Napoleon in 1812 - Chapter 37

Chapter 37

7. Gold Rush – 1

Napoleon did not love his family. It was more of an abomination. His violent and nervous mother, Letizia, 1) was a woman under the illusion that she was involved in Napoleon’s every success. After the successful coup, when Napoleon rose to the presidency, she, who had a strong sense of compensation, had asked Napoleon for a lot of things. Most of them were demands to place her children, Napoleon’s brothers and sisters, in key posts in the newly created government. The French Republic was not privately owned by Napoleon. Napoleon rejected her demands, and since then Letizia and Napoleon have had a lifelong dispute.

In this world, his eldest brother, Joseph Bonaparte, 21 was sitting on the throne of Spain and was struggling a lot against Arthur Wellesley in the war on the peninsula. He was by no means someone who could rule a small land like Corsica, let alone a great power like Spain. In the other world, he served as French Foreign Affairs Ambassador and President of the Cisalpine Republic, but he had obtained both positions by using Napoleon’s background. He was weak-minded and timid, but had a lot of greed.

He was also the person who strongly insisted that Napoleon should become Emperor. Because if Napoleon, who had no children, became Emperor, then the first in line for the succession would be him.

Napoleon despised him for that.

Lucien Bonaparte, 31 the third son of Letizia and Napoleon’s younger brother, had helped Napoleon during the coup. He was quite politically capable, but like the Bonaparte family, he was greedy and corrupt. Napoleon fired him and cut off his relationship when it was revealed that he had squandered more than several millions of francs.

The same was true of his youngest brother, Jérôme Bonaparte.141 Luxury, corruption, greed… Besides all these, this guy was incompetent. Napoleon only provided him with enough financial support to make ends meet and did not pave the way for him as a bureaucrat or soldier. After Napoleon retired, Jérôme rejected Napoleon. He was a coldblooded person who did not care about his family.

But the public opinion in France was also very cold. Unable to withstand the barrage of criticism and threatening letters, Jérôme fled to a foreign country.

Caroline Bonaparte and Elisa Bonapartell were Napoleon’s sisters.

Napoleon called these women ‘blood-sucking leeches’ as they were very shallow, greedy, extravagant and flirty. In particular, Caroline believed in her brother’s power in the Republic and even demanded a title and an estate like a hereditary monarch. As Napoleon could not look at these extraordinary things with his eyes open anymore, he ended his relationship with them as well. They constantly criticized on Napoleon and, like Jérôme, had to emigrate as if they were being chased abroad.

It was Louis Bonaparte and Pauline Bonapartell who could be considered nobles. In fact, they were better humans than the others, but they were still not in the normal category. At least, they had the Bonaparte family’s fanatical greed and complacency. Since their egocentric attitude was at a level that could be controlled by Napoleon, they were able to avoid the tragedy of being kicked out or cut off.

Anyway, the Bonapartes would always criticize Napoleon, saying that he was cold blooded, with no family affection, and that he was the only one who was not a Bonaparte. Whenever that happened, Napoleon would answer like this. You’re the ones who made me tear this family apart.

Napoleon drew a very sharp line in front of them. Whenever they borrowed his name and acted recklessly, he repeated threats and even demonstrations of force.

By doing so, he made the Bonaparte family quiet and built a wall around them. Napoleon agreed a hundred times that he was worse off than anyone else. Some malicious lords sarcastically called him la president who gained power but lost his family, but Napoleon thought it was the right thing to do.

He believed that the relatives of the head of the state needed stricter control to set an example for the entire nation.

But Nabot here did not seem to think that way. The name of the Bonaparte family was written all over the place with all kinds of titles. It was the worst judgment that came from the ignorance of the base of his power, how he gained the support of the people and took the place of Emperor.

‘The Emperor’s complex, the poor soul obsessed with his family legitimacy.’

Napoleon was the President of the Republic. Although he might be stigmatized as a dictator who won the coup, he did not have to insist on his legitimacy and his family’s legitimacy. On the other hand, Nabot here was the Emperor of the Empire. However, the history and legitimacy of his family were way too insignificant for an emperor. Nabot, who was ashamed of the humble and ill-educated Bonaparte family, made them pose as European nobles by giving them various titles. Nabot had made the Bonapartes fake crocodiles, who could fill their material greed and spiritual vanity.

‘I can’t leave them alone like this. I will arrange it by all means.’

This was because the existence of the Bonaparte family in itself was very likely to be a stumbling block to the reforms that Napoleon wanted, and might even consume the Empire. However, it was necessary to set the lines and steps of the process’ well. Like Eugène de Beauharnais who had become king (precisely vice-king) under the auspices of Nabot, some others had gained popularity and high positions. Caroline Bonaparte had married Joachim Murat, king of Naples. If he wanted to change Caroline’s position, he had to do the same with Murat.

There was a lot to consider.

And now I have another mountain of work to do, while I was just thinking about my first child.’

Napoleon clicked his tongue.

Anyway, he had to keep his promise to stop by the Fleury Palace when he had time.

After returning from the expedition, Napoleon spent some time to deal with his imperial duties that had piled up in the Tuileries Palace. Napoleon commented that it was a very precious time to get a grip on the reality of France.

“I’ve thought so far that only the consumption of manpower was endangering the Empire. But I didn’t expect a more serious financial crisis to cover the Empire… Well, it’s at such a level that the rewards we got after achieving a revolution to overturn the old system have disappeared.”

Napoleon laughed, dumbfounded, when he saw the real face of the Empire, and the most decisive reason why France, which had Europe’s most fertile land and had the richest state treasury, suffered a decline, a defeat at war, and even a revolution.

It was the existence of tax collectors who extorted the wealth of the good French people and made a huge hole in the state’s finances. The government had to collect more money because of the enormous amounts they took for themselves in the middle, and the result of the people crushed by double and triple taxation who could not tolerate it was a revolution. Surprisingly, the same thing was happening in the French Empire, which was born from the revolution.

The tax collectors had disappeared. But the messy tax collection system had become another tax collector. A vicious group of people who dug into the gaps in the administrative network was making the national finances leak.

“Call the Minister of Finance and the Treasury Secretary right now. Tell them to stop everything they’re doing and come right away, because I’ve discovered the most urgent problem of the Empire.”

“Yes, Your Majesty!”

Shortly after, the Minister of Finance Martin Michel Charles Gaudin and the Treasury Secretary Nicolas Françoislil arrived at the Emperor’s office. Napoleon ordered them to bring all the data for the last year’s fiscal indicators, expenditure and revenue reports, and real income indicators.

Struck by the Emperor’s order, the Minister’s and the Secretary’s offices packed all the documents in the archives of the Tuileries Palace, and Napoleon read and analyzed them as soon as they arrived.

How many days passed?

Only then could Napoleon, the officials and the secretaries find the tax that was disappearing in the middle and its amount.

“A whopping 210 million francs evaporated last year alone. As if snow had fallen and disappeared in the harbor of Marseille. What do you think about this situation? Until I noticed, none of the officials, experts in tax, law and finance, could even guess this upsetting issue.”

Napoleon’s tone was calm, but his words were colder than the wind. Everyone, regardless of status, bowed their heads and trembled at the Emperor’s remarks. Actually, their reaction was the right answer. Napoleon was angrier than ever. He had not even been that angry when he had discovered the doings of Nabot.

“Do you remember what the Empire’s revenues were last year? 668 million francs. Oh, my God! I had no idea that a third of the revenue from the taxes collected by the central government was escaping into an empty space! I didn’t even know that stupid, pathetic and incompetent people like you were in charge of the state’s finances!”

Maximilien Robespierre, 18l the epitome of the Terror, had took over the tax claims originally held by local governments, saying they should now be centralized. The National Assembly had then conducted a nationwide land and health survey to determine the size, status, dependents and property of taxpayers.

The work of Robespierre and the National Assembly was worth being called an achievement, with the central government changing the tax system to collect taxes directly from the people. This was because the state could identify individuals directly and receive relatively reasonable and accurate taxes without leaking money. Subsequently, the ruling government was able to lead the revolutionary war to victory, supported by Robespierre’s administrative and tax reforms.

But now the French Empire was walking the other way around. It was going back in time. Due to the vigorous conquests, the territory of France grew and the number of regions and citizens to manage increased. It was the same as well for the satellite countries. On the other hand, the number of central government officials who had to control and manage everything had not increased, and the administrative system had remained the same.

To overcome this gap, the Ministry of Finance and the National Treasury Administration began temporarily delegating the right to collect taxes to local government officials, bourgeois and financiers. Of course, like the previous tax collectors, there was no such crazy thing as officials willing to only collect the money and respect the quotas of the central government.

They just took advantage of the gains they could get in middle management positions, but as the central government’s surveillance system became weaker, the issue got bigger and bigger.

‘In the end, it meant that the country’s frame itself was poorly built. And so there was a country in the 19th century that carried out a decentralized plunder economy that rejuvenated the national economy with war-torn compensation.’

Napoleon was once again disappointed as he turned his eyes to see the reaction of the Minister of Finance, the Treasury Secretary, and officials in the department. They were just as scared as rabbits and were shivering at Napoleon’s criticism. No one offered legal punishment or the right alternative to the situation that Napoleon really wanted. All of them were incompetent, passive and self-centered. Even if he did not want to compare them to their counterparts in the other world, he could not help it.

‘I didn’t want to do that… but I’m afraid it can’t be helped.’

Napoleon thought about who had helped him lead the state affairs of the French Republic when he was president. They were true partners who were competent, clean, active, and above all, able to express their bitter opinions when the country was heading in the wrong direction.

Napoleon could not do all this alone with France, which was starved and rotten, and desperately needed them’.

TL notes

[1] Letizia Bonaparte

[2] Joseph Bonaparte

[3] Lucien Bonaparte

[4] Jérôme Bonaparte

(5) Caroline Bonaparte Elisa Bonaparte

[6] Louis Bonaparte Pauline Bonaparte

[Z] Martin Michel Charles Gaudin, Nicolas François Mollien

[8] Maximilien Robespierre