World's Best Histories — Volume 7: France

by François Guizot; Madame de Witt

Justice and right possess lights of which the cleverest framers of human politics are at times ignorant. The Emperor Napoleon descended several steps towards his fall when he abused his power as regards Pope Pius VII., and used odious means to dethrone the feeble and ignorant princes who were ruling over Spain. Very slippery are the roads of universal power; in the steps of its master, France was rushing to disaster.

CHAPTER X.

THE HOME GOVERNMENT (1804-1808).

For more than twenty years the history of France was the history of Europe; for more than fifteen years the history of Napoleon was the history of France, but a history cruelly bloody and agitated, often adorned with so much glory and splendor, that the country might, and in fact did, indulge itself in long and fatal illusions which drew down bitter sufferings. All this life of our country, however, was not dissipated afar off in the train of its victorious armies, or its arrogant ambassadors; if old France was sometimes astonished to find herself so much increased that she ran the risk of becoming one of the provinces of the Empire, she always remained the centre, and her haughty master did not forget her. Carried beyond her territory by the wild instinct of ambition, he did not renounce the home government of his first and most famous conquest. Seconded by several capable and modest men to whom he transmitted peremptory orders, often modified by them in the execution, Napoleon founded again the French administration, formerly powerful in the hands of the great minister of Louis XIV., but destroyed and overthrown by the shocks of the Revolution. He established institutions, he raised monuments which have remained while all the dazzling trophies of his arms have disappeared, while all his conquests have been torn from us, after worn out France, bruised and bleeding, found herself smaller than at the end of the evil days of the French Revolution.

"Scarcely invested with a sovereignty, new both to France and to himself," said Count Mollien in his memoirs, "Napoleon imposed upon himself the task of ascertaining all the revenues and expenses of the state. He had acquired patience for the details from the fact that, in his campaigns, he depended entirely upon himself for the care of securing food, clothing and pay of his armies." On the eve of Austerlitz, after immense efforts made by the government as well as the public, to re-establish order and activity in a country so long agitated and weakened by incessant shocks, the measure of new enterprises had been exceeded; embarrassments extended from public to private fortunes, all the symptoms of a serious and impending crisis were already shown. Napoleon did not hide this from himself, but he saw and sought for no other remedy than victory. Passing before Mollien, when going to theatre, he said to him, "The finances are in a bad way, the Bank is embarrassed. I cannot put these matters right." For a long time the fortune as well as the repose of France was to depend upon the ever doubtful chances of victory; long she submitted to it with a constancy without example. The day came when victory was not sufficient for our country, she had not strength enough to support the price of her glory. The Emperor Napoleon was deceived in seeking the sources of public prosperity in conquest; the blood which flows in the veins of a nation is not restored as soon as another nation, humiliated and vanquished, shall in its turn give up drop by drop its blood, its children, and its treasures. Society is exhausted unless war contributions and exactions definitively fill the coffers of the victor. The long hostilities of Europe, and our alternate successes and reverses, have sufficiently taught us this hard lesson. Victor or vanquished, France has never completely crushed her enemies, she has never been crushed by them. All have suffered, all still suffer from this outrage on the welfare of society, which is called a war of conquest. In the beginning of his supreme power, Napoleon thought to find in victory an inexhaustible source of riches. "It was the ideas of the ancients which Napoleon applied to the right of conquest," said Mollien.

He learnt even on the morrow of the battle of Austerlitz that victory is not sufficient for the repose and prosperity of a state; the expenses necessitated by the preparations for war, the enormous sums which the treasury had had to pay, the general crisis in the commercial world had induced the minister of the treasury, Barbé Marbois, to have recourse to hazardous enterprises entrusted to unsafe hands. "You are a very honest man," the emperor wrote [Footnote: The "Négociants réunis.">[ to his minister, "but I cannot help believing that you are surrounded by rogues." Six weeks after the battle of Austerlitz, on the 26th January, 1806, Napoleon arrived at Paris in the night and summoned a council of finance for the following morning. The emperor scarcely permitted a few words to be addressed to him on a campaign so promptly and gloriously terminated. "We have," he said, "questions to deal with which are more serious; it appears that the greatest dangers of the state are not in Austria; listen to the report of the minister of the treasury."

"Barbé Marbois commenced the report with the calm of a conscience which has nothing to reproach itself," adds M. Mollien. He soon showed how the receipts, constantly inferior to the indispensable expenses, had obliged the treasury to borrow, first from the receivers-general, then from a new company of speculators at the head of whom was M. Ouvrard, a man of ability, but of doubtful reputation; the brokers as they were called, had in their turn engaged the state in perilous affairs with Spain, and the commissions upon the receivers-general, which had been conceded to them, enormously surpassed their advances. "The State is the sole creditor of the company," Marbois said at last. The emperor got in a passion. His prompt and penetrating mind, always ready to distrust, discovered by instinct, and without penetrating into details, the fraud to which his minister was blind. He called before him the brokers, the principal clerks at the treasury, and confounding them all by the bursts of his anger, he forgot at the same time the respect he owed to the age and character of Marbois, who was suddenly dismissed, and immediately replaced by Mollien.

"I had no need to listen to the entire report to guess that the brokers had converted to their own use more than sixty millions," said Napoleon to his new minister; "the money must be recovered."

The debts of the brokers to the public treasury were still more considerable: Mollien had to find the proof and ward off in a great measure the dangers resulting to the treasury from this fatal association with a company of speculators.

Two years later the emperor placed Barbé Marbois at the head of the Court of Accounts which he had just founded. He did not admit the want of repose or a wish for retirement. For a moment Mollien had hesitated to accept the post imposed upon him by his master. He was director of the caisse d'amortissement (bank for redemption of rents), and was satisfied with his place. "You cannot refuse a ministry," said the emperor, suddenly, "this evening you will take the oath." Count Mollien introduced important improvements into the management of the finances. The foundation of the bank of service, in current account with the receivers-general, book- keeping by double entry, formerly brought into France by Law, but which had not been established at the treasury, the publication of annual balance sheets, such were the improvements accomplished at that time by the minister of the treasury.