The Conquest of Plassans (Rougon-Macquart). Cet article n’est pas disponible.The Conquest of Plassans (Rougon-Macquart)

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French Catholics to recover lost ascendency; and in the second place there is the conviction of the Vatican and the French episcopate generally that France is the only country which under favourable circumstances might be in a position to restore the temporal power of the Holy See. In that respect the Pope can hope for nothing from Spain or Austria or the Catholic States of Germany. In France rests the sole hope of the Papacy; and thus on political as well as religious grounds the establishment of a Catholic regime in place of the present-day freethought Republic is the one great dream of those who direct the fortunes of the Holy Roman and Apostolic Church. All who know anything of modem history are aware that in 1849 a French army overthrew the Roman Republic and reinstated Pius IX. in possession of the so-called patrimony of St. Peter, and that in after years, until France indeed was vanquished at Sedan, the presence of French forces alone enabled the Pope to continue in the exercise of his territorial sway. Both the Royalist reactionaries who sat in the National Assembly of the Second Republic, and the Prince-P resident of that time, afterwards Napoleon III., lent support to Pius IX., and in return expected to receive the countenance and help of the French clergy in their various designs upon France. But the clergy always seeks its own ends, and more than once its policy varied, now being in favour of the Royalists and now in favour of Louis Napoleon, according as it seemed likely to secure greater benefits from one or the other. Even when the contest for supremacy was over, when the Republic had been murdered at the Coup detat, and the hopes of the Count de Chambord had been destroyed by the triumph of Napoleon the Little, the clergy did not give unqualified support to the new government.
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