Verdun, la cathédrale [Notre-Dame, dégâts dus aux bombardements] : [photographie de presse] / [Agence Rol]

Référence bibliographique : Rol, 55278

Verdun, la cathédrale [Notre-Dame, dégâts dus aux bombardements] : [photographie de presse] / [Agence Rol]

Référence bibliographique : Rol, 55277

Verdun, la cathédrale [Notre-Dame, dégâts dus aux bombardements] : [photographie de presse] / [Agence Rol]

Référence bibliographique : Rol, 55280

Verdun, tour du 9e siècle [dégâts dus aux bombardements] : [photographie de presse] / [Agence Rol]

Référence bibliographique : Rol, 55279

Verdun, point central [vue sur le café du Balcon, dégâts dus à la guerre] : [photographie de presse] / [Agence Rol]

Référence bibliographique : Rol, 55300

Verdun, quai de la Comédie et le théâtre [dégâts dus à la guerre] : [photographie de presse] / [Agence Rol]

Référence bibliographique : Rol, 55297

Verdun, l'archevêché [dégâts dus à la guerre] : [photographie de presse] / [Agence Rol]

Référence bibliographique : Rol, 55306

Verdun, rue Mazel [dégâts dus à la guerre] : [photographie de presse] / [Agence Rol]

Référence bibliographique : Rol, 55307

Verdun, rue du Puty [dégâts dus à la guerre] : [photographie de presse] / [Agence Rol]

Référence bibliographique : Rol, 55302

Verdun, Hôtel de Ville [dégâts dus à la guerre] : [photographie de presse] / [Agence Rol]

Référence bibliographique : Rol, 55301

Verdun, rue du Puty [dégâts dus à la guerre] : [photographie de presse] / [Agence Rol]

Référence bibliographique : Rol, 55310

Verdun, la banque [dégâts dus à la guerre] : [photographie de presse] / [Agence Rol]

Référence bibliographique : Rol, 55309

Verdun, quai de la Banque et cercle militaire [dégâts dus à la guerre] : [photographie de presse] / [Agence Rol]

Référence bibliographique : Rol, 55308

Le regard de l'allié britannique sur la France et son armée durant la guerre de Crimée

Ce mémoire est une étude d’un cas de rapprochement entre deux pays. Pendant la guerre de Crimée, la Grande-Bretagne s’allia à la France du Second Empire. Ennemie traditionnelle, la France est toujours considérée comme une menace. La coopération forcée entre les deux pays, résultat des circonstances, est à la base de la présente recherche. Des milliers de militaires et de civils des deux pays travaillèrent ensemble pendant deux ans. Les correspondances britanniques révèlent une fraternisation plus importante que ce qui est relevé dans l’historiographie. D’après les théories de Gordon Allport sur la diminution des préjugés, toutes les conditions nécessaires à un rapprochement se retrouvaient en Crimée. Les étapes, définies par Allport, qui mènent à cette fraternisation se perçoivent aussi dans les lettres personnelles. Ce rapprochement eut des conséquences sous-estimées : les Britanniques se comparèrent aux Français et leur fierté céda la place à une importante autocritique. Cela déclencha des controverses dans l’armée et dans les journaux dès le début de la guerre, longtemps avant les scandales de l’hiver 1854-1855.

Profits, malversations, restitutions. Les bénéfices des financiers durant la guerre de la Ligue d’Augsbourg et la taxe de Chamillart

Profit, embezzlement, restitution. The role of the traitants in the Nine Years War and Chamillart’s tax on financial benefits The aim of this article is to revisit the question of the financiers in Old Regime France. It starts with an analysis of the discourses about the financiers under the Absolute monarchy that underlines the complexity of their relationship with the government and the public. It then reviews the secondary literature and highlights the existence of competing historical interpretations (functional, political, utilitarian), which raise the question of their overall capacity to account for the role and impact of the financiers at different times. On this ground, the article focuses on a specific group of financiers, the so-called traitants d’affaires extraordinaires, during the Nine Years War. Further to a description of the specific role and scope of the activities of the various financiers responsible for helping the monarchy to raise the funds it needed to pay for its peace and wartime expenditure, the article examines the conditions and profits granted by the king in his contracts with the traitants whose services were hired for the purpose of selling royal offices in the public and advancing the revenue to the Treasury. It also explores the contractual arrangements of the companies established by the financiers to manage their operations as well as the rights and the responsibilities of their various stakeholders. These bases being laid, the article relies on the administrative correspondence relating to the traités during the Nine Years War to address a range of issues, in particular the extent to which these contracts, and other control procedures, were robust enough to deter fraud. The accounts of two traitants’ companies offer an opportunity to analyse and compare the structure of their income and expenditure (including the volume and cost of the promissory notes sold in the public to finance their payments to the Treasury), to explore the strategies of the contractors, to calculate their net profits and further discuss the problem of embezzlement. The article ends with the study of the context and debates which led to the introduction by finance minister Michel Chamillart, in 1700, of a shortfall tax on the financial profits of the gens d’affaires or traitants, the method used to determine its rate (50 % of the net benefits), its distribution among the various stakeholders (including the bailleurs de fonds or backers), and the related procedures. In total, the article argues that the relationship between the monarchy, society and the financiers under the Ancien Regime was not static and, therefore, suggests that the broad question of control and fraud must be examined against changing circumstances. With regard specifically to the Nine Years War, the article concludes that within the constraints of the Absolute monarchy, contractors offered valuable services by raising capital for the benefit of a king who ruled over a country which, at the time, was by far the wealthiest in Europe, and where ministers failed to foresee long wars of attrition and whose financial strategy was limited by the very existence of privilege. Overall, the traités were too costly to be a viable system of war financing. In these conditions, the substantial fortunes made by a handful of very successful traitants suffice to explain that the government easily gave in to public criticism against the wealth of the financiers and felt compelled, when peace resumed, to cancel the advantageous conditions offered in the treaties by taxing financial profits.