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Financing the Kingdom – Fouquet and Colbert

Finding money was a primary preoccupation for Mazarin throughout his entire time as first minister. His new taxes on Parisians and the nobility had provoked the first Fronde, but the end of the Fronde did not resolve the problem. The government had borrowed huge amounts to finance the campaigns against the first Fronde and against Condé, and also had to pay for the continual travels of the Regent and the young King, and the elaborate festivities, parades, and cavalcades that accompanied their travel and every major event. The royal budget for 1653 was about 109 million livres, which amounted to eight hundred tons of silver or sixty tons of gold. Expenditures were the greatest between 1656 and 1659. Twenty-seven agreements were made with bankers, who loaned the government 98 million livres to supplement the money collected through ordinary taxes.

Following the death of his first finance minister, La Vieuville, on 2 February 1653, Mazarin chose a new minister, Nicolas Fouquet. At the age of twenty-five, Fouquet had inherited a very large fortune after the death of his young first wife, and an even greater fortune when he married the second time, to Marie-Madeleine de Castille, whose family was one of the wealthiest in Europe. Fouquet began as a master of receipts at age twenty, then an intendant to the army, then Procuror-General for the Parlement of Paris at the age of thirty-five.

Through his family connections, Fouquet had amassed a fortune of three to four million livres. One of the reasons for Fouquet's rapid rise was his willingness to lend very large sums to Mazarin for his various projects. In November 1657 Mazarin needed 11.8 million livres to pay the Army of the North. Fouquet, drawing upon his wealthy relatives, was able to provide the money. In 1659 he provided another loan of five million livres.

One effect of the enormous amount of money in the market during the period of the Regency of Anne of Austria and Mazarin was a decline in the value of the Livre tournois, the French royal unit of account, lost twenty percent of its value against the gold Florentine Florin coin. However, without the money lent by Fouquet and other aristocratic financiers, Louis XIV could never have accomplished his early military and diplomatic successes.

The great rival of Fouquet was Jean-Baptiste Colbert, who was also recommended to Louis XIV and brought into the government by Mazarin. Soon after he became an assistant to Mazarin, he wrote a mémoire to Mazarin, claiming that of the taxes paid by the people, not one-half reached the King. The paper also accused Fouquet of using royal funds for his own enrichment. Mazarin did not defend Fouquet; shortly before his own death, he agreed that Fouquet had to go. Shortly after Mazarin's death, Fouquet was accused by Colbert of misuse of state funds, his property was confiscated, and he was put into prison until his death, with Colbert eventually taking his place.

In 1645, Marie Louise Gonzaga, the aunt of Charles Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, had been granted in marriage to Władysław IV of Poland. She and her family did not have enough money to pay the agreed upon dowry of 2,100,000 livres. As a result, they went deeply in debt to Louis XIV, and their duchies of Mayenne, Nevers, and Rethel were mortgaged for this purpose. The negotiations, begun by Chancellor Séguier, were taken over by Mazarin, probably because Séguier was unable to put together enough money. Through various machinations, Mazarin and Colbert were eventually able to force Charles to pay off these debts by selling to Mazarin in 1654, the duchy of Mayenne (for 756,000 livres), and in 1659, that of Nevers (valued at 1,800,000 livres, at a discount of 1,534,675 livres), as well as the duchies of Donzy and Rethel. Thus, on 18 October 1660, less than five months before his death, Mazarin was confirmed by letters patent, issued by the young Louis XIV, as duke and peer of France.

The personal fortune of Mazarin at the time of his death was immense, amounting to 35 million livres, not counting the sums he left to his nieces. It exceeded the second-greatest personal fortune of the century, that of Richelieu, worth some 20 million livres. About one third of the personal fortune of Mazarin came from some twenty-one abbeys around France, each of which paid him an annual share of their revenue. Unlike members of the nobility, he did not have any large estates; his only real estate was the palace in Paris which he purchased in 1649, and added several surrounding houses. It was valued at 1.2 million livres. Thirty-seven percent of his fortune was in easily transportable jewels and cash. Within the ebony cabinets of his rooms at the Louvre his heirs found 450 pearls of high quality, plus quantities of gold chains and crosses, and rings with precious stones, altogether adding another 400,000 livres. He left to his family jewels worth an estimated 2.5 million livres, and gave a collection of diamonds worth 50,000 livres to the new Queen, and a 14-carat diamond called The Rose of England, valued at 73,000 livres, to the Queen Mother. The most valuable legacies of all, including a set of eighteen diamonds known as the "Mazarins", worth two million livres, were given to the young Louis XIV.