One morning in early September, as the Constituent Assembly was about to conclude its morning public debate, Prieur—serving as the weekly President—rose and solemnly announced a matter touching every deputy’s personal interest.
“Citizen deputies, after adjournment at noon, please inform your aides that within one week they may go to the Finance Committee to collect this year’s living stipend. The amount is 6,500 livres.”
At once the usually self-possessed deputies burst into cheers so warm that the crowd outside thought the Assembly had again reached consensus on some fateful national measure.
More than half of the 600+ deputies were not wealthy by birth. Few, like Antoine Barnave
Many, from ardor for the Revolution, had grown timid in practice: in imagination they accepted political funds and lived in luxury; in reality they dared not step across the line. An annual 6,500 livres was timely rain, enough for a decent, ordinary life.
But tight public finances had delayed stipends again and again. By September not a single livre had been paid; some poorer deputies were living on credit. Now, on his first day in the chair, the new President announced—lavishly—that the stipend would be paid in full for the entire year.
Some even began to fantasize that if President Prieur continued thus, they would gladly amend the Provisional Assembly Act and let this stern-faced but kind “good man of Reims” remain in the chair until next September, when the Constituent Assembly would dissolve.
When President Prieur rang the little bell again, the cheering ebbed. From the expectant, grateful, respectful looks of 600+ colleagues, a supreme sense of honor rose in Prieur’s heart. Even in his delight, he knew who had helped him win it.
A week earlier, André had persuaded the retired Captain Surcouf—using care for the younger Second Lieutenant Surcouf as leverage—to sail the privateer Le Renard from Bordeaux with a treasure of 7,000,000 livres aboard, pass the English Channel in safety, turn up the Seine estuary, and on September 6 arrive safely in Paris.
Under the letter agreement between André and the new Minister of Finance, Comte de Montmorin, these funds were to be used first for the Assembly’s annual stipends. Hence the present scene.
When the hall grew quiet, President Prieur named the prosecutor of the Special Fiscal Court, André Franck, and told the deputies plainly that the subsidies they were about to receive were won by the prosecutor—who had toiled without rest in Bordeaux, matching wits and shedding blood against tax farmers and lawbreakers.
After a new round of applause rose and fell, Prieur broached a sensitive question: how to place the prosecutor of the Special Fiscal Court on his return to Paris. Surely the tireless and meritorious prosecutor could not be left idle again merely because no fiscal court yet existed.
As expected, deputies who had taken a favor were in no mood to quarrel. With scarcely any debate, they unanimously voted to establish a Fiscal Court. The Assembly instructed its Finance Committee to work with the Palais de Justice to designate the court’s chief justice. Because Prieur deliberately omitted the word “Special,” the new court—its judges and its prosecutor—would no longer be temporary but could remain in being.
Whether Fiscal Court, fiscal judges, or the prosecutor of the Special Fiscal Court—these were small matters in the deputies’ eyes. After a brief recess, the masters of France’s fate turned to vexing foreign-affairs questions:
1. Whether to allow the Austrian army—nominally still an ally—under Archduke Charles of Austria to traverse thirty to forty leagues of French territory to return to garrison in the Austrian Netherlands (today’s central and northern Belgium);
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2. Whether to accede to a second request from the Parliament of the Kingdom of Poland to warn Russia, Prussia, and Austria to abandon their carve-up of that Baltic realm;
3. Whether to send a diplomatic note to the British Foreign Office and Westminster condemning Edmund Burke
4. Whether to grant the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire’s request to dispatch French troops to Turkey to reform the Janissaries’ backward artillery and inept engineers so as to resist the next Russian invasion;
5. Whether to approve the final result of a new round of debt negotiations conducted by the Diplomatic Committee with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Government of the United States;
Returning to domestic matters, whether to praise, ignore, or condemn Marquis de Bouillé for his punishment of the Nancy garrison mutiny—twenty-three rebels executed, 120 sentenced to lifelong hard labor;
6. Whether to enact at once a special measure—the Decree on the Clerical Oath—to compel all religious personnel on French soil to accept the Civil Constitution of the Clergy;
7. Whether to dissolve the local government of Reims for betraying France.
…
Several days later, when André learned of these developments, debate in the Manège Hall still yielded no result. None of that concerned him much.
The creation of the Fiscal Court, however, was an unexpected gain, though André had clear hints from Parisian friends that his title as the prosecutor of the Special Fiscal Court could not last. He would therefore have to make the most, by year-end 1790, of the conveniences of his present office.
On September 8, the Spanish banker Comte de Cabarrus arrived as agreed. With him came plantation owners and merchants from the Spanish Caribbean, and Governor Ortega of the Dominican colony.
Throughout the meeting, André showed keen interest in the low-ranking colonial governor (third tier—a subordinate under the Viceroyalty of Mexico). He also invited Prosecutor Luchon, who had resigned from the Bordeaux criminal court; the three met and negotiated privately, soon reaching multiple undisclosed agreements.
Governor Ortega promised all possible aid to French Saint-Domingue (Haiti): purchasing standard weapons; hiring mercenaries; accepting petitions for asylum; granting friendly privateers resupply in his ports; joint suppression of unlawful disturbances; and allowing the Bordeaux Chamber of Commerce to use the Dominican colony as a smuggling base to sell wine across Latin America and even North America. In return, French merchants would pay the Dominican governor an annual consultancy fee.
Comte de Cabarrus took no offense: the prosecutor pledged to support him in launching banking and other financial business in France. They agreed that André and Comte de Cabarrus would jointly found, in Paris, a French United Commercial Bank, shares split equally, each contributing an initial 2,000,000 livres as start-up capital.
By their arrangement, the Spaniard would build the bank’s operating platform, while André would use his political resources to shield it. Besides its Paris headquarters, the bank would open branches in Bordeaux, Reims (or Chalons-sur-Marne), Avignon, and Cap-Fran?ais, capital of French Saint-Domingue.
As for the plantation owners and Spanish shippers, André signed purchase contracts with them. Beginning at year’s end, Spanish merchants would ship vast quantities of sugar, coffee beans, cocoa, indigo, ship-timber, and even South American rubber to reception zones designated by André. Settlement would be by bankers’ acceptances issued by the French United Commercial Bank.
In truth, André hoped to include saltpeter in the smuggling trade; in two years, under blockade, France’s saltpeter price would spike nearly tenfold. The merchants flatly refused to deal in a dangerous commodity strictly controlled by the Spanish government. André was not anxious; if need be, he could grow nitrate beds in abandoned monasteries—though purity would be hard to guarantee.
After days of bilateral, trilateral, and multilateral talks—and quarrels—on September 20 André and his Spanish guests reached a package agreement.
When the celebratory 1783 Champagne had been drained, Governor Ortega, with Spanish merchants and a vice-chairman of the Bordeaux Chamber of Commerce, returned to the Dominican colony to inspect sites for the smuggling base or organize production and prepare supply.
Comte de Cabarrus, accompanied by Prosecutor Luchon, went straight to Paris—the former to prepare the joint bank; the latter to proceed to the Palais de Justice to receive his final appointment as a circuit judge for the colonial court.
Meanwhile, by late September, formation of the Champagne Composite Regiment was essentially complete. The regiment numbered 1,100 men: Lieutenant Hoche’s cavalry company (about 150); Captain Moncey’s infantry battalion (with Second Lieutenant Augereau commanding the 1st Company; about 600); Captain Senarmont’s artillery company (about 200); and Lieutenant Petiet’s supply, transport, and engineers (about one hundred). In addition there was a fifty-man mounted gendarmerie detachment, temporarily under André’s direct hand.