Introduction

1Just over one decade ago, Pierre Branda published his research findings on Napoleon’s ability to self-finance his wars in this journal. [1] The publication is a corollary of his broader research on Napoleonic public finance. [2] Branda’s research marks a watershed in the historiography of Napoleonic war financing for three reasons. One of the problems with studying Napoleonic resource extraction is the difficulty in penetrating the web of entangled resource flows. The first merit of Branda’s research is that he brings clarity and order through a conceptualisation of Napoleonic resource extraction. Branda distinguishes three types of resource extraction. First is the seizure of property, goods, and capital, and the appropriation of fiscal revenue during military campaigns, which is referred to as ordinary contributions. Second is extraordinary contributions, which refers to the financial gain derived from treaties, such as reparations, indemnities, or other financial contributions. Third is the savings and contributions to the Napoleonic war effort resulting from the obligation of dependent states to place (parts of) their military forces at the disposal of France, or to pay for the upkeep of French forces stationed in their territory. [3] As opposed to previous scholars, such as De la Rupelle and Marion who rely on erroneous primary source data, such as provisional budgets, Branda has relied the accounts of the financial administration of the Grande Armée. [4] This source material is much better, and thus it gives the research a solid footing. Three, Branda has developed a methodology for calculating resource flows that others have been able to qualify only, such as the savings on the Napoleonic war effort as a result of forcing dependent states to place their armed forces at the disposal of France. [5] Taken together, the above means that Branda is the first historian who was able to quantitively substantiate his assessment of Napoleon’s ability to make war pay for war. Branda’s research findings are given in table 1 (see Annex). The significant finding here is that Branda concludes that Napoleon had a war financing deficit of 503 million francs, and thus he failed in his efforts to make his wars self-financing. Seemingly then, Branda lays to rest the long-held myth of Napoleon ‘making war feed war’.

2However, Branda has mostly omitted resource flows from the Netherlands. This is understandable. Branda starts his research in 1803, when the Napoleonic wars broke out. At this time, the Netherlands was firmly in French orbit, and thus Napoleon did not have the opportunity to impose a harsh peace treaty on the Dutch that entailed resource transfers. That said, the Napoleonic demand for war-making resources made Napoleon inventive in searching out new resource flows, including in states that were allied to France. The Netherlands, with its perceived abundance of wealth, was one of the prime targets for Napoleon. As much is supported by the fact that the first treaty concluded by the Napoleonic regime was a treaty with the Dutch that offered (disputed) territorial concessions in exchange for a payment of 6 million francs. [6]

3This article aims to return the Netherlands to a more prominent position in the history of Napoleonic resource extraction and war financing. The article starts with a survey of French resource extraction in the Netherlands through applying Branda’s conceptualisation of French resource extraction, thereby highlighting some of the challenges faced when trying to get a clear overview and quantification of extracted resources, whilst also proposing how Branda’s conceptualisation and methodology can be amended to come to a more specific quantification of resource transfers. Using a cache of hitherto unexploited archival material, the second part of the article applies the revised conceptualisation and methodology to one French resource extraction instrument, the Dutch obligation to host a French contingent. The research findings are subsequently re-embedded in the historiography of Napoleonic resource extraction and war financing to highlight the benefits of the proposed amendments. The conclusion highlights some avenues for further research.

French resource extraction in the Netherlands

4French resource extraction in the Netherland was a longwinded and messy affair. France extracted resources from the Netherlands for almost two decades, from the invasion of the Dutch Republic in September 1794 until the departure of the last French troops from Delfzijl in May 1814. Moreover, French resource extraction evolved considerably as a result of the increasing French demand for resources, the Dutch resistance to resource extraction, and the gradual integration of the Netherlands into the Napoleonic Empire and the Napoleonic fiscal-military state. To start unravelling French resource extraction we may apply Branda’s conceptualisation of Napoleonic resource extraction to the Dutch case.

5When French revolutionary armies invaded the Dutch Republic in late 1794, plunder was the order of the day. It would be near impossible to estimate the sum of such French ordinary contributions were it not for a detailed overview compiled by Rutger Jan Schimmelpenninck, the future Grand Pensionary of the Batavian Republic (29 April 1805-4 June 1806). From table 2 it can be seen that Schimmelpenninck assessed that the French military authorities requisitioned goods to the sum of 21.5 million guilders (f). In addition, the Dutch government spent f10.48 million on compensating Dutch citizens for being underpaid as a result of being forced to accept assignats that devalued rapidly against the local currency. A third cost item was debt contracted by French authorities on the ground, which amounted to f17.6 million. Finally, Schimmelpenninck gives a list of requisitions to the sum of f7,513,580, which were contested as being rightful spoils of war by the Dutch but for which no resolution had yet been found. Thus, based on Schimmelpenninck’s assessment the sum of French ordinary contributions extracted from the Netherlands was f57,093,580. In addition to the ordinary contributions that were extracted during the military campaigning the Dutch Republic, there was continued extraction of ordinary contributions after the Netherlands had concluded peace and was formally allied to France. An example in case is the port of Flushing, which was exploited by the French navy for repairs and supplies. [7] A second example is the continued exploitation of the domains of alien sovereigns, ecclesiastical orders, and individuals in the Batavian Republic. Formally, the domains were ceded to the Batavian Republic with the Treaty of The Hague of 16 May 1795, which brought the Revolutionary War between France and the Dutch Republic to an end and which saw a regenerated Batavian Republic re-enter the war on the side of France. [8] However, in practice the French authorities in the Netherlands treated these domains as French property. It is unclear where these resource flows fit into Branda’s conceptualisation. If one accepts that the Netherlands continued to be treated as conquered territory, then the resource flows should be classified as ordinary contributions. If the extraction led up to a treaty which formalised and antedated the resource extraction, the flows should be classified as extraordinary contributions. If the extracted resources were settled against obligations to maintain a French contingent, then the extracted resources could be classified as Branda’s third category, savings on the Napoleonic war effort. If none of the above applies, a new category of resources would need to be conceptualised to include these resource flows. For the purpose of this study, the resources extracted through continued requisitioning after conclusion of military campaigning have been classified as ordinary contributions. These resources have not yet been quantified.

6In terms of extraordinary contributions, several Franco-Batavian treaties contained articles that entailed a financial obligation on the part of the Netherlands. First is the indemnity of f100 million that followed from the Treaty of The Hague. The indemnity is explored in-depth in the historiography. There is a broad consensus that the indemnity was timely and a great windfall to France, and that it was a near insurmountable cost to the Dutch which locked the Batavian Republic into a subordinate relationship with France. [9] However, the affair is not as clear-cut as it is often made out to be. For a start, in meeting their financial obligations to France, the Dutch insisted on sticking to the letter of their agreements, which led to a considerable intertwinement of resource flows. For example, whilst the Dutch accepted the indemnity as a way to compensate France for her campaign against the Dutch Republic, they refused to accept the legality of French requisitions. During the negotiations leading up to the treaty of The Hague, they demanded that the full sum of French requisitions (f21.5 million) be deducted from the indemnity. France objected, but the Dutch refusal to conclude a peace which did not address French requisitions forced the French negotiators to compromise by accepting a deduction of f10 million for past requisitions. [10] It is not unlikely that other cost items, such as the loans or the contested spoils of war were (partially) settled in similar fashion. The author has not yet been able to examine how all costs were settled. However, the archives of the Batavian Executive contain an updated overview of Dutch financial transfers to France. The overview does not seem to have progressed beyond the first draft, and therefore it must be treated with caution. It does show that a sum of f10 million from the indemnity was treated as a sort of running account from which illegal transfers were deducted. [11] Furthermore, the original terms of payment were often renegotiated, which had a bearing on the amount of resources transferred. For example, as a result of the difficulty in levying funds, the Dutch effectively ceased abiding by the terms of payment of the indemnity immediately after the signing of the treaty of 16 May 1795. After several rounds of acrimonious negotiations, France accepted a Dutch proposal to pay the second tranche of f50 million in a newly created currency, the Batavian Rescription. [12] However, few merchants were willing to accept the new currencies and so the French government had to liquidate the Batavian Rescriptions on the market at an average discount of 50%. [13] Thus, France only received f25 million of the second tranche of f50 million, and only f75 million of the f100 million indemnity, of which f10-20 million was settled against ordinary contributions.

7A second treaty that entailed a financial obligation on the part of the Batavian Republic was the Treaty of the Domains. This treaty was concluded to bring the illegal French exploitation of alien domains in the Batavian Republic to an end, but only at the cost of a financial transfer of 6 million francs. [14] A third treaty that resulted in a financial obligation was the treaty of 29 August 1801 in which the Dutch paid a sum of f6 million in order to reduce the French contingent in the Batavian Republic. This treaty was a direct corollary of ongoing negotiations on the cost of hosting a French contingent in the Netherlands. It is thus included in the cost of the upkeep of the French contingent in the second section of this article. An overview of Dutch extraordinary contributions is given in table 3.

8Like other French allies and satellites, the Netherlands contributed to the Napoleonic war effort, both through participating in French wars and by paying for the upkeep of a French contingent stationed in the Netherlands. Branda acknowledges the contributions that many foreign contingents made to the Napoleonic war effort, but he omits the contribution of the Dutch armed forces, perhaps because of the tarnished marital reputation that the Dutch armed forces gained in the Napoleonic wars. Nevertheless, the Dutch army did participate in several campaigns, such as the campaigns in North Germany in 1806-1807, the Peninsula War and the Russian Campaign and subsequent operations in Central Europe. If we were to apply Branda’s methodology for quantifying the Dutch contribution to the France’s wars, we would establish the size of the Dutch contingent and their number of active campaigning days and multiply this by the average daily cost of maintaining a singe soldier (1.91 francs per day). [15] However, there are two difficulties with this. First, Branda’s methodology pertains to offensive campaigning only. For many French allies and satellites, this makes good sense, but the Netherlands, strategically located to the north of France, was an important component of the imperial defence. For example, both in 1799 and 1809 coalition forces invaded the Netherlands to put pressure on France’s northern borders. The Dutch defensive contribution would need to be factored into the Dutch contribution to the Napoleonic war effort. One could opt to calculate the days of defensive campaigning for the Dutch armed forces, and then multiply this by the average daily rate of maintenance, but it would be difficult to distinguish defensive campaigning from the next step down on the ladder of preparedness, standing the army down. Second, as a maritime nation, the Dutch navy also contributed to the Napoleonic war effort. Its active campaigning may have been limited as a result of defeat, naval disrepair and an effective British blockade, but the Dutch navy remained a factor to be reckoned with and Dutch naval infrastructure remained in use. A methodology would be needed to quantify this naval contribution to the Napoleonic war effort. Rather than try to distinguish the deployment of the Dutch armed forces for the service of France from the deployment of the Dutch armed forces for the service of the Netherlands, a better methodology would be perhaps to consider all Dutch forces part of the Napoleonic war machine from 16 May 1795, when the Netherlands re-entered the Revolutionary Wars on the side of France, until 9 July 1810, when the Netherlands was annexed to the empire. To quantify Dutch contributions to the Napoleonic war effort, we could then rely on Dutch budgetary data for defence and the navy, as given in table 4.

9In addition to employing its armed forces for imperial campaigns and defence, the Netherlands hosted a French contingent. Branda has provided a listing of Napoleonic allies and satellites that hosted a French contingent, but the Netherlands is not included in the list. [16] Most likely the Netherlands has been overlooked because, when Napoleon rose to power, the Netherlands was allied to France. Thus, Napoleon did not have the opportunity to defeat the Dutch and impose a peace treaty that obliged them to host a French contingent. That said, Napoleon did inherit arrangements that had been put in place by his predecessors. With the Treaty of The Hague of 16 May 1795 Revolutionary France imposed the obligation to host a French contingent. The Dutch were not relieved of this obligation until shortly after Louis Bonaparte ascended the throne of the Kingdom of Holland on 31 July 1806. The historiographical representation of the cost of hosting the French contingent is mixed. Godefroi estimates the cost of the upkeep of French forces at f7.5 million per year. [17] Kubben proposes an average of f10 million per annum. [18] Crouzet gives an estimate of f13 million for the first year, with the cost of upkeep thereafter declining to f10 million annually. [19] Schama and White set the cost at f10-12 million per annum. [20] The two foremost authorities in Dutch fiscal history, Fritschy and Pfeil, estimate the cost of the upkeep for the French contingent at approximately f12 million annually. [21] Leaving aside the fact that most historians do not state for how long the Dutch were obliged to host a French contingent, the lack of historiographical consensus is problematic. A qualified argument could be made for setting the annual costs at about f11 million. An overview based on this argument is provided in table 5.

10Table 6 draws the figures referenced above together to quantify the resources extracted by France in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic era. It shows that France extracted no less than 1.5 billion francs from the Netherlands, 1795-1809. However, caution is needed in reflecting on these figures. To start, this figure is not the full sum of resources extracted by France in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic era. French resource extraction has been cut off in 1809, because from mid-1810 onwards, the Netherlands was annexed to the empire and Dutch fiscal revenue flowed directly into French coffers. This is an arbitrary decision that hinges on whether one considers the Netherlands naturally part of the Napoleonic empire or not. The argument can be made both ways. For this research it has been decided to abide by this cut off point to ensure compatibility with research on Napoleonic financing that relies on French budgetary data. More importantly, the reliability of the quantification of separate resource flows leaves much to be desired. Branda’s conceptualisation and methodology for assessing French resource extraction is an important step forward, but applying it to the Netherlands reveals several issues that inhibit quantifying with precision the resources extracted. First, the temporal delineation of Branda’s methodology means that resource extraction in the Netherlands is omitted from the final tally. Branda defines the Napoleonic era as the years 1803-1814 to coincide with the Napoleonic Wars, and he searches for resource extraction instruments that were introduced in these years. This overlooks resource extraction that was implemented by previous regimes and which were inherited by the Napoleonic regime. Second, Branda’s conceptualisation implies a rationality and clarity to French resource extraction that was rarely present. In practice the various methods of extracting resources are not so neatly distinguished. In the case of the Netherlands, extraordinary contributions were often settled with outstanding or unresolved ordinary contributions. Thus, there is a risk that some resource flows are counted double or are excluded altogether. Third, the methodology for assessing the contribution to the Napoleonic war effort does not account for naval contributions, nor for defensive contributions. This means that the Dutch contribution to the Napoleonic war effort is underestimated. Finally, the Dutch case shows that France continued to extract ordinary contributions from the Netherlands even after the military campaigning had ended and the Batavian Republic was formally allied to France. These resource flows are currently overlooked.

11If we are to gain a fuller understanding of Napoleonic resource extraction and war financing, these issues will need to be addressed. To start with, the temporal delineation of Napoleonic resource extraction needs to be expanded to start in 1799 so as to include the early years of Napoleonic resource extraction. Second, to address the possible intertwinement of resource flows, it is important to take two further steps in studying resource transfers. One, one cannot rely on diplomatic agreements to gain insight into the transfer of war-making resources. To be able to quantify the transfer of resources, one has to examine the financial operations following from diplomatic agreements. Two, the initial financial terms cannot be considered definitive. It is imperative to continue to follow the money until the accounts were settled. Third, the issue of contribution to the Napoleonic war effort should be interpreted in the broadest possible sense, thus including defensive contributions and naval contributions. In this light, it makes more sense to use budgetary data on the armed forces as indicative of the contribution to the Napoleonic war effort. As to resource flows currently overlooked, such as ordinary contributions exacted upon allies, a conceptualisation must be developed that allows for these resource flows to be included in the final tally. A logical decision would be to expand Branda’s current conceptualisation of ordinary contributions to include those exacted after military campaign had ended.

12The next section applies the proposed amendments to Branda’s conceptualisation and methodology of Napoleonic resource extraction to one French resource extraction instrument in the Netherlands, the Dutch obligation to maintain a French contingent in the Batavian Republic, to show how the amendments can change our perception of the success of Napoleonic resource extraction and war financing.

The French contingent in the Netherlands, 1795-1806

13The articles of the Treaty of The Hague that obliged that Dutch to host a French contingent were vague and contradictory. Article 17 of the Treaty of The Hague stated that France would continue to militarily occupy strategic points of the Netherlands for the duration of the war. Secret article 3 of the treaty stated that a French contingent, or part thereof, could remain in the Netherlands after the conclusion of a peace, and that this contingent would be maintained at Dutch expense. The details of maintenance were not specified, other than the contingent would be capped at 25,000 men and the Dutch would provide salary, clothing and equipment and accommodation. [22]

14The vagueness and potential contradiction meant that the obligation to maintain a French contingent became a topic of heated negotiations for the next eleven years. Issues of contention were whether or not the French contingent had the right to remain in the Netherlands, the size and composition of the contingent, whether France had the right to employ (part of) the contingent beyond the borders of the Netherlands, whether France could rotate troops into the contingent and whether the French contingent should be paid and maintained according to French or Dutch standards. In the negotiations, the Dutch position was to cut expenditure on the contingent by reducing the size of the contingent and/or removing it from Dutch territory altogether and by gaining control over the operational deployment and pay and supply of the contingent. France aimed to maintain the largest possible contingent at Dutch expense for as long as possible and she aimed to maintain command and control over the contingent whilst having the Dutch unquestionably supply and replenish the contingent with all it needed. There is no need to dwell on the twists and turns of the negations. Suffice it to say that three agreements were concluded. [23]

15The first agreement was concluded on 27 July 1795. [24] This was an explication of the obligation of the Treaty of The Hague. In short, France was not allowed to rotate troops into the French contingent in the Netherlands and (parts of) the contingent could not be employed for service beyond the borders of the Netherlands. The maintenance of the contingent was specified to mean that sustenance and pay were provided in line with French military regulation as per Law of 2 Thermidor, Year 2 (20 July 1794), whilst accommodation and medical care were to be provided according to Dutch army standards. The agreement did not hold up well because the supply and financing of the French contingent was disorganised and France mostly ignored her treaty obligations to maximise resource extraction. This greatly inflated the cost of the upkeep of the French contingent. The Dutch cut costs by reorganising the body that was charged with supplying and funding the French contingent on 21 March 1797, but they did not successfully manage to reopen negotiations on the maintenance of the French contingent until the Treaty of Lunéville, (9 February 1801) ushered in a continental European peace. The Dutch seized upon the peace to demand the withdrawal of the French contingent, but First Consul Bonaparte was unwilling to withdraw French troops from such a strategic location until all warring parties, thus including Britain, had concluded peace. [25] However, France was willing to accept a reduction of the size of the contingent in exchange for a one-off payment. The Dutch accepted and on 29 August 1801 a second contract was signed which reconfirmed the conditions of employment of the first contract but which reduced the size of the contingent to 10,000 troops in exchange for f6 million. [26] When a general peace finally came with the signing of the Treaty of Amiens (25 March 1802), the Dutch triggered the article stipulating the withdrawal of the French contingent. However, France refused, giving a variety of excuses, such as wanting to wait and see whether Britain respected the peace, wanting to ship off the French contingent conveniently from Dutch ports to take possession of Louisiana which had been retroceded to France per Third Treaty of San Ildefonso (1 October 1800) and, finally, not recollecting having committed to withdrawing the French contingent from the Netherlands at all. [27] Ultimately, the French contingent lingered in the Netherlands long enough for war to resume. The war was seized upon by France to force the Dutch to host a French contingent once more. On 25 June 1803 a third contract was signed which obliged the Dutch to host a French contingent of 18,000 troops on the same conditions as before. [28] The treaty remained the final arrangement until the Netherlands was relieved of this obligation in July 1806, when Louis Bonaparte ascended the throne of Holland. The convention of 12 February 1805, with which the French contingent was withdrawn in exchange for a sum of 15 million francs, does not seem to have been acted on. [29] Napoleon also attempted to seize upon the poor performance of the Dutch armed forces during the British invasion of Walcheren in 1809 to force his brother into signing a contract to host a French contingent of 6,000 troops. [30] But because several months later the Kingdom of Holland was annexed to the Empire, the treaty remained a dead letter.

16To quantify the sum of resources extracted by France through forcing the Dutch to host a French contingent, we must follow up the diplomatic agreement to examine how they were financially settled. Unfortunately, no archival sources exist for the period from the signing of the Treaty of The Hague until 20 March 1797. In this period, the French contingent was financed in an ad hoc fashion. Fortunately, some circumstantial evidence exists to allow us to quantify the cost of the French contingent for the period 16 May 1795-20 March 1797. First, because France did not abide by its obligations under the first contract, the Dutch charged an investigative committee to estimate the excess resource transfer to France. This committee concluded that the upkeep of the French contingent stood at f20,612,812 for a period of 12 months. [31] Were this figure applied to the entire period, the upkeep would amount to f37.79 million. Second, Schimmelpennick offers an estimate in his memoirs. He states that from the signing of the first contract on 27 July 1795 to 20 March 1797 the French contingent had cost f20,811,467. [32] If Schimmelpenninck’s figure were antedated to 16 May 1795, the upkeep of the French contingent would have cost f22.89 million. It is difficult to weigh off these two authoritative sources. What supports Schimmelpenninck’s figure is that it more or less corresponds to the initial estimate of the costs of the upkeep of the French contingent by the Batavian government, which was f1.065 million per month, and that Batavian army of similar establishment cost about the same. [33] From the reorganisation of the administration of the French contingent on 21 March 1797, the accounts were diligently kept. An overview of the costs of the French contingent is given in table 7. This primary source data allows for several conclusions on Napoleonic resource extraction, Napoleonic war financing and the historiographical assessment thereof.

17Table 8 gives the sum of resources extracted per regime and the resources extracted per annum per regime, thereby ensuring to include the early years of Napoleonic resource extraction. A first conclusion is that the average cost of upkeep of f8.6 million per annum is considerably lower than the qualified historiographical consensus of f11 million per annum (table 5). Second, at first sight it appears that Napoleon was less successful at extracting resources from the Netherlands than were his Revolutionary predecessors. Through forcing the Dutch to host a French contingent Napoleon extracted just over 112 million francs at a rate of f7.4 million per annum, whilst the various Revolutionary regimes extracted slightly under 106 million francs at a rate of f10.4 million per annum. In part this assessment is correct, but with the connotation that Revolutionary France was greatly assisted by the disorganised and ad hoc financing of the French contingent the first years, whilst the Napoleonic regime’s ability to extract resources from the Netherlands was limited to exploiting existing treaties. The fact that the Napoleonic regime succeeded in negotiating a second contract and then maintaining a French contingent in the Netherlands beyond its legal date to negotiate a third contract, testifies to how well Napoleon played a weak hand. More importantly, absolute numbers are but one part of the story. It must be remembered that size of the French contingent differed per contract. Thus, to assess the success of resource extraction it would be better to compare the resources extracted per head of the French contingent. Unfortunately, the calculation is not simply a question of dividing the extracted sum by the contracted size of the French contingent, as in reality the size of the French contingent fluctuated as the result of attrition and the manpower demands of other theatres of war. Fortunately, because the size of the French contingent formed the basis of variable costs, such as salary payments, the Dutch went to great lengths to establish it. Ideally, the Dutch solicited and received detailed breakdowns of the composition of the French contingent, but these were not always forthcoming. The alternative was to update previous submissions based on the number of delivered daily rations. The quarterly size of the French contingent is given in graph 9.

18Dividing the sum of extracted resources per period by the size of the contingent yields the results listed in table 10 The table shows that the Napoleonic regime extracted substantially more resources per head of the French contingent than did the Revolutionary regimes, except for under the first contract, in the early Napoleonic period. The reason for this is not clear. Possibly it has to do with the fact that, on the one hand, the French military presence in the Netherlands was reduced after the failed Anglo-Russian invasion of North Holland in 1799 and France needed to reinforce other theatres of war more urgently. On the other hand, after seizing power in France, Napoleon seems to have wanted to allow the Dutch the opportunity to willingly profess their loyalty to France as evidenced through voluntary resource transfers. Only when this failed to materialise, did Napoleon’s attitude towards the Dutch harden. Franco-Dutch correspondence from late 1799 and early 1800 seems to provide evidence for this. Of course, it may also be that Napoleon had not quite yet caught his stride in renegotiating resource extraction contracts with his allies.

19The conclusion that Napoleon was better at making war pay for war is further reinforced if we divide the maintenance cost of a single soldier of the French contingent in the Netherlands by the average annual maintenance cost of a French soldier in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic era. According to Lucien Bonaparte, under the Directory the average annual maintenance cost of a single French soldier across all branches of service was 1,000 francs per year. [34] According to Nicolas François Mollien, who, as head of the caisse d’amortissement and later Minster of the Treasury, was well placed to make the assessment, Napoleon reduced the average annual maintenance cost of a single French soldier to 700 francs per year in times of war and 600 francs per year in times of peace. [35] Dividing the maintenance cost of a single soldier by the average maintenance cost gives the results listed in table 11. The table shows that whilst the Revolutionary regimes extracted from the Netherlands 2-2.6 times the average maintenance cost of a French soldier, the Napoleonic regime extracted the equivalent of almost 5 times the average maintenance cost of a French soldier. Of course, these findings are slightly skewed by the fact that Napoleon managed to reduce the average maintenance cost of a French soldier, but that can also be taken as proof of Napoleon’s superior ability to make his wars self-financing.

20The clearest proof of the historiographical underestimation of Napoleon’s ability to make his wars self-financing is found when we apply the findings of this study on French resource extraction in the Netherlands through forcing the Dutch to host a French contingent to Branda’s work. This research has shown that the Napoleonic regime extracted resources to the value of just over 112 million francs. These resources have not been included by Branda. Adding this sum of resources allows us to update Branda’s research findings as per table 12. Whilst the amendment does not suffice to fully close the deficit in Napoleonic war financing, it does allow for a significant reconsideration of the success of Napoleonic resource extraction, and by extension Napoleon’s famed ability to make war pay for war.

Conclusion

21Much uncertainty still surrounds the quantity of resources that France extracted from the Netherlands in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic era. Branda’s conceptualisation of Napoleonic resource extraction and his methodology for quantifying resource flows marks a turning point in the historiography because, for the first time, it allows historians to quantitatively substantiate their assessment of Napoleon’s efforts to make his wars self-financing. As such, it gives historians a solid basis from which to start their research and it forms a criterion against which they can measure their findings. That said, this article argues that the success of Napoleonic resource extraction and war financing is underestimated because the historiographical temporal delineation of Napoleonic war financing and the conceptualisation of Napoleonic resource extraction omit certain resource flows, there is too great a reliance on diplomatic treaties to gain insight into resource transfers and because resource transfers resulting from defensive campaigning and naval operations are not included.

22Through exploring the Dutch obligation to host a French contingent, this article has shown how minor amendments to Branda’s research can lead to a fuller understanding of the nature and success of Napoleonic resource extraction and war financing. The research findings of this pilot study do not suffice to contest the conclusion that Napoleon failed to make his war self-financing. However, it must be emphasised that but one instrument of French resource extraction in the Netherlands has been explored. To speak definitively on whether resource extracted from the Netherlands further contributed to balancing the Napoleonic war financing budget, the remaining resource transfers referred to in the survey in the first section of this article must be studied using the revised conceptualisation and methodology. It may well prove that these resource flows go further towards closing Napoleon’s war financing deficit. Moreover, it may pay off to apply the revised conceptualisation and methodology to French resource extraction in other states and territories. At least it is hoped that this study, a first step of what is hoped to entail the start of a much broader study, may stimulate similar lines of inquiry for other parts of Revolutionary and Napoleonic Europe so that historians may once and for all pass verdict on the persistent myth of Napoleon’s ability to make war pay for war.

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