A measure of vastly greater importance and destined to lead to much graver consequences than even those already mentioned was the union of the Royal Bank and the Indian Company. A meeting was held on 22nd February at the Bank to which had been called the principal shareholders of the Company, the proposal being formally made and agreed to. Since the General Bank had been converted, in December, 1718, into a Royal institution, it had carried on its business for the benefit of the Royal revenues alone. The notes in circulation carried the guarantee of the King, a guarantee which was still to remain notwithstanding the amalgamation. For the ostensible purpose of preventing unlimited issue of additional notes it was provided that authority must in all cases be first obtained from the Council. Since the Council was in all its deliberations under the influence of the Regent, it will be seen later how worthless such a provision proved as an effective check to arbitrary fabrication of paper. During the period of the Bank’s existence as a Royal establishment, it had carried on business with great success, its balance sheet showing on paper a profit 120,000,000 livres of profit. This profit it was also arranged should be transferred intact to the company for the benefit of its shareholders. The object which Law had in view in bringing about the union could only have been one of expediency. It contained no feature which promised permanent success to the undertaking, and showed a singular lack of foresight and real business capacity. Undoubtedly it gave encouragement to speculators, who were carried away by the apparent increase of stability given to the Company by the amalgamation. But even this was of short duration. It was impossible to conceal for long the elusory nature of the transaction, and it soon became clear that a false step had been taken inasmuch as the fortunes of the Bank were now altogether bound up with those of the Company.
Previously to the date of the incorporation of the Bank and the Company, the note issue in circulation amounted to about 600,000,000 livres. Within three months after that date, an additional 2,000,000,000 livres were fabricated and set afloat. The bulk of the fresh issues was utilised for the purpose of discharging the national debt, one of the great objects which Law had in view at the initiation of his financial schemes. The national creditors were now become creditors of the Company in respect of the notes they held; and the state had now nominally discharged her debts in full.
One of the difficulties created by the publication of the various decrees limiting the currency of coin was that of scarcity of notes of small denomination. On 19th April, accordingly, a decree was registered by which no less than 438,000,000 livres in notes of 10 to 1000 livres each were issued in order to facilitate the changing of notes of greater value and the carrying out of transactions of small amounts.
Although all these expedients failed in their object, the extent to which speculation was carried was very little affected. The time for suddenly made fortunes had now gone, but sufficient excitement remained to render the purchase and sale of shares an occupation attractive to thousands of speculators. The tendency of the market was distinctly downwards, but there were intervening fluctuations, which maintained the mania in almost all its former strength. The Rue Quincampoix was still crowded from morning till evening. So great were the crowds on many occasions that scenes of confusion were frequent and sometimes developed into scenes of violence. It formed a happy hunting ground for the lowest classes in the community. Robberies and even murders took place so often that special precautions had necessarily to be taken by those who carried money on their person. So dangerous had the street and its environs become that on 22nd March, the council published an edict prohibiting its use as a stock market, and requiring all houses and offices wherein share transactions had been hitherto usually negotiated to be closed in future for such business. No other locality was assigned to the speculators, and for two months they had no recognised place of meeting. The wisdom of this decree was dictated by an unhappy occurrence that took place on the morning of the day of its issue, in which was involved a young foreigner of noble family, Comte de Horn, son of Prince Philippe Emmanuel who had served in France at the sieges of Brizac and of Landau, and at the battles of Spire and of Ramillies. According to the account given of the incident by Duclos, it appears that the Count, who had been living a riotous life in Paris for some time and had contracted extensive debts, along with two companions, Laurent de Mille, and a sham knight named Lestang, plotted the assassination of a rich stock-jobber and the theft of his pocket-book in which he was known to carry large sums of money in paper. They resorted to the Rue Quincampoix, and under the pretext of negotiating the purchase of 100,000 crowns worth of shares, took the stock-jobber to a tavern in the Rue de Venise and stabbed him there. The unfortunate stock-jobber, in defending himself, made sufficient noise to attract the attention of a waiter, who, passing at the moment the door of the room, opened it. Seeing a man lying in a pool of blood, he immediately closed and locked the door and shouted murder.
The assassins, finding retreat closed against them, escaped through the window. Lestang, who had been keeping watch on the staircase, rushed off on hearing the shouts of the waiter to the lodging house in the Rue de Tournon, where the three of them boarded, took the most portable luggage and fled. Mille dashed through the crowds in the Rue Quincampoix, but followed by the people, was at last arrested at the markets. The Comte de Horn was seized on jumping from the window. Believing his two accomplices to have succeeded in saving themselves, he had enough presence of mind to say that he feared he himself would also have been murdered in trying to defend the stock-jobber. His ruse, however, proved valueless by the arrest of Mille, who, having been brought back to the tavern, confessed all. The Comte declared to no purpose he did not know Mille; and the Commissary of Police took him to prison. The crime being fully established, the trial did not last long, and on 26th March both were broken alive on the wheel in the Place du Grève. The Comte was apparently the author of the plot; for, while he was still breathing on the wheel, he demanded pardon for his accomplice, who was executed last.
Before the execution had been carried out, the strongest efforts had been made to influence the Regent to grant a pardon, or at least a commutation of the punishment. The crime was so atrocious that they did not insist on the first, but redoubled their solicitations for the latter. They represented that the execution by the wheel was so ignominious, that no daughter of the house of Horn could, until the third generation, enter any convent. The Regent rejected all prayers for pardon. They appealed to him on the ground that the culprit was allied to him, but he replied,—“I shall partake of the shame. That ought to console the other relatives.” He repeated the words of Corneille: “The shame is in the crime, not in the scaffold.” The Regent was inclined however to commute the punishment, but Law and the Abbé Dubois impressed him with the necessity of preserving the public safety at a time when everyone carried his wealth about with him. They pointed out to him that the people would not be satisfied, and would consider themselves humiliated by a distinction of punishment for a crime so atrocious.
When his parents lost all hope of pardon from the Regent, the Prince de Robec Montmorency, and the Marechal d’Isenghen, found means of securing admission to the prison. They brought poison with them and exhorted him to take it in order to avoid the shame of the execution, but he refused. “You wretch,” they declared, leaving him with indignation, “you are only worthy to die by the hands of the executioner.”
CHAPTER XI
New measures prove ineffectual.—New edict issued fixing price of shares and depreciating value of notes.—Authorship of edict.—People hostile to edict.—Parliament refuses to register it, and a revocation is issued.—Law deposed from office of Controller-General.—D’Aguessau reinstated in his former office.—New schemes for absorption of bank-notes.—Widespread distress produced amongst community.—Law’s person in danger.—Stock-jobbers establish themselves in the gardens of the Hotel de Soissons.—Parliament exiled to Pontoise, and Bank closed for an indefinite period.