The victory of Marengo enabled Bonaparte to proceed with his plans for an accommodation with the Vatican; and he informed one of the Lombard bishops that he desired to open friendly relations with Pope Pius VII., who was then about to make his entry into Rome. There he received the protection of the First Consul, 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]