Three deputies were then sent to Buonaparte
to receive from him a new constitution; on June 6, after the
conferences at Montebello, he signed a convention, or rather issued a
decree, by which he fixed the new form of their Government; he himself
named provisionally all the members who were to compose it, and he
required the payment of seven millions of livres, as the price of
the subversion of their constitution and their independence. These
transactions require but one short comment; it is to be found in the
official account given of them at Paris, which is in these memorable
words: 'General Buonaparte has pursued the only line of conduct which
could be allowed in the representative of a nation which has supported
the war only to procure the solemn acknowledgement of the right of
nations to change the form of their Government. He contributed nothing
towards the revolution of Genoa, but he seized the first moment to
acknowledge the new Government, as soon as he saw that it was the
result of the wishes of the people.'[8]
It is unnecessary to dwell on the wanton attacks against Rome, under
the direction of Buonaparte himself, in the year 1796, and in the
beginning of 1797, which led first to the Treaty of Tolentino,
concluded by Buonaparte, in which, by enormous sacrifices, the Pope
was allowed to purchase the acknowledgement of his authority as a
sovereign prince; and secondly, to the violation of that very treaty,
and to the subversion of the papal authority by Joseph Buonaparte, the
brother and the agent of the general, and the Minister of the French
Republic to the Holy See: a transaction accompanied by outrages and
insults towards the pious and venerable Pontiff (in spite of the
sanctity of his age and the unsullied purity of his character), which
even to a Protestant seemed hardly short of the guilt of sacrilege.
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