What need then of confiscating it? Pius IX expressly rejected this income, 13 November, 1872. After the papal rejection of the Law of Guarantees, the popes existed in a self-imposed state as "Prisoner of the Vatican" in diplomatic protestation of the Kingdom of Italy's claims to the Papal States. The popes refused to leave the Vatican. At first the situation as embarrassing and even dangerous to the Italians, who feared that France or Austria might champion the cause of the Pope and compel them to evacuate Rome. But the defeat of these two Catholic nations by Prussia and, especially, the establishment of an anticlerical Republic in France, made such an event only a remote possibility, and the "Prisoner of the Vatican" became a polite fiction. As time went on there began a "raprochement" between the Vatican and the Quirinal, though, in theory, the successors of Pius IX continued to advocate the restoration of their temporal power. The situation was finally resolved in 1929 by the Lateran Pacts which created the State of Vatican City as an independent sovereign state to guarantee the political and legal independence of the pope from the Italian government. There is a treaty as well as a concordat, which together form a juridical whole. Although in principle the popes refused to accept the Law of Guarantees, in practice they tacitly accepted some of its provisions. They allowed clergy to accept revenues from the Italian state deriving from their benefices. The popes began appointing all Italian bishops. Previously, various Italian civil authorities had had the right of presentation, but the Law of Guarantees had given the right of free conferral back to the pope. Since the Italian territories had more bishoprics than in any other part of Christendom, by 1870 Victor Emmanuel had the right to present 237 bishops for appointment, more than any other king in Christian history. Such immense powers of appointment would now be exercised by the popes directly, which changed the relationship between the papacy and the Italian episcopate and shifted views on who should appoint bishops in general. A new and growing assumption was that it was for the pope to directly appoint bishops. The loss of temporal power greatly enhanced papal control over the church in Italy.