A man of Mazarin, Jean-Baptiste Colbert (August 29, 1619, Reims - September 6, 1683, Paris) entered the service of King Louis XIV of France on the death of his protector. Denouncing his financial practices, he contributes to Fouquet's disgrace and takes his place. A remarkable manager, he developed trade and industry through major state interventions. His name remains attached to such a policy:Colbertism.
His beginnings
Eldest son of Nicolas Colbert and Mariane Pussort, Jean-Baptiste Colbert belongs to a family of Champagne merchants and bankers claiming to be descended from Scottish nobles (but there is no proof of this and it was common practice at the time among the commoners to assert themselves by inventing a noble ancestry). His youth is poorly known. He was educated at a Jesuit college. In 1634, he worked for a banker in Saint Etienne, Mascranny, then for a Parisian notary, father of Jean Chapelain.
He then worked for his cousin Jean-Baptiste Colbert de Saint-Pouange, first clerk in the War Department under Louis XIII.
In 1640, at the age of 21, his father used his connections and his fortune to buy him the office of ordinary commissioner of wars, clerk of the Secretary of State for War, François Sublet de Noyers. This function required him to inspect the troops, which gave him a certain notoriety.
In 1645, Saint-Pouange recommended him to Michel Le Tellier, his brother-in-law, then Secretary of State for War, who hired him as private secretary and then had him appointed king's adviser in 1649. In 1661, Colbert was appointed to the council of En-haut and became comptroller general of finances. In 1651, Le Tellier in turn introduced him to Cardinal Mazarin who entrusted him with the management of his fortune, one of the largest in the kingdom.
Then responsible for overseeing the management of State finances, he wrote in October 1659 a memoir on the embezzlement of Nicolas Fouquet, the superintendent of finances. He indicates that less than 50% of the taxes collected reach the king.
Brittle and not very talkative, dressed in black, in the service of the State from 5 a.m., he was not liked by the Court, which reproached him for his commonness, his vulgarity as well as his cold and distant character. Madame de Sévigné nicknamed it “Le Nord”.
Before Mazarin's death, on March 9, 1661, the cardinal suggested to the king that he take Colbert into his service. In September 1661, he finally managed to obtain the disgrace of Fouquet, who was arrested in Nantes on September 5, 1661 by d'Artagnan. Colbert succeeded him at the head of the finance administration, first as intendant then, as comptroller general, in 1665.
In addition to this charge, which remains his essential function, he is also Secretary of State at the Maison du Roi. Convinced of the essential importance of trade in the economy, he obtained the creation of a Secretary of State for the Navy in 1669, of which he was the first holder. As Superintendent of Buildings, Arts and Manufactures, he also directed the artistic production intended for the development of the royal palaces, including Versailles. He was elected to the French Academy in 1667.
The Colbert clan
On December 13, 1648, Colbert married Marie Charron, daughter of a member of the royal council. Her dowry was 100,000 pounds. Together they had four children:
* Jeanne Marie Colbert
* Jean-Baptiste Colbert, marquis de Seignelay
* Jules Armand Colbert, marquis de Blainville
* Anne Marie Colbert
After having started within the Le Tellier clan, Colbert also became a follower of nepotism and decided to create his own clan by placing all his relatives in key positions such as his brother Charles Colbert de Croissy or his first cousin, Colbert de Terron. In fact, he became a rival of the Le Tellier clan and especially of the Secretary of State for War, François Michel Le Tellier de Louvois.
In 1657, he bought the barony of Seignelay in Yonne, then in 1670, the barony of Sceaux in the south of Paris. He made the Domaine de Sceaux one of the most beautiful in France thanks to André Le Nôtre who designed the gardens and Charles Le Brun who was in charge of all the decoration of both the buildings and the park.
Colbert's policy
Its policy is to give its economic and financial independence to France, endow it with a surplus trade balance and increase tax revenue. It puts an end to the depredations, and liquidates the debts of the State.
In 1663, he founded the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres. In 1664, he was appointed Superintendent of Buildings and Manufactures. He decides to copy the productions of neighboring states to make himself independent of their supplies. He does not hesitate to poach foreign workers to initiate these factories. He frequently used the granting of monopolies. He restored the old factories and introduced new ones, favoring, for example, the production of mirrors and carpets.
In March 1667, Gabriel Nicolas de la Reynie was appointed by Colbert to the post of police lieutenant. He thus becomes the first "cop" in France, imposing his authority on the constabulary and the men of the watch. The same year, Colbert was elected to the French Academy.
He encouraged commerce, protected the sciences, letters and the arts, and also favored research by creating the Academy of Sciences (1666), the Paris Observatory (1667) where Huygens and Cassini were called, the Academy of 'Architecture (1671).
In 1668, he was appointed Secretary of State at the Maison du Roi and in 1669, he became Secretary of State for Commerce and the Navy. He builds a war fleet of 276 ships. In 1681 France, victorious at sea and on land, had 176 warships, whereas a few years earlier, it had barely fifty.
He developed infrastructures favoring trade:canals, royal roads. He had the forest of Tronçais planted for shipbuilding. He had the main roads repaired, opened several of them, and joined the two seas by the Languedoc canal.
He paved and lit Paris, embellished this city with quays, public squares, triumphal gates (Portes St-Denis and St-Martin); we also owe him the colonnade of the Louvre and the Jardin des Tuileries.
With his son, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Marquis de Seignelay, he brought craftsmen, builders, ropemakers from the Hanseatic cities to set up shipbuilding yards or arsenals in the main ports of the kingdom. If he wants to ensure the recruitment of crews, he does not have recourse, as England has adopted, to the press, or forced enlistment of merchant marine sailors, but to a new process called maritime registration. . On the other hand, for the galleys, he asks the judges to condemn as many as possible, including when the offense is to be a marginal (offense of "vagrancy").
He established trading companies:Compagnie des Indes Orientales (Indian Ocean), Compagnie des Indes Occidentales (Americas), Compagnie du Levant (Mediterranean and Ottoman Empire) and Compagnie du Sénégal (Africa) and is the instigator of the triangular slave trade. He is also at the origin of the creation of counters:Pondicherry (1670) and what was the beginning of the settlement in New France (Quebec).
He opposes the Secretary of War, Louvois, considered to be too spendthrift of public funds. This intrigue against him with Louis XIV to such an extent that Colbert was on the point of being disgraced when he died on September 6, 1683, rue des Petits Champs, leaving Claude Le Peletier to succeed him as comptroller general of finances.
While carrying on the affairs of the state in such a brilliant manner, Colbert had amassed a considerable fortune, which amounted to about ten millions; also at his death, the people, believing to see in this fortune a sign of depredation, insulted his coffin; buried in Saint-Eustache, his legs would remain there; the rest was transferred to the catacombs in 1787.
Tomb of Colbert at the Church of Saint-Eustache, Paris 1er by Antoine Coysevox
Tomb of Colbert at the Saint-Eustache church, Paris 1er by Antoine Coysevox
His motto:“Pro rege, saepe, pro patria semper” (“Often for the king, always for the country”).
He leaves an image of an excellent manager even if his results ultimately remain rather mediocre mainly due to the great military expenditure of Louis XIV.
Its name gave rise to the term Colbertism, which emphasizes the greater share of state intervention in the economy compared to other Western countries.
Controversies over his economic policy
The real record of Colbert's economic policy would have been less brilliant than his myth suggests [1]:
* It is wrong to say that he is the creator of the industry of France, because this one already existed before him;
* most of the factories he created have collapsed and some had to be fished out at great expense afterwards;
* the later development of the drapery industry owes nothing to it;
* the trade, with in particular those of the East Indies being at his death in near bankruptcy, it was necessary to reinject money there but the losses continued to accumulate;
* at his death the finances of the State were more burdened than at the time of Fouquet's disgrace;
* the only means he had to meet budgetary demands were those of the Superintendent;
* his only task, in the management of the royal funds, was to distribute the size, the amount of which was fixed by the King.