CHAPTER SIXTEENThe afterglow of Austerlitz was ruined almost immediately by news of a
financial crisis back in France. It must be stressed that at this point the
crisis was financial only rather than economic in a general sense. A run on
the banks had been triggered by the discovery that millions of
government bonds had disappeared fr om the Treasury, bringing ruin to
thousands of investors. The hubbub only subsided when the Emperor
returned to France at the end of January r8o6; after thorough
investigation he suspended the Minister of the Treasury, Barbe-Marbois,
on suspicion of embezzlement.
Until September r8o6 Napoleon remained in Paris, dealing with a
plethora of vexatious domestic affairs and disputes involving the
marshalate. One of the first cases might have warned him that Naples was
always going to be a thorn in his side. Gouvion St-Cyr was a highly
talented general, uncorrupt, with a lifelong hatred of freemasonry, and an
early protege of Desaix's. A brilliant organizer, he had recommended
himself to Napoleon by his dislike of Jourdan and Moreau. He was on the
shortlist of possible marshals in r8o4, but ruined his chances by refusing
to sign a proclamation which congratulated Bonaparte on becoming
Emperor. In Naples he clashed spectacularly with Murat and Massena
and in disgust with Massena resigned in r8o6 and left for Paris in January
r8o6. Napoleon convinced him to return only by threatening him with a
firing squad for desertion if he did not.
The St-Cyr affair simply illustrated a general proposition: Napoleon's
lieutenants rarely served him well. The Emperor set up an imperial
university under the poet Louis de Fontanes, supposedly a body
directing education throughout France: the idea was that the university
would monopolize teaching and the Grand Master of the imperial
university would be assisted by a council and a bureau of educational
inspectors. But Fontanes subverted the intention of creating an imperial
elite by stuffing the universities and lycees with ultramontane Catholics,
thus producing the bizarre result that education under Bonaparte