The accord had been struck. In the quiet of his field headquarters, Louis had handed a destiny to Napoleon Bonaparte. He had unleashed a generational military genius upon Europe. But genius, he knew, was not self-sufficient. An army, especially the new kind of fast-moving, artillery-heavy army that Napoleon envisioned, did not run on brilliance alone. It ran on gunpowder, on leather boots, on fodder for horses, and on mountains of gold and silver coin. It ran on money.
Back in the Tuileries, the intoxicating thrill of his grand strategic gamble gave way to a sobering, practical reality. The Army of Italy was a phantom. On the muster rolls, it was a force of thirty thousand men. In reality, it was a ragged, half-starved collection of scarecrows clinging to the Maritime Alps, their uniforms in tatters, their muskets rusting, and their pay months in arrears. To forge this pathetic instrument into the thunderbolt he had ordered Napoleon to create would require a staggering, almost unthinkable, amount of money.
The national treasury, while no longer on the brink of the abyss thanks to his and Necker's early reforms, could not possibly bear the cost of a major new offensive. The Assignat was stable but fragile, its value still a matter of public confidence. To simply print more money to fund a war would be to send the currency into a death spiral, undoing years of painful work. The money had to come from new revenue. It had to come from a tax.
Louis convened a secret, late-night meeting in his study. He did not summon his full, formal council, which was now filled with timid men and secret enemies. He gathered the core of his own faction: the pragmatic Barnave, a few trusted moderate leaders from the Assembly, and his new, unofficial foreign minister, Talleyrand, who listened from a shadowed corner, offering no opinions but absorbing every word.
Louis laid out the situation with blunt clarity, presenting them with a preliminary budget for the Italian campaign prepared by his own hand. The numbers were stark. The cost of equipping and supplying Napoleon's new army would be in the tens of millions of livres.
The men were aghast. One of the moderate deputies, a wealthy merchant from Bordeaux, shook his head in despair. "It is impossible, Your Majesty," he declared, his voice strained. "Utterly impossible. The Assembly will never approve a new war tax. The people are weary of taxes. The Jacobins… they will tear us to shreds. They will paint you as a new Louis XIV, returning to the absolutist habit of taxing the people to fund your own private wars of glory. We would be politically crucified."
Louis listened patiently, letting them voice all their fears, all the conventional wisdom. When they were finished, a grim silence had fallen over the room. He looked at their defeated faces and knew he had to provide them not just with a plan, but with a new way of thinking.
"You are correct, of course," he said, his voice calm and measured, cutting through the pessimism. "We cannot ask for a 'war tax.' That is the language of the old regime, the language of the oppressor. It is politically toxic."
He paused, letting the statement hang in the air. "So, we will not ask for one."
He rose from his chair and walked to the window, looking out at the darkened city. "Instead," he said, turning back to face them, "we will propose a 'Contribution Exceptionnelle pour la Défense de la Propriété'—an Exceptional Levy for the Defense of Property."
The men exchanged confused glances. Barnave, his political mind always the quickest, leaned forward, a flicker of understanding in his eyes.
Louis explained the brilliant, deeply cynical logic of his plan. "Who," he asked, his voice taking on a professorial tone, "have been the primary financial beneficiaries of this revolution? Not the peasants, not the artisans of Paris. It is the bourgeoisie. The merchants, the lawyers, the speculators, the 'men of talent.' The very men who sit in the center of the Assembly. The men who bought up the vast, nationalized Church lands at a steep discount, using the Assignat. Their newfound wealth, their new status as landed proprietors, is entirely, one hundred percent, dependent on the survival of this government."
He began to pace, his energy rising as he laid out the narrative he was constructing. "We will frame it thus. The Austrians and their émigré allies are not just a threat to the abstract idea of the revolution. They are a direct, existential threat to property. If the revolution falls, if the monarchy is restored by foreign bayonets, what is the first thing that will happen? The émigré nobles will return, and they will demand their ancestral lands back. The Church will demand its property back. Every land sale made since 1789 will be declared null and void. The Assignat, the very currency they used to buy their new châteaux and farms, will become worthless paper overnight. Their entire world will be liquidated."
He stopped and looked at the faces around the room. They were beginning to understand. "Therefore," he concluded, "this levy is not a tax. A tax is something the state takes from you. This is an insurance policy. A small, one-time payment to fund a swift, decisive military victory that will permanently secure their new property from all foreign and domestic threats. We are not asking them to pay for a war of glory. We are asking them to pay to protect their own investments."
It was a masterful reframing of the entire debate. He was transforming a radical, aggressive war into a deeply conservative act of protecting the new financial status quo.
Barnave was tasked with drafting the bill and introducing it in the Assembly. He was the perfect man for the job, his fiery oratory capable of clothing the King's cynical logic in the noble language of patriotism.
Days later, he stood before the Assembly. He delivered a speech that would be remembered as one of the great political performances of the age. He began by stoking the fears of the propertied classes, painting a vivid picture of vengeful émigrés and a grasping Church returning to reclaim their wealth. Then he pivoted, aiming his rhetoric directly at the nervous, wavering deputies of The Plain.
He argued that the Jacobins, with their endless internal purges and their rhetoric of class warfare, were the true enemies of stability. Their chaos was weakening France, he thundered, making it a tempting target for foreign powers. "They speak of a war against tyrants abroad," Barnave cried, gesturing towards the Mountain where the Jacobins sat in stony silence, "while they wage a war of terror against property and order here at home! A swift, victorious war, a war to secure our borders and end this perpetual crisis, is the only path to a lasting, prosperous peace! A peace where a man may enjoy the fruits of his labor and the security of his land!"
The Jacobins were incandescent with rage. They saw the levy for exactly what it was: a brilliant maneuver by the King to fund a personal army with the bourgeoisie's money. They attacked the bill viciously. Robespierre himself took the podium, his voice thin and sharp with venom.
"Listen to the honeyed words of the new aristocrats!" he sneered. "They speak of defending property! What they mean is defending their stolen goods! They ask the nation to bleed so that the speculator may sleep soundly in the bishop's palace he has bought for pennies on the livre! This is not a levy for defense! This is a war tax to fund a new Caesar! The gold of the rich is being used to forge the chains of the people!"
The debate was ferocious. The Assembly became a cauldron of shouting, of accusations and counter-accusations. For two full days, the fate of the Italian campaign, the future of Napoleon Bonaparte, and the stability of the King's government hung in the balance. It all came down to the silent, terrified men of The Plain, the deputies caught in the crossfire between their fear of the Jacobins' mob and their even deeper fear of losing their newfound wealth.
The scene was the final vote. The tension in the Salle du Manège was unbearable. Deputies were on their feet, shaking their fists, their voices hoarse from shouting. The president, his face beaded with sweat, rang his bell again and again, calling for order. Finally, the vote was taken, a standing vote, section by section. It was impossible to tell the result by sight. The clerks began their tally, their quills scratching furiously on parchment. A deep, expectant silence fell over the hall. Every eye was on the chief clerk as he rose from his seat, the final tally in his hand.
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