Jacques Cœur

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Jacques Cœur (* 1395 in Bourges ; † November 25, 1456 in Chios ) was a French merchant and financier of King Charles VII of France .

Jacques Cœur (sculpture at the Palais Jacques Cœur in Bourges, 15th century)

Life

Jacques Cœur grew up in the merchant environment of Bourges. His father was a furrier , several families of cloth merchants lived in the neighborhood ; Jacques Cœur also began his activity as a businessman in the cloth trade.

His father left him a modest estate; The family of his wife Macée de Léodepart, whose father had been chamberlain to the Duke of Berry and who helped his son-in-law to establish some useful relationships , had more fortunes .

In 1423 Jacques Cœur, together with two partners, leased the Bourges Mint . Two years later they were convicted of counterfeiting the coins, but the affair had no further consequences.

Jacques Cœur undertook his first trip to the Orient in 1432 as a partner in a limited partnership from Languedoc . From then on his main interest was directed towards the Mediterranean and Levant trade and on speculation with price differences for gold and silver between the Orient and Western Europe, even if he could not immediately gain a foothold in the Mediterranean area alone and always traded in Europe. Systematically he built up a large trading empire over the years. On the shores of the Mediterranean he had about 300 offices in which he traded in all kinds of goods, including slaves from the Orient. His closest co-workers, like himself, came primarily from Berry, often even from Bourges, such as his “right hand man” Guillaume de Varye or his close confidante Jean de Village, who later married his niece. This intertwining of personal and business relationships was not uncommon for the time.

From 1438 he headed the Argenterie, the supply center of the royal court. Here he quickly won the trust of Charles VII and gained great freedom of action, although he was formally accountable to the king for every transaction made. The high costs of the large logistics company, which had to supply the royal court traveling around the country with food, clothing, jewelry, furniture, weapons and many other goods, were covered by the allocation of certain tax revenues, which is why their income soon fell into Cœur's area of ​​responsibility. At the same time, however, he never neglected his private trading company, but also skilfully used the contacts that his office brought him for his own business. Over time, he increasingly mixed his capital with that of argentery in order to be able to achieve maximum profits for both sides. If he himself had just invested a lot of money in real estate and had less readily available capital, he sometimes made use of argentery from the coffers, but later repaid the amounts in his own interest and often lent money to the king in financial crises. Over time, he rose to immense power in France and beyond. His name was known everywhere and made him appear creditworthy, he had his subordinates at all important switching points, and many nobles and princes were among his debtors.

In 1440 Jacques Cœur was ennobled and from 1442 he was a member of the royal council. Charles VII temporarily entrusted him with diplomatic embassies, for example in 1448 to the Pope in Rome. Because of his commercial skills and increasingly as a lender, Cœur made himself indispensable to the king for a long time. This is one of the reasons why this Cœurs tolerated generous use of state and private assets and even assigned him specific tax revenues so that Jacques Cœur could enlarge his private fleet.

His increasing recklessness in business matters, his abundance of power and his wealth, however, soon made Jacques Cœur many envious. When government spending fell at the end of the Hundred Years' War and Cœur was no longer quite so indispensable, Charles VII should also have been interested in getting rid of a man with whom he had accumulated considerable debts.

Probably through an intrigue, Cœur was accused of murdering Agnès Sorel , the king's favorite, in 1451 and arrested on July 31, 1451. His company was partially continued by his partners, parts were confiscated. In 1456, with the help of a few friends, he managed to escape from prison. After his escape, Cœur probably stayed in Italy for some time, but later had to leave the country again. He died as a member of the papal fleet against the Turks in 1456 on the island of Chios.

Jacques de Coeur, who was considered the richest man in France in his day, had 5 children: Jean, Henri, Geoffroy, Ravant and Perette. In particular, Jean de Coeur (1421-1483) tried as Archbishop of Bourges, together with his siblings, successfully after the death of King Charles VII to rehabilitate his father. The return of the immense fortune was only partially successful - the "realm of the never setting sun" in the widely ramified trading empire had collapsed. Descendants of the de Coeur family emigrated to Germany, among other places, where they still have the family name "von Herz" today. For example, great-granddaughter Britta von Herz works as an entrepreneur in Bielefeld.

literature

  • Hendrik de Man: Jacques Cœur - The royal merchant ; A. Francke Verlag, Tübingen and Basel, 1950.
  • Michel Mollat: The royal merchant: Jacques Coeur or the spirit of entrepreneurship , Munich, Beck 1991. ISBN 3-406-35074-7
  • Romain Roussel: Jacques Cœur le Magnifique , Paris, Èditions Berger-Levrault 1965
  • Jean-Christophe Rufin : Le Grand Cœur (novel), Paris, Èdition Gallimard 2012. ISBN 978-2-07-011942-4

Web links

Commons : Jacques Cœur  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Otto Spamer: The merchant at all times or book of famous merchants , page 66. Leipzig 1869 , queried on July 30, 2011
personal data
SURNAME Cœur, Jacques
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Coeur, Jacques de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French merchant and financier of the crown
DATE OF BIRTH 1395
PLACE OF BIRTH Bourges
DATE OF DEATH November 25, 1456
Place of death Chios