Christian Browne

In 1797, Revolutionary France, with the dynamic young General Bonaparte in command of its armies, set upon the conquest of Europe, both by taking territory and by spreading the new ideology. Pope Pius VI, though firmly opposed to the Revolution, nonetheless thought he had spared Rome from its march by granting Napoleon control over the papal lands in Tuscany, where the popes had reigned for a millennium. But the accidental death of a French general, living in Rome at the residence of the Fren...