Millionaire - Janet Gleeson [60]
It came on January 5, 1720, with the announcement that Law had received the ultimate accolade: he had been appointed controller general of finance. The position surprised few. Law had been the nation’s “first minister” in all but name for many months, but the title underlined his ascendancy. The world could no longer ignore the fact that he held the purse strings and therefore held sway over the most powerful and populous nation in Europe.
To commemorate his new office, a portrait was made of France’s new controller general, probably painted by the fashionable artist Hyacinthe Rigaud (the painting was feared lost but appeared recently at a Sotheby’s house sale). Something of the dandy lingers: in it Law wears a gold-buttoned velvet coat and showy turquoise waistcoat embroidered with gold leaves and bunches of brilliantly colored fruit, and sports a powdered gray periwig. The once angular face is now softened with the jowls and ruddy complexion of good living. But it is a grandiose portrait, which forces you to acknowledge a man of exceptional stature and achievement. Gone is the dreaminess: the eyes, brooding beneath luxuriant black brows, focus directly on the viewer, while behind, the emblem of his empire—a Mississippi ship at full sail—powers toward the horizon.
12
MISSISSIPPIMADNESS
After the death of Louis XIV, Law, a Scotchman, a very extraordinary person, many of whose schemes had proved useless, and others hurtful to the nation, made the government and the people believe that Louisiana produced as much gold as Peru, and that it would soon be able to supply as great a quantity of silk as China. . . . The settlers almost all perished from want; and the city was confined to a few paltry houses. Perhaps one day, when France shall have a million or two of inhabitants more than she may know what to do with, it may be of some advantage to her to people Louisiana.
Voltaire,
Short Studies: The French Islands
EVER SINCE LAW HAD TAKEN CONTROL OF THE LOUISIANA colony, tantalizing reports of it had appeared in France’s official newspaper, the Nouveau Mercure: correspondents described a land of milk and honey in which the climate was temperate, the soil fertile, the woods replete with trees suited to building and export, and the countryside populated with wild yet benign “horses, buffaloes, and cows, which however do no harm but run away at the sight of men.” In this wonderland, said an article published in September 1717, the soil bulged with seams of gold and silver ore; other valuable minerals—copper, lead, and mercury—also awaited exploitation, and the natives had spoken of an enormous rock near the Arkansas River made of a type of rock that was “dark green, very hard and very beautiful, resembling emeralds.” In short, said the endlessly imaginative Mississippi journalists, “nothing almost is wanting . . . but industrious people, and numbers of hands to work.” The optimistic dispatches continued to circulate Paris for three more years. “The most solid foundation for the hopes of the Mississippians,” wrote the captain of the Valette, a vessel that had recently returned from the region, “are the silver mines discovered in the country of the Illinois [the local Indian tribe].” Elsewhere, in the fairs, markets, and taverns of provincial towns and villages, catchy songs advertised the colony’s charms:
Aujourd’hui il n’est plus question
De parler de Constitution,
Ni de la guerre avec l’Espagne;
Un nouveau pays de cocagne,
Que l’on nomme Mississippi,
Roule a présent sur le tapis.
Today there is no longer any question
Of talking of the constitution
Nor of the war with Spain;
A new wonder land
That they call Mississippi
Has appeared on the scene.
By 1719, the showpiece settlement of New Orleans, founded a