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CHAP. of Heidelberg and Mannheim, still survived in the mind of Louis himself. Catinat found himself, on the 2nd October, in presence of the Piedmontese army at Marsaglia. Prince Eugene, who commanded the infantry of Savoy, counselled the duke to take possession of the heights of Piosaque on his left. The latter neglected the advice, and the French seizing it, were enabled to force the Piedmontese left wing. The centre under Prince Eugene, consisting of Spanish and German troops, as well as of Protestant refugees, was charged by the French with bayonets on their guns, and completely routed. The French gave no quarter.

In addition to these victories in Flanders and Piedmont, the Duke de Noailles captured Rosas and Gerona in Spain. But the want of funds and the impossibility of troops subsisting on Spanish resources compelled him to retreat. The war had become a struggle against poverty, as well as against the enemy; the weight with which its burden was felt being greatly aggravated by a terrible famine, which visited France and decimated it during the years 1693 and 1694. The king commenced and kept up negotiations with the Dutch, sending Callière and Harlay for this purpose to Flanders. In 1695, the capture of Namur by William, in the presence of a large French army under Villeroy, proved Louis no longer invincible in pressing or in raising a siege. The Dutch had found in Cohorn an engineer fully capable of competing with Vauban. Luxemburg was no more. Military skill and fortune seemed to pass to the enemies of France.

Of the causes which now inclined the French King to peace, none pressed upon him more than the total disorganisation of his finances. Had Louis the Fourteenth taken for his task the complete ruin of the public revenue, he could scarcely have adopted other measures than he did; whilst these came in aggravation of a system, than which nothing could be more impoverishing

XXXII.

or detestable. It is the great boast of political writers, CHAP. that serfage was got rid of, and the peasant made free, in the countries of Western Europe. It is much to be doubted that the peasant gained aught by the advance, at least in France, when in exchange for his freedom the whole weight of taxation was flung upon him. In England the taxes upon land and movables fell upon classes intelligent and powerful enough to feel and express their feelings of injustice or oppression. In France they were made to fall upon the unintelligent classes, deprived of the right of associating their members or expressing their opinions. English freedom and equality, at least in bearing the burdens of the state, were secured by self and local administration. In France the despotic and personal tyranny of the king was represented and exaggerated in the provinces by the power of the intendant. Several of these functionaries have left accounts of their gestion. And Boisguilbert has fully depicted the pernicious administration which the arbitrary nature of the national taxes left to their caprice or their vengeance. The intendants had in their hand the repartition of the taille, and their habit was to ingratiate themselves with the powerful landed proprietor by exempting his district, whilst the whole of the burden. was flung upon the poorer and more industrious population.*

The consequence was that all the peasantry or people who could do so, or possessed the means, removed from the heavy taxed district to others that were exempt. The fisc followed them there, successive ordonnances during the half of the century diminishing the amount of taille, and increasing still more that of aides, or duties on consumption. The peasant class which paid the taille was moreover vexed and ransomed by the passing of soldiers, and by a host of military and feudal, as well as royal, exactions. As the war advanced, and regular * Boisguilbert, Détail de la France.

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CHAP. troops were insufficient, the peasantry were drafted for the militia, and sent to perish in campaigns or on the battlefield.* Numerous writers testify the great diminution of the population in the last half of the century: Tours lost one-half of its numbers, the towns of the sea coast and land frontier more, emigration being facile. The rents paid for farms were reduced one-half; so was the number of cattle in the fields. Consumption was not one-fourth of what it had been. "One-tenth of the population is mendicant," writes Vauban; "four more tenths have but sufficient to keep life in them." The north especially, and Normandy still more so, were amongst the most wretched and distressed portion of the kingdom. The provinces which had Estates kept some show of comfort and prosperity, whilst those under regal jurisdiction were absolutely eaten up. Amidst the general ruin, the church rose like an oasis, surrounded by want and misery; its revenues were flourishing, and its members exorbitant. But whilst a few preachers made their classic orations before the court, the clergy of the provinces were sunk in ignorance and in utter incapacity of either instructing, enlightening, or influencing.†

How

It would have been vain for the greatest financial genius to have struggled against a system of tyranny, intolerance, prodigal luxury, and exhausting war. "Faites de la bonne politique," says a modern French statesman, "et je vous ferai de la bonne finance." could Colbert, the genius of peace, strive against Louvois, the spirit of war, but struggle in vain, and perish of despair and despite? The French loudly vaunt Colbert. They should but lament his hard fate and celebrate him in elegy, not panegyric. He was merely able in the first few years of peace, which marked his reign, to

*The colonel of the militia regiment of the Bourbonnais was killed at Marsaglia. See Rousset, Hist. de Louvois, part ii. for orga

nisation of militia.

† Vauban, Dime Royale. Barbier.

show what economy and activity could have done, had he, like his prototype Sully, had a Henry the Fourth to his sovereign. And no greater minister than Colbert could have been provided, if we take for inevitable the possession of an absolute power in the monarch, and the corresponding helplessness and inanity which is entailed on the people by such a regimen. Vain was, as we have before observed, his striving to introduce into such a body politic the action and the life which animated the Dutch. The association of capital, the direction of it, the enterprise, the commercial activity, naval ardour, all the common produce of freedom, could not be gathered, nor even the seed sown, in France. All that Colbert could do was to substitute royal patronage, ministerial initiation and protection, for social enterprise. He was able, indeed, to set them going, but to keep continued life in them was impossible. He founded manufactures with one hand, but the revocation of the Edict of Nantes cut them down with the other. Colbert was for protection and high duties. He was for manufactures, but manufactures could not become perfected or great unless they were exported and brought into competition with those of other countries. This could not be done without trade, reciprocal trade. But the minister would not permit this. He would take no manufactured commodities from Holland or from England. And the little that could be exported under such a rule was still further prevented by export duties. The west coast could not ship its salt or its corn, and the population was obliged to emigrate in order to live, as they were compelled to do the same in order to pray. Nor in his internal regulation of finance was Colbert more advanced; instead of destroying monopolies and corporations, he was their favourer and founder. In 1673, finding a great number of merchants and traders not included in any corporation, he compelled them to form

CHAP.

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CHAP. XXXII.

one, and levied 300,000 livres on the occasion as the price. The monopoly of tobacco, in addition to salt, was Colbert's; and most of the restrictions and narrow nature of the French excise, as well as customs, may be traced to him. With respect to his prohibitive system, however, we must record the same excuse which we did for Louis the Fourteenth: Spain and England set the example. Spain, after the Treaty of Vervins, though forbidden by one of its clauses to raise its tariff, did so; France but retaliated. Our Navigation Act of 1651 was the point from which statesmen started in their policy of preventing foreigners from rivalling or underselling them. The half-livre the ton duty on foreign shipping, imposed in 1659, was but an imitation of it. Colbert's Whale Fishing Company and attempt to found colonial trade with colonial empire was a portion of this policy. His tariff of 1667 subjected foreign cloths to a duty of eighty livres the piece of twenty-five ells, and was followed by his cloth establishment of Lodeve for the supply of the Levant. It would be unfair to say that Colbert was wrong in all these schemes, which the intolerance and prodigality of Louis subsequently defeated. But, whilst it may be unjust for the freetrader of the nineteenth century to cast contumely on the prohibitionist of early days, when political economy was in its infancy, it is exaggerated panegyric on the part of the French to fall down in admiration of such ministers as Colbert for ordaining those often futile attempts at trade, colonial empire, and manufacturing enterprise, all of which French industry was perfectly capable of initiating and carrying further itself if it had been endowed or knew how to grasp the commonest principles of commercial freedom, of publicity, and selfgovernment.*

Colbert would gladly have removed the fiscal barriers * Clements Colbert, and Joubleau.