sul, and soon recovered his
sovereignty over his States, excepting the Legations.

The negotiations between Paris and the Vatican were transacted chiefly
by a very able priest, Bernier by name, who had gained the First
Consul's confidence during the pacification of Brittany, and now urged
on the envoys of Rome the need of deferring to all that was reasonable
in the French demands. The negotiators for the Vatican were Cardinals
Consalvi and Caprara, and Monseigneur Spina--able ecclesiastics, who
were fitted to maintain clerical claims with that mixture of
suppleness and firmness which had so often baffled the force and craft
of mighty potentates. The first difficulty arose on the question of
the resignation of bishops of the Gallican Church: Bonaparte demanded
that, whether orthodox or constitutionals, they must resign their sees
into the Pope's hands; failing that, they must be deposed by the papal
authority. Sweeping as this proposal seemed, Bonaparte claimed that
bishops of both sides must resign, in order that a satisfactory
selection might be made. Still more imperious was the need that the
Church should renounce all claim to her confiscated domains. All
classes of the community, so urged Bonaparte, had made immense
sacrifices during the Revolution; and now that peasants were settled
on these once clerical lands, the foundations of society would be
broken up by any attempt to dispossess them.

To both of these proposals the Court of Rome offered a tenacious
resistance. The idea of compelling long-persecuted bishops to resign
their sees was no less distasteful than the latter proposal, which
involved acquiescence in sacrilegious robbery. At least, pleaded Mgr.
Spina, let tithes be re-established. To this request the First Consul
deigned no reply. None, indeed, was possible except a curt refusal.
Few imposts had been so detested as the tithe; and its reimposition
would have wounded the peasant class, on which the First Consul based
his authority. So long as he had their support he could treat with
disdain the scoffs of the philosophers and even the opposition of his
officers; but to have wavered on the subject of tithe and of the
Church lands might have been fatal even to the victor of Marengo.[154]

In fact, the difficulty of effecting any compromise was enormous. In
seeking to reconcile the France of Rousseau and Robespierre to the
unchanging policy of the Vatican, the "heir to the Revolution" was
essaying a hard