22 T HE FORESTS OF FRANCE. 



during the latter years of his ministry, an evil so pre- 

 valent and so deep-rooted, that it must have appeared 

 almost incurable. 



' In the midst of all this corruption, the officials of the 

 mistress of the moors and forests unhappily did not main- 

 tain clean hands. The Royal Forests were, under the 

 ministry of Mazarin, the theatre of hateful and innumer- 

 able abuses; but the death of the Cardinal was the 

 precursor and signal of the most serious reforms in every 

 administrative and judicial organisation in the kingdom. 

 Scarcely, indeed, had he succumbed, on the 9th of March 

 1661, to the attacks of gout which had tortured him for 

 a long time, when Louis XIV. called together the other 

 ministers and other advisers of the Crown to declare to 

 them that he willed from that time forward to be governor 

 himself, and to restore everything to order. It was indeed a 

 heavy task he had undertaken ; but the king was not 

 slow to prove that it was not beyond his strength. Aided, 

 prompted even by Colbert, whom a thorough practical 

 knowledge of business and exceptionally lofty views fitted 

 for the conduct of all, he undertook without hesitation, 

 and without misgiving or weakness, the great work of 

 social reconstruction upon which he had been meditating 

 for years. 



' In the month of September, as is known, the all-potent 

 superintendent was arrested, and his trial was prosecuted 

 with great rigour, in despite of the influence of high 

 personages, and of the queen-mother herself, with the 

 result of his being condemned, according to the Memoirs 

 of Madame de Motteville, as " a great robber." Two 

 months after his arrest a royal ordinance instituted a 

 Chamber of Justice for inquiring into abuses and mal- 

 versations of finance committed from 1635 onward, which 

 manifested all at once an energy and remarkable severity. 

 Maitres des requetes were at the same time sent to different 

 parts of the kingdom, to supply information to the king of 

 everything relating to the administration. By this means 

 all was brought to light in most provinces, and in others 



