with the instinctive feeling
and predetermination to profit by the alliance, even to making an
independent sovereign whom he recognizes as his equal, his subordinate
and a tool; hence, quarrels and war. This time also, in the expedition
against the Pope, his strategy is admirable,--the entire ecclesiastical
territory studied beforehand, the objective point selected,[51113] all
disposable forces employed and directed by fixed marches to where the
victory is to be decisive, the conquest extended and the seat of the
final dominion established; the successive and simultaneous use of every
kind of means--cunning, violence, seduction and terror. Calculation of
the weariness, anxiety and despair of the adversary; at first menaces
and constant disputes, and then flashes of lightning and multiplied
claps of thunder, every species of brutality that force can command;
the States of the Church invaded in times of peace, Rome surprised and
occupied by soldiers, the Pope besieged in the Quirinal, in a year the
Quirinal taken by a nocturnal assault, the Pope seized and carried off
by post to Savona a