The Confusion

Samuel Bernard to Eliza
23 MAY 1692

Madame la comtesse,

Five Bills should be enclosed, each in the amount of one hundred thousand livres tournoises and each endorsed, for the time being, to you. These are drawn ultimately on the credit of the French treasury as personified by M. le comte de Pontchartrain. If you see him, perhaps you could think of a polite way of reminding him that the chain of credit passes through yours truly; my friend Monsieur Castan; and diverse members of the Depot of Lyon.

It is a good thing that I went to Lyon, for in the end it was necessary for me to involve myself in the negotiations with Lothar (he was obviously present in Lyon, but we were never in the same room together; his factor Gerhard Mann mediated all of our discussions).

Monsieur Castan is cunning and assiduous, but when presented with something outside his scope he does not respond well, and is apt to become flustered and then irritable. This happened very early in our talks with the House of Hacklheber. It took some time for me to understand why: Lothar believes that the invasion will never actually happen; or that if it does, it will be snuffed out within a few hours. In consequence, our negotiations over the terms of these Bills were strangely duplicitous. The nominal purpose was to pay troops in England, and so we had to settle terms in such a way that we-meaning France-could get silver coin in England, while allowing Lothar to realize some profit. In that sense I got what we wanted, viz. wholly legitimate, negotiable Bills which you now have in your hand. But Lothar’s true purpose, as I eventually came to understand, was to reap a large windfall at very little risk by expressing a willingness to forward silver for an invasion that would never materialize. In effect he was selling us insurance against the contingency that our invasion fails to fail. It was this subtext that M. Castan had not understood, with the result that he was bewildered by what he saw as erratic demands made by the House of Hacklheber.

At the beginning we proposed that the five Bills’ dates of expiry should be at one-week intervals. We envisioned, in other words, that, beginning shortly after the invasion, our agents would present Bills in London approximately once a week for a period of five weeks, as our army fought its way across southern England toward London. We presumed that Lothar would prefer it thus, as it would spread out the transaction over a long period of time and simplify the logistics of buying or shipping the silver and having it minted. This was when we were still naive enough to believe that Lothar construed payment of the bills as an opportunity. Later, as I have mentioned, I perceived that Lothar actually sees the possible consummation of this transaction as a risk to be hemmed in and mitigated as strictly as possible. Accordingly, he hated the idea of staggering the Bills’ dates, because it would mean committing himself to be at risk (risk of having to pay silver to some unknown person in London) over a period of almost two months. For the first Bill would become payable, in theory, about two weeks following the date that Lothar wrote it in Lyon, i.e., in mid-May. The last one would remain payable in theory as late as the middle of July. It was in his interest to limit our freedom in the matter by having the Bills all payable only during a narrow interval of time shortly after the scheduled date of the invasion. That way, if the invasion came off as scheduled and a stable beach-head were established on English soil, we should have only a few days in which to present the Bill in London and demand that all of the silver be supplied at once. The deal became, in other words, an all-or-nothing proposition to be resolved, one way or the other, quite early. Indeed, Lothar wanted to issue one single Bill for half a million livres rather than breaking it up into several smaller ones-this struck me as too risky and I persuaded him to relent. So there are five separate Bills. Four of them bear the same dates-they are 45-day Bills-and the other is a 30-day Bill. All of them were written by Lothar himself; for only he has authority to write Bills of this size. He wrote them in Lyon on the 6th day of May, the Year of our Lord 1692. Postal time from Lyon to London is generally reckoned at about two weeks, so they could be presented there as early as 20 May (by the French calendar). The 30-day Bill is payable on 5 June, the other four on 20 June.

It is generally to the advantage of the payer (Lothar’s factor in London) if the payee (whomever you endorse these Bills to) presents the Bills well in advance of the expiration of their usance, as this will give the payer more time to make arrangements to deliver the specie. That is particularly true in this case, when the acceptance of these Bills in London may trigger purchase or shipment of silver by Lothar.

We have have no reason to present these Bills for payment in London until a successful invasion has occurred, which ought to be no later than the last day of May. The 30-day Bill would then come due almost immediately, which suggests that Lothar will have to have 100,000 livres’ worth of silver on hand in London. Thus we may be assured of paying our troops the first installment of their salary shortly after their arrival on English soil. The other four bills, as I have mentioned, are not payable until 20 June; and obviously it will be in our best interests to present these at the same time as the 30-day Bill so that Lothar will have two or three weeks’ time in which to get an additional 400,000 livres’ worth of silver to the Tower of London to be minted.

That amount, in British coin, is some 20,000 pounds sterling, which represents two days’ produce for the Mint at the Tower; so Lothar’s factor will have to deliver some three tons of bullion to the Tower mint no later than the 17th of June. This will present something of a challenge even to a man of Lothar’s resources, and so he has been careful to insert a proviso on the four 45-day bills stating that they must be presented to the House of the Golden Mercury, Change Alley, London, no later than fifteen days before the date of expiry, i.e., the stroke of midnight, 5 June.

I remind you that the English use a calendar that long ago was abandoned by the rest of the civilized world. It is ten days behind ours, and falling further behind with each tick of the clock. All of the dates I have mentioned in this letter are in the modern (French) system of reckoning; you must subtract ten days to get their English equivalents.

In all other respects this transaction is wholly normal and self-explanatory and should present no particular difficulties for you or your agents.

It has been my honor and privilege to be of service to France in this matter. I look forward to renewing our acquaintance at the Cafe Esphahan after the tumult of invasion has subsided.

Your humble amp;c.

Samuel Bernard