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These measures undoubtedly instilled in the system a new degree of energy, but the mere remodelling of the state was not enough. Backing up the prefects were military resources that were both more powerful and more reliable: efforts were made to rotate National Guard battalions so that they served outside their own locality; the Gendarmerie Nationale was purged, rebuilt with reliable veteran soldiers, placed under an Inspector General, and greatly increased in size; and Paris and other large cities were permitted to form municipal guards. More immediately, the lull in hostilities following the battle of Marengo also allowed the dispatch of large numbers of troops into the interior to suppress brigands and round up deserters, their activities being strengthened by the introduction of special judicial measures that effectively authorized summary execution. This offensive did not solve the problem overnight - between December 1804 and July 1806 there were no fewer than 119 anti-conscription disturbances of various sorts in metropolitan France, while as late as 1805 desertion was running at a rate of around 800 men per month - but little by little the situation was visibly changing. In 1798 draft evasion had stood at 37 per cent; in it stood at 27 per cent; in 1810 it stood at 13 per cent; and in 1811 it disappeared altogether. Nor was it simply men who refused to go along with conscription that felt the weight of repression. In Normandy and Brittany the chouan bands that had throughout the 1790s at one and the same time kept counter-revolution alive, given aid and sustenance to draft evasion and terrorized all those who stood by the state, were hunted down by the newly invigorated authorities. Equally brigandage was gradually closed off as a survival strategy for those who chose to live outside the law: in the department of Seine Inférieure, for example, the number of highway robberies (for which government mail coaches were a common target) declined steadily from 1800 onwards, until a final attack in April 1807 was followed by six years of absolute peace. We look some way into the future here, of course, but even so, by the time that relations began once again to break down with the British, the immediate problem had been resolved. ‘The English ministers . . . make a great mistake if they think they can dictate laws to a nation of forty millions,’ boasted Napoleon. ‘They think I am doubtful of my position and therefore afraid to go to war. Why, I can raise two million men if I want them.’19

Men, meanwhile, were matched by money. In the realm of taxation Napoleon was in no sense an innovator. If there was one area of government in which the Directory had had some success it was that of the development of the fiscal system. In the period 1797-9 the tax structure inherited from the Revolution had been completely reorganized by the Minister of Finance, Jacques Ramel de Nogaret. Direct taxation had been based on three property levies - on land, movable property and servants, and doors and windows - and a licence that was payable by the proprietors of all commercial and industrial businesses. Backing these up were an array of indirect taxes: abolished in the course of the Revolution, these now returned in the form of internal customs dues - the old octroi - stamp duties and a levy payable on tobacco. The Consulate let this be: from 1804 onwards there was a steady increase in the number of indirect taxes payable on consumer goods, but for the time being Napoleon let well alone other than to impose a moderate additional levy known as the centimes additionnels on the four direct taxes. What he was interested in was rather the state’s ability to collect the revenue theoretically assigned to it. Despite genuine efforts by Ramel, who had transferred the task of tax assessment and collection from agents of local government to new officials responsible to the treasury and launched a major drive to collect the large number of outstanding arrears, returns were very low. With its foreign revenues