It had long been the rule at Rome that no officer of justice or finance could enter the dwelling inhabited by the minister who represented a Catholic state. In process of time not only the dwelling, but a large precinct round it, was held inviolable. It was a point of honour with every Ambassador to extend as widely as possible the limits of the region which was under his protection. At length half the city consisted of privileged districts, within which the Papal government had no more power than within the Louvre or the Escurial. Every asylum was thronged with contraband traders, fraudulent bankrupts, thieves and assassins. In every asylum were collected magazines of stolen or smuggled goods. From every asylum ruffians sallied forth nightly to plunder and stab. In no town of Christendom, consequently, was law so impotent and wickedness so audacious as in the ancient capital of religion and civilisation. On this subject Innocent felt as became a priest and a prince. He declared that he would receive no Ambassador who insisted on a right so destructive of order and morality. There was at first much murmuring; but his resolution was so evidently just that all governments but one speedily acquiesced. The Emperor, highest in rank among Christian monarchs, the Spanish court, distinguished among all courts by sensitiveness and pertinacity on points of etiquette, renounced the odious privilege. Lewis alone was impracticable. What other sovereigns might choose to do, he said, was nothing to him. He therefore sent a mission to Rome, escorted by a great force of cavalry and infantry. The Ambassador marched to his palace as a general marches in triumph through a conquered town. The house was strongly guarded. Round the limits of the protected district sentinels paced the rounds day and night, as on the walls of a fortress. The Pope was unmoved. "They trust," he cried, "in chariots and in horses; but we will remember the name of the Lord our God." He betook him vigorously to his spiritual weapons, and laid the region garrisoned by the French under an interdict.451This dispute was at the height when another dispute arose, in which the Germanic body was as deeply concerned as the Pope.
Cologne and the surrounding district were governed by an Archbishop, who was an Elector of the Empire. The right of choosing this great prelate belonged, under certain limitations, to the Chapter of the Cathedral. The Archbishop was also Bishop of Liege, of Munster, and of Hildesheim. His dominions were extensive, and included several strong fortresses, which in the event of a campaign on the Rhine would be of the highest importance. In time of war he could bring twenty thousand men into the field. Lewis had spared no effort to gain so valuable an ally, and had succeeded so well that Cologne had been almost separated from Germany, and had become an outwork of France. Many ecclesiastics devoted to the court of Versailles had been brought into the Chapter; and Cardinal Furstemburg, a mere creature of that court, had been appointed Coadjutor.
In the summer of the year 1688 the archbishopric became vacant.
Furstemburg was the candidate of the House of Bourbon. The enemies of that house proposed the young Prince Clement of Bavaria. Furstemburg was already a Bishop, and therefore could not be moved to another diocese except by a special dispensation from the Pope, or by a postulation, in which it was necessary that two thirds of the Chapter of Cologne should join. The Pope would grant no dispensation to a creature of France. The Emperor induced more than a third part of the Chapter to vote for the Bavarian prince. Meanwhile, in the Chapters of Liege, Munster, and Hildesheim, the majority was adverse to France. Lewis saw, with indignation and alarm, that an extensive province which he had begun to regard as a fief of his crown was about to become, not merely independent of him, but hostile to him. In a paper written with great acrimony he complained of the injustice with which France was on all occasions treated by that See which ought to extend a parental protection to every part of Christendom.
Many signs indicated his fixed resolution to support the pretensions of his candidate by arms against the Pope and the Pope's confederates.452Thus Lewis, by two opposite errors, raised against himself at once the resentment of both the religious parties between which Western Europe was divided. Having alienated one great section of Christendom by persecuting the Huguenots, he alienated another by insulting the Holy See. These faults he committed at a conjuncture at which no fault could be committed with impunity, and under the eye of an opponent second in vigilance, sagacity, and energy, to no statesman whose memory history has preserved.
