The disorder in the accounts of the…
January 1661 CE
The disorder in the accounts of the French government has become hopeless under Nicolas Fouquet, whom Cardinal Mazarin had appointed Superintendent of Finances in 1653; fraudulent operations are entered into with impunity, and the financiers are kept in the position of clients by official favors and by generous aid whenever they need it.
Fouquet's fortune now surpasses even Mazarin's, but the latter is too deeply implicated in similar operations to interfere.