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Last post, we had (among other things) Danish kings and their favorites; Louis XIV and Philippe d'Orléans; reviews of a very shippy book about Katte, a bad Jacobite novel, and a great book about clothing; a fic about Émilie du Châtelet and Voltaire; and a review of a set of entertaining Youtube history videos about Frederick the Great.

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From:

mildred_of_midgard

Fanny apparently took part in a money-making scheme in Paris in the late 1710’s, something called the Mississippi Scheme, where they bought cheap stock and sold it when the market was high.

Okay, so, some context about the Mississippi Scheme!

When Louis XIV died in 1715, the War of the Spanish Succession, on top of all his other wars, had economically ruined the country. His de facto successor, Philippe d'Orleans, regent for young Louis XV, was something of an Anglophile and had noticed the English were doing quite well with their Bank of England. So he worked with some finance ministers, the most famous of whom was the Scot John Law, to introduce paper money and a stock market into France. The Mississippi Company got a royal monopoly in 1717, and people believed it had access to vast wealth in the Louisiana territory. By combining with the stock market, John Law was able to drive speculation of shares in the Mississippi Company very high, starting in 1719, which he wanted to use to restore French finances.

Much like with the contemporary South Sea Bubble in England (which *also* developed out of the War of the Spanish Succession, but differently), it had a good run for a few years (almost the identical same few years), then the bubble burst, there was a stock market crash, and a few people made off well from the speculation, but most were impoverished.

The French attempt to adopt the English financial model was abandoned, paper money got a bad name, and the French economy remained wobbly throughout the mid-eighteenth century. They still hadn't figured out a solution when the economy *really* bad after the Seven Years' War and the financing of the American Revolution. Though Louis XVI and his ministers tried desperately to solve that problem, they failed, and then all it took was a few bad 1780s harvests to result in the famines that would kick off the French Revolution.

Across the Channel, they had the South Sea Bubble. A little history: one of the things Britain had gone to war over in the War of the Spanish Succession was to keep France from getting all the economic benefits of the Spanish empire. In particular, Britain wanted the "asiento", the contract to supply slaves to the Spanish colonies. Britain won this and was granted the asiento as part of the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. Much like with Louisiana and the Mississippi Company, the whole idea of a vast overseas empire made people think "$$$!!!!" all out of proportion to reality, and they invested like crazy. The bubble burst in 1720.

But unlike the French, the more modern English economy was able to weather it. England got into a positive feedback loop in which the economy supported the military, which supported imperialism, which supported the economy, and the French got into a negative feedback loop where the military sucked up money from the economy, which became inadequate to fund an army that would win the military victories needed to support the economy...and thus you have the 18th century, and the English ability to weather a defeat in the American Revolution and the French inability to weather a victory, and eventually the French Revolution (as mentioned) and the British empire on which the sun never set.

Though these chapters of noble canonesses are not by any means strict after the use of ordinary convents

Yeah, that was definitely how it went! Marguerite Louise d'Orleans could tell you a thing or two about that.

Fontenoy

cahn, this was a victory of Maurice de Saxe (illegitimate son of August the Strong and Aurora von Königsmarck) over future "Butcher" Cumberland in the War of the Austrian Succession. Voltaire, as Louis XV's court historian, got a commission to write a poem glorifying the victory. Louis himself had been present but not especially responsible for the victory.