We might compare their difficulties with those which hampered Napoleon when he aspired to the Imperial tyranny over French conquests in Europe.] With that view he raised one of his nephews, Carlo, to the Cardinalate, and bestowed on two others the principal fiefs of the Colonna family.
The Colonnas were by tradition Ghibelline.

This sufficed for depriving them of Palliano and Montebello.

Carlo Caraffa, who obtained the scarlet, had lived a disreputable life which notoriously unfitted him for any ecclesiastical dignity.

In the days of Sixtus and Alexander this would have been no bar to his promotion.

But the Church was rapidly undergoing a change; and Carlo, complying with the hypocritical spirit of his age, found it convenient to affect a thorough reformation, and to make open show of penitence.