required to resign in June 1806 as Cardinal Secretary of State, from which he went on to serve in various functions of the Curia. When the French entered Rome in 1808 and formally abolished the temporal power of the pope, Consalvi broke off all relations with the French. When France annexed the Papal States in 1809 and took the pope into exile in Savona, Cardinal Consalvi was forcibly taken to Paris. There he was met by Napoleon himself, who offered him an annual pension of 30,000 francs. This he refused. When he and twelve other cardinals refused to attend Napoleon's marriage to Princess Marie Louise in 1810, they were stripped of their property and ecclesiastical status, becoming known as the black cardinals. Consalvi and the others were also forced to reside in various cities in France, in his case, Reims. This lasted until Pius VII signed the Concordat of Fontainebleau in January 1813. The cardinal was then allowed to leave his place of forced residence and joined the Pope. Consalvi then promptly persuaded Pius to retract the concessions he had made to Napoleon, which he began to do in March of that same year. In consequence of his role in shifting Pius' position, the French authorities first barred Consalvi from seeing the Pope, then the following January again sent him into exile, this time in Béziers. This exile, however, lasted only a matter of weeks, as he was freed by the French Provisional Government on 2 April 1814, shortly before Napoleon's final abdication. He was then able to rejoin the Pope in Italy, at which time he was reappointed to the office of Secretary of State. Cardinal Bartolomeo Pacca, who was kidnapped along with Pope Pius VII, took the office of Pro-Secretary of State in 1808 and maintained his memoirs during his exile. His memoirs, written originally in Italian, have been translated into English (two volumes) and describe the ups and down of their exile and the triumphant return to Rome in 1814. Policy of Papal Neutrality After the fall of Napoleon, he was papal plenipotentiary at the Congress of Vienna and was able to convince the victorious powers to restore the Papal States almost entirely (although the Papacy had been forced to accept the French annexation of Avignon). Pius VII and Consalvi realized that in the face of Metternich's new international system, a neutral position for the pope might