Fortune & Schemes

He lived well for forty years without a profession. Here's the documented money trail.

The lottery of 1757

Casanova’s one great legitimate fortune came from an idea. In Paris in 1757, through the abbé de Bernis, he proposed a state lottery to finance the new École militaire — the military academy Louis XV was founding. The Loterie de l’École militaire was authorized, and Casanova became one of its receivers (receveurs). The returns made him genuinely rich for the first time in his life — rich enough to live as a grand seigneur, keep a carriage, and gamble at the highest tables. It is the best-documented episode of his financial life.

Gambling

Gambling was both income and ruin. Casanova played faro and other games of chance across Europe, winning and losing fortunes; the memoirs record both with unusual candor. He also, by his own admission, cheated — he describes loaded dice and marked cards without apology. The gambling is documented in his account; the scale of the sums is his own testimony.

The silk manufacture

In 1758–59 Casanova attempted a more respectable enterprise: a silk manufacture (silk-stocking factory) in Paris. It failed, expensively — one of several business ventures that collapsed and left him in debt. The failure is documented in correspondence and the memoirs alike.

“Chevalier de Seingalt”

From about 1757 Casanova signed himself “Chevalier de Seingalt” — and sometimes “Jacques Casanova de Seingalt.” No Venetian or French authority granted the title; it was a self-styled invention, likely coined for Parisian society. It appears on the title pages of his own works, including Histoire de ma fuite (1788). Scholars treat it as documented self-fashioning, not as a real rank.

The Marquise d’Urfé affair

In 1759–60 Casanova pursued occult and alchemical schemes with the wealthy widow Jeanne de Lascaris, Marquise d’Urfé — promising, among other things, to regenerate her youth and reveal the philosopher’s stone, in exchange for very large sums. When the schemes unraveled and arrest threatened, he fled France in 1760. The affair is documented in correspondence as well as the memoirs; the sums involved are his own figures.

Source notes

• The 1757 lottery and Casanova’s role as receiver are documented in French administrative records as well as the memoirs; the scholarly editions (Pléiade 2015) confirm the episode.
• The silk manufacture, the gambling admissions, and the d’Urfé affair rest primarily on Casanova’s memoirs and correspondence.
• “Chevalier de Seingalt” is identified as self-styled in the scholarly literature; no grant of nobility exists.