But all this was little compared with the contemplated reconciliation with the Church for which the way was now carefully prepared. Pius VI had died a prisoner on French soil, and had been buried without honor. Befitting memorial ceremonies having been performed, the priesthood were released from the ban which the Jacobins had laid upon them. No oath in support of the new charter was required from the many priests who could not accept the civil constitution of the clergy, enacted in 1790; they could minister to their adherents without fear of persecution; they at once returned from exile or emerged from their hiding-places in large numbers. In the rôle of philosopher the First Consul professed to see the necessity of the Church as the main prop of a strong social organism and good government. As a far-seeing schemer he clearly felt that military power was a stanch support, but that in the end a firm moral foundation would likewise be needed in the hearts of hundreds of thousands in Europe, who would bless the man that should restore to them the institution which was the visible sign of their hopes for eternity. This desirable affection and approbation Bonaparte meant from the outset to secure. Had the scoffer, the worshiper of science, the would-be Mohammedan prophet, himself experienced a change of heart? Perhaps. Responsibility often breaks down indifference.
This policy of tolerance was well understood to be an interim measure, to be succeeded by a permanent settlement satisfactory to all the faithful. Furthermore, the ban having been removed from the exiled royalists as well, a number of emigrants had likewise returned: these and their clergy soon conceived the idea that Bonaparte was preparing a restoration of the monarchy, and would consider propositions for reëstablishing the close alliance of church and state, the identity almost, which had been the one outstanding feature of French absolutism. For this reason the insurrectionary West made overtures to the First Consul, and emissaries were passed through the lines, admitted to an audience, and permitted to state their case. Bonaparte gave heed and attention. Andigné proved exacting and impossible, Hyde was smooth and uncertain; it was only later that in Bernier, a simple village priest, he found a man to his liking, shrewd and scheming, but reasonable and efficient. He soon became an important agent in resolving the knotty problem of restoring the West to French nationality. Hitherto the rebels of lower Normandy and Brittany had followed either the resident nobility, of whom Andigné and Frotté were types, or peasant reactionaries like Georges Cadoudal, bold, desperate, irreconcilable men who demanded either war or their king. Bonaparte determined to ignore alike the high and the low, the desperate men with everything to gain and little to lose; he therefore appealed to the middle sort of gentle and simple through the intermediation of Hédouville for the government and Bernier for the people. The latter, accompanied by Count Bourmont, finally came to Paris, and both were won, Bourmont to the undoing of Napoleon, as it turned out. A method of pacification was arranged and soon put into successful operation, largely through the superlative adroitness of Bernier. Frotté was captured and executed, Cadoudal fled to England. The royalist agitation of the West was ended for a time: the efforts of the party in Provence, though carefully studied and widely exerted, proved ineffectual, and the internal reforms of administration were there, as throughout all France, efficiently put in operation. The policy of tolerance and moderation won over thousands upon thousands, and reduced the sullen minority to inactivity.