The Great Gambler: Womanizer, murderer, speculator, genius. The true story of the man who invented paper money. by Claude Cueni

Author:Claude Cueni
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Historical Novel
ISBN: 9783952428818
Publisher: Script Avenue Publishing
Published: 2014-06-10T18:30:00+00:00

CHAPTER X

HOLLAND, 1705

When John Law and Catherine Knollys reached the Dutch mainland after a stormy passage, the European countries were once again busily investing their last coins in another bloody war that now extended from Holland to Italy and from Bavaria to Gibraltar. War broke out everywhere—on the land, on sea, and in the distant colonies. Private travel by carriage required a lot of courage or sheer audacity.

Law was blessed with both, and so in the following years he traveled through Europe from city to city. In Venice he extended the lease on the warehouse he had rented from the banker Rezzonico years ago, and gave him an order to purchase additional paintings. He took positions in The Hague, Amsterdam, Vienna, Turin and Genoa, then again in Amsterdam. He deepened his knowledge of the world's leading Dutch bank, made new contacts in the salons, gave brilliant lectures on financial theory, and en passant excelled at the gambling table. But while his reputation - and his now legendary wealth – continued to grow, his appeals for clemency in England were always rejected.

Catherine Knollys had become a mother of two, and her Amsterdam salon was one of the best in Dutch monetary and financial aristocracy. Here ambassadors, scholars, artists, mistresses, and spies rubbed shoulders with Russian princes and nobles from Italy and Spain. But nobody wanted to give John Law the chance to prove the correctness of his financial theories in a real economy and put it to the test on a large scale. Law's theories were still considered quirky by the financial industry, the entertaining ideas of a notorious gambler.

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