With the loss of the Vatican and the pope's other temporal power, the cardinals were left in a remarkable position. All had been expelled from the city of Rome by the French occupying authorities. They were forced to hold the conclave in
Venice. This followed an
ordinance issued by Pius VI in 1798, which established that when a conclave could not be held in Rome, it would be held in the city with the greatest number of
cardinals. The
Benedictine San Giorgio Monastery in Venice was chosen as the location for the conclave, and the voting would be held in its night chapel. The city, along with other northern Italian lands, was held by the
Archduchy of Austria, whose ruler
Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor, agreed to defray the costs of the conclave. Since the secretary of the College of Cardinals was unable to leave Rome to attend, the cardinals elected, in an almost unanimous vote, Msgr.
Ercole Consalvi as secretary in his place. Consalvi would prove an influential figure in the election. The conclave began on 30 November 1799 and the assembled cardinals could not overcome a
stalemate between Bellisomi and Mattei until March 1800. Thirty-four Cardinals were present at the start, with the late appearance in conclave on 10 December of Cardinal
Franziskus Herzan von Harras, who was also the imperial plenipotentiary of Francis II. He bore the Imperial commands, the first of which was to get Cardinal Alessandro Mattei elected Pope. Strangely, by 28 December 1799 Cardinal Herzan had not yet presented his credentials as Imperial plenipotentiary to the College of Cardinals, and thus had no special status. Cardinal
Carlo Bellisomi, the
bishop of Cesena, seemed a viable candidate (
papabile), with some eighteen committed votes. His unpopularity among the Austrian faction, however, who preferred Cardinal Alessandro Mattei, the
archbishop of Ferrara, subjected Bellisomi to the "virtual veto", since the Mattei faction had sufficient numbers to deny Bellisomi a canonically required two-thirds vote. The conclave considered a third possible candidate, Cardinal
Hyacinthe Sigismond Gerdil,
CRSP, but Austria had rejected him from before the beginning of the conclave as too old—he was eighty-two. As the conclave was in the third month Cardinal Maury, who supported neither Bellisomi nor Mattei, suggested Barnaba Chiaramonti, OSB Cassin., the bishop of Imola. In the middle of February, both Herzan and Maury independently calculated that Chiaramonti had about twelve supporters. On 11 March, a frank, private conversation took place between Cardinal Antonelli and Cardinal Herzan, in which each frankly admitted that the candidacies of Calcagni, Bellisomi, Gerdil, Mattei, and Valenti were failures. During the conversation Cardinal Dugnani appeared and suggested that Chiaramonti might be considered; numbers of supporters of Mattei were willing to go over to him. On 12 March the Spanish agent, Cardinal Francisco Lorenzana, received news from Madrid that he had permission to formally exclude Cardinal Mattei. It was unnecessary to do so, of course, since Bellisomi's supporters had already given him the virtual veto. On 14 March, with the support of the active and influential conclave secretary Consalvi, Cardinal Chiaramonti was elected. Chiaramonti was, at the time, the bishop of
Imola in the
Subalpine Republic. He had stayed in place after the assumption of his
diocese by Bonaparte's army in 1797 and famously made a speech in which he stated that good Christians could make good democrats, a speech described as "
Jacobin" by Bonaparte himself. Though he could not save ecclesiastical reform and confiscation under the new rule, he did prevent the church being dissolved, unlike that in France. Due to its temporary siting in Venice, the
papal coronation was hurried. Having no papal treasures on hand, the noblewomen of the city manufactured the famous
papier-mâché papal tiara. It was adorned with their own jewels. Chiaramonti was declared Pope Pius VII and crowned on 21 March at the monastery church of S. Giorgio. ==Election of Pope Pius VII==