Pierre César Labouchère

Pierre César Labouchère (* 1772 in The Hague ; † 1839 ) was a Dutch banker of French descent who was co-owner of the Hope & Co. banking and trading company in Amsterdam .

Life

Partner through skill

His father, a Huguenot and cloth merchant, sent him to his uncle in Nantes , also a wholesale merchant, where he stood out for his remarkable ability. It earned him a recommendation to the banking and trading company Hope & Co., where at the age of twenty-two, after three years of auxiliary activity, he decided to hold the hand of the daughter of his business partner Sir Francis Baring. The latter had connections with the British government and, with the Baring bank, dominated the entire international money business. However, the courtship only promised success if he became a partner in Hopes beforehand. The request for admission did not fall on fertile ground with the Hope owners, only when he revealed the possible connection with the Baring house did he become a useful partner for them and, conversely, an acceptable son-in-law for Baring. The marriage to Dorothée Elisabeth Baring (1771–1825), known as the “Hopesche Hochzeit”, shed light on Labouchère's dexterity. In addition, he combined the solidity of the respectable businessman with the manners of a nobleman, which sometimes - viewed from a different perspective - made him appear cold and arrogant.

Escape from the revolutionary troops

During the quarrels between the patriots and the Orangeans, company boss Henry Hope was able to maintain a neutral status thanks to his Anglo-American origins, but after the Prussians invaded the Netherlands in 1787, he made no secret of his preference for the Orangeans. In the course of the spread of the French Revolution he had to flee to England in February 1793. Labouchère and his future brother-in-law Alexander Baring, who was training with Hopes, held out until January 18, 1795, when the French troops invaded Amsterdam, and then fled via Den Helder . Although signals soon came that the leading figures of the Batavian Republic would like to continue business as usual, the French sponsored a coup in 1798 in favor of a more radical group. It was not until the autumn of 1801 that Labouchère ventured to the Netherlands to reopen Hope & Co., and then to travel overland via Paris, Nantes and Madrid to Portugal for a loan deal in which Brazilian diamonds were to serve as collateral. It was in the interest of Hope & Co. to save the diamond trade for Holland - and thus for their own house - and to avoid London's development as a competitor.

Back in Holland with the family

Labouchères returned to the Netherlands in October 1802, but were not welcomed with open arms everywhere. A leaflet had circulated in radical patriotic circles denouncing those "who leave the republic in times of danger and return in peacetime". Towards the end of the year, the big financial transaction that the Louisiana sale would bring for France began to emerge, and Alexander Baring sought the opportunity to participate in Paris. In May 1803, the French Treasury reached an agreement with the Houses of Baring and Hope on the manner in which American payment should take place for Louisiana. Another war with England broke out and a sale of all relevant bills of exchange to Barings and Hopes seemed the surest way for the French treasury to keep a happy ending. For the most part, it was Labouchère's job to negotiate the supplementary agreement signed in April 1804.

Doing business with Napoleon Bonaparte

Now it turned out that Hope & Co., with its obvious ties to England, was becoming more and more important in Napoleon's financial planning. Most sensational was the project with which the speculator Gabriel-Julien Ouvrard wanted to rehabilitate the French and Spanish households in 1805 by bringing in Mexican piastres , a fiasco for him and the company of the merchants involved , but not for the incorporated company Hope & Co. On the gigantic, half-earth-spanning business and the placement of a Spanish bond in the Netherlands, she earned almost a million pounds sterling within two years in association with the Baring house . The intricacies of the deal had been negotiated between Médard Desprez , head of the Bank of France and vice-chairman of the Society of United Merchants , and Pierre César Labouchère. Labouchère was alien to dark business deals and unsound financing; he did not make a deal at any price. This earned him respect even from Napoleon , with Talleyrand he was on friendly terms. When French troops occupied Spain in 1808, however, the business that had begun there became less and less controllable and Labouchère had to give up his plans to withdraw from day-to-day business, especially as the problems with interest and repayments on loans given to Russia increased.

Napoleon's emissary in peace matters

At the end of 1809, the French Police Minister Joseph Fouché was able to help improve the relationship between Louis Bonaparte and his brother Napoleon, and since it had been agreed to establish a secret contact to explore possibilities for peace with England, he was able to present the right man with Pierre César Labouchère . Labouchère made use of the contact with the Duke of Wellington in February 1810 , but the British government did not want any secret negotiations, the threat of the occupation of Holland did not work and the British would not deny the Bourbons' claim to the Spanish throne. Informed of the result in Paris, Napoleon put an end to the mission and gave instructions to send Labouchère again to London to communicate the decision. However, Fouché and Ouvrard, who tried to thwart the breakdown of the negotiations, slipped a new peace offer, unknown to Napoleon, which provided for a division of America between England and France, with the Bourbons as monarchs in Mexico. When Napoleon noticed his betrayal, Fouché was released and Ouvrard was sentenced to three years in prison.

Conversion of the Hope company

On February 25, 1811, Henry Hope, the last commercially committed member of the founding family, died. Labouchère withdrew from the company, but in such a way that he continued to look like a partner. Pressure was being put on him by John Hope to resell Russian loan receivables just as war between Russia and France was about to begin. Finally, the heirs sold their shares to Alexander Baring, who re-founded Hope & Co. with Labouchère as the official owner on January 1, 1815. That he had decidedly goodbye to day-to-day business was confirmed by his withdrawal to London. After a few failures with Ouvrard, there was still a hit there: When France's situation became increasingly critical because of the repayment of war debts, Ouvrard sought the support of Labouchère and Alexander Baring in 1816 to create government bonds worth 100 million francs . After everything happened this time as planned by Ouvrard, even Baring and Hope, who at first vehemently resisted taking out the bond for their own account, suddenly wanted to buy the entire issue instead of only carrying out the sales for the Allies against a commission. Also in 1816 Labouchère acquired the Hylands Park estate , which he remained in possession of until his death in 1839.

literature

• Jean Tulard : Labouchère (Pierre-César), 1772 - 1839, banquier , in Jean Tulard (ed.): Dictionnaire Napoléon , Arthème Fayard, Paris 1987, p. 1011

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Marten G. Buist: At Spes non fracta. Hope & Co. 1770 - 1815. Merchant bankers and diplomats at work , Martinus Nijhoff, Den Haag 1974, p. 40
2. ↑ Otto Wolff : The business of Mr. Ouvrard. From the life of a brilliant speculator , Rütten & Loening, Frankfurt am Main 1932, p. 154
3. ↑ Marten G. Buist: At Spes non fracta. Hope & Co. 1770-1815. The Hague 1974, p. 64
4. ↑ Marten G. Buist: At Spes non fracta. Hope & Co. 1770-1815. The Hague 1974, p. 50
5. ↑ Marten G. Buist: At Spes non fracta. Hope & Co. 1770-1815. The Hague 1974, p. 388
6. ↑ Marten G. Buist: At Spes non fracta. Hope & Co. 1770-1815. The Hague 1974, p. 400
7. ↑ Marten G. Buist: At Spes non fracta. Hope & Co. 1770-1815. The Hague 1974, p. 403
8. ↑ Marten G. Buist: At Spes non fracta. Hope & Co. 1770-1815. The Hague 1974, p. 57
9. ↑ William Berdrow: book of famous merchants. Men of energy and enterprise , Otto Spamer Verlag, 2nd edition, Leipzig 1909, p. 168
10. ↑ Marten G. Buist: At Spes non fracta. Hope & Co. 1770-1815. The Hague 1974, p. 292
11. ↑ Marten G. Buist: At Spes non fracta. Hope & Co. 1770-1815. The Hague 1974, p. 65
12. ↑ Louis Madelin: Fouché. 1759-1820 , Librairie académique Perrin, Paris 1979, p. 255
13. ↑ Louis Madelin: Fouché. 1759 - 1820 , Paris 1979, p. 257 and Stefan Zweig : Joseph Fouché. Portrait of a political man , Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1957, p. 147
14. ↑ Otto Wolff: The business of Mr. Ouvrard. Frankfurt am Main 1932, p. 156
15. ↑ Marten G. Buist: At Spes non fracta. Hope & Co. 1770-1815. The Hague 1974, p. 268
16. ↑ Otto Wolff: The business of Mr. Ouvrard. Frankfurt am Main 1932, p. 187
17. ↑ Otto Wolff: The business of Mr. Ouvrard. Frankfurt am Main 1932, p. 190