The Queen's Embroiderer - A True Story of Paris Lovers Swindlers and the First Stock Market Crisis

Joan DeJean

Summary

From the author of How Paris Became Paris, a sweeping history of high finance, the origins of high fashion, and a pair of star-crossed lovers in 18th-century France.

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.

Available since: 05/01/2019.

Print length: 400 pages.

Other books that might interest you

Turning Donors into Partners -...

Brad Layland

Fundraising can be one of the most stressful parts of ministry. Budget needs are daunting, prospects seem limited, and the cycle is unending. How do we get off of the treadmill of crisis-driven fundraising to more sustainable ministry funding?
Professional fundraiser Brad Layland revolutionizes fundraising and transforms it into a relational process where donors truly become partners in ministry. With decades of expertise in leading multimillion-dollar capital campaigns and working with major donors, he offers a more strategic and personalized yet less labor-intensive approach. Practical insights include ten essential elements of a case and four key steps that lead up to making an ask. Ultimately, fundraising is best done in community, and this book will help you develop a community of people who enjoy giving and want your organization to succeed.
Fundraising can become a life-giving, energizing experience of developing partners who fuel your ministry's vision. Discover how you can become fully funded and accomplish the work that God has given you to do.

Show book

Building a StoryBrand Summarized...

P EDDINGTON

Too often, marketing efforts yield little or no results. In Building a StoryBrand Summarized for Busy People, best-selling author Donald Miller offers a solution that works, by teaching companies how to dramatically improve how they connect with customers and grow their businesses. Miller’s StoryBrand process is a proven solution to the struggle business leaders face when talking about their businesses.

Show book

Collaborate - The Art of We

Dan Sanker

Collaboration is not a new concept, but globalization and new technologies have turned it into one of the best methods of competitive advantage available. Rather than engaging in an endless tug-of-war over the dwindling crumbs in a finite market, collaborative companies find ways to make the pie bigger, or create whole new pies, expanding everyones market and revenue. By collaborating, companies can tap into talent sources beyond their means, overcome organizational weaknesses cheaply by combining capabilities, eliminate waste and overhead by sharing resources, and better engage their markets by providing a more comprehensive and integrated array of products and services. The authors company, CaseStack, is a model of collaboration. Its a full-service logistics company that offers warehousing, transportation and an award-winning tech platform, without owning any actual warehouse buildings or trucks, and using cloud-based hardware. Many of its key business partners could easily be construed as competitors, and its most important service platforms have been developed with retailers who arent customers, vendors, or even partners, in a legal sense. Yet by sharing strengths, all have seen greater profits while cutting costs and improving service. This book shows how others can successfully pool resources and competencies, develop new innovative products and services, access new markets, and reduce costs through collaboration. It explores the tools that facilitate the collaborative process, particularly new online tools that have revolutionized the process, and the outsourcing boom. Case examples illustrate both large-scale (e.g. Disney and McDonalds partnering with Happy Meals) and small-scale collaborations that have succeeded in the real world.

Show book

The Nonconformist Revolution -...

Amanda J Thomas

A historian examines the evolution of dissenting thought and how it shaped the transformation of England from a rural to an urban, industrialized society. 
 
The foundations for the Industrial Revolution were in place from the late Middle Ages, when the early development of manufacturing processes and changes in the structure of rural communities began to provide opportunities for economic and social advancement. Successive waves of Huguenot migrants and the influence of Northern European religious ideology also played an important role in this process. The Civil Wars would provide a catalyst for the dissemination of new ideas and help shape the emergence of a new English Protestantism and divergent dissident sects. The persecution that followed strengthened the Nonconformist cause, and for the early Quakers it intensified their unity and resilience—qualities that would prove to be invaluable for business.  
 
The book proceeds to explore how in the years following the Restoration, Nonconformist ideas fueled enlightened thought, creating an environment for enterprise but also a desire for more radical change, how reformers seized on the plight of a working poor alienated by innovation and frustrated by false promises—and how the vision which was at first the spark for innovation would ignite revolution.

Show book

Online passive income ideas...

Parshwika Bhandari

HEY GUYS, I AM PARSHWIKA, in this book you listen to how to earn passive income from 0 dollar, no upfront cost and earning to 1000s of dollars, i will going to discuss how i have earned dollars from these passive income ideas and how you can also do it.

Show book

Brave New World Economy - Global...

Wilhelm Hankel, Robert Isaak

The stock market crashes. Oil prices swoon. American unemployment spikes. Large brand name corporations go bankrupt. Global confidence is at an all time low. The Government spends billions on bailouts. And the dollar goes up. The dollar is still the key reserve currency. People all over the world need some value to believe in, a commodity that is backed up with some security; a certian store of value. Since the U.S. superpower appears to be too powerful to be replaced in the short term, and has always been good for payments on its debts, most people see the U.S. as the fortress of capatalism in time of crisis. In Brave New World Economy, Wilhelm Hankel and Robert Isaak show how "Obamanomics" can be a main proponent in saving the ecomnomic crisis if handled correctly; using America's consistant pattern in reinventing the wheel, to sell and market the new, to discover future in the present.

Show book