escribable fear. Napoleon III. insisted that
the organic article of the Concordat, forbidding the publication in France
of Bulls, Briefs, &c., should be enforced. But he could not, any more than
his uncle, forbid the excommunication to take effect. The first Napoleon
was at the height of his greatness when struck with excommunication. He
received the sentence with jeers. Would it make the arms fall from the
hands of his soldiers? How literally this question was answered, let the
snows of Russia tell. There are other ministers of the wrath of heaven
besides the frosts of a Northern winter. Napoleon III. was in the zenith
of his power when he heard the sentence which he vainly tried to stifle.
His great political wisdom, and the wonderful success of all he undertook
had hitherto astonished the world. There was now a manifest change. But it
need not here be said with what unspeakable humiliation his star went
down.

The revolutionary party could not have more effectually shown their dread
of the Papal sentence, than by their endeavors to suppress it. They went
so far as to publish in its place a forged document, as odious as it was
extravagant, appended there to the signature of Pius IX., and exposed it
to the jeers of the ignorant multitude. The bishops did their best in
order to make known the truth; with what difficulty it will be easily
understood, when it is remembered that an Imperial decree forbade the
newspapers to publish a word in their interest.

(M71) Had there been question only of forming a united Italy, and of
introducing such reforms as the time demanded into the States of the
Church, and those of the Italian grand dukes, such a cause would have had
no better friends and supporters than the Pope and the native princes. But
the revolutionary party aimed at more than this, and they hastened to show
their hand as soon as they obtained any power. As has been seen, the Holy
Father himself complained bitterly of the increase of irreligion and
immorality under their ill-omened auspices in Romagna. It was not their
policy to reconstitute, but to subvert. No existing institution, however
excellent, was sacred in their eyes. Thus speak the archbishops and
bishops of the Marches in a remonstrance addressed to the Piedmontese
Governor on 21st November, 1860: "We scarcely believe our own eyes, or the
testimony of our own ears, when we see and hear the excesses, the
abominations, the disorders witnessed in the chief citi