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Title: Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

Author: Charles Mackay

Release Date: February 5, 2008 [EBook #24518]
Last Updated: April 1, 2018

Language: English


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MEMOIRS
OF
EXTRAORDINARY POPULAR DELUSIONS
AND THE
Madness of Crowds.

By CHARLES MACKAY, LL.D.
AUTHOR OF “EGERIA,” “THE SALAMANDRINE,” ETC.

ILLUSTRATED WITH NUMEROUS ENGRAVINGS.

N’en déplaise à ces fous nommés sages de Grèce,

En ce monde il n’est point de parfaite sagesse;

Tous les hommes sont fous, et malgré tous leurs soîns

Ne diffèrent entre eux que du plus ou du moins.

BOILEAU.

LONDON:
OFFICE OF THE NATIONAL ILLUSTRATED LIBRARY,
227 STRAND.

1852.

CONTENTS. INDEX. FOOTNOTES. Volume I. Contents. List of Engravings. Preface. The Mississippi Scheme. The South-Sea Bubble. The Tulipomania. The Alchymists. Modern Prophecies. Fortune-Telling. The Magnetisers. Influence of Politics and Religion on the Hair and Beard. Volume II. Contents. List of Engravings. The Crusades. The Witch Mania. The Slow Poisoners. Haunted Houses. Popular Follies of Great Cities. Popular Admiration of Great Thieves. Duels and Ordeals. Relics.
A garden landscape.

THE MISSISSIPPI SCHEME: GARDENS OF THE HOTEL DE SOISSONS, 1720.

MEMOIRS
OF
EXTRAORDINARY POPULAR DELUSIONS.

VOLUME I.

A coat of arms.

THE BUBBLERS’ ARMS—PROSPERITY.

LONDON:
OFFICE OF THE NATIONAL ILLUSTRATED LIBRARY,
227 STRAND.

1852.

MEMOIRS
OF
EXTRAORDINARY POPULAR DELUSIONS
AND THE
Madness of Crowds.

By CHARLES MACKAY, LL.D.
AUTHOR OF “EGERIA,” “THE SALAMANDRINE,” ETC.

ILLUSTRATED WITH NUMEROUS ENGRAVINGS.

VOL. I.

N’en déplaise à ces fous nommés sages de Grèce,

En ce monde il n’est point de parfaite sagesse;

Tous les hommes sont fous, et malgré tous leurs soîns

Ne diffèrent entre eux que du plus ou du moins.

BOILEAU.

LONDON:
OFFICE OF THE NATIONAL ILLUSTRATED LIBRARY,
227 STRAND.

1852.

LONDON:
PRINTED BY ROBSON, LEVEY, AND FRANKLYN,
Great New Street, Fetter Lane.

CONTENTS.

THE MISSISSIPPI SCHEME.

John Law; his birth and youthful career—Duel between Law and Wilson—Law’s escape from the King’s Bench—The “Land-bank”—Law’s gambling propensities on the continent, and acquaintance with the Duke of Orleans—State of France after the reign of Louis XIV.—Paper money instituted in that country by Law—Enthusiasm of the French people at the Mississippi Scheme—Marshal Villars—Stratagems employed and bribes given for an interview with Law—Great fluctuations in Mississippi stock—Dreadful murders—Law created comptroller-general of finances—Great sale for all kinds of ornaments in Paris—Financial difficulties commence—Men sent out to work the mines on the Mississippi, as a blind—Payment stopped at the bank—Law dismissed from the ministry—Payments made in specie—Law and the Regent satirised in song—Dreadful crisis of the Mississippi Scheme—Law, almost a ruined man, flies to Venice—Death of the Regent—Law obliged to resort again to gambling—His death at Venice

THE SOUTH-SEA BUBBLE.

Originated by Harley Earl of Oxford—Exchange Alley a scene of great excitement—Mr. Walpole—Sir John Blunt—Great demand for shares—Innumerable “Bubbles”—List of nefarious projects and bubbles—Great rise in South-sea stock—Sudden fall—General meeting of the directors—Fearful climax of the South-sea expedition—Its effects on society—Uproar in the House of Commons—Escape of Knight—Apprehension of Sir John Blunt—Recapture of Knight at Tirlemont—His second escape—Persons connected with the scheme examined—Their respective punishments—Concluding remarks

THE TULIPOMANIA.

Conrad Gesner—Tulips brought from Vienna to England—Rage for the tulip among the Dutch—Its great value—Curious anecdote of a sailor and a tulip—Regular marts for tulips—Tulips employed as a means of speculation—Great depreciation in their value—End of the mania

THE ALCHYMISTS.

Introductory remarks—Pretended antiquity of the art—Geber—Alfarabi—Avicenna—Albertus Magnus—Thomas Aquinas—Artephius—Alain de Lisle—Arnold de Villeneuve—Pietro d’Apone—Raymond Lulli—Roger Bacon—Pope John XXII.—Jean de Meung—Nicholas Flamel—George Ripley—Basil Valentine—Bernard of Trèves—Trithemius—The Maréchal de Rays—Jacques Cœur—Inferior adepts—Progress of the infatuation during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—Augurello—Cornelius Agrippa—Paracelsus—George Agricola—Denys Zachaire—Dr. Dee and Edward Kelly—The Cosmopolite—Sendivogius—The Rosicrucians—Michael Mayer—Robert Fludd—Jacob Böhmen—John Heydon—Joseph Francis Borri—Alchymical writers of the seventeenth century—Delisle—Albert Aluys—Count de St. Germain—Cagliostro—Present state of the science

MODERN PROPHECIES.

Terror of the approaching day of judgment—A comet the signal of that day—The prophecy of Whiston—The people of Leeds greatly alarmed at that event—The plague in Milan—Fortune-tellers and Astrologers—Prophecy concerning the overflow of the Thames—Mother Shipton—Merlin—Heywood—Peter of Pontefract—Robert Nixon—Almanac-makers

FORTUNE-TELLING.

Presumption and weakness of man—Union of Fortune-tellers and Alchymists—Judicial astrology encouraged in England from the time of Elizabeth to William and Mary—Lilly the astrologer consulted by the House of Commons as to the cause of the Fire of London—Encouragement of the art in France and Germany—Nostradamus—Basil of Florence—Antiochus Tibertus—Kepler—Necromancy—Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus, Arnold Villeneuve—Geomancy—Augury—Divination: list of various species of divination—Oneiro-criticism (interpretation of dreams)—Omens

THE MAGNETISERS.

The influence of imagination in curing diseases—Mineral magnetisers—Paracelsus—Kircher the Jesuit—Sebastian Wirdig—William Maxwell—The Convulsionaries of St. Medard—Father Hell—Mesmer, the founder of Animal Magnetism—D’Eslon, his disciple—M. de Puysegur—Dr. Mainauduc’s success in London—Holloway, Loutherbourg, Mary Pratt, &c.—Perkins’s “Metallic Tractors”—Decline of the science

INFLUENCE OF POLITICS AND RELIGION ON THE HAIR AND BEARD.

Early modes of wearing the hair and beard—Excommunication and outlawry decreed against curls—Louis VII.’s submission thereto the cause of the long wars between England and France—Charles V. of Spain and his courtiers—Peter the Great—His tax upon beards—Revival of beards and moustaches after the French Revolution of 1830—The King of Bavaria (1838) orders all civilians wearing moustaches to be arrested and shaved—Examples from Bayeux tapestry

LIST OF ENGRAVINGS IN VOL. I. Frontispiece—Gardens of the Hotel de Soissons. (From a print in Mr. Hawkins’ collection.) Vignette—The Bubblers’ Arms, Prosperity. (Bubblers’ Mirror, or England’s Folly.) John Law. (From a rare print by Leon Schenk. 1720) The Regent D’Orleans Old Palais Royal from the Garden. (From a scarce print, circa 1720) Law’s House; Rue de Quincampoix. (From Nodier’s Paris) Humpbacked Man hiring himself as a Table Hôtel de Soissons. (From Nodier’s Paris) The Coach upset Murder of a Broker by Count D’Horn John Law as Atlas. (From England under the House of Hanover) Caricature—Lucifer’s new Row Barge Procession of Miners for the Mississippi The Chancellor D’Aguesseau Caricature—Law in a Car drawn by Cocks M. D’Argenson Caricature—Neck or Nothing, or Downfall of the Mississippi Company The South-Sea House. (From a print, circa 1750) Harley Earl of Oxford Sir Robert Walpole Cornhill. (Print, circa 1720) Stock-jobbing Card, or the Humours of Change Alley. 1720. (From the Bubblers’ Medley) Caricature—People climbing the Tree of Fortune. (From the Bubblers’ Medley) The Gateway to Merchant Tailors’ Hall. (Gateway from old print) Mr. Secretary Craggs Caricature—Beggars on Horseback. (From the Bubblers’ Medley) Caricature—Britannia stript by a South-Sea Director Caricature—The Brabant Screen. (Copied from a rare print of the time, in the collection of E. Hawkins, Esq., F.S.A.) Bonfires on Tower Hill The Earl of Sunderland Caricature—Emblematic Print of the South-Sea Scheme. (From a print by Hogarth) Caricature—Bubblers’ Arms: Despair. (From Bubblers’ Mirror, or England’s Glory) Conrad Gesner The Alchymist. (From print after Teniers) Albertus Magnus Arnold de Villeneuve Raymond Lulli House of Jacques Cœur at Bourges. (From Sommerard’s Album) Cornelius Agrippa Paracelsus Dr. Dee Dr. Dee’s Show-stone and Magic Crystal. (Originals in the possession of Lord Londesborough and British Museum) Innspruck. (From Nodier’s Paris) House of Cagliostro (Rue de Clery, No. 278), Paris Mother Shipton’s House Henry Andrews, the original “Francis Moore, physician” Nostradamus. (From the frontispiece to a collection of his Prophecies, published at Amsterdam A.D. 1666) Serlo clipping Henry I.’s hair Peter the Great Bayeux Tapestry
Preface.

In reading the history of nations, we find that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities; their seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do. We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first. We see one nation suddenly seized, from its highest to its lowest members, with a fierce desire of military glory; another as suddenly becoming crazed upon a religious scruple; and neither of them recovering its senses until it has shed rivers of blood and sowed a harvest of groans and tears, to be reaped by its posterity. At an early age in the annals of Europe its population lost their wits about the sepulchre of Jesus, and crowded in frenzied multitudes to the Holy Land; another age went mad for fear of the devil, and offered up hundreds of thousands of victims to the delusion of witchcraft. At another time, the many became crazed on the subject of the philosopher’s stone, and committed follies till then unheard of in the pursuit. It was once thought a venial offence, in very many countries of Europe, to destroy an enemy by slow poison. Persons who would have revolted at the idea of stabbing a man to the heart, drugged his pottage without scruple. Ladies of gentle birth and manners caught the contagion of murder, until poisoning, under their auspices, became quite fashionable. Some delusions, though notorious to all the world, have subsisted for ages, flourishing as widely among civilised and polished nations as among the early barbarians with whom they originated,—that of duelling, for instance, and the belief in omens and divination of the future, which seem to defy the progress of knowledge to eradicate them entirely from the popular mind. Money, again, has often been a cause of the delusion of multitudes. Sober nations have all at once become desperate gamblers, and risked almost their existence upon the turn of a piece of paper. To trace the history of the most prominent of these delusions is the object of the present pages. Men, it has been well said,

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