l ambitions, and
ofttimes returning insolence for favors. To meet these enormous
expenditures there had been inaugurated throughout Europe a system of
what may be termed private confiscations, the vast dimensions of which
can never be justly estimated. German princes and Spanish grandees,
English merchants and the Italian clergy, had all been wrung dry;
timorous statesmen, crafty churchmen and sly contractors, unprincipled
financiers and ambitious politicians, not one was forgotten or
overlooked in the accumulation of hoards which, having long been
called the army chest, were now erected into the dignity of an
"extraordinary domain."

Kept so far in a decent obscurity, these ill-gotten possessions, which
belonged, if not to their original owners, then to the state, were, in
the low condition of public morality, not merely recognized--they were
actually increased from new sources of supply. The confiscated
palaces, forests, lands, and fisheries, the proceeds from the sale of
American ships, values of every kind, were all made the private
property of the Emperor. If any of these rills of revenue should run
dry, the criminal code with its legislation of confiscation might be
relied on to supply a menace strong enough to express inexhaustible
treasure from storehouses yet untouched. One orator declared this
barbaric fund to have been in the Emperor's hands a "French
Providence, which made the laurel a fertile tree, the fruits of which
had nourished the brave whom its branches covered." Napoleon had found
the crown moneys sufficient for himself. Berthier now had a revenue of
one million three hundred and fifty thousand eight hundred francs, and
Davout was scarcely less regal with one of nine hundred and ten
thousand; Ney had only seven hundred and twenty-eight thousand, and
Massena five hundred thousand; Soult was ambitious to increase his
income of three hundred and five thousand by securing the Portuguese
crown. What with the great public charities endowed from this
extraordinary fund, what with the great public works in Paris and
elsewhere which had been carried on by its means, the total
expenditures had been more than four hundred and thirty million
francs. The total receipts had risen to about seven hundred and sixty
millions, and there were therefore still in the Emperor's purse upward
of three hundred millions. He could not be called destitute or even
poor.

[Illustration: NAPOLEON BONAPARTE in 1809.

From a pai