Surprisingly, it wasn’t a total loss.
Paul Strathern wrote in A Brief History of Economic Genius, “Some historians even contend that the overall situation was now significantly better than before Law had taken over. The excess of paper money meant that almost everyone had managed to pay off their debts (many of which had been crippling and of long standing). The administrations of several provincial cities had lost fortunes, but the cities themselves had been stirred into a new commercial life. Also, the flight from paper money into solid goods meant that there were now many more property owners. At the same time the rigid social barriers of the ancien régime had been seriously undermined: the seeds of democracy had been sown. Many, like the cook with her diamonds, felt themselves the equal of their so-called superiors. In seventy years’ time this feeling of egalité would combine with liberté and fraternité to become the French Revolution.”
John Law “had now become a celebrity throughout Europe, and a pardon was quickly granted.” He had “salted away no money of his own. All his property in France had been seized, and he owed millions.”
