The Piedmontese government at this time was most reactionary, and had made a clean sweep of all French institutions.
A clean sweep was made of the medieval polity surviving in the somnolent local diets and corporations.
A clean sweep was made of the legislation of the preceding period; the five articles of Perth, the service book and book of canons and the court of high commission were all condemned.
The bishops almost unanimously refused to conform, and a clean sweep was made of the episcopal bench.
The royalist plot of the Rue Saint-Nicaise (December 24, 1800) allowed him to make a clean sweep of the democratic republicans, who despite their innocence were depsrted to Guiana, and to annul Assemblies that were a mere show by making the senate omnipotent in constitutional matters; but it was necessary for him to transform this deceptive truce into the general pacification so ardently desired for the last eight years.
