Book Description

Excerpt from The Letters of Madame, the Correspondence of Elizabeth-Charlotte of Bavaria, Princess Palatine, Duchess of Orleans, Called "Madame" At the Court of King Louis XIV, Vol. 2: 1709-1722 When the newly-appointed Regent came to look into the financial state of the country, he found France upon the brink of ruin. Royal extravagance, the endless suc cession of wars, and the peculations of statesmen and extortions of moneylenders, had increased the national debts to an enormous figure; the national revenue was steadily declining, while agriculture, commerce and industry, weighed down by taxation and drained of their life-blood by a host of usurers, had almost given up the struggle. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.