Financial Innovation and Its Discontents

Financing expanded government and prolonged warfare required fiscal innovations that strained traditional systems while creating new ones. Richelieu's financial expedients—increased tailles, new indirect taxes, forced loans, office creations—generated revenues at tremendous political and social cost. Popular revolts, parliamentary resistance, and aristocratic conspiracy reflected fiscal pressure's destabilizing effects.

The Croquants peasant rebellions in southwestern France (1636-1637) demonstrated rural distress caused by wartime taxation. Though suppressed with characteristic brutality, they revealed monarchy's narrow social base. Urban revolts like the Nu-Pieds in Normandy (1639) showed that fiscal pressure affected all social levels. The monarchy's response—temporary concessions followed by harsh repression—maintained order without addressing underlying grievances.

Financial administration's sophistication increased despite resistance. The intendants supervised tax collection more efficiently than traditional officers. Government borrowing through rentes created public debt markets. Tax farming to financier syndicates provided predictable revenues while enriching new social groups tied to royal service. These developments, though generating corruption and inefficiency, created fiscal state capacity essential for absolutist ambitions.