When Napoleon was imprisoned on Saint Helena, the "Bonapartists" who had once followed him began to be hunted by the former Royalists. Ignoring the surrender agreement Marshal Davout had negotiated, they arrested his confidants everywhere in search of revenge. Many Bonapartists fled to America.
When the Directory ordered Napoleon to destroy the Papal States, he had not obeyed either.
Everyone had to leave themselves a way out. Even Voldemort had prepared Horcruxes for himself. Besides, if he really destroyed the Pope's state, Christians would think they were facing persecution from a "Roman Emperor" and go underground.
This did not mean going "underground" by concealing their identities. It meant actually digging out a city beneath the ground and living in it. There were similar ruins in Rome. Guerrillas endlessly pouring out from underground were the most troublesome. Someone as clear-headed and sensible as him would never be as reckless as the Directory.
When Thomas Jefferson died, he wrote his own epitaph and demanded that not a single word be changed: Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, author of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, founder of the University of Virginia, lies buried here.
The final Declaration of Independence had been altered beyond recognition from Jefferson's original draft, even contradicting his original intentions to some extent.
Too many people's interests were involved. Even if Benjamin Franklin had been the drafter, it would not have changed much. At most, the prose would have gone from grand and majestic to plain and approachable.
Obscurantism was not the same as superstitious belief in gods. Its key was preventing people from thinking rationally, spreading theories that sounded plausible and made people feel as though they understood, as though they had awakened, as though they were the ones who had left the cave and no