under orders from Napoleon, Savary took the extraordinary step of having General Étienne Radet arrest the Pope in the Vatican, giving him half an hour to pack his bags before escorting him to the bishop’s palace in the small Italian Riviera port of Savona. This allowed Pope Pius to make one of the wriest remarks of the nineteenth century. ‘Assuredly, my son,’ he told Radet, ‘those orders will not bring divine orders upon you.’16 Napoleon meanwhile told his brother-in-law Prince Camillo Borghese, who was governor-general of the Alpine region which included Savona, that ‘The guard of the Pope
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