Some 4o,ooo emigres or 4 0% of the total availed themselves of the
opportunity, making Napoleon's rightward drift ever more evident.
Josephine was a crypto-royalist and even corresponded with people who
were officially enemies of the state. Napoleon, amused, indulged her but
told Fouche to keep a close eye on her activities; a vicious circle was thus
set up, wherein Fouche reported to Napoleon on Josephine and she
reported to the chief of police on her husband.
By this time Bonaparte was increasingly confident that events were
moving his way, even in areas where a year or two before there had been
little reason to be sanguine. He had inherited a disastrous financial legacy
from the Directory and economics is less obedient to the dictates of
consuls and premiers than are political factions. When he became First
Consul, the economy was a shambles: it was widely reported that only
167,000 francs remained in the state coffers. Highway robbery and
brigandage were rampant, especially in the south and west, industry,
trade and finance were in ruins, there were beggars and soup kitchens in
Paris, the navy was non-existent, the desertion rate in the army at
epidemic level, and yet Napoleon had to find the means of waging war for
another full year.
Until he pushed his luck to the point where it could not possibly hold,
Napoleon was always fortune's darling. There had been an early instance
of this when an intemperate letter of complaint arrived from Kleber in
Egypt, containing a blistering attack on 'General Bonaparte' and all his
works. Addressed to the Directory, it arrived in Paris when that body was
no more and was delivered into the hands of the cynically amused First
Consul, who published it together with a tendentious rebuttal. At
Marengo too he was lucky, and even more in its after-effects. First, there
were the negotiations for the Concordat. Then came a dramatic fall in the
price of bread, which convinced many that it was in some sense caused by
Napoleon's military victory. At the same time bankers, persuaded both by
the plebiscite and by Marengo that Napoleon was there to stay, began
opening their purse strings. The First Consul told his Finance Minister
Gaudin: 'The good days are coming.'
With his new popularity Napoleon felt confident enough to impose an
additional zs-centime tax, which under the Directory would have
brought the people on to the streets. Instead they applauded him. By
1801 economic recovery was in full swing. It is true that Napoleon was
lucky, whereas the Directory's rule had coincided with a long period of
economic depression. But he had worked hard for his success, which was
possible only because he had won the complete confidence of the
bourgeoisie. Among his most successful economic measures during
marcin
(Marcin)
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