Napoleon Made France Great Again

Why his Economic Reforms and Infrastructure Upgrades Put MAGA to Shame

When the Bank of England was created in 1694, one of its primary goals was to provide enough funds for England to continue its war against France. France was the dominant world power at the time, both in terms of maritime forces and territorial possessions. Four years earlier, at the Battle of Beachy Head near Eastbourne, England, the French navy comprehensively destroyed the Anglo-Dutch force, sinking twelve ships and exploding another twenty.

France had been ruled by its most illustrious king, King Louis XIV, the Sun King, since June 7, 1654. Louis was well-versed in the bankers' tricks. When he discovered that his Superintendent of Finances, Nicolas Fouquet, was a representative of what we now call the money power, and received irrefutable evidence that "he had long been betraying the trust reposed in him by mishandling the state finances and by monstrous corruption," he arrested him. Fouquet was tried and sentenced to complete isolation in the impregnable stronghold of Pignerol for the remainder of his life.¹

The War of the Spanish Succession, which lasted from 1702 to 1714, was the most extensive military struggle since the Crusades. It erupted after Louis revealed his desire to install his grandson, Philip, Duke of Anjou, on the Spanish throne. If successful, this endeavor would have created a large Franco-Spanish empire, posing a direct danger to the Bank of England and its proxy, the British government. The English, with their ability to manufacture money from nothing, were able to amass a vast fleet and buy the loyalty of France's foes by bankrolling them.

Louis resisted for nine years, until his successors began to die in unnatural circumstances. On 13 April 1711, his heir Louis, Le Grand Dauphin, died allegedly of smallpox, despite having suffered the disease as a kid. The wife of his grandson, the Duke of Burgundy, died of a fever on February 12, 1712. Her husband was covered in spots a few days later and died on 18 February 1712 of unexplained causes. Scarlet fever struck the King's two great-grandsons a few weeks later. On March 18, 1712, the five-year-old Duke of Brittany died. The Duke of Anjou, the King's three-year-old brother, miraculously survived after the King ordered his confinement and treatment with an antidote.

As a result of these tragedies, the King was convinced to call an end to the fighting and commence negotiations. In March and April 1713, a treaty was signed in Utrecht that permitted France to keep most of its pre-war borders. Following that, the successors to the French monarchy stopped dying. However, this did not prevent Louis' other grandson, the Duke of Berry, who was the regent of the future Louis XV, from dying in an unusual riding "accident."² The Sun King died of natural causes on September 1, 1715, as a broken man.