were expelled from France by edict of Louis XV on 2 February 1763. Revolution The diocese of Montauban was one of the fifty dioceses that were abolished by decree of the National Assembly in 1790, in the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, an act which was uncanonical. The territory of the diocese, which fell into the new Department of Tarn-et-Garonne, but Montauban was not the largest city in the department, and therefore it was denied a bishop in the new Constitutional Church. Bishop Le Tonnelier de Breteuil (1762–1794) died during the Reign of Terror on 14 August 1794, in the prison of Rouen, after converting the philosopher La Harpe to Catholicism. In 1793 the Abbey of Moissac was closed, along with all the other monastic institutions in France. The Cathedral Chapter was also disbanded. Church of the Concordat The diocese was recreated, uncanonically, by the Emperor Napoleon I in 1808, and he offered the diocese to Jean-Armand Chaudru de Trélissac, the pre-Revolutionary Vicar General of Montauban, who refused the offer. Other offers were made, but not confirmed by Pope Pius VII. Under the Concordat, however, Bonaparte exercised the same privileges as had the kings of France, especially that of nominating bishops for vacant dioceses, with the approval of the Pope. The practice continued until the Restoration in 1815, when the privilege of nomination returned to the hands of the King of France. On the occasion of the proclamation of the Empire in 1804, Archbishop de Cicé was made a member of the Legion of Honor and a Count of the Empire. In accordance with the Concordat between Pope Pius VII and King Louis XVIII, signed on 11 June 1817, the diocese of Montauban was to be restored. The Concordat, however, was never ratified by the French National Assembly, which had the reputation of being more royalist than the King, and therefore, ironically, Napoleonic legislation was never removed from the legal code (as agreed in the Concordat of 1817) and the terms of the Concordat of 1817 never became state law. In 1881 and 1882, Jules Ferry was responsible for the enactment of the Jules Ferry Laws, establishing free primary education throughout France, and mandatory secular education. This removed church control over public education. The low point in relations between the Vatican and Paris came in 1905, with the Law on the Separation of the Churches and the State. This meant,