by Susan Jaques
To prevent a British landing during the Austerlitz campaign, French troops occupied the strategic port of Ancona on Italy’s east coast. From the start of his pontificate, Pius tried to remain neutral in the continent’s ongoing wars. In mid-November 1805, Pius wrote a strongly worded protest to Napoleon, demanding the evacuation of French troops from Ancona and complaining about Napoleon’s failure to offer a quid pro quo for his attending the coronation.
Busy defeating Austria at Austerlitz, Napoleon responded to Pius from Munich on January 7, 1806. Calling the pope’s letter a stab in the back, Napoleon berated Pius for his unaccommodating attitude to France. The same day, Napoleon wrote Cardinal Fesch, describing Pius’s letter as “ridiculous and senseless.” In his polite reply, Pius did not renounce his call for the French evacuation of Ancona.
In February, Napoleon upped the ante, firing off another angry letter to Pius, emphasizing that political matters were under his control. “Your Holiness is sovereign in Rome, his relations with me are the same as those your predecessors with Charlemagne. You are sovereign in Rome, but I am its emperor.” He pressed the pope to cease working with “heretical” Britain and “extra-ecclesial” Russia and demanded he expel Sardinian, British, Russian, or Swedish agents living in the Papal States.
Napoleon sent an urgent letter to his uncle, Cardinal Fesch, “As far as the pope is concerned, I am Charlemagne, for like Charlemagne I have united the crowns of France and Lombardy, and my Empire extends to the borders of the Orient.” He soon sent his uncle a follow-up letter: “Tell them that I have my eyes open. That I am only fooled inasmuch as I let myself be fooled. I am Charlemagne, the sword of the Church and their [the clergy’s] Emperor . . . I am informing the pope of my plans in a few words. If he does not acquiesce, I shall reduce him to the same status that he held before Charlemagne.”8
Pius responded to Napoleon’s threat on March 21: “I reply with apostolic frankness that the Holy Father [. . .] does not recognize and has never recognized, in his states, any power superior to his own, and that no emperor has any rights over Rome.” Napoleon still needed the Catholic Church politically. “Catholic priests are a great help; they were the reason why conscription this year worked much better than in previous years. . . . No other state body speaks as well as they do regarding the government,” remarked Napoleon in 1806.
In 1807, Napoleon continued to dominate the continent with victories in Jena and Friedland. A series of decrees effected the Continental System, aimed at reducing the power of Britain by closing French-controlled territory to its trade. In addition to keeping the main papal port open to British shipping, Pius began refusing to invest Napoleon’s nominees for bishop.
While fighting Austria, Napoleon decided that he could no longer tolerate the noncooperative pope. On February 2, 1808, French troops occupied Rome. Two months later, he decreed the papal territories Urbino, Ancona, Macerata, and Camerino “irrevocably” part of “my kingdom in Italy.” By the following May, France formally annexed Rome to the Empire, proclaiming it a free imperial city.
Napoleon had long dreamed of annexing Rome. The Eternal City held a particular fascination for him, evoking the splendor of the Roman imperial tradition. The pretexts for his seizure of Rome were numerous. Pius had refused to annul the marriage of his brother Jérôme, support the Continental blockade, and accept the occupation of Ancona. By 1809, Napoleon’s struggle with Pius reached a climax.
That May, he annexed the Papal States. Pius’s temporal powers were revoked; his realm was reduced to the spiritual domain along with the Quirinale and pontifical palaces. In protest, Pius issued a bull memoranda on June 10, 1809, excommunicating all those who “usurp, encourage, advise or perform” violation of the temporal sovereignty of the Holy See. The immunity Pius enjoyed was now over. He and his advisers withdrew to the Quirinale.
In an irate letter to his brother-in-law Joachim Murat, king of Naples, Napoleon wrote: “This instant I have received the news that the pope has excommunicated all of us. By this he has excommunicated himself. No more regard for him! He is a raving madman and must be locked up!”9 On June 19, Napoleon wrote again: “If the pope preaches revolt . . . then you must arrest him.”10 He ordered Rome’s military governor, General Miollis, to lock up anyone who infringed on public law and order—including members of Pius’s household. Despite this, after learning of the pope’s abduction, Napoleon called the arrest “utter folly” in a letter to police minister Joseph Fouché. Yet he did not order the pontiff released. “Now there is no remedy: what is done is done,” he wrote.11
After his arrest in Rome in early July 1809, Pius was transferred to Tuscany, where he was joined by his private chaplain, doctor, cook, and servant. An envoy from Elisa Bonaparte’s court paid his respects but the pope was too tired from the journey to receive him. The grand duchess quickly decided that the sympathetic figure was too big a political liability to remain in Tuscany. He was whisked off toward Grenoble, France.
Napoleon, who did not want to be associated with the pope’s arrest, ordered that he stay in Italy. “If he stops being so foolish, I should even have no objection to his being brought back to Rome,” Napoleon wrote Fouché.12 But Pius was dragged back over the Alps, passing through Valence where his predecessor Pius VI had died, then the former papal city of Avignon, continuing to Marseilles and Nice. After two weeks, he arrived in Savona (between Nice and Genoa) on August 10. The same month, Cardinal Pacca was imprisoned at the infamous Fenestrelle Fortress in Piedmont, one of Europe’s largest prisons.
After several days at the mayor’s residence, Pius was moved to the more secure Bishop’s Palace, a former Franciscan monastery. A week later, 150 infantry and another one hundred artillery soldiers arrived, along with a squadron of dragoons and gendarmes as his “guard of honor.” Pius was allowed a visit to the nearby Shrine of Our Lady of Mercy where the Virgin was believed to have appeared in 1536. Cut off from his advisers, Pius had no ability to govern the Church. But he refused to cave in to the demands of Cardinals Fesch, Maury, and Caprara that he confirm Napoleon’s nominees for bishops. Nor would he approve the French Empire’s incorporation of Rome or accept a position in France as Napoleon’s chaplain-in-chief.
In response to his letter to the emperor, Pius was read this letter aloud: “His Majesty does not judge it fitting to reply to the pope’s personal letter. He will write when he is satisfied with him. . . . The emperor was pleased to scorn the said criminal and ridiculous document [Bull of Excommunication]. . . . His Majesty pities the pope’s ignorance. . . . As the pope is not sufficiently enlightened by the Holy Spirit, why does he not resign? For he is evidently incapable of distinguishing dogma from the essentials of religion. . . . If [he] is unable to understand this fairly obvious distinction, easy enough for a young seminarian, let him come down from the Pontifical Chair and make way for a man of better sense and comprehension.”13
Napoleon wrote Camillo Borghese in 1811: “Since nothing induces the pope to behave reasonably, he will see that I am powerful enough to do what my predecessors have done—to depose a pope.”14 In another letter that year, Napoleon justified the imprisonment of Pius by invoking Charlemagne: “I know that I must render unto God that which is God’s, but the pope is not God . . . the present epoch takes us back to the age of Charlemagne. All the kingdoms, principalities, and duchies which after the breaking up of his empire set themselves up as republics have now been restored under our laws. The Church of my Empire is the Church of the Occident and of nearly the universality of Christendom. I am resolved to convoke a council of the Western Church, to which I shall summon the bishops of Italy and of Germany, in order to draw up, as has been suggested by many bishops, a general discipline. Thus the Church of my Empire shall be one in its discipline as well as in its creed.”15
Napoleon’s true goal was to nationalize the French Church. His precedent was fourth-century Emperor Constantine, who Christianized pagan Rome and dominated the popes and the Church.16 Napoleon later explaine
d his intentions:
“Thus I had at last achieved the long-desired separation between temporal and spiritual power. . . . Thenceforth, I was in a position to exalt the pope beyond all bounds and to surround him with such pomp and ceremony that he would have ceased to regret the loss of his temporal power. I would have made an idol of him. He would have resided near me; Paris would have become the capital of Christendom, and I would have become the master of the religious as well as of the political world . . . I would have called religious as well as legislative bodies into session; my church councils would have been representative of all Christendom, and the popes would have been mere chairmen. I would have opened and closed these assemblies, approved and made public their decisions, as did Constantine and Charlemagne.”17
In addition to gathering the world’s finest art, Napoleon planned to place all European learning in a world library in Paris. His unrealized plan was to move the Bibliothèque Impériale to the Musée Napoléon, bringing added prestige to both.18 Toward this end, Napoleon sent his chief archivist Daunou to Rome.
In 1804, Napoleon had created a new home for the National Archives in the Marais district. The building was the Louis XIV–era Palace of the Dukes of Guise and Soubise, known as the Hôtel de Soubise. Six years later, Berthier received a letter from the emperor about “collecting in Paris a single body the archives of the German Empire, those of the Vatican, of France, and of the United Provinces, it may be interesting to search what has become of the archives of Charles V and of Philip II, which would so nicely complete this vast European collection.”19
That year, much of the Vatican archives, the Sacred College, was shipped to Paris in hundreds of wagonloads. Fearing the P. M. Vitali collection would also be taken, Pius had entrusted Antonio Canova to safeguard it in his home before his abduction.20 Marino Marini, nephew of Gaetano Marini, secret chamberlain of the prefect of the archives, was sent to Paris with the Vatican archives, over three thousand cases of material, to assist in their arrangement. Unofficially, he was there to keep an eye on them.21 French officials also traveled to Simanca, Spain, Piedmont, and Holland to select and remove valuable archives.
Two years earlier, in 1808, Napoleon requested that a librarian and geographer collect “memoirs about the campaigns which have taken place on the Euphrates and against the Parthians, beginning with that of Crassus up to the 8th century and including those of Antonius, Trajan, Julian, etc.; he is to mark upon maps of suitable size the route which each army followed, together with the ancient and modern names of the countries and principal towns, and add notes on the geographical features and historical descriptions of each enterprise, taking these from the original authors.”
With his library of the world, Napoleon may have been inspired by the great libraries of antiquity. It’s thought that around 295 B.C.E., scholar and orator Demetrius of Phalerum, an exiled governor of Athens, persuaded Ptolemy I to form a library in Alexandria, Egypt, to house a copy of every book in the world. It was under Ptolemy II that the idea of a universal library arose. Part of a complex that included a cult center called the Temple of the Muses or musaeum, the library may have housed as many as half a million papyrus scrolls. Strabo, Euclid, and Archimedes were among the brain trust of some one hundred resident scholars.
The destruction of Alexandria’s famous library remains a mystery. Julius Caesar is among the prime suspects. In 48 B.C.E., Caesar found himself in the city’s Royal Palace with the Egyptian fleet threatening in the harbor. He reportedly ordered his soldiers to set the ships on fire, which spread out of control.22 Some scholars believe the harbor fire damaged the library whose destruction came later in the thirrd or fourth centuries.
Julius Caesar’s father-in-law is thought to have assembled another extraordinary library, the Villa of the Papyri, in his Herculaneum home. When nearby Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 C.E., some 1,800 scrolls were buried under ninety feet of volcanic material. Among the blackened scrolls uncovered in the eighteenth century were writings of the Epicurean philosopher and poet Philodemus.23
Imperial Rome boasted some two dozen major libraries. One of the most prestigious was located at Emperor Trajan’s mega-forum, flanked by the soaring Trajan’s Column. The concrete, marble, and granite libraries featured central reading chambers and two levels of alcoves lined with an estimated twenty thousand scrolls. The libraries were still being mentioned as late as the fifth century C.E.24 Soon after Trajan’s library debuted, the son of Roman consul Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus unveiled an elegant library/mausoleum for his father in Ephesus (Turkey). Celsus was buried in an ornamental sarcophagus surrounded by an estimated 12,000 scrolls. The façade featured a marble stairway and columns, along with statues of Wisdom, Virtue, Intelligence, and Knowledge.
In the fourth century, Constantine the Great formed an imperial library in Constantinople. A century later, its collection mushroomed to some 120,000 scrolls and codices. The renowned library was never the same after the Crusades in 1204. But by making parchment copies of the aging papyrus scrolls, the library’s scribes helped preserve classical literature.25
Inspired by the Spaniards’ success against the French, Austria’s Francis I launched a campaign to liberate neighboring countries from French rule. Hoping to trigger an insurrection in the Confederation of the Rhine, Francis invaded Bavaria on April 8, 1809, proclaiming a War of German Liberation. But having benefited by Napoleon’s 1805 defeat of Austria, Bavaria remained allied with the French emperor.
Sensing their marriage was on the rocks, Joséphine insisted on going along with her husband. Napoleon left her in Strasbourg while he saw his Polish mistress Maria Walewska, before embarking on another campaign. After the victory at Ratisbon, Napoleon addressed his troops: “Soldiers: You have justified my anticipation. You have supplied by bravery the want of numbers, and have shown the difference which exists between the soldiers of Caesar and the armed rabble of Xerxes. Within the space of a few days we have triumphed in the battles of Thaun, Abersberg, and Eckmuhl, and in the combats of Peissing, Landshut, and Ratisbon. One hundred pieces of cannon, forty standards, fifty thousand prisoners, three bridge equipages, three thousand baggage-wagons with their horses, and all the money chests of the regiments, are the fruits of the rapidity of your marches, and of your courage. . . . In one month we will be in Vienna.”
Francis I and his family fled to Hungary, leaving Vienna’s defense to Archduke Maximilian Joseph of Austria-Este. From a base camp at Linz, Napoleon assaulted the capital. Unable to keep the French at bay until reinforcements arrived, the inexperienced archduke also fled. By May 13, Vienna surrendered. In a speech to his victorious soldiers, Napoleon compared the Habsburgs to Medea: “The princes of that house have abandoned their capital, not like the soldiers of honor, who yield to circumstance and the reverses of war, but as perjurers haunted by the sense of their crime. In flying from Vienna, their adieus to its inhabitants have been murder and conflagration. Like Medea, they have with their own hands massacred their own offspring . . .”26
In an echo of Roman emperor Trajan, Napoleon ordered a bridge built over the Danube with a bridgehead of thirty thousand soldiers. On May 21 and 22, Archduke Charles launched a surprise attack, defeating the Grande Armée at Aspern and Essling, with each side suffering around twenty thousand casualties. The Austrian victory was short-lived. Napoleon quickly rebuilt the bridge, led his army across the Danube, and defeated Charles at Wagram.
Four years earlier after the victory at Austerlitz, Napoleon and his army stayed in Vienna. About the Hofburg, Francis’s palace in Vienna, he had commented, “How can the descendant of so many Emperors live in this garret?”27 For the two-week stay, the emperor chose instead Schönbrunn Palace, the Habsburg summer residence west of Vienna’s city walls. Now, Napoleon returned for several months.
According to legend, the name Schönbrunn came from Emperor Matthias’s discovery of a beautiful spring (schöner Brunnen) on the property while hunting. In the mid-seventeenth century, Eleanora Gon
zaga, the cultured wife of Emperor Ferdinand II, expanded the old manor house in Italian baroque style. Damaged during the Turkish siege soon after, the palace was extensively rebuilt by Empress Maria Theresa. During her reign, six-year-old Mozart played in the palace’s mirrored hall.
Napoleon now used the Hall of Ceremonies for an audience chamber. Franz Stephan’s council chamber, the Blue Chinese Salon featuring Chinese floral wall-hangings and walnut paneling, and the Vieux Laque Room, Franz Stephan’s private study, became Napoleon’s drawing rooms. For his bedroom, Napoleon occupied the bedroom shared by Franz Stephan and Maria Theresa with a view of the Gloriette—an elegant, colonnaded neoclassical building with a long row of arches and topped with an imperial eagle. Marie Theresa ordered the elegant structure in 1775 as a “temple of glory” for the palace garden.
Napoleon turned Maria Theresa’s chinoiserie Porcelain Room into his study; its painted wood paneling and carved blue and white framing were made to look like porcelain. On the way to Wagram, Napoleon packed several boxes of his portable library organized by Antoine-Alexandre Barbier. The emperor’s library included forty volumes on religion, forty epic poems, forty tragedies, a hundred novels, and titles in philosophy and history.28 From Schönbrunn, Napoleon ordered an updated traveling library to include three thousand volumes, mainly classics and reference works. To decrease the weight, he wanted them printed on thin paper without margins. Barbier drew up a catalogue, requesting half a million francs and six years for the project.29
Despite the emperor’s complaints that Schönbrunn was poorly furnished, he was impressed by the palace. At either side of the entrance leading to a huge courtyard, Napoleon erected a pair of obelisks crowned by eagles. Napoleon restored the palace theater where he attended German opera performances from his box.30