own. As late as 1651 and 1652 he had been straitened for money, and to avoid a recurrence of such a misfortune he grasped at and amassed every source and means of wealth. As Mazarin understood little of financial and treasury affairs, Fouquet was the instrument, and Fouquet, in helping his patron also helped himself. If Fouquet imitated Mazarin in greed, he surpassed the cardinal in sumptuous expenditure. Whilst the cardinal filled his town palace with the choicest pictures, statues, and volumes, Fouquet spent all that luxury and extravagance could suggest on his country house at Vaux. Nor did he, like Mazarin, practise economy at one end whilst launching into extravagance at the other. The cardinal, when he gave up the public property to Fouquet, committed the management of his private fortune and affairs to a man of a very different character, Colbert. Long kept down in an inferior position, almost one of domesticity, Colbert did not contract the expensive and dissolute tastes of Fouquet. He was the steward of Mazarin, fattening his calves, taking care of his basse cour, and on venturing to offer advice to his patron, taking care to affirm that he never meddled with politics.* Such an humble instrument was far more to the taste of Louis than Fouquet, who was imprudent enough to rival the king not only in parks and palaces but in his amours. He had offered a large sum of money to La Vallière. Yet Louis was generous to hint to Fouquet that bygones were bygones, and that if he would henceforth be honest, make no further alienation or mortgage of revenues, and give the king a true account of the finances, and how they might be recovered, past dilapidations should be forgotten. But Fouquet had not the discernment or the good fortune to perceive that Louis could not be treated like Mazarin. He deemed the king's scrutiny of the finances and business in general *Correspondence of Colbert. Cheruel's Memoirs of Fouquet. СНАР. XXXI. XXXI. CHAP. as an effort of which he would soon tire. Instead, therefore, of giving him true information he merely sought to amuse and deceive him, whilst continuing to plunder for himself. In the four years previous Fouquet had sunk in mortgages ten millions of revenue. After this remonstrance of the king and his own promise, he proceeded to mortgage little short of a million more (800,000).* Of course the account of receipts and expenditure which he furnished the king, were cooked to cover such dilapidation. The precaution was vain, since Colbert, whom the king had appointed one of the intendants of finance, furnished the monarch in private with his accounts, and with the means of detecting Fouquet's dishonesty. The political schemes and conduct of the superintendent were as culpable as his financial. Foreseeing the possibility of disgrace, he had purchased the port of Belle Isle as a government, and proceeded to arm it as a fortress and a place of retreat, as Richelieu and Mazarin had thought to do with Morbihan or Havre. Reports of these precautions were brought to the king, who had also fears of seeing himself embarrassed by factions similar to those of the preceding reign. He therefore dissembled with Fouquet. The latter, as procureur-général, could only be brought, if accused, before the united chamber of parliament. To deprive him of this privilege, he was tricked into giving up the place. The king, he perceived, had been mollified by Mazarin's surrender of all his property previous to his decease. Fouquet now sold the procureur-generalship, and paid the purchase-money into the treasury. After such an act of self-sacrifice Fouquet thought he might fête the king, and invited him accordingly to see the splendour and enjoy the festivities of Vaux. Louis went, determined to dissemble, but could scarcely persevere, being so indignant at the display and the pretensions of Fouquet, that he proposed arresting *Correspondence of Colbert. XXXI. and sending him to prison on the spot. The queen CHAP. mother prevented the explosion. And it was only after the lapse of a month, during a visit which the court paid to Britanny, that Fouquet was arrested at Nantes, and sent to the Bastille for trial. It lasted several years, and formed the principal topic of the time. For Fouquet had very many friends. Madame de Sevigné is one of the most illustrious. He had paid court to her, was denied her love, but contented to secure her friendship. Fouquet, too, was the originator of that generous government patronage extended to letters, science, and the arts, which Louis and Colbert afterwards adopted. Corneille and Lafontaine were favoured by him; Molière and Scarron his debtors. In the long imprisonment and trial of Fouquet for financial malversation, public opinion was thus far more favourable to him than to the court and king, or to Colbert and the other ministers who joined in persecuting or convicting him. That he took and appropriated large portions of the public revenue there could be no doubt, but Mazarin did the same. And as Fouquet made large advances from his own funds to the necessities of the state at divers epochs, it was difficult, if not impossible, to tell what sum was repayment and what was rapine. The majority of his judges, taking these things into consideration, sentenced Fouquet to exile and confiscation of property-a sufficient punishment. Louis the same evening uttered the revengeful and unmanly regret that the accused had not been condemned to death, for he certainly would have sanctioned the execution. He indeed commuted the sentence to one as severe, substituting for exile an imprisonment for life in the fortress of Pignerol.* (1664.) Colbert succeeded not indeed to the dignity, but to the real authority of finance minister, and he at once proceeded to introduce order and economy into the ad * Proces de Fouquet. Memoir of the time. CHAP. ministration. His first act, a colossal one, was to cancel the greater number of financial places, taking means at the same time for indemnifying the holders. How enormous were the abuses and dilapidations of these officers and collectors of revenue appear from the figures of eighty-four millions as the gross receipts raised, whilst but thirty-one were counted as the ordinary or available revenue. The rest was absorbed in local charges and the cost of levying. Whilst striking at the permanence and independence of financial functionaries, Colbert prepared for the abolition of the whole system. The purchasable value of place in France was then estimated at 420 millions sterling. And as each holder indemnified himself somehow or another for the purchase, the sum was an enormous burden upon the country. The debts which weighed more palpably on the revenue were the mortgages or alienation, and the rentes or regular debts. Of the 31,000,000 ordinary revenue, 9,000,000 were alienated. The greater part of the domains were also mortgaged. Colbert proceeded against both classes of state creditors with equal severity and injustice. Taking for granted • Louis the Fourteenth's favourite maxim, that all the property of his subjects was his own, the legitimate inference from it was, that all who had taken mortgages or alienations had robbed the state of so much, and all who had been the king's creditors wronged him in the same proportion. Colbert, therefore, established a tribunal for inquiring into debts due to the state, and contracts made with it. Fouquet, at the same time, being put upon his trial, and menaced with death, was a spectacle in terrorem to induce the accused capitalists to compound with the minister. They did so, and he obtained from them 110,000,000 as fines, besides probably as much more in the cancelling of debts.* * Clement's Memoirs of Colbert. Finance. Forbonnais. Joubleau. Colbert's Memoir on XXXI. Those who had accommodated the government with CHAP. temporary loans having been thus summarily dealt with, Colbert turned to the rentiers, or stockholders. During the recent civil war, the frequent syncopes and permanent necessities of Mazarin's government, many, no doubt, had purchased stock at a very low price. Colbert now proposed to pay each holder merely the regular interest of his purchase money, whatever that might have been. What was harder still, those of whom the government had bought up the créances, were ordered to disgorge the difference between the sum received and the current price. This draconic order amounted to a complete cancelling of the loans of several years. Even the original debt or rentes upon the Hôtel de Ville, which had fallen in the market value solely because the government did not pay the interest, the said government now took advantage of the diminution of value caused by itself, to reduce to one-half, and, in some cases to one-third of the original capital. For this act of bankruptcy or state robbery, Colbert has been awarded the civic crown by most historians. Such a reform of finance, or such a diminution of public expenditure might be accomplished at any time in any country, that had the fortune to possess an absolute government, without much genius in the financier. All required was the reckless dishonesty of the sovereign, and the pusillanimous character of the people. It was by acts like these that Colbert inaugurated his attempt to rival the Dutch in wealth and trade! By such acts, however, Colbert was able to raise the mount of net revenue from 32,000,000 to 60,000,000, whilst decreasing the taille, which weighed upon agriculture, and the salt tax, so severe upon the poor. This increase of revenue enabled the minister to provide for Louis a fleet of fifty-nine sail, some of which carried 80 guns and 600 men. There was, at the |