Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/315

 1922 SHORT NOTICES 307 morphosis being described in great detail. The author has handled his material ably, and is studiously impartial in his judgements, but the book is marred to some extent by defects in style and arrangement. For example, the proper place to discuss the change of creed which accom- panied Bernadotte's assumption of a new nationality is surely the volume which describes that assumption, and not a note to Bernadotte ; the First Phase, the volume which closes at a date ten years before the change was even contemplated. The book would also have gained considerably in value by a more convenient arrangement of the bibliography. L. The biography of another marshal of France has been made available for the large number of students who do not read Polish by MM. Kozakie- wicz and Cazin's translation into French of M. Simon Askenazy's Le Prince Joseph Poniatowski, Marechal de France, 1763-1813 (Paris : Plon-Nourrit, 1921). As the translators say in their preface, ' Si le Prince Joseph appar- tient a la Pologne, le Marechal Poniatowski appartient a la France ', and we may note that it is the more admirable part of his life that belongs to France. Those later years do much to wipe out the memory of the mistakes and frivolities that made up only too great a part of the record of his earlier life. The translators have done their work adequately. There is an obvious mistake in the statement of Poniatowski's age on the title-page, and there are some misprints that have escaped the proof- reader's eye, but the book as a whole is free from minor defects. L. M. Rene de Chauvigny, in his La Resistance au Concordat de 1801 (Paris : Plon-Nourrit, 1921), has given an account of the clergy in the neighbourhood of Blois and Vendome who refused to recognize the validity of the agreement made between Napoleon and the papacy. M. de Chau- vigny has confined his work to a much smaller area than is covered by the books of P. Drochon or M. Latreille, and, within this area, has made a detailed study of the relevant correspondence and administrative docu- ments. For the existence of this petite eglise there was much reason. The papal brief asking the French bishops to resign their sees showed by its language that the pope realized the severity of his demands. He claimed, indeed, to give precedents, but so moderate an observer as the Abbe Emery put no value upon them, while an English Roman catholic, Milner, the friend of Burke, Pitt, and Wilberforce, could find no parallel except in the attitude of Gregory the Great to the Celtic church in England. Again, the later years of the empire showed only too clearly that the papacy had little freedom in its dealings with Napoleon. The faithful of Blois and Vendome had another excuse for being stiff-necked. The bishop of Blois (Mgr. de Themines) was one of the most intransigeant among the clergy (he refused even on his death-bed in exile to be reconciled with the pope) ; when the see of Blois was abolished by the concordat, its territory was given to Orleans, and Orleans was given to Bernier. Bernier's desertion of a losing cause made his efficiency in the service of a new master seem the more odious. Little wonder then that a handful of zealous priests could keep the allegiance of their people, and defy the efforts of the civil and religious authorities. M. de Chauvigny's little X 2