Millionaire - Janet Gleeson [56]
Elsewhere a similar sense of well-being came from share dealing. The regent’s family and favorites were given preferential allocations and prospered spectacularly. His mother reported that the king had millions for his household and that “My son has given me 2 million in shares which I have distributed among my household.” The Marquis de Lassay, the Maréchal d’Estrées, the Duc de la Force, and the royal princes of Conti and Bourbon made millions. Bourbon spent part of his colossal windfall in starting his own porcelain factory and redecorating his château at Chantilly. An avid equine enthusiast, he was convinced that he would come back in the afterlife as a horse, and had luxurious stables, the so-called Grandes Écuries, designed by the architect Jean Aubert. Arcaded, domed, and studded with sculpture, the palatial building could house five hundred horses and survives as an equestrian museum.
So numerous were the private fortunes gained that a new word was invented to describe them. The word “millionaire” was coined at this time to describe the rich Mississippians, first appearing in print in the lawyer Marais’s journal in 1720:
Espérons que la dividende
En sera plus sûre et plus grande
Sur le rapport qu’il en fera,
Et que l’on communiquera
Aux calotins actionnaires,
Lesquels n’ont point realisé
Comme certains millionnaires
Peuple avare et mal avisé.
Let’s hope that the dividend
Will be more certain and larger
On the return that it will bring
And one will inform
The smug investors
Who have realized nothing
Like certain millionaires
A greedy and ill-advised breed.
The term “millionaire” exerted a seductive appeal. Drawn by stories of unbelievable gains that echoed throughout Europe, foreigners flocked to Paris. Estimates vary, but around 200,000 (some put it as high as 500,000) people from Venice, Genoa, Geneva, Germany, England, Holland, and Spain, as well as vast numbers from the provinces, gravitated to the city to play the markets. The streets were choked with carriages; all modes of public transport from the major cities of Lyon, Aix, Bordeaux, Strasbourg, and Brussels were booked up months in advance; people gambled or bid outrageous sums for a place on a coach.The lucky ones arrived in Paris to find every room occupied, and even stables let as accommodation. Journalists reveled in the frenzied get-rich-quick ambience. In one periodical Defoe commented, “Beau Gage has gained three hundred thousand pounds sterling by the stocks. The Lord Londonderry also . . . being the same that sold the great diamond to the King of France is there, and they say has likewise gotten very great sums of money.” Gage was later nicknamed Croesuss, and with his winnings he attempted to buy the island of Sardinia and the crown of Poland. He was trounced in Poland, equally dishonestly, by Augustus the Strong of Saxony, prompting Alexander Pope to write in his “Epistle to Bathurst”:
The Crown of Poland, venal twice an age,
To just three millions stinted modest Gage.
But in certain Parisian salons the flourishing fortunes of countless overseas investors met with a chilly reception. Why, many asked, should foreigners profit when many French were unable to buy as many shares as they would have liked? What right had Law to help English investors at their expense? “Some of the French have endeavoured to represent to Mr. Law’s prejudice the great gains they pretend his countrymen have made,” the diplomat Daniel Pulteney observed. Law ignored the faultfinders. In reality, nostalgia for the land of his birth had nothing to do with it: he encouraged