John Lawthe ForgeESTP

On 9 April 1694, in Bloomsbury Square in London, John Law faced Edward Wilson, known as Beau, and killed him with a single thrust of his sword. Law was 22.

He was the son of an Edinburgh goldsmith and banker, a tall young Scot already known around London as a gambler. He told the court the meeting had been an accident, and that Wilson drew first. Angry letters between the two men were read out at the Old Bailey, and the judge saw no accident in them.

The jury found him guilty of murder, and he was sentenced to hang. He was reprieved, but Wilson's family were not finished. They brought an old form of private prosecution, an appeal of murder, and Law was held in the King's Bench prison while it went ahead.

He did not wait for the result. Files found their way into his cell, and by one account so did some help from the keepers. In early January 1695 he was out, with a reward on his head, and soon across the sea.

That is the Forge eye at work. In a locked room, find the one weak point and work at it until it gives.

What came next is the part the legend skips. For twenty years Law lived by cards and dice across Europe, and he won because he counted. He thought hard about what money was and how it moved, and in 1705 he published a book called Money and Trade Considered. Then he spent years in anterooms, pitching his ideas to rulers who kept saying no.

Forges are known for nerve. Fewer people see the patience underneath it. The bet at the table is the last step of a long sum.

In May 1716 France let him open the Banque Générale in Paris. He took charge of the Mississippi Company, and in January 1720 he became controller-general of the finances, the man running a kingdom's money. For a while he was among the richest men alive. Only at the height of his power did Britain finally pardon him for killing Wilson.

People called the whole structure the System. Later it would be remembered as the Mississippi Bubble. It was a bet placed with a country's money, and because Law had done the arithmetic, he believed he wasn't guessing. So he raised the stakes, and raised them again.

In 1720 it collapsed. By late December he had fled France, aged 49, with little left of his fortune.

The bill went to the people who had trusted him. By one account his brother William was jailed in Paris over the wreck, and when William wrote complaining, John answered that blame was no use now and William should suggest a way out. In a crisis that is the right instinct. To a brother in a cell, it read like a to-do list.

Law died in Venice on 21 March 1729, at 57, short of money. The nerve that won a duel at 22 and a fortune at 45 was the same nerve that lost it all at 49. Nothing in him had changed. Only the size of the bet.