Chapter 5 explores the context and reason for the publication of the Letters on Sympathy in 1798 as an accompaniment to her translation of Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments. For Grouchy, the Terror and the fall of Robespierre were personally traumatic and led to her decision to divorce Condorcet shortly before his death. However, these events did not introduce any major changes to her philosophy. Deprived of her key intellectual partner, she attempted (more or less unsuccessfully) to recreate the partnership she had shared with Condorcet with her lover, Maillia Garat, and her brother, Emmanuel de Grouchy. Moreover, the publication of the Letters was intended to be a reminder of the ideals of the early revolution, in the face of the increasingly elitist politics of the Directory regime and her allies in the republican centre. Nevertheless, the uncertain political atmosphere of 1795–8, in which a fear of left-wing plots combined with an increasing suspicion of female political outspokenness, led her to package her message together with the less controversial Theory of Moral Sentiments. This allowed her ideas to be dismissed by some, at least publically, as purely dealing with moral, as opposed to political matters.

Founded by the Constitution of the year III, and with the executive power divided between five Directors, and the legislative power divided into two houses, the Directory sought political middle ground. It defied at the same time the “Jacobins” of Babeuf’s conspiracy and the constitutional circles, and the royalists of the Philanthropic Institute, who were ready to seize power by means of elections or force. In the name of this double danger, real or supposed, the Directors set up coups d’état to nullify election results by associating themselves with generals haloed by their expeditions and their victories abroad (in Egypt or the “sister-republics”). The Directory tried to muzzle the press, supervise the theater, multiply the official celebrations, and reform primary and secondary education. It tried in vain to spread a national religion (theophilanthropy) to control public opinion, to favor a republican elite, to tie scholars to the regime. In charge of a society marked by strong contrasts between the new rich who benefited from the development of the arts, and those left behind (the downgraded, unemployed, deserters, emigrants), it was confronted with corruption and brigandage.

This chapter investigates how Napoleon funded his war effort during the fifteen years that he was in power. Coming to power in the wake of the French monarchy’s financial insolvency and the profound turmoil of the French Revolution, Napoleon chose to become personally involved in financial affairs of the nation, opting for radical but effective solutions. This aspect of his accomplishments is usual forgotten. This is all the more unfair as his successes were real and stark. By rationalizing old principles, the winner of Austerlitz gave himself the means to embody the “God of war” but failed to win the battle for credit due in large part to the disastrous legacy he received from regimes that had preceded him.