orms, Colbert needed peace; but the war department
was in the hands of his great rival Louvois, whose influence gradually
supplanted that of Colbert with the king. Louis decided on a policy of
conquest. He was deaf also to all the appeals against the other forms of
his boundless extravagance which Colbert, with all his deference towards
his sovereign, bravely ventured to make.[1] Thus it came about that,
only a few years after he had commenced to free the country from the
weight of the loans and taxes which crushed her to the dust, Colbert was
forced to heap upon her a new load of loans and taxes more heavy than
the last. Henceforth his life was a hopeless struggle, and the financial
and fiscal reform which, with the great exception of the establishment
of the navy, was the most valuable service to France contemplated by
him, came to nought.

Depressed by his failure, deeply wounded by the king's favour for
Louvois, and worn out by overwork, Colbert's strength gave way at a
comparatively early age. In 1680 he was the constant victim of severe
fevers, from which he recovered for a time through the use of quinine
prescribed by an English physician. But in 1683, at the age of
sixty-four, he was seized with a fatal illness, and on the 6th of
September he expired. It was said that he died of a broken heart, and a
conversation with the king is reported in which Louis disparagingly
compared the buildings of Versailles, which Colbert was superintending,
with the works constructed by Louvois in Flanders. He took to bed, it is
true, immediately afterwards, refusing to receive all messages from the
king; but his constitution was utterly broken before, and a post-mortem
examination proved that he had been suffering from stone. His body was
interred in the secrecy of night, for fear of outrage from the
Parisians, by whom his name was cordially detested.

Colbert was a great statesman, who did much for France. Yet his insight
into political science was not deeper than that of his age; nor did he
possess any superiority in moral qualities. His rule was a very bad
example of over-government. He did not believe in popular liberty;, the
parlements and the states-general received no support from him. The
technicalities of justice he never allowed to interfere with his plans;
but he did not hesitate to shield his friends. He trafficked in public
offices for the profit of Mazarin and in his own behalf. He caused the
suffering of thousands