ABSTRACT
A serious problem facing the king of France was how to meet the sudden and largely unpredictable costs of war; but he seems to have become aware of this problem only gradually. Francis embarked on his first war with the emperor Maximilian in 1521 without having anticipated its probable cost. Although Francis resorted to fiscal expedients from the start of his reign, it was only in 1521, after going to war with the emperor, that the gulf between his revenues and expenses became almost unbridgeable. The cost of war between its declaration in 1521 and the king's defeat at Pavia in February 1525 was nearly 20 million livres. In the last two decades of Francis's reign, government expenditure continued to outstrip its resources. As always, war was the biggest single drain. The war of 1542-46 was the most costly of all Francis's wars. As England joined the conflict, he was forced to spend almost two million livres on his navy.
