Overview
Samuel Bernard (1651 in Sancerre – January 18, 1739, in Paris), Count of Coubert (1725), was a French noble and financier.
Life
Of Dutch origin, Samuel Bernard was the son of the painter and engraver Samuel-Jacques Bernard (1615-1687). His family was Protestant, but his father, according to the apocryphal memoirs of the Marquise de Créquy, "had embraced the sect of Arminius [and] had been forced into exile."
He created the French Guinea Company. Declared by Saint-Simon to be "the most famous and richest banker in Europe," he lent important funding to the Kingdom of France during the reigns of Louis XIV and Louis XV.
Louis XIV, having exhausted his finances, notably turned to Bernard in 1708 to finance the War of the Spanish Succession. In order that the King would not have to stoop to receive the financier in an audience, the Controller-General of Finances, Nicolas Desmarets (1648-1721), carefully choreographed a meeting which took place at Marly. According to Saint-Simon:
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