The position of affairs required no fewer virtues.

"Disorder reigned everywhere," says the king; "on casting over the various portions of my kingdom not eyes of indifference, but the eyes of a master, I was sensibly affected not to see a single one which did not deserve and did not press to be taken in hand.

The destitution of the lower orders was extreme, and the finances, which give movement and activity to all this great framework of the monarchy, were entirely exhausted and in such plight that there was scarcely any resource to be seen; the affluent, to be seen only amongst official people, on the one hand cloaked all their malversations by divers kinds of artifices, and uncloaked them on the other by their insolent and audacious extravagance, as if they were afraid to leave me in ignorance of them." The punishment of the tax-collectors (_traitants_), prosecuted at the same time as superintendent Fouquet, the arbitrary redemption of rentes (_annuities_) on the city of Paris or on certain branches of the taxes, did not suffice to alleviate the extreme suffering of the people.

The talliages from which the nobility and the clergy were nearly everywhere exempt pressed upon the people with the most cruel inequality.

"The poor are reduced to eating grass and roots in our meadows like cattle," said a letter from Blaisois those who can find dead carcasses devour them, and, unless God have pity upon them, they will soon be eating one another." Normandy, generally so prosperous, was reduced to the uttermost distress.
"The great number of poor has exhausted charity and the power of those who were accustomed to relieve them," says a letter to Colbert from the superintendent of Caen.