Jacques Cœur

Jacques Cœur (c. 1395–1456), a merchant born at Bourges, opened regular French trade with the Levant after buying goods at Damascus in 1432, running his operations from Montpellier.

Summoned to Paris by Charles VII in 1436, he became steward of royal expenditure and was ennobled in 1441; his loans funded the reconquest of Normandy.

In 1451 he was arrested on a fabricated charge of poisoning Agnès Sorel, and in 1453 sentenced to confiscation and exile. Escaping in 1455, he found refuge with the pope in Rome and died on Chios in 1456 while leading a papal fleet to relieve Rhodes.