Chapter 3 - Developing a Post-Revolutionary Fiscal Politics, 1799–1814

Summary

Napoleon took power in 1799, promising to end the instabilities of the previous decade. To some degree, he succeeded. The ancien régime indirect tax of l’octroi, abolished in 1790 and then reintroduced in 1798, was rapidly extended after 1799 and smoothed the introduction of new, national indirect taxes from 1804 onwards. To compensate for the limitations of public credit, which only recovered slowly from the collapse of the 1790s, the Napoleonic regime heavily plundered occupied territories. This, though, revealed the limitations of Napoleon’s renovation of the fiscal-military state. As David Bell has argued, the period 1792–1815 was characterised by ‘total war’; the escalating costs of men and material eventually overstretched the Napoleonic state, destroying its legitimacy and precipitating its collapse in 1813–14. Nevertheless, despite their failure to produce a sustainable fiscal-military state, the Revolutionary and Napoleonic regimes established the taxes that formed the basis for the post-revolutionary fiscal system.