Jean Pâris de Monmartel

Jean Pâris de Monmartel, (3 August 1690 at Moirans - 10 September 1766 at his château at Brunoy) was a French financier. He was the youngest of the four Pâris brother, who were financiers under Louis XIV and Louis XV. At the height of his fortunes he had 370,000 livres invested in the powerful Société d'Angola, which was the first European company set up to deal in the Atlantic slave trade, managed by Antoine Walsh, the richest and most famous of the Irish of Nantes.

He held a number of titles: marquis of Brunoy, count of Sampigny, baron Dagouville, count of Châteaumeillant, d'Argenton et Veuil d'Argenson, viscount de la Motte Feuilly, baron Saint-Jeanvrin, Saligny et Marigny, seigneur of Villers-sur-Mer, Chateauneuf, La Chétardie, Varenne, Lamotte-Glauville, Bourgeauville, Drubec, des Humières, Le Donjon, La Forest les Dureaux, Lamirande, Lachetardie, and other places.

The suffix "Monmartel" comes from an estate at Moirans, spelled "Montmartel", acquired by his father, which included the inn the family ran. The inn stood on the route taken by supply trains for the French army in Italy; in 1693 the Pâris boys acted as guides for the army suppliers, in whose Paris offices they eventually went to work. Jean spent his early years at Moirans in the family business, and was a soldier for a time before joining his older brothers Antoine and Claude in Paris. There he benefited from the valuable network of contacts they had built up, which enabled him in his turn to begin ascending the ladder of society: as early as 1704 he had been made Intendant General of the Army of Flanders. The grain trade was particularly profitable at this time, when transport was primitive, and where the slightest shortage sent prices soaring, benefitting whoever had the means of managing large volumes of stock.

He was made War Commissar in 1709, under Louis XIV, and he bought the post of Treasurer of the Ponts et Chaussées in 1715. He was involved in the opération du visa in 1716 - the systematic management of payments to government bondholders, his first venture into the world of finance. Exiled in 1720 along with his brothers, he remained away from Paris until the end of December. The large amounts of money he had made, along with his brothers, trading in military supplies and in wholesale commerce, allowed him to purchase the lordship of Brunoy, with its château, in 1722. Shortly before this, in 1721, one of his friends, François Poisson, asked him to act as godfather for his newborn daughter. He chose her names, Jeanne-Antoinette, and she was later to become Madame de Pompadour.

...
Wikipedia