Creation of the Banque de France

The Consulate inherited a monetary disaster: the collapse of the assignats and then of the territorial mandates had destroyed confidence, the state was borrowing at ruinous rates, and commercial paper circulated only among a few Paris houses. No institution could discount bills at a reasonable price.

On 18 January 1800 a group of Paris bankers founded the Banque de France, a joint-stock company with thirty million in capital. Bonaparte subscribed himself, as did several of his ministers: the government was a shareholder in the bank it was instituting.

In 1803 the Bank received the exclusive privilege of issuing notes in Paris, later extended to a few provincial cities. But governance remained in the hands of the two hundred largest shareholders, the future "two hundred families", who elected the regents.

In the autumn of 1805 the Négociants Réunis affair — Ouvrard's speculation on Spanish piastres, backed by advances from the Bank — caused a panic: the counters were besieged and the notes lost value. Napoleon came back from Austerlitz furious.

The reform of April 1806 placed at the head of the establishment a governor and two deputy governors appointed by the head of state. The regents' independence was reduced; the Bank became a public instrument administered by private interests, a balance that would last more than a century.

In 1811 it moved into the Hôtel de Toulouse, rue de La Vrillière, where it still stands. With the Civil Code and the Legion of Honour, it is one of the few creations of those years still working.