Did the French have to pay reparation after the Napoleonic Wars?

Question

As above.

Who had control of the French civil service after the defeat of Napoleon? How comprehensive was the control of French public life?

How did it return to total French control?

Answer 1

No reparations were required for one main reason: the main allied countries wanted to see the return of the Bourbon monarchy. The revolutionary and the Bonapartist governments were viewed as war-mongering usurpers, so that the Bourbons were actually assisted to re-establish their regime by gifts and loans. They'd been rulers in exile for over 20 years.

The situation at the end of the Great War in 1918 was a little different. The Hohenzollern regime that started the war had been everyone's "good neighbour" since 1870, and there was no clear alternative government in exile that others wished to support. Also, the French were still smarting from their defeat in 1871, and the loss of Alsace. They were not in a forgiving mood at Versailles - they'd forgotten the magnanimity of the Allies in 1815.

As regards the civil service, the French view of their senior officers after about 1805 was quite different from before the Revolution. A professional paid (not already wealthy and landed) civil service had been put in place by the Directory (1795-99) and strenghtened by Bonaparte. A classic case was Jean-Louis Calmon. He who was a regional and national banking official from 1790 until his death in 1857 and was awarded the Legion of Honour by King Louis-Phillipe in 1840: a Bonapartist award granted by the last Bourbon. Since the time of the Consulate (1799-1804), the French have separated the responsibility of the civil service from that of the ruling politicians. Therefore, the business of running the country continues despite regime changes and political unrest. This has been the case in United Kingdom since about 1690, but the USA seems not to have learned this lesson yet.

Answer 2

No, they did not. The idea of reparations had not been developed in 1815. Control returned to the Bourbons with the major servant of the state being Count Talleyrand. He was, in fact, a major player at the Congress of Vienna which was designed to settle the map of Europe after Napoleon. There was a limited Prussian occupation of northern France for a time after Waterloo, but by and large the French controlled their own affairs.