Millionaire - Janet Gleeson [82]
The final decisive blow to Law’s debilitated empire came on October 10 with another stinging, but by this stage predictable, ruling. In view of the still depreciated paper-money system, in which no one any longer had faith, from November 1 France would depend once again entirely upon metal coins. Holders of banknotes were obliged to convert them into annuities. Law’s rivals had finally won over the regent. On hearing the news Voltaire remarked sardonically that paper was now back to its intrinsic value, but Marais’s response was more emotional: “Thus ends the system of paper money, which has enriched a thousand beggars and impoverished a hundred thousand honest men,” he wrote. When the bank finally closed its doors on November 27, few mourned its passing.
Mississippi shareholders shuddered at news of the bank’s impending closure, and Law’s newly ascendant rivals were swift to exact vengeance against those who had earlier triumphed. Profit as a result of speculation was now deemed suspect. The sea change was heralded in mid-October with a menacing new ruling that warned of an investigation to root out anyone who had not “acted in good faith,” or who enjoyed an opulence that was “odious to the public and contrary to the good of the State.” Especially offensive to the new lawmakers were less privileged investors who had prospered—the “thousand beggars” to whom Marais had referred. The balance would now be redressed: the victors would be victimized.
So that the profiteers could be identified, investors were ordered to bring their shares to the offices of the now-defunct bank to register them; any unregistered certificates would be worthless. If no evidence of misdealing was discovered, shares would be returned after a week. Those deemed guilty of illicit moneymaking would be penalized by confiscation of large portions of their property. The process was little more than an arbitrary witch hunt.
While nemesis was thus zealously pursued, the Bourse, scathingly condemned as “a riotous assembly,” was shut down. When news of the impending closure broke, Marais visited the market. The reaction, he recalled, was one of bewilderment and utter devastation. “Faces changed. It seemed a defeat, as if a battle had been lost.” Along with thousands of others he took his shares to the bank and was alarmed at the lengthy and apparently chaotic tangle of red tape. After endless form filling and rubber stamping, he wrote, “You take away only a small unsigned slip, on which is your name, the number of your shares and the page in the register. . . . There was much outcry at this procedure, which was not mentioned in the decree, but finally all the shareholders had to go through it; it was suffocating in there and no one knows what will happen.”
Many were so fearful of investigation that they packed their bags with as much portable wealth as they could cram in and made immediate preparations to leave. At least four senior members of Law’s staff absconded, doubtless fearing that they would be subjected to extra-rigorous scrutiny. Vernezobre, one of the head clerks of the bank, fled to Holland, taking several millions belonging to him and others. Angelini, Law’s Italian secretary, appeared in mourning and informed Law that his father had died and begged leave to go to Italy to collect his inheritance. He never returned, spending his remaining years living in comfort on the income from money he had invested in buying property in the Roman campagna.
Though precipitous, this descent did not mark the end of the Mississippi Company. The anti-Law cabal that had striven for months to demolish Law’s conglomerate clamored to cherry-pick its prime assets. The lucrative rights to revenues from the mint and taxes were their first targets. Meanwhile the company, in common with