Napoleon's Fortune

Feilding Star, Volume IX, Issue 84, 16 February 1888, Page 3

Napoleon's Fortune

One of the most remarkable historical incidents of this ceutury was the disappearance of the First Napoleon's enormous fortune. In 1810 he was far and away the richest individual in the world. He came out of the Italian campaign ended in 1800 with 4,000,000 dol., according to his own account. This he maintained was his private property. Taking the statements he made to his friends and others at St. Helena, he must have had hidden away when he left France the last time, the enormous sum of 40,000,000d01., or 200,000,000 francs! This would make him very much the wealthiest man in che world, for that sum then was equal in influence to 200,000,000d01. now. No sovereign of his time could begin to approach him in personal fortune. Marshall Soult, the last of the Imperial Marshall (who died in November, 1851, just about a year before his great antagonist, the Duke of Wellington), told a venerable French officer, who repeated it to the writer, that when the Emperor went to Elba he had 60,000,000 francs covered up in Paris alone. Of the 12,000,000d01. hard cash paid over at one time by the United States to Napoleon as First Consul in 1803, it was common rumor — not very general, you may be sure, however—that 7,500,000 francs of the sum was never accounted for in vouchers. This might easily have been. Napoleon was then First Consul for life. He could do j ust w hat he choose, and nobody dared call him to account. It is not very difficult to hide money in large sums, too, so it cannot be found, be the search ever so careful. Ferdinand Ward has some millions thus covered up, and no human being has ever yet found a clue to the stolen treasure. It was said and believed by many people, too, that 1 Stephen Girard, of I'hiiadelphia, had ! a large sum in his hands belong- j ing to Napoleon 1., which he would have handed over to him had he succeeded in getting away to the United States" after Waterloo, as he tried to do. Louis XVJ.IL, through his Minister of Finance, did all in his power to discover this hidden treasure, but those who knew would never tell. They probably took it themselves when the Emperor died m 1821. But it is a very interesting and romantic story, the disappearance absolutely of the greatest fortune in the world's history up to that time, leaving not a trace behind. — Washington Herald.