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$Title{Life Of Napoleon Bonaparte And Life Of Josephine
Chapter VII}
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$Author{Tarbell, Ida M.}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{napoleon
france
works
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millions
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government
taxes}
$Date{1906}
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Title:       Life Of Napoleon Bonaparte And Life Of Josephine
Book:        Life Of Napoleon Bonaparte
Author:      Tarbell, Ida M.
Date:        1906

Chapter VII

Napoleon As Statesman And Lawgiver - Finances - Industries - Public Works

     "Now we must rebuild, and, moreover, we must rebuild solidly," said
Napoleon to his brother Lucien the day after the coup d'etat which had
overthrown the Directory and made him the temporary Dictator of France.

     The first necessity was a new constitution.  In ten years three
constitutions had been framed and adopted, and now the third had, like its
predecessors, been declared worthless.  At Napoleon's side was a man who had
the draft of a constitution ready in his pocket.  It had been promised him
that, if he would aid in the 18th Brumaire, this instrument should be adopted.
This man was the Abbe Sieyes.  He had been a prominent member of the
Constituent Assembly, but, curiously enough, his fame there had been founded
more on his silence and the air of mystery in which he enveloped himself than
on anything he had done.  The superstitious veneration which he had won, saved
him even during the Terror, and he was accustomed to say laconically, when
asked what he did in that period.  "I lived."

     It was he who, when Napoleon was still in Egypt, had seen the necessity
of a military dictatorship, and had urged the Directory to order Napoleon home
to help him reorganize the government - an order which was never received.

     Soon after the 18th Brumaire.  Sieyes presented his constitution.  No
more bungling and bizarre instrument for conducting the affairs of a nation
was ever devised.  Warned by the experience of the past ten years, he
abandoned the ideas of 1789, and declared that the power must come from above,
the confidence from below.  His system of voting took the suffrage from the
people; his legislative body was composed of three sections, each of which was
practically powerless.  All the force of the government was centered in a
senate of aged men.  The Grand Elector, as the figurehead which crowned the
edifice was called, did nothing but live at Versailles and draw a princely
salary.

     Napoleon saw at once the weak points of the structure, but he saw how it
could be re-arranged to serve a dictator.  He demanded that the Senate be
stripped of its power, and that the Grand Elector be replaced by a First
Consul, to whom the executive force should be confided.  Sieyes consented, and
Napoleon was named First Consul.

     The whole machinery of the government was now centered in one man. "The
state, it was I," said Napoleon at St. Helena.  The new constitution was
founded on principles the very opposite of those for which the Revolution had
been made, but it was the only hope there was of dragging France from the
slough of anarchy and despair into which she had fallen.

     Napoleon undertook the work of reconstruction which awaited him, with
courage, energy, and amazing audacity.  He was forced to deal at once with all
departments of the nation's life - with the finances, the industries, the
emigres, the Church, public education, the codification of the laws.

     The first question was one of money.  The country was literally bankrupt
in 1799.  The treasury was empty, and the government practised all sorts of
makeshifts to get money to pay those bills which could not be put off.  One
day, having to send out a special courier, it was obliged to give him the
receipts of the opera to pay his expenses.  And, again, it was in such a tight
pinch that it was on the point of sending the gold coin in the Cabinet of
Medals to the mint to be melted.  Loans could not be negotiated; government
paper was worthless; stocks were down to the lowest.  One of the worst
features of the situation was the condition of the taxes.  The assessments
were as arbitrary as before the Revolution, and they were collected with
greater difficulty.

     To select an honest, capable, and well-known financier was Napoleon's
first act.  The choice he made was wise - a Monsieur Gaudin, afterward the
Duke de Gaete, a quiet man, who had the confidence of the people.  Under his
management credit was restored, the government was able to make the loans
necessary, and the department of finance was reorganized in a thorough
fashion.  Napoleon's gratitude to Monsieur Gaudin was lasting. Once when asked
to change him for a more brilliant man, he said:

     "I fully acknowledge all your protege is worth; but it might easily
happen that, with all his intelligence, he would give me nothing but fresh
water, whilst with my good Gaudin I can always rely on having good crown
pieces."

     The famous Bank of France dates from this time.  It was founded under
Napoleon's personal direction, and he never ceased to watch over it jealously.

     Most important of all the financial measures was the reorganization of
the system of taxation.  The First Consul insisted that the taxes must meet
the whole expense of the nation, save war, which must pay for itself; and he
so ordered affairs that never, after his administration was fairly begun, was
a deficit known or a loan made.  This was done, too, without the people
feeling the burden of taxation.  Indeed, that burden was so much lighter under
his administration that it had been under the old regime, that peasant and
workman, in most cases, probably did not know they were being taxed.

     "Before 1789," says Taine, "out of one hundred francs of net revenue, the
workman gave fourteen to his seignor, fourteen to the clergy, fifty- three to
the state, and kept only eighteen or nineteen for himself.  Since 1800, from
one hundred francs income he pays nothing to the seignor or the Church, and he
pays to the state, the department, and the commune but twenty-one francs,
leaving seventy-nine in his pocket." And such was the method and care with
which this system was administered, that the state received more than twice as
much as it had before.  The enormous sums which the police and tax-collectors
had appropriated now went to the state.  Here is but one example of numbers
which show how minutely Napoleon guarded this part of the finances.  It is
found in a letter to Fouche, the chief of police:

          "What happens at Bordeaux happens at Turin, at Spa, at Marseilles,
     etc.  The police commissioners derive immense profits from the
     gaming-tables.  My intention is that the towns shall reap the benefit
     of the tables.  I shall employ the two hundred thousand francs paid by
     the tables of Bordeaux in building a bridge or a canal. . . ."

     A great improvement was that the taxes became fixed and regular. Napoleon
wished that each man should know what he had to pay out each year.  "True
civil liberty depends on the safety of property," he told his Council of
State.  "There is none in a country where the rate of taxation is changed
every year.  A man who has three thousand francs income does not know how much
he will have to live on the next year.  His whole substance may be swallowed
up by the taxes."

     Nearly the whole revenue came from indirect taxes applied to a great
number of articles.  In case of a war which did not pay its way, Napoleon
proposed to raise each of these a few centimes.  The nation would surely
prefer this, to paying it to the Russians or Austrians.  When possible the
taxes were reduced.  "Better leave the money in the hands of the citizens than
lock it up in a cellar, as they do in Prussia."

     He was cautious that extra taxes should not come on the very poor, if it
could be avoided.  A suggestion to charge the vegetable and fish sellers for
their stalls came before him.  "The public square, like water, ought to be
free.  It is quite enough that we tax salt and wine. . . . It would become the
city of Paris much more to think of restoring the corn market."

     An important part of his financial policy was the rigid economy which was
insisted on in all departments.  If a thing was bought, it must be worth what
was paid for it.  If a man held a position, he must do its duties.  Neither
purchases nor positions could be made unless reasonable and useful.  This was
in direct opposition to the old regime, of which waste, idleness, and
parasites were the chief characteristics.  The saving in expenditure was
almost incredible.  A trip to Fontainebleau, which cost Louis XVI. four
hundred thousand dollars, Napoleon would make, in no less state, for thirty
thousand dollars.

     The expenses of the civil household, which amounted to five million
dollars under the old regime, were now cut down to six hundred thousand
dollars, though the elegance was no less.

     A master who gave such strict attention to the prosperity of his kingdom
would not, of course, overlook its industries.  In fact, they were one of
Napoleon's chief cares.  His policy was one of protection.  He would have
France make everything she wanted, and sell to her neighbors, but never buy
from them.  To simulate the manufactories, which in 1799 were as nearly
bankrupt as the public treasury, he visited the factories himself to learn
their needs.  He gave liberal orders, and urged, even commanded, his
associates to do the same.  At one time, anxious to aid the batiste factories
of Flanders, he tried to force Josephine to give up cotton goods and to set
the fashion in favor of the batistes; but she made such an outcry that he was
obliged to abandon the idea.  For the same reason he wrote to his sister
Eliza: "I beg that you will allow your court to wear nothing but silks and
cambrics, and that you will exclude all cottons and muslins, in order to favor
French industry."

     Frequently he would take goods on consignment, to help a struggling
factory.  Rather than allow a manufactory to be idle, he would advance a large
sum of money, and a quantity of its products would be put under government
control.  After the battle of Eylau, Napoleon sent one million six hundred
thousand francs to Paris, to be used in this way.

     To introduce cotton-making into the country was one of his chief
industrial ambitions.  At the beginning of the century it was printed in all
the factories of France, but nothing more.  He proposed to the Council of
State to prohibit the importation of cotton thread and the woven goods. There
was a strong opposition, but he carried his point.

     "As a result," said Napoleon to Las Cases complacently, "we possess the
three branches, to the immense advantage of our population and to the
detriment and sorrow of the English; which proves that, in administration as
in war, one must exercise character. . . . I occupied myself no less in
encouraging silks.  As Emperor, and King of Italy, I counted one hundred and
twenty millions of income from the silk harvest."

     In a similar way he encouraged agriculture; especially was he anxious
that France should raise all her own articles of diet.  He had Berthollet look
into maple and turnip sugar, and he did at last succeed in persuading the
people to use beet sugar; though he never convinced them that Swiss tea
equalled Chinese, or that chicory was as good as coffee.

     The works he insisted should be carried on in regard to roads and public
buildings were of great importance.  There was need that something be done.

          "It is impossible to conceive, if one had not been a witness of it
     before and after the 18th Brumaire [said the chancellor Pasquier], of the
     widespread ruin wrought by the Revolution. . . .  There were hardly two or
     three main roads [in France] in a fit condition for traffic; not a single
     one was there, perhaps, wherein was not found some obstacle that could not
     be surmounted without peril.  With regard to the ways of internal
     communication, they had been indefinitely suspended.  The navigation of
     rivers and canals was no longer feasible.

          "In all directions, public buildings, and those monuments which
     represent the splendor of the state, were falling into decay.  It must
     fain be admitted that if the work of destruction had been prodigious, that
     of restoration was no less so.  Everything was taken hold of at one and
     the same time, and everything progressed with a like rapidity.  Not only
     was it resolved to restore all that required restoring in various parts of
     the country, in all parts of the public service, but new, grand, beautiful
     and useful works were decided upon, and many were brought to a happy
     termination.  This certainly constitutes one of the most brilliant sides
     of the consular and imperial regime."

     In Paris alone vast improvements were made.  Napoleon began the Rue de
Rivoli, built the wing connecting the Tuileries and the Louvre, erected the
triumphal arch of the Carrousel, the Arc de Triomphe at the head of the Champs
Elysees, the Column Vendome, the Madeleine, began the Bourse, built the Pont
d'Austerlitz, and ordered, commenced, or finished, a number of minor works of
great importance to the city.  The markets interested him particularly.  "Give
all possible care to the construction of the markets and to their
healthfulness, and to the beauty of the Halle-aux- bles and of the
Halle-aux-vins.  The people, too, must have their Louvre."

     The works undertaken outside of Paris in France, and in the countries
under her rule in the time that Napoleon was in power were of a variety and
extent which would be incredible, if every traveller in Europe did not have
the evidence of them still before his eyes.  The mere enumeration of these
works and of the industrial achievements of Napoleon, made by Las Cases, reads
like a fairy story.  "You wish to know the treasures of Napoleon?  They are
immense, it is true, but they are all exposed to light.  They are the noble
harbors of Antwerp and Flushing, which are capable of containing the largest
fleets, and of protecting them against the ice from the sea; the hydraulic
works at Dunkirk, Havre, and Nice; the immense harbor of Cherbourg; the
maritime works at Venice; the beautiful roads from Antwerp to Amsterdam, from
Mayence to Metz, from Bordeaux to Bayonne; the passes of the Simplon, of Mont
Cenis, of Mount Genevre, of the Corniche, which open a communication through
the Alps in four different directions, and which exceed in grandeur, in
boldness, and in skill of execution, all the works of the Romans (in that
alone you will find eight hundred millions); the roads from the Pyrenees to
the Alps, from Parma to Spezia, from Savona to Piedmont; the bridges of Jena,
Austerlitz, Des Arts, Sevres, Tours, Roanne, Lyons, Turin; of the Isere, of
the Durance, of Bordeaux, of Rouen, etc.; the canal which connects the Rhine
with the Rhone by the Doubs, and thus unites the North Sea with the
Mediterranean; the canal which joins the Scheldt with the Somme, and thus
joins Paris and Amsterdam; the canal which unites the Rance to the Vilaine;
the canal of Arles; that of Pavia, and the canal of the Rhine; the draining of
the marshes of Bourgoin, of the Cotentin, of Rochefort; the rebuilding of the
greater part of the churches destroyed by the Revolution; the building of
others: the institution of numerous establishments of industry for the
suppression of mendicity; the gallery at the Louvre; the construction of
public warehouses, of the Bank, of the canal of the Ourcq; the distribution of
water in the city of Paris; the numerous drains, the quays, the
embellishments, and the monuments of that large capital; the works for the
embellishment of Rome; the reestablishment of the manufactures of Lyons; the
creation of many hundreds of manufactories of cotton, for spinning and for
weaving, which employ several millions of workmen; funds accumulated to
establish upwards of four hundred manufactories of sugar from beet-root, for
the consumption of part of France, and which would have furnished sugar at the
same price as the West Indies, if they had continued to receive encouragement
for only four years longer; the substitution of woad for indigo, which would
have been at last brought to a state of perfection in France, and obtained as
good and as cheap as the indigo from the colonies; numerous manufactories for
all kinds of objects of art, etc.; fifty millions expended in repairing and
beautifying the palaces belonging to the Crown; sixty millions in furniture
for the palaces belonging to the Crown in France, in Holland, at Turin, and at
Rome; sixty millions of diamonds for the Crown, all purchased with Napoleon's
money; the Regent (the only diamond that was left belonging to the former
diamonds of the Crown) withdrawn from the hands of the Jews at Berlin, in
whose hands it had been left as a pledge for three millions.  The Napoleon
Museum, valued at upwards of four hundred millions, filled with objects
legitimately acquired, either by moneys or by treaties of peace known to the
whole world, by virtue of which the chefs-d'oeuvres, it contains were given in
lieu of territory or of contributions.  Several millions amassed to be applied
to the encouragement of agriculture, which is the paramount consideration for
the interest of France; the introduction into France of merino sheep, etc.
These form a treasure of several thousand millions which will endure for
ages."

     Napoleon himself looked on these achievements as his most enduring
monument.  "The allied powers cannot take from me hereafter," he told O'Meara,
"the great public works I have executed, the roads which I made over the Alps,
and the seas which I have united.  They cannot place their feet to improve
where mine have not been before.  They cannot take from me the code of laws
which I formed, and which will go down to posterity."