Eighteenth Century France - Six Essays (Paperback)

Text extracted from opening pages of book: PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN CONTENTS PAGE FOREWORD V JOHN LAW I ANGLOMANIACS AND FRANCOPHILES 29 L'ABBE COYER A SOCIETY IN TRANSITION .... 70 VOLTAIRE'S GREATEST ENEMY in PLAYHOUSES 155 THE CENSORSHIP * 94 Vll JOHN LAW IN the closing days of December, seventeen hundred and twenty, a post-chaise, emblazoned with the arms of Philip due de Orleans and Regent of France, jolted its way through the gathering dusk towards Valenciennes en route for Brussels. To the elder of its two occupants at least this bleak, flat, and sodden countryside of northern France, with its sparse pollarded willows and straight, restless poplars, was a welcome sight even to one who had just left behind him the wooded snugness of the fertile lie de France. This middle-aged, rather tired man was John Law of Lauriston, late Comptroller-General of the Finances of Louis XV of France and adviser to His Majesty in all his councils. The other traveller, not much more than a boy, was his son. It is true that the carriage which was bearing these two towards Brussels had been sent by order of the Regent or, to be strictly accurate, by the kind offices of the Regent's titular mistress, Mme de Prie. It is also a fact that Law's passports were in perfect order and signed with the boyish scrawl of the young King himself. Still, John Law of Lauriston, of Guermande, and half a dozen other French estates 2 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FRANCE might have been excused a certain uneasiness as he peered out through the streaming windows of the coach. For this Scottish financier carried in his ears the roars of execration of a populace and the lamentations of a ruined and starving nation which but a few monthsbefore had hailed him as the saviour of France. At Valenciennes fresh horses are procured and the chaise sets off again, only to be halted sharply by Monsieur d'Argenson, Intendant to the King at Maubeuge and the son of Law's most implacable enemy, the ex-Keeper of the Seals, now slowly dying at the Convent of Tresnel at Paris. This might be called a dramatic meeting. The greatest gambler in Europe is arrested in headlong flight by the son of a man whose career he had smashed after a three year duel of wits. Imagine the forty-eight hours that follow, hours of anxious heart-searching on the part of Law who asks himself whether the Regent has played him false, whilst the younger d'Argenson savours with delight the spectacle of the financier's misgivings. But a peremptory order arrives from the Regent to allow Law to proceed unmolested, Of what really happened during those two fateful days we know little. D'Argenson of course records in his diary that Law was badly frightened; but from what we know of the Scotsman's character this is mere guesswork on the part of the over - zealous Intendant. Frightened Law probably was; but if we believe what more impartial enemies have said of his amazing sang-froid, it is practically certain JOHN LAW 3 that lie did not make d'Argenson a witness of his emotions. To understand the denouement we must go back to the opening scenes of the astonishing history of John Law. Born in Edinburgh in April 1671, he was the son of a goldsmith who, like most of his colleagues, made much more money by usury than by the practice of his nominal trade. Law's mother, it is said, was descended from the ducal family of Argyll and his political relations with that house lendprobability to the story. His father's death left him master of two small estates, Randleston and Lauriston, of a decent fortune, and a very considerable knowledge of finance. In 1694 we find him in London gambling, making love, and studying the credit system of the newly founded Bank of England. Either his luck at cards or his gallantries, or more probably both, embroiled him with a man called Beau Wilson whom he un fortunately killed in a duel, for which he was sent to the Tower. Acquitted of murder, a verdict against which the Wilson family vehemently appealed,