The Consulate inherited a monetary disaster: the collapse of the assignats had destroyed confidence and the state was borrowing at ruinous rates. On 18 January 1800 a group of Paris bankers founded the Banque de France with the backing of the First Consul, who subscribed shares himself. In 1803 it received the exclusive privilege of issuing notes in Paris, later extended to the provinces.
The law of 7 Germinal Year XI, in April 1803, defined the franc: five grams of silver nine-tenths fine, with a gold parity set accordingly. This germinal franc remained unchanged until 1914. It is probably the regime's most durable creation — more durable than the letter of the Civil Code, since no value in it was altered for a hundred and eleven years.
Confidence still lacked solid foundations. 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, the notes lost value. Napoleon came back from Austerlitz furious and imposed a governance reform in 1806: a governor and two deputy governors appointed by the head of state.
In 1811 the institution moved into the Hôtel de Toulouse, rue de La Vrillière, the former mansion of the Count of Toulouse, whose forty-metre golden gallery by Robert de Cotte became one of the most spectacular settings in European finance. The Banque de France is still there; with the Civil Code and the Legion of Honour, it is one of the few creations of those years still working.
