bearing on the
political situation because in general the Emperor's remedy for an
empty treasury was a new war.

The ecclesiastical situation had now become acute. As one bishopric
after another had fallen vacant, bishops had been nominated by the
Emperor; but the Pope, who was still sitting in captivity at Savona,
had from the moment of his incarceration steadily refused to institute
them. For a time, as has been explained, the difficulty had been
ingeniously avoided by the process of ecclesiastical law, according to
which the chapters of the various dioceses elected the imperial
candidates as vicars capitular, and thus enabled them to perform
episcopal functions without regard to institution. But this could not
go on forever, and every effort had been made to induce the prisoner
of Savona to yield. In response he took a firmer stand, and indicated
to the chapters both of Italy and France that they should no longer
elect the imperial nominees as vicars capitular. This was a rupture of
the Concordat, and was so regarded by Napoleon. The attitude of all
pious Catholics was becoming uneasy, and this new declaration of war
by the Church could only serve to heighten the bellicose humor of the
Emperor. The Pope was eventually brought to terms, partly by
increasing the rigors of his imprisonment, partly by terrorizing his
agents in France, but chiefly through the representations made to him
by the ablest ecclesiastics of the realm, and by the summoning of a
church council, which turned out nearly as subservient to the secular
authority as the Jewish Sanhedrim had been.

With reference to the third point, it seems impossible to determine
whether the menace to Russia was actually made, as one version of the
reply has it, or whether a later speech, at the opening of the
legislature in June, and the report on the situation of France, issued
in the same month, have not both been confused with the Emperor's talk
in March. In either case the result was identical, for France and
Europe instinctively took in the situation, and clearly understood
that the Emperor was not indisposed toward the renewal of war in
northern Europe. This third point was of course the most noteworthy of
the three, for it could be only a question of time when the storm
should burst.

If it were possible at that epoch of the world's history to
distinguish between Napoleon the man and Napoleon the embodied
political force of Europe, the aspect of the former