4

The Parlements of France

[1661-1715 what remained of them; there were the provincial Parlements; there were the municipal liberties, once so vigorous and important, and still general, though decadent and threatened with extinction. Wide differences still existed between province and province, not only in feeling and institutions, but even in language. Lavisse has asserted that in the year 1661 the greater number of Frenchmen were still ignorant of the French tongue. In consequence of these separatist tendencies the royal authority had a hard struggle to carry out its aim of centralised and unified government, in spite of the heavy blows which Richelieu had already struck in this direction. The ruins of the past were still left to cumber the ground, and often to prevent the rise of any more useful edifice; but in their midst there rose the power of the royal intendants. The Parlements were not abolished: they continued to sit and to give decisions at Toulouse, Grenoble, Bordeaux, Dijon, Rouen, Aix, Pau, Rennes, Metz; and later in the reign at Tournay and Besançon. The provincial Estates still met at intervals in Britanny, the Boulonnais, Artois, Burgundy, Provence, Languedoc, and Franche Comté. The Governors still held nominal power in the various provinces: they were usually men of aristocratic birth and they enjoyed a large income. But they were for the most part absentees, and, when they went to their provinces, it was for ceremonial purposes rather than for the performance of important business. Parlements, Estates and Governors were devoid of any real power. The real authority lay with the royal intendants, who in effect. represented in the provinces the unlimited authority of the King, and who were placed there in order to maintain and increase it. The King informed his intendants that it was their business to see to "the observation of our edicts, the administration of civil and criminal justice and of police, and all other matters which concern the prosperity and security of our subjects." They were chosen from the ranks of the unprivileged classes, and the nobility saw in them their chief riyals and enemies. In the passage quoted above, the King speaks of "the prosperity and security of our subjects," and the relief of the poor figures occasionally in dispatches. But it is the special weakness of the reign that so much was made of the royal authority for its own sake, while the condition of the people occupied a quite secondary place. Notwithstanding the great power of Louis XIV and the reforming energy of Colbert, little was done for the relief of the people even during the early and prosperous years of Louis XIV's rule; and the wars, successful and unsuccessful, of his later years heaped intolerable burdens on the shoulders of the poor and threw into further confusion the system of administration, which Colbert had done his utmost to regularise and simplify.

It was the effort of the King to keep the power in his own hands and to avoid the slightest appearance of a "mayor of the Palace." Without violently overthrowing the old machine of government, he reduced to

1661-1715]

The Ministers of State

5

something like impotence the ministers of old and high-sounding titles, and gave the reality of power into the hands of other ministers and Secretaries of State who were immediately appointed by and dependent on himself. The Secretaries of State, despite their nominally dependent position, were elevated above the heads of the old nobility. They represented Royalty itself, and only Princes, Dukes, and Marshals, were exempted from the necessity of saluting them by the title of "Monseigneur." The Chancellor was in name the chief of the King's servants. He seemed the last survival of the Middle Ages. He was nominal president of all the Councils and head of all Courts and tribunals; he had the custody of the royal seal, so that all acts of the royal authority passed through his hands. He was irremovable and seemed therefore a very bulwark of aristocratic power against the monarchy. But, in truth, the treatment of the Chancellor is symbolic of the whole political condition of France. He remained in his splendour and wealth and nominal power. Earlier Kings had eluded his power by giving the actual custody of the seals to an official removable at pleasure; but in the reign of Louis XIV the prestige of the royal authority was so great that no such subterfuge was necessary. The Chancellors of Louis XIV were not the slightest check, upon his authority. Next came the Controller-General of Finances and the Ministers of State, whose office under Louis XIV lasted just so long as they retained the confidence of the King. They were without accurately defined duties, and were in fact exactly what the King chose to make of them. After them came the Secretaries of State, in whose hands lay the real administration of the realm. Their duties in 1661 were the superintendence of (1) foreign affairs, (2) war, (3) the King's household and the Church, (4) the Protestants of France: but, in addition, the provinces were rather arbitrarily, divided into four groups, and each group was placed under one of the four Secretaries. these duties were not rigidly defined and were varied when new appointments were made.

But

Louis XIV was excellently served during the first part of his reign. by men most of whom had received their training in statesmanship in the schools of Richelieu and Mazarin. Le Tellier, a man of humble origin, was Secretary of State for war and had shown great efficiency in that department. He was a servant such as Louis XIV loved to havepainstaking, efficient and incapable of any ambition except to rise in the favour and service of his royal master. His reputation has been effaced by his subordinate Colbert, and by his son, the notorious Louvois. Brienne, La Vrillière, and Guénégaud were the other secretaries in 1661; but the name of Lionne was greater than theirs. He had served as a diplomatist with great distinction under Mazarin, and was soon to show his skill under Louis XIV as Secretary of State for foreign affairs.

For the moment, however, it was not war or foreign affairs which claimed the King's chief attention, but rather the department of finances,

6

The fall of Fouquet.

Colbert

[1661-9 where Nicolas Fouquet still reigned as surintendant. It has been told in an earlier volume how Fouquet had used the troubles of the Fronde to amass for himself an enormous fortune by methods even more corrupt than the moral standard of the time allowed. Mazarin had known what he was doing, had winked at it, and had probably shared in the profits. But the new master of France had an authority and a spirit which placed him above such temptations; and the wealth and the position of Fouquet were such that he was the most real rival of the royal power. Colbert had already marked the dishonest gains of Fouquet and had reported them to Mazarin; but no action had been taken. His counsels had more weight with Louis XIV, and the overthrow and trial of Fouquet was the first serious measure of his reign. He was condemned to banishment and confiscation of property; but this was not enough for the King, who commuted the sentence into imprisonment for life. Fouquet was immured until his death in the prison of Pinerolo.

The chief agent in pressing on the trial of Fouquet had been Colbert. He was sprung from a family engaged in commerce, and had at first thought of commerce as his destined career. But he had then entered the service of Le Tellier, and had through him become acquainted with Mazarin, to whom he had rendered important services. His opposition to Fouquet was prompted by a detestation of the methods employed which animated his whole career; but personal ambition also played its part. The fall of Fouquet brought Colbert to the control of the finances, though the title of surintendant was not employed again. Finance was now relegated to the attention of a Council; but in this Council Colbert was henceforth the supreme influence, though he at first only held the title of intendant des finances, which was later changed to controller-general. His influence too extended far beyond the finances, and largely controlled the King's policy until the epoch of the great wars began. Charge after charge was accumulated upon him. In 1661 he was member of the Council of Finance and chargé d'affaires for the navy. In 1664 he became superintendent of buildings. He was raised. to the post of Controller-General of Finance in 1667. He became Secretary of State for the King's household and Secretary of State for the navy in 1669.

Colbert was neither a philanthropist nor a philosopher. The relief of the poor is often mentioned in his projects, but it seems rather a conventional phrase than a deeply cherished aim. He has nothing to add to the economic or political theory of the State. He identified the wealth of a State with the amount of gold and silver which it contains. This was the common theory of his age. It was more individual to himself that he conceived the total volume of European commerce to be incapable of a material increase. What one nation gained, he concluded, another must lose. The idea of the fraternity of nations found no place in his scheme of thought. He was anxious that France should win

The character and aims of Colbert

7

1661-5] from the other nations the commerce which they at present possessed. Commerce with him was divided from war by its methods rather than by its spirit or its objects. The greatness of France, he declared on one occasion, was proved not merely by its own flourishing condition but by the poverty and general distress to which it had reduced its neighbours. Yet, while neither philanthropist nor philosopher, he was a man of business with a passionate enthusiasm for detail, industry, and efficiency. And, though not an original thinker, there is something revolutionary in his general objects: for he wished to make of France, in spite of all her --feudal, aristocratic, and military traditions, a commercial State; to transfer her ambition from war to finance; to manage her policy, not with an eye to glory, but on sound business principles. But he failed to bend France to his will. Her traditions stood in his way, and Louis XIV cared nothing for commerce and much for military glory. Yet even the small measure of success to which he attained makes an epoch in French history.

The man himself is clearly revealed in his projects, his letters, and the correspondence and memoirs of the time. Madame de Sévigné calls him the "North Star," in allusion both to his fixity of purpose and the coldness of his temperament. Industry with him ceased to be an effort and became a passion. The labour which he so readily underwent himself he exacted from others. He loved to work his way into all the details of business; to determine the methods by which it could be simplified and improved; and then to carry out the reform in spite of all obstacles, thrown in his way by tradition, corruption, and the carelessness of the King. But a desire to paint Colbert as the King's good influence, while Louvois figures as the opposite, has sometimes led to the attribution of virtues to Colbert which are not really his. His life was not without very serious blemishes. He made himself the complacent instrument of the King's amours, and his passionate hatred of corruption did not prevent him from gaining titles, income, and offices for himself and his relatives by means which in another he would have bitterly condemned.

As a man of business Colbert, while he sought to open out new sources of income for the State, desired also to see the State managed on its present lines with economy and efficiency. For the present these qualities were the last that could be attributed to the political and economic system of France. There was confusion everywhere. A medal struck in Colbert's honour mentioned without exaggeration "aerarii rationes perturbatas et hactenus inextricabiles." But confusion was not the only trouble; there had been corruption and knavery too. And, so soon as Fouquet had been arrested, and long before his trial had reached its strange termination, Colbert set to work. A tribunal was established to deal with the fraudulent financiers, and sat from 1661 to 1665. There was no inclination to lean to mercy's side. Some were condemned

8

Colbert's reforms in taxation

[1661-79

to death, though none were executed; more than four thousand were fined and compelled to disgorge large sums for the benefit of the treasury.

The debts of the State next demanded his attention. Through the mouth of the King he repudiated certain debts altogether, because only a small portion of the original capital had ever reached the treasury. Then he declared that other bonds were to be cancelled by paying off the original sum advanced, less the sum of the interest already received. Those who were chiefly injured by this measure were the rentiers of the city of Paris, and their protests were loud and long. The King supported Colbert in a declaration wherein he stated that the cancelling of the bonds was the only way of effecting "the relief of the people which we desire with so much ardour"; but subsequently the procedure was modified in deference to the outcries of the people of Paris. The net result was, however, a considerable reduction in the indebtedness of the State.

The assessment and collection of the taxes also called for immediate consideration. The chief of the taxes was the taille. The abuses connected with this most burdensome and long-lived impost were threefold, and may be summed up in the words privilege, arbitrary assessment and oppressive exaction. Nobility, clergy, court and government officials were exempt. Boisguillebert estimated, in 1697, that not more than a third part of the population contributed to the taille, and this third was the poorest and most wretched. In the pays d'élection the total sum was fixed by the Government, divided among the districts and parishes of the province by the intendant, and finally collected by prominent villagers, who were made responsible in their own property for the full payment. The payment of the tax was enforced by distraint and quartering of soldiers, often accompanied by acts of cruelty, and was frequently evaded by corruption. The collectors especially groaned under the burden of their responsibility. Failure to find the prescribed amount of taxes was punished by imprisonment. In 1679 we hear that there were 54 collectors imprisoned in Tours alone. Colbert's letters are full of the shifts to which the taxpayers had recourse in their efforts to escape, and of the misery caused by the government exactions. In the pays d'état, the taxes paid to the King were still called a don gratuit (or "benevolence "), and the taille was by no means so grievous a burden and did not discourage industry and the cultivation of the soil. The total amount was fixed by the intendant; but the provincial Estates had some influence in its assessment on districts and individuals, and it was reckoned, not on the general wealth of the taxpayer (taille personnelle), but upon his house and landed property (taille réelle). How was the situation to be remedied? Colbert did not propose or desire to anticipate the ideas of 1789 by the abolition of privilege; but he scrutinised all claims to exemption, and brought back into the ranks of the taxable