[Illustration: Fig. 288.--A Village pillaged by Soldiers.--Fac-simile of a
Woodcut in Hamelmann's "Oldenburgisches Chronicon." in folio, 1599.]
In an administrative and financial point of view, the reign of Francis I.
was not at all a period of revival or of progress. The commencement of a
sounder System of finance is rather to be dated from that of Charles V.;
and good financial organization is associated with the names of Jacques
Coeur, Philip the Good, Charles XI., and Florimond Robertet. As an example
of this, it may be stated that financiers of that time established taxes
on registration of all kinds, also on stamps, and on sales, which did not
before exist in France, and which were borrowed from the Roman emperors.
We must also give them the credit of having first commenced a public debt,
under the name of _rentes perpetuelles_, which at that time realised
eight per cent. During this brilliant and yet disastrous reign the
additional taxes were enormous, and the sale of offices produced such a
large revenue that the post of parliamentary counsel realised the sum of
2,000 golden ecus, or nearly a million francs of present currency. It was
necessary to obtain money at any price, and from any one who would lend
it. The ecclesiastics, the nobility, the bourgeois, all gave up their
plate and their jewels to furnish the mint, which continued to coin money
of every description, and, in consequence of the discovery of America, and
the working of the gold and silver mines in that country, the precious
metals poured into the hands of the money-changers. The country, however,
was none the more prosperous, and the people often were in want of even
the commonest necessaries of life. The King and the court swallowed up
everything, and consumed all the resources of the country on their luxury
and their wars. The towns, the monasteries, and the corporations, were
bound to furnish a certain number of troops, either infantry or cavalry.
By the establishment of a lottery and a bank of deposit, by the monopoly
of the mines and by the taxes on imports, exports, and manufactured
articles, enormous sums were realised to the treasury, which, as it was
being continually drained, required to be as continually replenished.
Francis I. exhausted every source of credit by his luxury, his caprices,
and his wars. Jean de Beaune, Baron de Semblancay, the old minister of
finance, died a victim to false accusations of having misappropriated the
public funds. Robertet, who was in office with him, and William Bochetel,
who succeeded him, were more fortunate: they so managed the treasury
business that, without meeting with any legal difficulty, they were
enabled to centralise the responsibility in themselves instead of having
it distributed over sixteen branches in all parts of the kingdom, a system
which has continued to our day. In those days the office of superintendent
of finance was usually only a short and rapid road to the gibbet of
Montfaucon.
|