In framing a national Church the First Consul would have appealed not only to the old Gallican feeling, still strong among the clerics and laity, but also to the potent force of French nationality.

The experiment might have been managed so as to offend none but the strictest Catholics, who were less to be feared than the free-thinkers.

Consalvi was not far wrong when, writing of the official world at Paris, he said that only Bonaparte really desired a Concordat.
The First Consul's motives in seeking the alliance of Rome have, very naturally, been subjected to searching criticism; and in forcing the Concordat on France, and also on Rome, he was certainly undertaking the most difficult negotiation of his life.[157] But his preference for the Roman connection was an act of far-reaching statecraft.

He saw that a national Church, unrecognized by Rome, was a mere half-way house between Romanism and Protestantism; and he disliked the latter creed because of its tendency to beget sects and to impair the validity of the general will.

He still retained enough of Rousseau's doctrine to desire that the general will should be uniform, provided that it could be controlled by his own will.