The Concordat placed the three chief Christian confessions and the Jewish religion in the same position; they were all under state protection and their clergy were all dependent on the state for their incomes. Napoleon evidently overestimated the power which this gave him over the Catholic church, the only one of any importance in France. It soon opposed him, upon which he used violence, actually carrying off the Pope and keeping him prisoner. He himself set his Concordat at naught.
But its sound political and tactical basis enabled it to survive both this breach and its projector's fall.
The very important part which Bonaparte's personal ambition must have played in the evolution of the Concordat need only be suggested. With the authority of the church had been overthrown the authority of the monarchy. What was required was the restoration of the principle of authority. All the ceremonial of the old monarchy returned of its own accord at the moment when religion again became a power in the state. The revivification of the idea of authority which the Revolution misunderstood and scorned has been described as Napoleon's greatest and most arduous achievement.[4] It has been said with truth that no one ever developed the instinct and the gift of ruling as naturally and as boldly as he. But from the moment when, no longer content with being a power in virtue of his genius and of the new social order, he attempted to restore autocratic monarchy, what he relied on was not that idea of authority which amalgamates with the idea of right, and is an expression of the reasonableness of things, but the idea of authority which influences by dazzling and which is accepted blindly. And from that moment the alliance with the church was a necessity. When, in 1808, Wieland asked the Emperor why he had not adapted the religion he had reintroduced somewhat more to the spirit of the times, Napoleon laughed and replied: "Yes, my dear Wieland! It is certainly not a religion intended for philosophers. The philosophers believe neither in me nor my religion; and for the people who do believe one cannot do miracles enough or allow them to retain too many." It would hardly be possible to assert more plainly that authority is a dazzling, deluding power. On other occasions Napoleon employed the word which became the intellectual catchword of the following period--he described religion as _order_. Johannes Müller writes to his brother in 1806: "The Emperor spoke of what lay at the foundation of all religions, and of their necessity, and said that men required to be kept in order."