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Pontchartrain and the Grain Trade During the Famine of 1693

Louis XIV went to war in 1689 in an effort to counter the growing strength of the Habsburgs and the development of German alliances hostile to France. He expected the conflict to be short, but when the "blitz" failed to deter his foes and the French armies bogged down in Germany, a nine year war began. The strain on the royal treasury was enormous, more than doubling expenditures from 1688 to 1697. Royal ministers ran the gamut of traditional money raising expedients in the early years of the war: they increased the taille and the contract of the general farms, coerced privileged groups to contribute to the treasury in the emergency, created and sold innumerable offices and, of course, tampered with the currency. In the end, when all these efforts failed to provide sufficient funds, the government boldly established a new tax, the capitation, to which all were liable.1 At the same time, while the burden of war stretched the crown's resources to the limit, France experienced a devastating famine; together, these calamities