Banknote of the Banque Royale

The note of the bank set up by John Law, a Scotsman, under the Regent, the Duke of Orléans. At the core of its credit was a promise: redemption in coin of the weight written on the note. Law tied the shares of the Mississippi Company, the banknotes and the public debt into one vast circuit, and the swelling of paper and credit did indeed bring a boom. But it was printed far beyond the quantity of metal that could redeem it, and in 1720 the system collapsed. The failure cut a century of distrust of paper money into France, and that thread runs on as far as the assignats of the Revolution.