It was not hard to understand how those millers felt. On Floréal 6, Year Ten of the Republic, April 26, the Senate of the Directory passed a law requiring émigrés to return before Vendémiaire 1. For the newly rich who wanted to buy up the former nobility's assets, this was their last chance. Naturally, they hoped to buy as much as possible.
The Concordat was signed on July 14, 1801, and officially promulgated in April 1802. Napoleon had his "inspiration" in January 1802. The timing of its promulgation also had to be considered. The law was issued in April, and bread prices shot up the following month. Other goods could be bought secondhand, but no one could eat stale bread.
Small bakeries were now struggling desperately to survive. On one side were citizens demanding cheap bread; on the other was the ever-rising cost of flour. Some owners were already planning to sell their bakeries to charitable societies and merely provide labor themselves. Otherwise, the mountain of accumulated debt was simply too much to bear.
After attending the parade, Georgiana returned to the Duke of Burgundy's residence. Though it was the same place, it felt different now. She had acquired a large personal retinue: four attendants besides Matilda, three servants to clean her rooms, two hairdressers, a tailor, and someone to tend the candles. That person's job was not to light the castle's candles, but specifically to warm sealing wax for her so that she could stamp documents.
Besides these personal servants, she had a private physician and a nun nurse, both from the Versailles army hospital, which had once been Georgiana's fief. There were also five clerks in charge of bookkeeping, all recruited from pawnshops, along with one hundred Mamluks guards. She was practically like an empress now. Yet she