Millionaire - Janet Gleeson [44]
His place was filled by the gimlet-eyed d’Argenson. Many questioned the appointment. Some said that d’Argenson knew little of finance, that he would take the role and its perks and let Law run things behind the scenes. Others felt that he was a hard-liner who had been brought in to keep a stronger control of the Parlement. Certainly it seemed that he was not going to let Law run his show and take all his glory. As if trying to out-maneuver him, d’Argenson swiftly proposed his own remedy for the country’s financial problems: he would slash government debt by calling in old coins and state bonds for revaluation. The livre would be devalued by a sixth, but a substantial amount of debt would be absorbed.
If Law had had anything to do with the scheme, he did not show it. His main worry was to prevent the public losing trust in his banknotes, although since they were guaranteed at value on date of issue, they would be unaffected—or, if anything, more desirable. Thus, he reasoned, he could lie low while d’Argenson played at finance. He was wrong.
In the Parlement there was outcry. Unlike in England, members of the French Parlement were nonelected and had little real influence over the absolute monarchy; their role was no more than that of a judicial high court with administrative and legal duties. To bolster his own position in the early days of his regency, Orléans, however, had restored to them the right of “remonstrance” before registration, which Louis XIV had removed in 1673. It was a decision he now regretted, since it gave them a lever—albeit a flimsy one—with which to challenge his authority. Law had not been overtly involved in the devaluation of the currency, and later said he had opposed it. But the scheme presented the Parlement with a twofold opportunity: to assert its power and to dispose of Law, against whom distrust festered. “The Parlement are still doing all they can to pick a hole in Mr. Law’s coat, striking at the Regent through his sides,” reported Fanny Oglethorpe—a Jacobite exile and friend of Law—of the mounting tensions. The English ambassador, the Earl of Stair, also marked the mood: “What makes it dangerous to employ Law is that everyone is against him, and that the Duke of Orléans, in the present situation of his affairs, would run a great risk in putting the administration of the finances into the hands of a stranger so generally hated, even if his system were good.”
The turning point came when the Parlement audaciously demanded that the regent revoke the devaluation. When he refused, the judges retaliated by publishing an edict that outlawed the link between the bank and the government. No longer would taxes be payable in banknotes, it said, and, moreover, it was “forbidden to all foreigners, even naturalized, to meddle directly or indirectly, or to participate under assumed names, in the handling or the administration of the royal funds.” The reference to Law could not have been clearer.
The crisis deepened. Word reached Saint-Simon that the Parlement intended to send bailiffs “some morning with a warrant to arrest Law and hang him within three hours in the prison-yard.” At this, according to the Jacobite exile General Dillon, the regent “sent immediate orders to the foot and horse guards to be ready at a call and had powder and ball distributed to them. There are actually footguards at Law’s house to secure his person from insult.” It must all have been a frightening reminder to Law of his trial and imprisonment. During an emergency meeting hastily convened by Saint-Simon, the strain of the past days took their toll and Law’s self-possession crumbled: he broke down, according to Saint-Simon, “more dead than alive, [he] knew not what to say, still less what to do.” Saint-Simon calmed him, and suggested that Law and Katherine