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By Root 646 0

the bank, the bonfires and rationings had done nothing to improve matters. Coin supplies could not keep pace even after the restrictions were imposed. Reserves ran so low that vast quantities of copper coins were minted, but there was still a hopeless insufficiency. Bank openings became briefer and more sporadic, and the queues continued to grow. When the doors did open, the competition to get to the front of the line was frenzied. “The demand is so prodigiously great for the money, and the notion that everyone has in their heads that they will stop payment again in a few days, is such as makes people even mad to get their money, and hazard their lives to come at it,” wrote Defoe, referring to an incident in which armed guards were forced to fire on the crowd, killing three people, to preserve order. It was just a prelude.

On July 17, at 3 A.M., a crowd of around 15,000 had gravitated from distant suburbs to congregate in the streets outside the bank. Word had spread that for the first time in over a week 10-livre notes would be converted into coins between nine and one that day. Wooden barricades had been erected in anticipation of a throng, but a multitude this size was unexpected, unprecedented, and, it turned out, uncontrollable. At five o’clock several workmen, exasperated by the wait and fired up by alcohol, vaulted the barricades and launched themselves into the crowd on the other side. At the entrance in rue Vivienne there were similar scenes. Men picked their way over the ruins of the houses Law had demolished to make way for the new exchange, mounted the garden wall, and swung themselves through the chestnut trees to jump the queue. From every direction a hysterical multitude funneled toward the bank and those at the front found themselves defenseless against panicked surges from the throng behind.

By dawn a dozen or more people had perished, crushed to death against the barricades, trampled underfoot by the stampede, their cries pitifully audible above the rabble’s roar. Buvat, the diarist, who left one of the most gripping accounts of the day, found himself caught in the mêlée when five or six men hurled themselves off a barricade and only narrowly escaped being crushed or suffocated to death. Defoe was moved by witnesses’ accounts: “It is impossible to describe the pressing and thronging for money at the bank, the outcries of those who were almost killed were most affrighting.”

A large mob carried three bodies in angry procession to the Palais Royal and demanded the regent’s attention from outside the locked gates. While the regent sent for military reinforcements—some 6,000 uniformed troops were presently camped on the outskirts of Paris—Le Blanc, the secretary of state, and the Duc de Tresmes, the governor of Paris, arrived outside the forecourt. As the gates opened to admit them, a crowd of four or five thousand flooded in. Still in his carriage, the Duc threw handfuls of silver and gold into the crowd to appease them. Minutes later his sleeves were torn to shreds. Le Blanc needed an armed escort to reach the steps of the palais and face the tumult. Eventually, having secured a promise that money would be distributed throughout the city, the crowd began slowly to drift away.

But the mood in the streets remained ugly. A second mob directed their attentions to Law and marched to the Place Vendôme to lynch him. Having failed to force the gates, they hurled missiles at his house, shattering most of the windows before guards arrived and arrested the ringleaders. Law had heard the furor and wisely escaped to the Palais Royal. Had he not, there was little doubt in anyone’s minds what would have happened. “The rabble, who take things as they understand them, be they right or be they wrong, threw it all upon Mr. Law; and, had he returned into his coach, there had certainly been an end of all his designs and projects at once,” Defoe affirmed.

Later that morning Law’s empty carriage was spotted in the rue Richelieu, leaving a side entrance of the Palais Royal. A group barred its path and attacked. Law’s driver