The drafting and approval of the national budget had to follow certain legal procedures.
Yet Napoleon had launched military campaigns abroad many times when the treasury was basically empty. He was as miserable as a stray dog forced to forage for its own food.
Britain also had a fiscal budget, but its wartime deficit was severe, and it had to balance its books by printing paper currency and collecting income tax. Addington was the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and he understood best which departments needed their spending cut. The Royal Navy enjoyed such high prestige that reducing its expenditures was easier said than done. Reckless militarism, like extravagance and corruption, could lead a nation to ruin.
Georgiana had warned Napoleon beforehand that there had once been an emperor in the East whose enemy had sent a spy to persuade him to build the Zhengguo Canal, hoping to drain the Qin State's national strength. Yet the ruler of Qin had overruled all objections and forcibly approved the project, continuing the excavation.
With the Seine's water so filthy, it would have been stranger not to fall ill from drinking it. At Christmas in 1800, the assassins who targeted Napoleon had used a water cart to conceal the explosives.
To rule out the possibility that other water carts contained explosives, the secret police destroyed several of them. They only stopped after newspapers condemned them. The police could not disregard the rights of an entire city's citizens for Napoleon Bonaparte's safety alone.
Handing out sugar on National Day was no small affair. Everyone understood what it meant.
At least Napoleon was considering employment for those discharged soldiers. That was far better than the Senate of the Directory, who rode through the streets of Paris in carriages and could not be bothered to spare them