From Owen Connelly's Historical Dictionary of Napoleonic France an article on exchange rates by Harold T Parker, 174:
'Napoleon was a hard-money man. He had a horror of going into debt (he borrowed as little as possible), and he abhorred paper money. The value of his franc coins in silver (or gold) equaled their face value, the Bank of France's billets of 500 francs, backed by commercial paper, were redeemable in metallic currency, and by 1812 Napoleon had stored 400 million francs in bullion in the cellar of the Tuileries. By 1810 the French franc on the exchange was the strongest currency in Europe, the standard by which other currencies were measured. At that time the lire (Kingdom of Italy) equaled 0.76 franc; the ducat (Naples), 4.45; the real (Spain), 0.27; the florin (Holland), 2.17; the dollar (United States), 5.00; the pound sterling (Great Britain), 20.30. Meanwhile Britain was financing war expenses by borrowing (its debt doubled during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic period), by issuing paper money and by going off the gold standard. By April 1811 the British pound bought only 17 to 18 francs. The hard-money franc was victor in the battle of exchange rates.'