Conclusion

For most French people it touched, the War of the Spanish Succession was a disaster, or at least it blighted more than a decade of their lives. But there were some men who did rather well out of the war, to borrow an expression. What form did this take? Much of the money made by Samuel Bernard and the other bankers who escaped the wreckage of Lyon was invested in financial instruments, which were vulnerable to fluctuations in value. But the paper-related world of the financiers and bankers was not so clearly demarcated from that of the land-based fortunes of the French greater nobility by the end of Louis XIV’s reign as it had been at the beginning. And the extreme pressures and opportunities of the War of the Spanish Succession had greatly accelerated this process. As part of their drive to enhance, protect and embed their fortunes, bankers like Bernard invested a great deal not just in more solid trading ventures but also in acquiring respectability. For those who had converted to Catholicism it was especially important that their choice of religion should be accompanied by greater social acceptance. It is not surprising, therefore, that these men — like foreigners who had come to France to seek their fortune in the service of great families or the king — were ambitious social climbers who bought into the culture of the court and the high aristocracy.1