"The Queen’s Embroiderer: a true story Paris, Lovers, Swindlers, and the first stock market crisis"

From Spear's Magazine:

Christopher Silvester reviews a dazzling true story of greed and its pitfalls from the 17th to 18th century 
The queen’s embroiderer: a true story Paris, Lovers, Swindlers, and the first stock market crisis by Joan Dejean 

Our story starts with the first Jean Magoulet, appointed as the Queen’s Embroiderer in 1677, who became a prominent supplier to the courtiers at Louis IV’s Versailles. Barely able to sign his name, Jean was nonetheless a dab hand at designing elaborate patterns for embroidery. 

But he had to pay 6,000 livres for the privilege of obtaining his coveted status, which meant embarking on a career as a debtor as well as an embroiderer. Courtiers rushed to emulate the fashions of the king and queen, and embroidery with metallic threads of gold and silver was all the rage.

A truly extravagant outfit of the time might require ten or more pounds of precious metal,’ says Joan DeJean. Indeed, so laden with gold and silver were Magoulet’s garments that when the country went through a bullion shortage, desperate courtiers would sell them for their metal content. 

Jean’s brother Jacques also rose to prominence during Louis IV’s reign, working as an overseer of the country’s tax farmers for the finance minister. He, too, had to buy and borrow his way to success. 

Jean Magoulet became a busy lender as well as a borrower. He also became a womaniser and parent to four illegitimate children. Under constant financial pressure, he was prepared to do dastardly things to slake his lust for credit.

He even sold his legitimate first-born son, Jean II, aged six, into indentured servitude to a French baron on a Caribbean island for three years. Unsurprisingly, Jean II nursed a bitter desire to wreak vengeance on his own father for the remainder of his days.

While the Magoulets were making their mark, another family, the Chevrots, were also benefiting from the upward mobility of the day, first from collecting salt taxes, then from controlling annuities. 

‘For an entire century and through four generations, the line went forward from one Antoine Chevrot to the next, with each subsequent marriage moving the family up a notch in the two worlds that counted in its members’ eyes: Paris and the French court.’
 

Meanwhile, John Law, an enterprising Scot, persuaded Louis XV’s Regent to create a new Royal Bank that would issue paper money for the first time. He also launched his Indies Company, which sought investment in the exploitation of mineral wealth, principally silver, from Louisiana, a French colony in America.
 

Parisians embarked on a frenzied buying of Indies Company stock. To put this in perspective for modern readers, DeJean reminds us that ‘during the dot-com bubble, the Nasdaq index rose from 500 to just over 5,000, but that spectacular climb took place over the nine-year period from April 1991 to March 2000’, whereas ‘in just five months, Law’s stock rose from 500 to over 10,000’. 

Several persons of humble station made quick and easy fortunes: a banker’s servant made 50 million, a waiter 30 million, and even Law’s coachman made ‘many, many millions’. Indeed, the heady episode gave rise to the first use of the term ‘millionaire’.

The stock bubble coincided with a heat wave, followed by a drought, and the inevitable surge in the price of bread, starvation, and epidemics of contagious diseases known as ‘fevers’.

It was at this point....

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