consigned them. After 1806, for example, Frankfurt's infamous Juden
gasse ghetto no longer resembled a gigantic Marshalsea, though Jews still
paid special taxes and were banned from entering coffee houses or
walking through the city squares. On the other, Napoleon was personally
anti-semitic, as he showed at the grand Sanhedrin of Jewish leaders he
convoked in April 1807. A number of discriminatory measures were
ordained: Jews could practise their religion only under State supervision,
they were denied recognition as a separate nation, one-third of their
marriages had to be with non-Jews, and so on. These laws were
supposedly to hold good throughout the extended Empire, though the
fate of Jewish communities largely depended on the attitude of the local
rulers or proconsuls. In Holland and Italy Jews fared badly, but in
Westphalia Jerome, a notable philosemite, admitted them to full
citizenship, while in neighbouring Berg most of the restrictions against
them were lifted. Nevertheless, in general the lot of Jews was harsh. They
were robbed, swindled and unable to recoup debts owed them, while in
Holland Louis became notorious for forming a Jewish regiment from
boys taken fr om the poor or press-ganged from orphanages.
With a few exceptions, the rulers of Napoleon's empire were a
mediocre bunch. Perhaps the most spectacularly incompetent were the
Murats in Naples. Joseph, when King of Naples, had made a good start,
aided by his excellent ministers Miot, Roederer and Saliceti. He deployed
a force of 40,000 men to combat brigandage; set up a Ministry of the
Interior and a provincial intendant system modelled on the French
prefects; established a property tax, supervised the sale of Church
property and reorganized the fiscal system. The Murats, even with what
many claim were even more talented ministers - Zurco at the Interior and
Ricciardi at Justice- undid much of the good work and required constant
injections of French blood and treasure to maintain their position. Murat,
fancying himself as an independent monarch fully the equal of Napoleon,
was mortified when he discovered that the Army obeyed the Emperor,
not him. Detesting his scheming wife Caroline ever more daily, Murat
worked himself into such a state of nervous tension that, when not
womanizing, he sat up all night reading police reports. He alienated the
Emperor by blatantly infringing the Continental Blockade, allowing U.S.
ships to smuggle British goods into Naples. His invasion of Sicily, finally
attempted with Napoleon's connivance in the autumn of 1810, predict
ably ended in miserable failure.
Murat's lacklustre performance was thrown into relief by the generally
good showing of the viceroy of French Italy, Eugene de Beauharnais, who
presided in Milan over an area divided into twenty-four departments. In
marcin
(Marcin)
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