28 THE FORESTS OF FRANC& 



'Although the registers of the despatches of Colbert 

 for the years 1663 1670 have, unfortunately, not been 

 found, his incessant activity in endeavouring to put a stop 

 to the destruction of the wooded domains of France, and 

 to restore her forest wealth, may be considered sufficiently 

 demonstrated by what has been advanced. His Memoire 

 sur les Forets, presented to the king in 1665, will supply, 

 if need be, one more proof. This document, in which he 

 establishes with regret that the forests of the kingdom 

 had been sacrificed for a long time, and that they had 

 never been treated so as to leave reserves and produce for 

 future use, was, in some respects, the avant-courier of the 

 celebrated ordinance of 1669.* 



' The king himself, on his side, took the greatest interest 

 in, and attached the greatest importance to, the re-estab- 

 lishment of a proper and intelligent administration of the 

 forests. Of this we have unquestionable evidence in the 

 memoirs and instructions drawn out by Pellisson, from his 

 notes and under his own eyes, which he designed for the 

 Dauphin, his grandson. Under date of 1662> we read in 

 these, " I have applied myself also this year to a code of 

 regulations for the forests of my kingdom, in which the 

 decrease was very great, and displeased me so much the more that 

 I had formed and entertained for a long time great designs 

 for the navy. The war, and the schemes of partisans to 

 make money, had produced an influx of officers Des Eaux 

 et Forets, as of all other kinds. The wars, and the schemes 

 themselves consumed or reduced their wages, of which 

 they had only made a vain show in creating their officers. 

 They avenged themselves and paid themselves, and that 

 with usury, at the expense of the forests which had been 

 entrusted to them. There were no kinds of artifices with 

 which these officers were not familiar, even to the burning by 

 design of a portion of the standing trees, that they might have 



* There might be cited also his letter of 7th August 1666, to the poet La Fontaine, 

 Mattre des Eaux et ForStt k Chateau Thierry, preserved in CKuvre$ d* La Fontaine, 

 tdition Wrtckenaer. 



