Antoine Crozat, marquis du Châtel

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Antoine Crozat, marquis du Châtel (* around 1655 in Toulouse ; † June 7, 1738 in Paris ) was a French tax collector, financier and entrepreneur and one of the richest French merchants of his time. He was the first private landowner of the Louisiana colony , which he is considered to be the founder. Crozat financed the first thirteen kilometers of the Crozat Canal (today: Canal de Saint-Quentin ) between the Oise and the Somme, as well as the construction of the port of Saint-Quentin . His brother was the financier and art collector Pierre Crozat (1661 or 1665-1740).

Life

Antoine Crozat was born as the son of Antoine Crozat the Elder and his wife Catherine Saporta in Toulouse, where his father was a financier and “capitoul”, that is, high magistrate .

He rose from the “general tax collector of the clergy of France” (receveur général du clergé de France) and director of the Duke of Vendôme to the “trésorier des états” of the province of Languedoc . In 1714 he was appointed grand treasurer (grand trésorier) of the Order of the Holy Spirit and in the grand chancellery as secretary of King Louis XIV . This gave him the title of Marquis de Châtel, which he bequeathed to his eldest son. Successful speculative deals in maritime trade made Crozat one of the most influential and wealthy financiers of his time. His wealth enabled him to lend the king credit.

In 1700 Antoine Crozat bought one of the parcels on Place Vendôme (today house number 17) in Paris and had a hôtel particulier built by the architect Pierre Bullet , a student of Blondel , which after the death of his widow in 1742 was initially given to his second son Joseph-Antoine left, who was inherited by his younger brother Louis-Antoine in 1750. The city palace remained in the family until 1787, then changed hands several times and in 1998 was annexed to the neighboring Hôtel Ritz (house number 15), to which it still belongs today.

In a royal patent dated September 12, 1712, Louis XIV granted the Compagnie de Louisiane, founded by Crozat, the monopoly of trade in the entire area between New Mexico and Carolina crossed by the Mississippi and its tributaries for the following fifteen years , to the French fur trader and discoverer Cavelier de la Salle had given the name Louisiana in honor of his king . All of the lands cleared by him were assigned to Crozat for life, under the condition that two ships a year would be equipped for the colony and ten young men or girls would be recruited for each of the crossings. Finally, Louis XIV - who had always refused to introduce blacks to Louisiana - allowed him to receive a ship with slaves every year . The king favored Crozat with another monopoly, which secured him the slave trade for the needs of the Spanish colonists. The prudent financier, however, quickly became certain that his ventures in Louisiana would not yield any appreciable returns . After the death of Louis XIV (1715) in the summer of 1717, he returned the privileges granted to him five years earlier to the crown. Duke Philippe II. D'Orléans , regent during the minority of Louis XV. transferred the privileges of the Compagnie de la Louisiane ou d'Occident founded by John Law (colloquially also "Compagnie d'Occident" or "Compagnie du Mississipi"), with which Law 1720 went bankrupt.

Camelot-Aved : Marguerite Le Gendre d'Armeny, widowed "Madame Crozat", 1741, oil on canvas, Montpellier , Musée Fabre

progeny

He left his widow Marguerite, née Le Gendre d'Armeny († 1742), daughter of a general tenant (fermier general) and magistrate (capitoul) from Toulouse, whom he married in 1690, and the following descendants who had married into the most influential families in the country :

  • 1691: Louis-François (1691–1750), marquis du Châtel ⚭ 1722 Marie-Thérèse Gouffier
  • 1695: Marie-Anne (1695–1729) ⚭ Henri-Louis de La Tour d'Auvergne , Comte d'Évreux .
  • 1696: Joseph-Antoine Crozat (1696-1740 or 1750), marquis de Thugny ⚭ Catherine Amelot de Gournay; the couple had no offspring
  • 1700: Louis-Antoine Crozat (1700–1770), baron de Thiers ⚭ Louise-Augustine de Montmorency-Laval

literature

  • Alain Decaux, André Castelot: Dictionnaire d'Histoire de France Perrin . Paris, 1981, Librairie Académique Perrin, ISBN 2-262-00228-2

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ According to other sources, the lettres patentes were dated September 14th.
  2. ↑ For this purpose Crozat bought “La Dauphine” (in Holland) and “La Paix”.
  3. ^ Jacques Leclerc: Histoire linguistique de la Louisiane. TLFQ, Université de Laval , Québec 2004
personal data
SURNAME Crozat, Antoine
ALTERNATIVE NAMES marquis du Châtel, known as Crozat le Riche
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French financier, merchant and founder of the Louisiana colony
DATE OF BIRTH around 1655
PLACE OF BIRTH Toulouse
DATE OF DEATH June 7, 1738
Place of death Paris