Médard Desprez

Médard Desprez (* 24. April 1764 in Vauxaillon (Aisne); † 24. March 1842 in Meulan ) was a French banker, 1801 - 1806 Member of the Board of the Bank of France and belonged 1802 to the bankers of the State Treasury (bankers du Trésor public ).

Life

Family connection

His parents were primary school teachers Jean-François Desprez and Marie Declerc. He married Marie-Madeleine Lecotier and had no descendants.

Career in banking

In 1785 he was a clerk at Bank Cottin & Jauge, and between 1788 and 1790 he carried out bills of exchange for the director of the State Treasury, Dufresne de Saint-Léon, as the unofficial middleman of the discount office (Caisse d'escompte). During the Bank of France's first capital increase , some of the shares could not be placed. The bank needed to sell them, but did not want to offer them on the stock exchange itself. Desprez took it on his account and was able to sell it on. In 1799 he was the administrator of the current account (Caisse des comptes courants), in 1800 he worked as a stockbroker, and in 1805 he appeared for the first time in the Almanac as a banker. Desprez was the best informed of all of Paris about events on the stock exchange that relied on state money. The great speculation with the receipts of the general tax collector was his innovation.

Napoleon's various attempts at state financing gave him the opportunity. Although the First Consul sought to create facilities that would ensure regular supplies to the state treasury, it dragged on and he had to fall back on private donors. In 1800 he accepted the Twenty United Merchants (Vingt Négociants réunis) as lenders, the following year their number was reduced to ten. Desprez's proposal to trade in the bonds of tax collectors was shortly tested before the Association of Bankers of the State Treasury (Association des Banquiers du Trésor public), which adopted this system, came together in July 1801 . Napoleon limited the achievable interest income, which in 1802 led to a replacement of the Bankers' Association , this time including Médard Desprez. In 1803 the treasury minister was to rely solely on the general tax collector's office, but in 1804 he had to ask private donors again. The Society of United Merchants came together, the five members of which had become rich as army suppliers.

Right in the middle: the crisis 1805–1806

From 1801 Desprez was one of the directors ("régent") of the Bank of France and was asked in July 1804 by the merchant Gabriel-Julien Ouvrard to coordinate the services of the partners in the Society of United Merchants . In fact, Treasury Minister Barbé-Marbois was behind the election, but he got a rebuff at the first question: Some of the members of the merchants had a bad reputation for Desprez. When Napoleon confirmed the wish, Desprez relented. A complicated procedure was devised in which the merchants financed the state and were paid for their supplies of food at the same time. In mid-1805, two of the five participants got out because of lower interest rates. The effort was made more difficult by new war activities and the unforeseen connection with the budget restructuring started by Ouvrard in Spain, a South American silver supply was to be tapped.

The payments that the Dutch trading house Hope & Co. made to France after the acquisition of all the bills of exchange related to the Louisiana sale already ran through Desprez, so it was obvious that his co-owner and actual head, Pierre César Labouchère , with Desprez the basic features a transfer of Mexican piastres to Europe. The expansion of the naval war, however, collapsed the credit building based on Mexican silver coins, and it also became more difficult for the army suppliers to remain solvent. They issued bills of convenience to each other, which Desprez's Bank of France accepted without complaint.

Since suppliers had to settle for national goods in the Rhenish departments to compensate for their demands from Napoleon since 1805, Desprez was also drawn into the trade in goods supplied by the army . Meanwhile in Paris, the "bons Desprez" he issued undermined confidence in banknotes. The worst crisis that trade went through in years arose. In January 1806 the resulting damage amounted to 73 million francs . Relieved of all his offices, Desprez had to hand over his property to the state and declared bankruptcy at the end of 1807. He owned two houses in Paris near the boulevards, the Domaine de Marchais (Aisne), including woods and farms, and a courtyard in Ecqueuilly.

In the debt trap?

The terrible reckoning of Napoleon earned Desprez a sentence in the Sainte-Pélagie prison. Freed for fifteen months, he was arrested again in Bordeaux in October 1810 and was only released after more than a year. However, his bankruptcy on November 27, 1807 also revealed him to be in the key position of a financial vault over a large cluster of trade speculations associated with Paris and the Atlantic ports. Accordingly, his case caused tremors in various Parisian economic sectors. It took him two days to reach an agreement with his creditors that he would manage his business under the supervision of appointed committee members for the liquidation. 28 years after his release, the liquidation was still going on and it was alleged in a commercial court in 1839:

"This is a pleasant situation that he wants to keep as long as possible."

Which also happened until his death on March 24th, 1842.

reference

• Romuald Szramkiewicz: Desprez (Médard), 1764 - 1842, régent de la Banque de France , in Jean Tulard (ed.): Dictionnaire Napoléon , Arthème Fayard, Paris 1987, p. 598

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Michel Bruguière: Gestionnaires et profiteurs de la Révolution. L'administration des finances françaises de Louis XVI à Bonaparte , Olivier Orban, Paris 1986, p. 246
2. ↑ ^{a b} Maurice Payard: Le financier G.-J. Ouvrard. 1770 - 1846 , Académie nationale de Reims, Reims 1958, p. 103
3. ↑ Arthur Lévy : Un grand profiteur de guerre sous la Révolution, l'Empire et la Restauration, G.-J. Ouvrard , Calmann-Lévy, Paris 1929, p. 115
4. ↑ Arthur Lévy: Un grand Profiteur. P. 116
5. ^ Louis Bergeron: Banquiers, négociants et manufacturiers parisiens du Directoire à l'Empire , Mouton Éditeur, Paris et al. 1978, p. 147
6. ↑ Michel Bruguière: Gestionnaires et profiteurs de la Révolution. L'administration des finances françaises de Louis XVI à Bonaparte , Olivier Orban, Paris 1986, p. 154
7. ↑ Marten G. Buist: At Spes non fracta. Hope & Co. 1770 - 1815. Merchant bankers and diplomats at work , Martinus Nijhoff, Den Haag 1974, p. 292.Buist doubts the claim in Ouvrard's memoir that Messrs. Hope almost fell from their chairs in April 1805 when he did the Concept for the transfer of the silver coins spread before them, as he also points out that the majority of the authors of work on Ouvrard referred to his memoirs, which are unreliable in terms of facts and figures (ibid .: p. 631).
8. ^ Georges Lefebvre : Napoleon , Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2003, p. 207
9. ^ Gabriele B. Clemens: Real estate dealers and speculators. The socio-economic and historical significance of the large buyers at the national goods auctions in the Rhenish departments (1803 - 1813) , Harald Boldt Verlag, Boppard am Rhein 1995, p. 188
10. ^ Louis Bergeron: Banquiers, négociants et manufacturiers parisiens du Directoire à l'Empire , Mouton Éditeur, Paris et al. 1978, p. 381
11. ↑ Otto Wolff : The business of Mr. Ouvrard. From the life of a brilliant speculator , Rütten & Loening, Frankfurt am Main 1932, p. 160
12. ^ Louis Bergeron: Banquiers, négociants et manufacturiers parisiens du Directoire à l'Empire , Mouton Éditeur, Paris et al. 1978, p. 291
13. ↑ Il fut dit alors au Tribunal de Commerce: “C'est une situation douce qu'il veut conserver le plus longtemps possible.” Quoted from Maurice Payard: Le financier G.-J. Ouvrard. 1770 - 1846 , Académie nationale de Reims, Reims 1958, p. 162