Millionaire - Janet Gleeson [62]
Bernard Cantillon and his team had found themselves in a dismal, hostile territory in which the struggle for survival overshadowed any attempt to farm or prospect. The immigrants were racked with scurvy, dysentery, malaria, and yellow fever. There was the ever-present danger of hostile Indians, who needed constant bribes to remain friendly. According to Buvat, in one attack that took place in March 1719 and was never publicized, 1,500 French colonists were ambushed in their homes and slaughtered. There was also danger from the Spanish settlements to the west—with whom war was waged from 1719 to 1720—and English settlements to the east, between which the French colony was sandwiched. Cantillon and his party, like others before them, realized the extent of the exaggeration only when they arrived, but by then it was too late to go back. Within four years, desertion, disease, and other hazards had culled the expedition’s numbers until only a quarter remained. Law and his partners found little in the way of quick profit. In a letter to one partner two years later, when his own fortunes were in decline, he was forced to relinquish his investment: “With regard to my Louisiana colony, I thank you for your offers. As I am not in a state to continue to take on the necessary expenditure to support it, don’t hesitate to take the party that suits your interests best. Wishing you success in what you undertake.” Another two centuries would pass before the true wealth beneath the soil was found, not in silver, gold, or emeralds but in oil.
In Paris, conscious that the rising share market depended on public confidence that large-scale revenue would come sooner rather than later, Law moved to speed things up. The stumbling block as he saw it was still the dearth of settlers and an inadequate support system. He responded first with orders for new shipping, making so massive an investment that even the pragmatic Daniel Pulteney was astounded: “Besides the ships the company had already bespoke in England, which I think were 8 or 9 orders, are lately sent for building there 8 more . . . 4 ships are now fitting out at port Louis,” he wrote, in early 1720, by which time the company fleet had already swelled to some thirty ships, more than the rival English East India Company.
Meanwhile, the problem of where to find settlers had been dramatically addressed: new legislation was passed whereby every criminal, vagabond, and prostitute and any servant unemployed for more than four days was listed and liable for transportation. An army of mercenary soldiers, known as “archers,” was employed by the company to trace, apprehend, and escort them to the nearest port for transportation. In Paris, with the blessing of the authorities, Law rounded up orphans and young people from the so-called hospitals, many of which served also as detention centers and poorhouses. Thus, in Paris alone it was estimated that some 4,000 people—among them society’s most defenseless, disreputable, and dangerous citizens—taken from Bicêtre, l’Hôpital Général, and Salpêtrière, would swell the numbers of settlers and provide the necessary unskilled labor. According to the reports, the first cargo of female deportees arrived to the warmest of welcomes from the male settlers and quickly found marriage partners. Problems arose, however, when two men claimed the last woman, and the matter had to be decided by hand-to-hand combat.
In Paris, at a comfortable distance from wrestling matches on the dockside, few at first opposed the transportations. Echoing the general mood, Saint-Simon commented, “If this had been done with wisdom, discernment and necessary caution, the object they proposed would have been accomplished, and Paris and the provinces relieved of a heavy, useless and sometimes dangerous burthen.” But public approval was short-lived. The journalist Buvat sternly noted the problems caused in Louisiana by certain categories of female immigrants: “The debauched girls that had been transported to the Mississippi