Ouvrard had scarcely completed the outline of his extraordinary enterprise when the Emperor suddenly broke up his camp at Boulogne to march to Germany.  It will readily be conceived that Ouvrard’s interests then imperatively required his presence at Madrid; but he was recalled to Paris by the Minister of the Treasury, who wished to adjust his accounts.  The Emperor wanted money for the war on which he was entering, and to procure it for the Treasury Ouvrard was sent to Amsterdam to negotiate with the House of Hope.  He succeeded, and Mr. David Parish became the Company’s agent.

Having concluded this business Ouvrard returned in all haste to Madrid; but in the midst of the most flattering hopes and most gigantic enterprises he suddenly found himself threatened with a dreadful crisis.  M. Desprez, as has been stated, had, with the concurrence of the Treasury, been allowed to take upon himself all the risk of executing the treaty, by which 150,000,000 were to be advanced for the year 1804, and 400,000,000 for the year 1805.  Under the circumstances which had arisen the Minister of the Treasury considered himself entitled to call upon Ouvrard to place at his disposal 10,000,000 of the piastres which he had received from Spain.  The Minister at the same time informed him that he had made arrangements on the faith of this advance, which he thought could not be refused at so urgent a moment.

The embarrassment of the Treasury, and the well-known integrity of the Minister, M. de Barbe Marbois, induced Ouvrard to remit the 10,000,000 piastres.  But a few days after he had forwarded the money a Commissioner of the Treasury arrived at Madrid with a ministerial despatch, in which Ouvrard was requested to deliver to the Commissioner all the assets he could command, and to return immediately to Paris.

The Treasury was then in the greatest difficulty, and a general alarm prevailed.  This serious financial distress was occasioned by the following circumstances.  The Treasury had, by a circular, notified to the Receivers-General that Desprez was the holder of their bonds.  They were also authorised to transmit to him all their disposable funds, to be placed to their credit in an account current.  Perhaps the giving of this authority was a great error; but, be that as it may, Desprez, encouraged by the complaisance of the Treasury, desired the Receivers-General to transmit to him all the sums they could procure for payment of interest under 8 per cent., promising to allow them a higher rate of interest.  As the credit of the house of Desprez stood high, it may be easily conceived that on such conditions the Receivers-General, who were besides secured by the authority of the Treasury, would enter eagerly into the proposed plan.  In short, the Receivers-General soon transmitted very considerable sums.  Chests of money arrived daily from every point of France.  Intoxicated by this success, Desprez engaged in speculations which in his situation