ABSTRACT
Late in 1758, a year of distress in the French empire, the government of Louis XV took the unusual step of hiring merchant bankers to assist in financing the navy. Who they were, what they did, and how they failed to stave off bankruptcy in October and November 1759 makes an interesting short chapter in the history of the French navy, of the Seven Years War, and of the Bourbon monarchy. The French navy was financed for the 20 years 1750 to 1770 by two financiers, the Treasurers-General for the Navy and their employees in Parls and the seaports. The French navy's difficulties might perhaps be expressed accurately in figures by a professional accountant trained in eighteenth-century methods, for many reports and summaries survive in the archives, even though the principal accounts appear to have perished. French shipping merchants were in despair. Abraham Gradis declared that in all his years in business he had never seen things looking so black.
