Bonaparte perceived what an invaluable instrument in the hand of a ruler a traditional religion and form of public worship was, and, if for no other reason than this, was determined on an alliance with the clergy, whom he, when a victor in Italy, had flattered and favoured with a view to eventualities. He was well aware that in France as in other countries the ignorant majority were still attached to the traditional religion, and that the teachings of the eighteenth-century philosophers could not possibly as yet have penetrated to the lowest and widest layer of the population. At an earlier period he had openly avowed his aims. At a meeting of his Council of State in the year 1800 he exclaimed: "With my government functionaries, my armed police, and my priests I am in a position to do whatever I please." To him the priest was a police official like the others, simply with a different uniform. In the notes which he dictated to Montholon he plainly intimates that the Concordat originated in his wish to attach the clergy to the new order of things, and to break the last tie which bound them, and the country with them, to the old royal house. He had carefully weighed in his own mind the choice which lay open to him between Catholicism and Protestantism. He conceded to his advisers that the inclination of the moment was probably more in the direction of Protestantism. "But," he sagaciously queried, "is Protestantism the old religion of France? Is it possible to create in a people habits, tastes, memories? The principal charm of a religion lies in its memories. When I am at Malmaison I never hear the church bell of the neighbouring village ring without feeling moved. And in France who could feel moved in a Protestant church, which evokes no memories of childhood, and the cold, severe appearance of which is so little in harmony with the ideas of the people?" "Besides," said he to Las Casas, "all my great aims were to be attained much more certainly with the aid of Catholicism. It kept the Pope on my side, and with my influence in Italy and my military strength there I did not doubt that sooner or later, by one means or another, I should get this same Pope into my power. And from that moment what influence! what a lever with which to move public opinion throughout the world!... Had I returned from Moscow as a conqueror I should easily have induced the Pope to forget the loss of his temporal power. I should have made him an idol; he would have stayed with me. Paris would then have become the metropolis of the Christian world, and I should have ruled the religious as well as the political world.... _My_ church councils would then have represented Christianity; the Popes would simply have been their presidents."