text: 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 