expenditure was around 18 million pounds, leaving a deficit of 8 million. In 1667, the net receipts had risen to 20 million pounds
sterling, while expenditure had fallen to 11 million, leaving a surplus of 9 million pounds.
Money was the essential support of the reorganized and enlarged army, the panoply of Versailles, and the growing civil
administration. Finance had always been the weakness of the French monarchy: tax collection was costly and inefficient; direct
taxes dwindled as they passed through the hands of many intermediate officials; and indirect taxes were collected by private
contractors called tax farmers who made a handsome profit. The state coffers leaked at every joint.
The main weakness arose from an old bargain between the French crown and nobility: the king might raise taxes on the nation
without consent if only he exempted the nobility. Only the "unprivileged" classes paid direct taxes, which came to mean the
peasants only, as most bourgeois finagled exemptions in one way or another. The system laid the whole burden of state expenses
on the backs of the poor and powerless. After 1700, with the support of Louis's pious secret wife Madame de Maintenon, the king
Personal reign and reforms
Coming of age and early reforms