CHAPTER XLV .-- --LOUIS XIV., HIS WARS AND HIS REVERSES.

(1697-1713.) France was breathing again after nine years of a desperate war, but she was breathing uneasily, and as it were in expectation of fresh efforts.
Everywhere the memorials of the superintendents repeated the same complaints.

"War, the mortality of 1693, the, constant quarterings and movements of soldiery, military service, the heavy dues, and the withdrawal of the Huguenots have ruined the country." "The people," said the superintendent of Rouen, "are reduced to a state of want which moves compassion.

Out of seven hundred and fifty thousand souls of which the public is composed, if this number remain, it may be taken for certain that there are not fifty thousand who have bread to eat when they want it, and anything to lie upon but straw." Agriculture suffered for lack of money and hands; commerce was ruined; the manufactures established by Colbert no longer existed; the population had diminished more than a quarter since the palmy days of the king's reign; Pontchartrain, secretary of finance, was reduced to all sorts of expedients for raising money; he was anxious to rid himself of this heavy burden, and became chancellor in 1699; the king took for his substitute Chamillard, already comptroller of finance, honest and hard-working, incapable and docile; Louis XIV.

counted upon the inexhaustible resources of France, and closed his ears to the grievances of the financiers.