Royal agent Under the
Constituent Assembly, de Batz's reputation as a financier led to his appointment on 28 May 1790 to the Liquidation Committee, which was responsible for clearing public accounts. It appears that de Batz conducted liquidations of fraudulent debts, and sold them to his friends who then reimbursed him. At the same time, he became a secret adviser to
Louis XVI, and organized the financing of a secret policy implemented at the Château des Tuileries under
Armand Marc, comte de Montmorin to defend the monarchy, which continued until at least 10 August 1792. On his own account, de Batz advanced to Louis XVI a sum exceeding 500,000 livres. Baron de Batz's closest ally was the Minister of Finance,
Étienne Clavière, and under the guise of missions Clavière entrusted to him, de Batz made several voyages abroad between March 1792 and January 1793, during which he maintained contacts with foreign monarchs and royalist sympathizers. De Batz also had close ties to
Louis Auguste Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, the last chief minister to Louis XVI and leader of the Bourbon government in exile after Louis was executed. On 21 January 1793, de Batz tried in vain to raise the crowd in boulevard de Bonne Nouvelle to save the king from execution. Several royalists were killed, though de Batz managed to escape. De Batz also made efforts to save the queen, Marie Antoinette. He remained partially in hiding until he obtained a certificate of non-emigration in June 1793.
Conspiracies At the end of October 1793, fraud was uncovered in the liquidation of the
French East India Company, and de Batz was named as the leader of a vast conspiracy against the fledgeling republic. According to a declaration made in prison by
François Chabot, de Batz had frequently met with leaders of the
Paris Commune and the
National Convention, including
Committee of Public Safety members
Claude Basire,
Julien de Toulouse and
Delaunay d'Angers. Chabot also claimed that de Batz had held talks with foreign bankers including
Junius Frey and his brother Emmanuel Frey (of Austria), Pierre-Jean Berthold de Prosly (of Brussels) (
fr), Andres Maria de Guzman (of Spain), and Jacob Pereira (of Portugal), and that de Batz's efforts were funded at least in part by British money. These accusations were themselves were likely intended to undermine de Batz and his collaborators. It was at about this time that de Batz, who still concealed his true loyalties, secretly proposed undermining the Revolution by printing counterfeit
assignats, the paper currency the Republic depended on to finance its activities. According to historian Arnaud de Lestapis
:fr:Arnaud de Lestapis, Batz had a network of a dozen nobles (see below) to assist him in distributing the bogus paper. Lestapis observes that Batz's plan was similar to one that historian
Louis Blanc claimed was provided to the Pitt government by the Scottish banker
William Playfair at about the same time. A proposal in Playfair's handwriting that appears to be the one Blanc referred to was later found in a collection of letters from Playfair to
Henry Dundas, the former British Secretary of War. Both the popular historical author
Meade Minnigerode's biography of de Batz and the proposal that Blanc attributed to Playfair claim that a goal of these economic warfare measures was to create chaos within the Revolution by turning its leaders against each other. and, according to the memoir published by one of de Batz's descendants, the Baron crossed the Channel regularly during this time, meeting with British leaders, including
Lord Sydney, the
Duke of Richmond, and
Lord Gower, who had been England's ambassador to Paris during the insurrection that toppled the King. Lestapis notes that the forgery of assignats was one reason the French Republic gave for declaring war on Britain, suggesting that it achieved its goal of disruption. According to Minnigerode de Batz was also secretly aiding the royalists by skimming funds from the transactions he conducted for the French Republic that would be used to support counterrevolutionary activities. At the time, de Batz was also regularly traveling between the provinces and Switzerland, and learned that his friends and most of his relations had been arrested. Denunciations were gathered to build an indictment. On 14 March 1794,
Hébertistes,
Clootz, Pereira and Prosly were
guillotined. On 5 April,
Georges Danton and his friends were executed with Chabot, Basire, the abbot of
Espagnac, Guzman, and the Frey brothers. Historians such as
Norman Hampson argue that de Batz escaped accusations of involvement in the scandal by using his knowledge of his accusers' own corruption.
After the Reign of Terror Returning to France, de Batz was involved in the
royalist insurrection of 5 October 1795, and imprisoned. After the
Coup of 18 Fructidor (4 September 1797), he took refuge in
Auvergne where he owned a castle. Discovered, he was arrested, but escaped during his transfer to
Lyon and fled to Switzerland. The
French Consulate had him removed from the list of emigrants and he abandoned political activism, returning to live in Auvergne. Under the
Bourbon Restoration, he was awarded the rank of
maréchal de camp (field marshal) and the
cross of St. Louis for his services, as well as the military command of
Cantal, which was revoked after the
Hundred Days period. Living in seclusion in
Chadieu, near
Vic-le-Comte, he died on 10 January 1822. == Literary representations ==