My Reign

During my reign the French treasury was very close to economic failure when my son Louis XIV became king in 1661. He has demonstrated an incredibly excessive spender, providing enormous amounts of money to invest his wars and his court. Some people assume that by half of my son’s reign France’s yearly income went to maintaining Versailles. Large amounts of money was missing because of corruption within the large French’s system of government. At this period the principal French taxation devices included the assistants of the douanes, the gabelle, and taille. The helpers and the douanes taxed on trade through customs duties, the taxation on usage of salt was called the gabelle, and the taille was tax on land. The nobles and clergy claimed exception from these taxes so that the poor and the middle class had to pay for all of the remainder of feudal France. There were many conflicts of this taxation that would eventually lead to the French Revolution. Louis XIV would appoint the clever Colbert as his Minister of Finance. Colbert’s efforts were to reduce the unfortunate’s dishonesty and reorganize the bureaucracy (underprivileged people) began to start revenue, although this didn't suffice to begin to reverse Franc’s growing national debt. In 1667, Louis put an end to the Livre Parisis (Paris Pound) in favor of the much more extensively used Livre Tournois (Tour Pound). Considering that in order to success in absolute power he must first achieve religious unification, Louis XIV started trouble for the Protestant population, must notably through the the Edict of Fontainebleau (1685). This invalidated the religious understanding of Edict of Nantes (1598). Henry IV had ordered the destruction of Huguenot churches as well as closing Protestant Schools.
http://valkyrian.tripod.com/essays/gmt10b.html