Napoleon: a life

20 Consolidation

ON 19 FEBRUARY 1800 the consuls transferred from the Luxembourg to the Tuileries. The move was dictated by the need to make room for the Senate at the Luxembourg and by the fact that the former royal palace was more centrally situated and easier to defend against mob violence. According to Cambacérès, Bonaparte was also concerned that if a use were not found for it, the building would fall into ruin. On inspecting the palace before the move he was disgusted to see revolutionary graffiti scrawled on the panelling.^[1]

On the day, in fine spring weather, the three consuls left the Luxembourg in some pomp in a coach drawn by six white horses, with Roustam resplendent in his Mameluke gear riding alongside. They were preceded by the ministers, who had to make do with ordinary Paris cabs, their numbers papered and painted over for the occasion, and by a detachment of Bonaparte’s Guides. Behind the carriage came the cavalry of the new Consular Guard and an escort of other troops. The cortège was cheered by a small crowd of onlookers as it arrived before the palace. The consuls alighted, and while Cambacérès and Lebrun entered the palace, Bonaparte mounted a horse and inspected three demi-brigades which were drawn up on parade in front of the building. He then installed the Council of State in one of the galleries and formally received the city’s civil and military authorities.^[2]

With the ceremonial over, Bonaparte and Josephine settled into their new abode. She was uneasy, as the place brought to mind the fate of its last occupant, Marie-Antoinette. Her apartment, which she had redecorated in yellow silk and filled with mahogany furniture, was on the ground floor. The windows opened on to the Tuileries gardens, from which the palace was separated only by a narrow terrace and a few steps. As the gardens were open to the public she made little use of them, but Bonaparte often did when he felt the need for some exercise.^[3]

He took over a set of rooms above, linked to hers by a hidden staircase. He installed his study in a room with a single window overlooking the gardens which had been a queen’s bedroom, decorated in the reign of Louis XIV with a fresco of Minerva being crowned by Glory on the ceiling and landscapes on the walls. With time he would tailor the quarters to suit his working needs, but to begin with he accommodated himself as best he could, using a desk that had belonged to the last king and converting a small oratory into a bathroom.

His household consisted of ten men, including a librarian, a groom, a cook, and a valet, and a dozen or so lesser staff, all marshalled by Bourrienne. He was also constantly attended by Roustam, who slept in the next room. At the end of March, Bonaparte took over from Josephine the twenty-one-year-old Belgian Constant Wairy, who became his principal valet.^[4]

He usually rose at seven and had the newspapers and sometimes a novel read to him while he washed, had himself shaved (something he was slow to learn to do for himself), and dressed. He would then work with Bourrienne in his study, only leaving it to receive ministers or officials in an outer office. He usually ate lunch alone, seldom spending more than fifteen minutes over it and often less. He preferred simple dishes, although he had brought home from Egypt a taste for dates and enjoyed a ‘pilaff’. He only ever drank a single glass of wine, always Chambertin, usually watered down. He would follow this with strong coffee. He was sometimes joined by Josephine and often employed the time talking to people such as artists or writers he wished to see, who stood around as he lunched.

The other two consuls had been meant to take up their quarters in the palace too, but while Lebrun obliged, Cambacérès preferred to stay in his own house. The prospect of being able to keep his own table probably played a part, as no doubt did the freedom to take his pleasure without censure from the prudish Bonaparte, but so did his wise prescience that he might with time have to face the indignity of being asked to vacate the palace, as Lebrun would one day.

On the morning after he moved in, Bonaparte held the first meeting of the three consuls in the former royal palace. By coincidence, that same day its would-be occupant, Louis XVIII, wrote to him from his Warsaw exile proposing he assist him in recovering the throne. Bonaparte did not reply. Cambacérès believed that at this stage he had no clear idea of the future, beyond the reconstruction of France. ‘All the signs were that he wanted to be the master,’ he wrote. ‘Nothing suggested that the title of First Consul seemed insufficient to him.’ In conversation with Roederer, Bonaparte said he would retire if he felt the French people were ‘displeased’ with him. ‘As for me, I require little,’ he told him. ‘I have an income of 80 or 100,000 livres, a town house, one in the country: I do not need more.’ But, he added, so far they seemed satisfied with him. He was there to stay and made a point of showing it.^[5]

The next day the consuls held a reception for the diplomatic corps, headed by the ambassadors of the King of Spain and the Pope, then the various administrative bodies of the Republic. A former royal chamberlain was dug out of retirement, told to conduct the proceedings exactly as they had been under the last king, and handed a staff for the purpose. Bonaparte received the guests as head of state, after which they were offered coffee and hot chocolate before being conducted by Talleyrand to Josephine’s apartment to be presented to her and a gaggle of women who were already behaving as though they were in waiting. She had slipped into the role of royal consort as effortlessly as he had adopted the attitude of a head of state.

Gone was the threadbare ‘greenish’ tail-coat. He had designed a uniform for the consuls which was a clear break with the togas and plumes of the Directory. It consisted of a blue tail-coat buttoned up to the chin, with a standing collar and cuffs enhanced by gold embroidery, white breeches, and stockings, and a more sumptuous version in scarlet velvet for ceremonial occasions such as this. Gone too were the lanky strands of hair limply framing his sallow face, replaced by a closer crop á la Titus. He also began to take greater care over his toilette, insisting on frequent changes of linen and manicuring his hands, of which he was inordinately proud. He bathed frequently and doused himself in eau de cologne.

A couple of days after this first reception, Bonaparte asked the minister of finance to locate the crown jewels; not long afterward, visitors to the Tuileries noted that the first consul’s sword blazed with diamonds, its hilt topped by the famous Régent, the largest in the world. Stung by some amused comments, he felt it necessary to publish in Le Moniteur an article explaining that it was not merely a piece of jewellery but a symbol of the greatness of France.^[6]

Bonaparte’s new role meant he had to learn to behave. Until now, he had operated in a military environment with sallies into small-town politics and wartime diplomacy. He had never had to accommodate the niceties of convention or adapt to civil procedure and had not had the opportunity to develop normal social skills. He was tactless and had, according to one his ministers, all the grace of a badly-brought-up subaltern, using his fingers at table and getting up from it regardless of whether his companions had finished eating. His pronounced views, attitude, and character did not predispose him to begin a social apprenticeship at his age, and he suffered from one fundamental disadvantage in his relations with others, which Germaine de Staël perceptively identified as a total lack of the faculty of empathy.^[7]

He was kind by nature, quick to assist and reward. He found comfortable jobs and granted generous pensions to former colleagues, teachers, and servants, even to a guard who had shown sympathy during his incarceration after the fall of Robespierre. He was generous to the son of Marbeuf, promoted his former commander at Toulon Dugommier and looked after his family when he died, did the same for La Poype and du Teil, and even found the useless Carteaux a post with a generous pension. Whenever he encountered hardship or poverty, he disbursed lavishly. He could be sensitive, and there are countless verifiable acts of solicitude and kindness that testify to his genuinely wishing to make people happy.^[8]

He possessed considerable charm and only needed to smile for people to melt. He could be a delightful companion when he adopted an attitude of bonhomie. He was a good raconteur, and people loved listening to him speak on some subject that interested him, or tell his ghost stories, for which he would sometimes blow out the candles. He could grow passionate when discussing literature or, more rarely, his feelings. When he did, he was, according to Germaine de Staël, quite seductive, though the actress Ida Saint-Elme found ‘more brusquery than tenderness’ in his attempts to charm. Claire de Rémusat also found his gaiety ‘tasteless and immoderate’, and his manners often more suited to the barrack room than the drawing room. He was generally ill at ease with women, not knowing what to say and making gauche remarks about their dress or their looks, and allowing his lack of consideration for their sex to show. Only in the presence of Josephine was he less prickly.^[9]

He was most at his ease with children, soldiers, servants, and those close to him, in whom he took a personal interest, asking them about their health, their families, and their troubles. He would treat them with a joshing familiarity, teasing them, calling them scoundrels or nincompoops; whenever he saw his physician, Dr Jean-Nicolas Corvisart, he would ask him how many people he had killed that day. His way of showing affection was giving people a little slap on the cheek or pinching their nose or ear. He was curiously unconscious of causing pain, even when a hard pinch of the nose brought tears to the victim’s eyes, and since they regarded it as a mark of great favour, which it was, nobody objected. At the end of a stormy meeting in the course of which he roundly told off a minister about his handling of his brief, Bonaparte invited him to dine. The minister bowed, respectful but defiant, at which point he was seized by both ears, which he took as ‘the most intoxicating sign of favour for him who is honoured enough to receive it’. It was a gesture of familiarity that defused many an awkward situation. Yet real familiarity was something Bonaparte seemed to fear, and only a select few, such as Duroc and Lannes, ever got away with addressing him with the familiar tu.^[10]

He did lose his temper, but he was quick to calm down and forgive. He did on occasion lose control and break things or stamp on his hat. He once hit the interior minister Chaptal with a roll of papers and was known to use his riding crop, on one occasion striking a groom across the face for negligence which had led to a horse throwing him, for which he would make generous amends. Most of his rages were feigned, either to frighten people, to make an example of an officer in front of his men or a general in front of his peers, or just to test someone’s reactions. His principal interest on meeting a man was to assess whether he would be of use. He expected quick and precise answers, appreciated a snap retort if it was in order, but according to his chamberlain General Thiard, ‘his amour-propre was flattered if he noticed the signs of fear and confusion caused by his presence’. This is confirmed by Claire de Rémusat, who noted that in great as in small things, he applied the rule that ‘people only showed zeal if they were scared’. Chaptal’s assertion that ‘Nobody was at ease in his company except himself’ may sound harsh, but it is borne out by the testimony of others.^[11]

‘The fact is that for him human life was a game of chess,’ reflected Mathieu Molé, ‘and people, religion, morality, affections, interests were so many pawns or pieces which needed to be moved about and used as the occasion demanded.’ According to Molé, ‘he was quick to grasp an individual’s character, to seek out each person’s weak spot, and to address it with remarkable skill and perceptiveness’. This suggests, as does Bonaparte’s behaviour in general, that he was no more at ease in the company of others than they in his.^[12]

His new position aggravated the awkwardness, and his attempts to strike the right note as the head of government often went very wrong. As a token of thanks to Roederer, he decided to give him a jewelled snuffbox. On hearing of this through Talleyrand, Roederer felt offended, explaining that he would have gladly accepted a signed copy of a book on Bonaparte’s Egyptian campaign, but this smacked of the classic royal gesture of giving tips to faithful servants. ‘I have done nothing for Bonaparte,’ he wrote. ‘All I wanted was to help him do what he has done for us, I mean for all patriotic Frenchmen. It is for us to give him presents, and I have an oak-leaf ready.’^[13]

Equally gauche were his attempts to position his family in a manner he deemed appropriate. He saw it, and his close military entourage, as an extension of himself, and felt an urge to direct and control its members, both for practical reasons and in order to project a suitable image of himself. He liked to arrange the marriages not just of his family but of his military entourage too and often selected names for their children — usually from antiquity or from the poems of Ossian; Leclerc’s son was Dermide, Bernadotte’s Oscar, Murat’s Achille.

He ensured that Letizia was comfortably housed and gave her enough money to live and entertain like a grande dame, but her experience of penury had made her parsimonious and, not trusting to the permanence of her son’s good fortune, she squirrelled away for a rainy day every penny he gave her, some of it in foreign banks.

Joseph continued to play a role in politics, and although he was generally supportive, he affected a degree of independence. He created his own court at Mortefontaine with literary figures and members of the old aristocracy. His wife, Julie, was charming and docile, universally loved for her kindness and amiability and endlessly tolerant of Joseph’s infidelities.

Élisa, the least good-looking of the siblings but possibly the brightest, had moved to Paris and installed herself as hostess to the widowed Lucien, while her husband, Bacciochi, remained at his provincial military post. She held a salon with a literary flavour in which her lover, the poet Fontanes, held sway. Although she was admired by the writer René de Chateaubriand, whom she helped bring back to France and into favour with her brother, her salon was dull.

Despite having played a crucial role in bringing his brother to power, Lucien’s attitude to him remained ambivalent. He made it clear that he regarded Joseph as the head of the family and disapproved of what he saw as Bonaparte’s usurpation of that role. He was proving an able and suitably unscrupulous minister of the interior, but being a widower he felt at liberty to pursue women and abused his position to have his way.

Caroline had married Murat, in a civil ceremony at the Luxembourg in January, followed by a pseudo-religious one in a temple at Mortefontaine. Bonaparte had opposed the match. While he appreciated his military dash and his devotion, he considered the Gascon innkeeper’s son, with his picaresque past, too coarse and low-born. ‘I do not like these silly little love marriages,’ he commented, speculating that one day she might be in a position to marry a monarch. But Caroline was headstrong and he could not afford to make an enemy of Murat. Paulette was also wayward, and Bonaparte felt obliged to lecture her on her marital duties to her husband. Louis, whom he loved most of all his brothers, he had the highest hopes for.^[14]

Josephine was both his greatest asset and his greatest liability. She had all the necessary grace and polish to hold court, as well as the charm to win people over and soothe anger or hurt. She was, if anything, too kind and approachable, and she lent a sympathetic ear to a stream of petitioners begging her to press their case for favour or redress. Bonaparte expressed his annoyance but found it difficult to resist her pleas, which only encouraged others to join the queue. More of an irritant to him were the jewellers, dressmakers, hatters, glove-makers, cobblers, and other tradesmen who swarmed on her, indulging her insatiable appetite for luxury of every kind. This was an uncontrollable urge, possibly a disorder brought on by her experiences during the Terror, and the tradesmen knew it. However much he raged, often having them ejected physically and in one case having a dressmaker thrown in prison for twenty-four hours, they crept back when he was away or occupied with work.

One of her fancies that he shared was the house at La Malmaison, which she had bought while he was in Egypt. They drove down there at every opportunity, as she loved the privacy and he the fresh air. In November 1799, shortly after the coup, she brought the architect Pierre Fontaine to see it; he agreed the site was delightful and the gardens pleasant, but thought the house a mess. He started work on it in January 1800. He had to work around their visits so as not to interfere with their leisure, and he put up with criticism of his work and frequent changes of plan from Bonaparte. When he was first presented to Bonaparte on 31 December, Fontaine heard of his plans for Paris and was commissioned to embellish the Invalides, where Bonaparte intended to have the horses of St Mark’s installed along with a statue of Mars brought from Rome. He was bombarded with new ideas and projects faster than he could work on them, and he found Bonaparte’s impatience as well as his attention to detail and continual questioning of costs exhausting as well as irritating.^[15]

Fontaine was not the only one to feel the strain of the first consul’s manic urge to get as much done as quickly as possible. Berthier was pressed to purge the army of inefficient or politically suspect officers, improve conditions for the troops, see to it that they were paid and fed, organise the supply of uniforms and equipment, improve discipline, and stem the endemic desertion. Every minister was similarly harassed. Nor did Bonaparte spare himself. ‘There were no fixed hours for his meals or his sleep,’ recalled Chaptal. ‘I saw him dine at five o’clock and at eleven. I saw him go to bed at eight o’clock in the evening and at four or five in the morning.’ He generally slept about seven hours out of twenty-four, but often in three short bursts. His only means of relaxation was either violent exercise such as riding, when he would gallop furiously, or a hot bath, in which he might spend up to an hour.^[16]

Between going to the theatre and the opera, attending sessions of the Institute, and inspecting troops, Bonaparte found the time to supervise such matters as the standardisation of the metre throughout French territory, appoint David as ‘painter of the government’, and give instructions concerning the next year’s salon. He absorbed information rapidly, stripping it down to essential facts, and made snap decisions after a moment’s reflection — usually the right ones. His secretaries could hardly keep up with him as he dictated, racing ahead as though he were talking to someone in the room, never pausing and intolerant of being asked to repeat anything. He treated his secretary ‘like a machine, to which one does not speak’, as one of them put it. He would become animated as he spoke, pacing up and down his study, either bent forward with his hands in his pockets or swaggering with his hands behind his back, his right shoulder occasionally jerking upward in a nervous tic, developing his train of thought as he went. Not the least of the difficulties was his propensity for malapropism, substituting ‘amnesty’ for ‘armistice’, ‘convention’ for ‘constitution’, ‘session’ for ‘section’, the Elbe for the Ebro, Smolensk for Salamanca, and so on. But since his writing was almost indecipherable, they nevertheless preferred to take dictation rather than copy his notes. They never stopped him to clarify a point, as his features would set in ‘an attitude of imposing severity’ when he was at work, and it was only when he stopped that he would smile ‘with great warmth’, as one of his secretaries recalled. ‘He rarely laughed, and when he did, it was in a great burst, usually to show irony rather than great joy.’^[17]

His contacts with others, whatever their station and whatever their relationship, were bedevilled by a mass of insecurities, social, intellectual, physical, and sexual. ‘There was no kind of merit or distinction of which he was not jealous,’ according to Mathieu Molé. ‘He aspired to strength, grace, beauty, to the gift of being able to please women, and what is most curious is that his pride was so successful in containing his vanity, his real superiority in covering up his pettiness, that with so many opportunities to appear ridiculous he never did.’ His insecurities were, however, reflected in the way life was lived in the Tuileries.^[18]

Bonaparte felt it should be conducted according to a strict etiquette in order to add dignity to his person and office and, as he later put it, to stop people slapping him on the back — though there is no record of anyone ever having dared to do so even when he was a mere cadet. His close friend and aide since the Italian campaign, General Duroc, was put in charge of arrangements in the palace, and liveried footmen soon joined officers in uniform. Old courtiers were sought out, along with documents describing procedures at the court of Louis XVI, and quizzed about details of life at Versailles under the ancien régime. Madame Campan, former lady of the bedchamber to Marie-Antoinette, was consulted. Josephine acquired a series of noble ladies as companions. At the same time, the first consul clung to his familiar habits, walking into Josephine’s dressing room to tell her what to wear. They shared the same bedroom and lived, as he put it, ‘in a very bourgeois way’.^[19]

He was aware how much the coterie of men of business and women of slight virtue that had gathered around Barras and other Directors had tarnished the image of the government, and he wanted that of the consular administration to remain untainted. This accorded with his personal dislike of what he saw as profiteers and his prudish morality and led to his banning Thérèse Tallien and other friends of Josephine’s whom he regarded as morally sullied; he took a high tone when it came to any amorous activity, other than his own, and made plain his disapproval of revealing female dress.

The result was a stuffy parody of a court, which only Bonaparte seemed satisfied with as he strutted about making awkward conversation with the ladies or holding forth on some subject. Those of his entourage who had spent the past years on campaign found it difficult to comply with the imposed rules of behaviour and had to be called to order; Junot had an unfortunate habit of attracting a lady’s attention by slapping her on the thigh. Bonaparte himself disregarded etiquette when it suited him and would on occasion escape the constraints of the Tuileries. He would put on an old overcoat, pull a scruffy hat over his face, and walk the streets of an evening with Bourrienne to observe, and sometimes to engage people in conversation to find out what they thought of his regime.^[20]

In their retreats in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, the old aristocracy made fun of the parvenu court, which did lend itself to mockery; as the need to underline revolutionary credentials receded, old forms of dress revived, but lack of savoir-faire produced a mixture of fashions described by one as ‘a real masquerade’. Republicans were no less scathing, and when in Josephine’s drawing room people began addressing each other as ‘Madame’ rather than Citoyenne, they voiced their horror and predicted the worst.^[21]

A routine was established, with two receptions a month for the diplomatic corps, one every second day of the décade for senators and generals, on the fourth for the members of the Legislative Body, and on the sixth for those of the Tribunate and the top judiciary. Once a décade there was a parade at which Bonaparte would review troops, dressed in his blue consular uniform, wearing boots rather than stockings and pumps. These parades became a popular spectacle for Parisians and tourists alike. For the first consul they were an opportunity to demonstrate the power and discipline of the new state, and his own. They also provided an opportunity for units which had not served under him to see Paris and their new master.

Though vanity undoubtedly played a part, these rituals were inspired principally by the need to create the institutions and framework which Bonaparte believed to be essential props of the nascent French polity. They were all of a piece with everything else he was doing, which he famously described as laying down blocks of granite on which the state would rest.

He was not insensible to the fact that the authoritative government and strong hand required to put France back together were in conflict with the ideals of the Revolution, most of which were his own. That it had degenerated into a series of murderous convulsions he ascribed to a lack of discipline and the pursuit of consensus through discussion, which ultimately led to the rule of the mob. The tensions between liberty and effective government had been one of the principal preoccupations of eighteenth-century thinkers; in the first sentence of Du Contrat Social, a seminal Enlightenment text, Rousseau sought a formula that could tailor good legislation to the imperfections of man. ‘In this quest I shall everywhere try to reconcile what the law permits with what is required by the common good, in such a manner that justice and utility should not conflict,’ he wrote, recognising that laws too rigid to adapt to developing events can prove pernicious in certain situations, even leading to the downfall of states.^[22]

The Revolution, Bonaparte believed, had shown the way and then got lost. ‘We have finished the novel of the Revolution,’ he told the Council of State. ‘We now have to write its history, to pick out only those of its principles which are real and possible to apply, and not those which are speculative and hypothetical. To follow a different course today would be to philosophise, not to govern.’^[23]

Rousseau defined the man who usurps royal authority as a tyrant and the one who usurps the sovereignty of the people as a despot. ‘The tyrant will break the law in order to take power and govern according to the law; the despot places himself above the law itself,’ he explained. ‘Thus a tyrant may not be a despot, but the despot is always a tyrant.’ France needed a tyrant, and Bonaparte fitted Rousseau’s definition, but he did not at this stage aspire to the role of despot. ‘My policy is to govern people as the majority wishes to be governed,’ he would explain to Roederer a couple of months later. ‘That is, I believe, the best way to acknowledge the sovereignty of the people.’^[24]

He had gone to great lengths to allow a voice and a forum to everyone who was not opposed to the state as it was constituted. The credibility of the four constitutional bodies was grounded in his non-partisan appointments, which gave many who were ill-disposed to him a platform on which to air their views. As the various bodies met in different places — the Legislative at the Palais-Bourbon, the Tribunes at the Palais-Royal, the Senate at the Luxembourg, and the Council of State at the Tuileries — they were not in a position to form a nexus of resistance. And there were few prepared to stand in his way, if only out of fear. The prominent liberal Benjamin Constant had invited a number of friends to dinner at his house on 6 January 1800, but the previous day he had criticised one of Bonaparte’s projects in the Tribunate, and in consequence only two turned up — and they only because he had bumped into them that afternoon, which left them no excuse. Such self-control provided no guarantee, and Bonaparte realised the necessity of building state structures of requisite strength and stabilising the political, economic, and social situation to the point at which the benefits of the status quo would outweigh any desire for change. A key element in this was local administration.^[25]

A law of 17 February 1800 fixed the administrative structure of the country (which survives almost unchanged to this day). It was based on a project devised by Sieyès at the beginning of the Revolution in 1789, and its guiding principle was centralisation, with every department run by a single prefect. ‘Discussion is the function of many, execution is that of one man,’ was how he had introduced it. As with many of Sieyès’s projects, it was theoretically sound but wanting in practice, and the new structure put in place by Bonaparte, Daunou, Roederer, and Chaptal was more effective. The administration of the country was divided up into ninety-eight departments, each with a prefect exercising full authority, assisted by a sub-prefect and a General Council (Conseil général). A department consisted of a number of districts (arrondissements), which grouped together the communes, run by a mayor and a municipal council. The new law abolished the election of prefects, sub-prefects, and mayors, who were henceforth to be nominated by the first consul. In the interests of stability, most incumbents were maintained, but as they now held their office by the grace of the first consul, he acquired a control throughout the provinces which the monarch under the ancien régime could only have dreamed of.^[26]

Lying in the department of the Seine, Paris was granted special status, with twelve mayors overseeing the arrondissements, but the city’s real mayor was the prefect of the Seine — an autonomous mayor of Paris would have been a potential focus for political opposition. Fear of the city’s populace made Bonaparte act fast; barely a week after the coup d’état, some 70 percent of the municipal authorities had been sacked, with those of lower-class origins replaced by men of property, mostly shopkeepers, who were admonished to act in such a way as to ‘extinguish all hatreds’.^[27]

A month later, on 18 March, a new system of justice came into being, with 400 local courts, a high court (cour de première instance) for every department, and twenty-nine courts of appeal, all overseen by the highest court in the land, the Tribunal de Cassation. Before any case came to court, it was brought before one of 3,000 justices of the peace. The prestige of the law was enhanced by regulations which created a new class of magistrates who were given the robes and titles which had applied before the Revolution. This class, along with the wealthier and more active citizens in every locality, constituted what were termed as ‘notables’, a social grouping described by Thibaudeau as ‘a kind of aristocracy destined exclusively for public office’. They would become the backbone of the new French state.^[28]

As important as any political or administrative measures were those Bonaparte undertook to stabilise the economic and financial situation. The French state had been struggling to avoid bankruptcy for most of the eighteenth century, and the crisis of the late 1780s had led to the outbreak of the Revolution. The ensuing chaos and wars had wrought yet more havoc with the economy. Consecutive revolutionary governments had issued vast quantities of assignats, paper money backed by the supposed value of the confiscated biens nationaux. More and more notes were printed, precipitating a headlong fall in their value, leading to a monetary crisis which by 1793 had become endemic. The introduction of the silver franc in 1795 only served to underline the worthlessness of the paper currency (the printing costs of which exceeded its value), and in February 1796 the Directory attempted to halt the slide by holding a ceremonial smashing of the plates, hoping to convince people that no more would be printed. But in March it issued a new form of paper currency — which lost 80 percent of its value in the space of a month and had to be withdrawn within less than a year. It then resorted to a sleight of hand that made two-thirds of all paper currency valueless.^[29]

The Directory just about managed to survive on the proceeds of successful wars which brought millions in specie as ‘contributions’ and straight looting from Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and western Germany. But the majority of the people suffered. While the rural population could feed itself it could not sell its produce at a reasonable price, and the knock-on effect on manufacturing led to stagnation. The only sector which thrived was that of supplying the armies, and fortunes were made by unscrupulous entrepreneurs (members of the Bonaparte clan among them) who were paid in specie by the government, bought victuals and goods at knockdown prices, and often did not even pass them on to the troops but sold them to locals in occupied territories. The situation began to improve in the last year of the Directory, but this went largely unnoticed. In time, Bonaparte would take the credit, but when he took power the situation was dire. The coffers of the treasury contained no more than 167,000 francs. Expected receipts were 470 million, to cover a budget of 600 million and service a debt of 500 million.

Financial milieus, badly battered by the Directory’s attempts to deal with the liquidity crisis, were ready to pin their hopes on any government that looked as though it might provide fiscal stability. Cambacérès’s prestige stood high in these circles, and they were prepared to follow his lead. Shortly after the coup, on 24 November, Bonaparte received five leading financiers whom he assured that his government would respect private property, defend the social order, and provide stability. He then withdrew, leaving the finance minister Gaudin to ask them for a loan, which they readily subscribed.^[30]

Gaudin instituted a lottery, sold off government property, and imposed a levy on the Sister Republics. He persuaded Bonaparte to introduce a range of indirect taxes, including duties on tobacco, alcohol, and salt — the very taxes which had done so much to provoke the Revolution and been repealed in 1789. In order to provide a new mechanism for raising credit for the government, on 13 February he established the Banque de France. Gaudin’s work on enforcing the payment of arrears and bringing in efficient methods of collecting taxes gradually began to pay off.

Bonaparte had already gone a long way to destroy, disable, or disarm the political malcontents on both the right and the left. Their capability had been eroded by the general mood of contentment. He had managed to win over many without necessarily fulfilling their hopes or expectations. Hyde de Neuville admitted that the advent of the new regime had induced ‘a sense of relief and acceptance’, and that ‘the desire for order and stability was so universal that people were delighted to find themselves taken in hand by one capable of re-establishing them’.^[31]

‘The favourable opinion of the talents and principles of the First Consul grows daily, and that opinion, along with his authority, is really held by the people,’ reported the Prussian minister on 2 January. ‘It is difficult to imagine in what a state of relief and happiness France soon found itself,’ recorded the young Amable de Barante. ‘After ten years of anarchy, of civil wars, of bloody discord, after the fall of an ignoble tyranny, we saw public order re-establish itself as though by miracle.’ He did note that some far-sighted people were alarmed that these benefits all stemmed from the absolute power of one man, but the price seemed worth paying.^[32]