THE

HISTORY OF FRANCE.

1. LOUIS XIV.-MINISTRY OF COLBERT.

Internal Administration.-Louis XIV., who was as jealous of the appearance of power as of power itself, had declared, on the death of Mazarin, that he would be his own prime minister. In the first thirty years of his reign, he attended the council eight hours each day, listening to and consulting all, but judging himself. Whatever activity he imparted to public affairs, it is to two of his ministers, however, whose great art consisted in often making him take their ideas for his own, that the greater portion of the benefits and errors of his reign must be attributed. Colbert and Louvois were respectively his good and his evil genius. Colbert, the grandson of a wool merchant of Rheims, a man of a profound mind, tenacious and indefatigable, exercised, in his own person, the functions of minister of the interior, of commerce, of finance, and marine. The great object of his life was to promote the prosperity of France. He achieved great

things, and the greatest calamities of the people date from the moment when the influence of Louvois overcame his own. Louvois, nevertheless, gifted with a remarkably vigorous mind, displayed in the war department the same activity which Colbert brought to that of the interior.

The disgrace of Fouquet, superintendent of finance, was the first act of the king's authority after the death of Mazarin. Fouquet was an expensive, prodigal, and licentious character, most unfit to have the management of a treasury, which he often converted to his personal grandeur and indulgence. Louis wisely preferred Colbert--stern, economical, and orderly. But to disgrace or supplant a minister in those days, required address and dissimulation, even in a monarch. In the midst of a splendid fête, given by the superintendent to Louis, the latter was tempted to arrest him. The measure was only deferred until Fouquet's fortress of Belleisle could be seized simultaneously with his person. His process and his papers, in which so many were mentioned and implicated, threw the court into a ferment. He was condemned to perpetual imprisonment, and seems to have merited his fall; although his want of honesty as treasurer was redeemed by such traits of generosity and worth, as had won the attachment of La Fontaine and the sympathy of Madame de Sévigné.

The best proof of the disorder of the finances under Fouquet is, that for the last four years of his administration no accounts whatever were forthcoming of the revenue or the expenditure. In a series of years taxes had been heaped on taxes, the receipt not increasing. The customs especially had been so severe, that regular commerce was sacrificed