Dotation

The dotations were made by Emperor Napoleon to family members, government figures and military officers as a means of securing their support.

The loss of revenue to the conquered states was significant; the Kingdom of Westphalia was never financially solvent under French rule because of the dotation system taking 20% of its income.

[5] English-Italian historian Stuart Woolf said of the dotation system "no better example could be given of the unresolvable contradictions between the modernizing ideals of integration of the French administrative class and the practice of exploitation that accompanied the expansion of the Empire".

The top grade consisted of 10 donataires whose dotations ranged in value from 400,000 to 1.5 million francs per year (between 1806 and 1813) including Napoleon's sisters Pauline and Elisa, senior generals Michel Ney, André Masséna, Louis-Nicolas Davout, Jean-de-Dieu Soult and Jean-Baptiste Bessières and senior ministers including Armand-Augustin-Louis de Caulaincourt.

Other dotations were comparatively small; the lowest grade held revenues of 5,000–10,000 each and included 248 individuals with a total income of less than 2 million francs.

The toll on the Kingdom of Westphalia, which lost almost 20% of its revenue, meant that it failed to develop as an independent state and was never fiscally solvent.