increased at will by largely alloying the gold with base metals.  The duties on exported and imported goods were increased, notwithstanding the complaints that commerce was declining.  These financial expedients would not have been tolerated by the people had not the King taken the precaution to have them approved by the States-General of the provincial states, which he annually assembled.  In 1355 the States-General were convoked, and the King, who had to maintain thirty thousand soldiers, asked them to provide for this annual expenditure, estimated at 5,000,000 livres parisis, about 300,000,000 francs of present currency.  The States-General, animated by a generous feeling of patriotism, “ordered a tax of eight deniers in the pound on the sale and transfer of all goods and articles of merchandise, with the exception of inheritances, which was to be payable by the vendors, of whatever rank they might be, whether ecclesiastics, nobles, or others, and also a salt tax to be levied throughout the whole kingdom of France.”  The King promised as long as this assistance lasted to levy no other subsidy and to coin good and sterling money—­i.e., deniers of fine gold, white, or silver coin, coin of billon, or mixed metal, and deniers and mailles of copper.  The assembly appointed travelling agents and three inspectors or superintendents, who had under them two receivers and a considerable number of sub-collectors, whose duties were defined with scrupulous minuteness.  The King at this time renounced the right of seizin, his dues over property, inherited or conveyed by sale, exchange, gift, or will, his right of demanding war levies by proclamation, and of issuing forced loans, the despotic character of which offended everybody.  The following year, the tax of eight deniers having been found insufficient and expensive in its collection, the assembly substituted for it a property and income tax, varying according to the property and income of each individual.

[Illustration:  Fig. 282.—­The Courtiers amassing Riches at the Expense of the Poor.—­From a Miniature in the ’Tresor of Brunetto Latini, Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century, in the Library of the Arsenal, Paris.]

The finances were, notwithstanding these additions, in a low and unsatisfactory condition, which became worse and worse from the fatal day of Poitiers, when King John fell into the hands of the English.  The States-General were summoned by the Dauphin, and, seeing the desperate condition in which the country was placed, all classes freely opened their purses.  The nobility, who had already given their blood, gave the produce of all their feudal dues besides.  The church paid a tenth and a half, and the bourgeois showed the most noble unselfishness, and rose as one man to find means to resist the common enemy.  The ransom of the King had been fixed at three millions of ecus d’or, nearly a thousand million francs, payable in six years, and the peace of Bretigny was concluded by the cession of a third of the territory of France.  There was, however, cause for congratulation in this result, for “France was reduced to its utmost extremity,” says a chronicler, “and had not something led to a reaction, she must have perished irretrievably.”