ABSTRACT
Whatever the particular reasons for individuals or communities being brought to the point of rebellion, the common cause was financial. The state was nearly bankrupt. In 1639 Bullion had warned Richelieu that the ‘traitants were deserting us’ and that there was danger of a general tax-strike: ‘the masses will not pay either the old or the new taxes’. He instigated an inventory of the property of the church. Fearing Gallicanism and the erosion of its independence, the church put up a stout defence. At the Assembly of Mantes 1 in February 1641 government demanded 7 million livres: it got little more than half. There was to be little help from that quarter. In August 1641 Bouthillier, sole surintendant after Bullion’s death the previous winter, noted the effects of the failures of two leading financiers: ‘Our tax contractors can scarcely find credit’. At Amsterdam Lopez, Richelieu’s agent, was having to offer ever higher rates of interest to attract the cautious Dutch investor. 2 The government was trapped between the exigencies of war finance, and a fiscal system which could only operate with relative efficiency under peacetime conditions.
