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"Concordat." M. D'Haussonville relates, very graphically, all the steps towards it-the negotiations, first at Rome, and afterwards at Paris. It was to his first negotiator at Rome, M. Cacault, that Napoleon gave the celebrated injunction, "Remember to treat the Pope as if he had two hundred thousand men at his command." Unfortunately, with him was joined another negotiator, a priest whose antecedents led men to trust him, for he had been among the most influential leaders of the royalist peasantry in La Vendée; but who was undeserving of their confidence. This is the same person who, being made Bishop of Orleans on the conclusion of the Concordat, distinguished himself by the basest subserviency to Napoleon, and whose disgrace, if we remember rightly, has been noted by the pen of the distinguished prelate who now sits in his seat. The unworthy conduct of this man, and of Cardinal Caprara, who was long Legate at Paris, no doubt contributed to confirm Napoleon in the fatal opinion that every man has his price," and so to lead him into his worst errors. We cannot follow M. D'Haussonville through these negotiations. When Napoleon found that he did not get his own way, he threatened to invade the States of the Church, and found that the threat produced no effect. He then threatened to lead France into schism, and even to make it Protestant. In his calmer moments, disposed as he always was to reckon on his power, he felt that this exceeded it. "To his most trusted counsellor," he said that:

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It would be a folly to join himself to the constitutional bishops and priests. Their influence was gone. They could lend him no force; still, they do very well to threaten Consalvi with. To put himself at the head of a separate Church, to make himself Pope, for him a man of war in his sword and spurs, would be simply impossible. Would they have him make himself hated like Robespierre, or laughed at like Laréveillère Lepeaux? To make France Protestant! Easily said, no doubt. But everything cannot be done in France, say what they may; even he could do nothing except by going with real feelings. The Catholic was the ancient religion of the land. Half France at least would remain Catholic, and there would be no end of disputes and divisions. The people must have a religion, and that religion must be in the hands of the Government (Vol. i., p. 107).

Still, neither to the Pope nor his minister did he confess even so much as this, and it would be a serious responsibility to push him, by insisting upon anything which could lawfully be conceded, into a renewal of the persecution which had hardly ceased, or even into a schism like that of the constitutional clergy. A powerful Monarch, quite reckless of the welfare of souls, is, no doubt, always at a great advantage in

dealing with a Pontiff with whom the good of souls is a primary consideration.

One point upon which there was much difficulty, but which the Pope ultimately conceded, was whether the Concordat should declare Catholicism the religion of the State, or only that of the vast majority of the French people. At last,

after long debates and many delays, the terms of the Concordat were settled, and Napoleon agreed to withdraw the articles in which he had embodied the Gallican doctrines. Nothing, therefore, remained except to sign: and a meeting was held for that purpose. It had been expressly declared that it was a mere formality, "which would hardly occupy a quarter of an hour." We need hardly tell, what all the world knows, how, at the moment when he was about to put his hand to the document as the representative of the Holy Father, Cardinal Consalvi discovered that Napoleon had attempted a fraud upon him, by substituting for the document to which he had agreed, another containing the obnoxious articles. We must refer to our author for the vivid description of scenes which followed, which are too long to be extracted here.

Napoleon throughout kept up the character of one who united with the highest genius the lowest and most paltry meanness and falsehood. It is universally known that when the Concordat was at last signed, he published it with the rejected articles added to it as if they had been agreed upon. At the same time he attempted another fraud, not so generally known, for, having always given Consalvi to understand that if the Concordat were concluded, he would have nothing to do with the schismatical clergy, except on condition of their making due submission to the Pope; he had no sooner obtained the signature, than he caused one of his agents to mention to the legate, as a matter of course, that as many as possible of" both clergies" (i. e. the Catholic and the schismatical) would attend at the Te Deum sung for the conclusion at Notre Dame. At the same time he condescended to another trick of the same sort. There had been a dispute whether the legate should take an oath which had formally been required from legates à latere in France. The first consul had promised that it should not be required, and in fact it was not. But, to satisfy the Gallicans, a formal notice was officially inserted in the Moniteur, asserting that Cardinal Consalvi had taken the oath, which, for greater effect, was printed at full length.

The manner in which the difficulty about the constitutional clergy was got over, was also characteristic of Napoleon. There were two ecclesiastics wholly free from the taint of the

schism, and of unblemished reputation, upon whom, however, Napoleon, with his usual knowledge of character, felt sure that he might rely for any service, however unworthy. These were the Abbés Bernier and Pancemont. They were named by the First Consul for the sees of Orleans and Vannes. The legate, in the name of the Pope, gladly gave them canonical authority and episcopal consecration, and congratulated his Holiness upon the character of these appointments. The bishops who had compromised themselves in the constitutional schism, and whom the First Consul, against the wishes of the legate and against his own promises, had nominated to other sees, had of course been required "explicitly to confess their schism and to abjure their past errors." The bishops of Orleans and Vannes attested that they had made this declaration before themselves, but no sooner had the constitutional bishops obtained canonical investiture than they boasted that they had done nothing of the sort, and that they had even torn into a thousand scraps the letter which had been proposed for their signature in the name of the Holy Father. "Between such opposite assertions," asks our author, "which are we to trust?" Then, after adding that facts are now notorious against the uprightness of M. Bernier, but that nothing was ever alleged to the discredit of M. de Pancement, he adds:

In such a case there are, in fact, no positive proofs. Still it is with surprise and pain that, in searching among the contemporary documents for the means of forming my own judgment, I found, in the correspondence of Napoleon I., two letters which may perhaps throw an unexpected light upon the conduct of the two prelates. One is a request to M. de Talleyrand to give to the Abbé Bernier a sum of thirty thousand francs (£1,200) out of the secret service money, to assist him in negotiating suitably with the Legate; the other an order to Citizen Portalis to hold at the disposition of M. de Pancement, Bishop of Vannes (without any publicity), the sum of fifty thousand francs (£2,000).

We have mentioned merely a few instances of the affair of the Concordat because they illustrate the character of Napoleon, who certainly was, of all great men in history, the most willing to descend to any littleness, any meanness, any falsehood, any treachery, if it seemed likely to accomplish his ends. The whole course of a matter complicated by many strange intrigues, and extending over many months, is related in a lucid narrative by our author. The publication of the Concordat was long delayed by Napoleon after it was formally signed, partly in consequence of the disputes to which we have alluded, partly for a reason highly characteristic of him.

No man ever thought more of what Englishmen would laugh at as theatrical effects. If he wished to publish a decree against British commerce, it was no mere coincidence which occasioned him to sign it in his head-quarters, at the palace of the King of Prussia, at Berlin; the decree regulating the Opera at Paris was dated from Moscow. In this case, he had set his heart upon publishing the Concordat on the anniversary of the Coup d'Etat by which he had placed himself at the head of the State-the 18th Brumaire (Nov. 9). As soon as this was gone by, instead of pressing the matter forward as he had done all along, he intentionally delayed it. His reason was, that he thought the next best thing would be to publish the Concordat at such a moment that the Te Deum at Notre Dame might be sung on Easter day. For that day, he caused the state carriages of the unfortunate Louis XVI., which had lain by in dust and neglect for ten years, to be regilt for his use. In the same spirit, he selected as preacher on the occasion, the Cardinal de Boisgelin, an exemplary prelate, but whom he no doubt selected because he had preached five and twenty years before in the same pulpit at the coronation of Louis XVI. What a deluge had swept over France since that day! But who shall say that in matters such as this, a man so keen-sighted, did not rightly estimate the effect to be produced upon the minds of the people whom he so thoroughly

understood?

In the negotiations which went on while the publication of the Concordat was delayed, as well as in those which followed, it was the misfortune of the Holy See that the Legate at Paris, though by no means a hypocrite or indifferent to duty, was yet not to be trusted. This was Cardinal Caprara, a man of illustrious birth, and who had already been employed in high positions. Napoleon insisted on his being appointed to the office, practically refusing to receive any one else. Although he was not the man whom Pius VII. would have selected, no definite cause could be alleged for refusing him, and he was appointed. He retained the office until, after the extreme outrages of the Emperor upon the Holy See, the Pope recalled his powers, and appointed no successor. In that time it is not too much to say that, although there is no reason to suppose he intended to betray the cause of the Church, yet he conducted himself on numerous occasions rather as the minister of the Emperor than of the Pope. More than once he acted in direct disobedience to the positive commands and instructions of the Holy See, and at last so entirely lost the confidence of the Holy Father, that, instead of instructing him to say what he had too good reason to

believe would not be said, he used to send letters written in full, which his nuncio was only to sign and deliver. M. D'Haussonville finds that Caprara, on several occasions, allowed himself to be under pecuniary obligations to Napoleon.

The next affair of importance between Napoleon and the Holy Father was the coronation in Nôtre Dame. M. D'Haussonville tells excellently all the circumstances which led to this event-the Emperor's notion of the extreme importance of the religious sanction it would give his title, especially as tending to remove the ill-effects of the recent murder of the Duke d'Enghien; the consternation of Cardinal Caprara when first sounded upon it by Napoleon; his pressing importunities to the Holy Father not to refuse; the promises so made as to give the Pope to understand more than Napoleon had any intention of fulfilling; the Pope's enthusiastic reception by the French people, and the jealousy which it excited in the mind of Napoleon.

For all this, and much more, we must refer our readers to his pages. It is, however, important to notice that Napoleon's uncle, Cardinal Fesch, earnestly pressed Pius VII. to make the restitution of the Legations (still held by the French) and a compensation for Avignon and Carpentras a condition of his consent, and that the Pope (although hoping this from the Emperor's generosity) steadily refused to mix the temporal question with the spiritual points upon which he felt bound in conscience to insist. One of these was the form of the coronation oath which the Pope was to tender to the Emperor. As drawn up by the Emperor, it bound him to "respect and make others respect the laws of the Concordat." This the Pope refused, because it might be taken to include the "organic articles," which, though not really part of the Concordat, had been published as such by Napoleon. A still more important question arose upon the words "to respect and cause to be respected the liberty of worships [la liberté des cultes]. To this Cardinal Consalvi, in the name of the Pope, objected: "This implies an engagement, not to tolerate and allow, but to support and protect; and it extends, not only to the persons but to the things, that is to all worships [à tous les cultes]. But a Catholic cannot protect the error of false worships." Caprara replies to this, that the terms of the oath meant nothing. But Consalvi rejoins:

The formula is such as a Catholic ought not to take, and a Pope cannot

* Vol. i., p. 330.

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