City Libraries, City of Gold Coast

The Queen's embroiderer, a true story of Paris, lovers, swindlers, and the first stock market crisis, Joan DeJean

eng

Includes bibliographical references (page [347]-354 and index

collective biography

illustrationsmaps

index present

non fiction

The Queen's embroiderer

bibliography

Joan DeJean

a true story of Paris, lovers, swindlers, and the first stock market crisis

Paris, 1719. The stock market is surging and the world's first millionaires are buying everything in sight. Against this backdrop, two families, the Magoulets and the Chevrots, rose to prominence only to plummet in the first stock market crash. One family built its name on the burgeoning financial industry, the other as master embroiderers for Queen Marie-Thérèse and her husband, King Louis XIV. Both patriarchs were ruthless money-mongers, determined to strike it rich by arranging marriages for their children. But in a Shakespearean twist, two of their children fell in love. To remain together, Louise Magoulet and Louis Chevrot fought their fathers' rage and abuse. A real-life heroine, Louise took on Magoulet, Chevrot, the police, an army regiment, and the French Indies Company to stay with the man she loved. Following these families from 1600 until the Revolution of 1789, Joan DeJean recreates the larger-than-life personalities of Versailles, where displaying wealth was a power game; the sordid cells of the Bastille; the Louisiana territory, where Frenchwomen were forcibly sent to marry colonists; and the legendary "Wall Street of Paris, " Rue Quincampoix, a world of high finance uncannily similar to what we know now. The Queen's Embroiderer is both a story of star-crossed love in the most beautiful city in the world and a cautionary tale of greed and the dangerous lure of windfall profits. And every bit of it is true

The Queen's embroiderers -- Star-crossed -- Upward mobility.1: Salt and taxes: The Chevrots: 1604-1698 -- Upward Mobility.2: Purveyors To the crown: The Magoulets: 1638-1678 -- Salad days: The Magoulets: 1679-1698 -- Annual income, annual expenditure: The Magoulets: 1677-1691 -- Secrets and lies: The Magoulets: 1692-1704 -- A person of consequence: The Chevrots: 1692-1708 -- The great winter: The Chevrots: 1708-1716 -- The deadly years: The Magoulets: 1705-1719 -- The gold rush: Jean Magoulet: 1718-1719 -- The invention of money: Louise Magoulet And Louis Chevrot: 1719 -- Clement Magoulet: 1669-1719 -- "The incredible madness of the 20th year of the eighteenth century": Louise Magoulet And Louis Chevrot: 1720 -- Aftershocks: everyone: 1721-1723 -- Total eclipse: everyone: 1723-1724 -- "A diabolical person": Clement Magoulet: December 1724-May 15, 1732 -- The remains of the day: The Chevrots: 1725-1736 -- Embroiderer to the princes, designer to the princes: The Magoulets: 1728-1761 -- The King's prosecutors: Louise Magoulet: 1729-? -- To the islands: Marie Magoulet: early 1740s-1848 -- A royal wedding: The Magoulets: 1717-1827 -- The noise of time: The Chevrots: 1736-1790