44 France’s Fiscal Woes
22.1.5: France’s Fiscal Woes
Under Louis XIV, France witnessed successful reforms and growth as a global power, but financial strain imposed by multiple wars left the state bankrupt. Under Louis XV, lost wars and limited reforms reversed the gains of the initial years of economic recovery.
Learning Objective
Examine the excessive spending of Louis XIV and Louis XV and the consequences of their actions for the French government.
Key Points
- Louis XIV began his personal reign with effective fiscal reforms. He chose Jean-Baptiste Colbert as Controller-General of Finances in 1665, and Colbert reduced the national debt through more efficient taxation. However, the gains were insufficient to support Louis’s policies. During his reign, France fought three major wars and two lesser conflicts. In order to weaken the power of the nobility, Louis attached nobles to his court at Versailles. These strategies to hold centralized power, although effective, were very costly.
- To support the reorganized and enlarged army, the panoply of Versailles, and the growing civil administration, the king needed more money. Only towards the close of his reign under extreme stress of war was he able to impose direct taxes on the aristocratic population. However, so many concessions and exemptions were won by nobles and bourgeois that the reform lost much of its value.
- Louis encouraged industry, fostered trade and commerce, and sponsored the founding of an overseas empire, but the powerful position of Louis XIV’s France came at a financial cost that could not be balanced by his reforms. The considerable foreign, military, and domestic expenditure impoverished and bankrupted France.
- Cardinal Fleury was Louis XV’s chief minister and his rule was the most peaceful and prosperous period of the reign of Louis XV. After the financial and social disruptions suffered at the end of the reign of Louis XIV, the rule of Fleury is seen by historians as a period of “recovery.” Following Fleury’s death, Louis failed to continue his policies.
- Louis XV attempted fiscal reforms that included the taxation of the nobility but his foreign policy failures weakened France and further strained its finances. As a result of lost wars, Louis was forced to cede many territories, including lucrative overseas colonies.
- Lost wars and subsequent financial strains, ineffective reforms, and religious feuds, combined with XV’s reputation as a man interested more in women and hunting than in ruling France, weakened the monarchy that was left in a state of economic crisis.
Key Terms
- parlements
- Provincial appellate courts in the France of the Ancien Régime, i.e. before the French Revolution. They were not legislative bodies but rather the court of final appeal of the judicial system. They typically wielded much power over a wide range of subject matter, particularly taxation. Laws and edicts issued by the Crown were not official in their respective jurisdictions until assent