order to a chaotic, post-revolutionary France and had turned his attention, not to war, but to establishing peace and improving economic conditions at home. He was particularly anxious to get his country and his people out of debt and out of the control of bankers. R. McNair Wilson, in
The object was to withhold from finance the power to embarrassthe Government as it had embarrassed the Government of Louis XVI.
When a Government, Bonaparte declared, is dependent for moneyupon bankers, they and not the leaders of that Government control thesituation, since "the hand that gives is above the hand that takes."...
"Money," he declared, "has no motherland; financiers are withoutpatriotism and without decency: their sole object is gain."1
One of Napoleon's first blows against the bankers was to
establish an independent Bank of France with himself as president.
But even this bank was not trusted, and government funds were never placed into it. It was his refusal to borrow, however, that caused the most concern among the financiers. Actually, to them this was a mixture of both bad and good news. The bad news was that they were denied the benefit of royalty payments on fractional money. The good news was that, without resorting to debt, they were confident Napoleon could not militarily defend himself. Thus, he easily could be toppled and replaced by Louis XVI of the old monarchic dynasty who was receptive to banker influence. Wilson continues:
They had good hope of compassing his downfall. None believedthat he could finance war on a great scale now that the resource ofpaper money had been denied him by the destruction of the Assignat.
Where would he obtain the indispensable gold and silver to feed andequip a great army? Pitt [the Prime Minister of England] countedalready on a coalition of England, Austria, Prussia, Russia, Spain, 1. R. McNair Wilson,
2. The Assignat was pure fiat money which rapidly became totally worthless in commerce and which all but destroyed the French economy.
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THE CREATURE FROM JEKYLL ISLAND
Sweden, and numerous small states. Some 600,000 men would be put into the field. All the resources of England's wealth—that is to say, of the world's wealth—would be placed at the disposal of this overwhelming force. Could the Corsican muster 200,000? Could he arm them? Could he feed them? If the lead bullets did not destroy him, the gold bullets would soon make an end. He would be forced, like his neighbors, to come, hat in hand, for loans and, like them, to accept the banker's terms....
He could not put his hands on £2,000,000, so empty was the Treasury and so depleted the nation's stock of metallic money.
London waited with interest to see how the puzzle would be solved.1
Napoleon solved the puzzle quite simply by selling off some real estate. Those crazy Americans gave him £3,000,000 for a vast swamp called Louisiana.
A PLAN TO DESTROY THE UNITED STATES
Napoleon did not want war, but he knew that Europe's
