The winter of 1651 was destined to be difficult for Contin, the head of the Florentine merchant station on the east coast.

By this time, he had already taken several personal retinues and boarded a brig named after Frank, the son of the Baron of Toulouse, and prepared to sail north to Paris. They will first travel to the port of Nantes to take care of a business of the Baroness' family, and then travel to Paris via Orleans on a river boat to meet with some powerful officials.

The rumors at the top of France have been bad lately, and even though the country is in the midst of a civil war, some gossip circulating among the top brass still makes the tiny East Coast Republic nervous. For example, many French merchants pointed out that their ships in the Caribbean had been captured by the Coasters, whose navy had pretended to be pirates and had committed ugly and despicable privateering. Although the French have no time to take care of it because of the civil war, it is difficult to guarantee that they will not settle accounts later, so the East Coast locals instructed the trading stations stationed in Europe to make every effort in public relations to try to eliminate some adverse effects, so that the East Coast Republic of China will not be labeled as an "evil country".

Frank's family had great influence in the Lower Gallon and Languedoc regions, so Condin was ordered to go to Paris to carry out public relations, so he invited their family connections. Of course, not only that, but the East Coast people also have some channels of their own, such as the Talon family of the High Court and so on. In short, a dead horse should be a live horse doctor, and all the gods who can be worshipped should be worshipped, and by the way, we should make efforts to reduce the high import tariffs on goods on the East Coast to see if there is any possibility of lowering them -- in a certain way, this matter is probably more important than public relations washing.

Their ships departed from the port of Bordeaux. Now that France's most prosperous port had faded from its former glory, a detachment of Frondes (led by the Dukes of Bouillon, La Rochefoucauld, and the young wives of the Prince of Condé) seized the commercial city and immediately sent large sums of money to the city to recruit troops and prepare to attack the royal party (led by Mazarin). Many businessmen were forced to "make voluntary contributions". The common people were also looted enough, and of course there were some nobles who wanted to restore their feudal privileges to speculate and finance these slingers.

In short, the once largest port in France has been completely disorganized. And it became the base camp of the Frondes. Spanish envoys were coming and going here, and their armies were marching to the south of France. A large number of military funds were transported to the port of Guò, and the army recruited by the Frondes was quickly armed. Moreover, there have been "rumors" in the city recently that the Prince of Condé, Prince Conti, Duke of Languville, and others, who had been released from Le Havre prison by Mazarin, have arrived in Bordeaux and are currently actively planning to expand their occupation zone. What's more, some have pointed out that the Prince of Condé, who was also from the Bourbon family, is no longer satisfied with the position of prince and wants to get a glimpse of the throne of the king.

Let's be honest. The power of these nobles in France is now quite astonishing, but they are still not satisfied, and still want to return to the good old days of being emperors and lords as they please, so they hate the measures that the prime ministers Richelieu and Mazarin have been trying to sweep away the divided princes and strengthen the centralization of power, they no longer want to be court nobles who flatter the king or the prime minister all day long, they want to control the future of the country. One can imagine how shocked and delighted they were when the news of Charles I's execution reached France, and they couldn't wait to follow the example of the English and send the king to the guillotine. Then his own family has been in power for generations.

Condin was well aware of these French nobles, and he personally scorned them. Coming from a commoner background, he looked down on these nobles, who had nothing to do except the common people, who owned large private property (usually estates and fields) in the countryside. But they pay only a tiny fraction of the tax. Buagilbel once wrote: "Whoever collects three or four thousand livres pays only ten or twelve écors (one écor is about three livres); It has become commonplace for those who collect three or four hundred livres of land rent to pay a tax of one hundred livres. ”

Kang Ding once heard Mo San tell him about the so-called "aristocracy" not paying taxes that happened in the Eastern Ming Kingdom, and the consequences of the consequent. He had thought that such a ridiculous thing would not happen again, but now he found himself wrong, and starting with the new tax bill of 1648, the Kingdom of France also entered this strange circle: last year (1650), a total of 48 million livres of the Dai tax (a tax on land and population) was collected throughout France. It accounts for 60 to 70 percent of total fiscal revenue, most of which is borne by the poor.

Taxation system in France. It is basically levied on a parish basis, with a quota per diocese per year. The collector had to collect enough tax within the prescribed time limit, otherwise he would have to pay it himself - but this was rare, and the tax collectors were not ordinary people, and they always had many ways to get their taxes. For example, they would take away the livestock of peasants who could not pay their taxes, they would take away their furniture, and sometimes they would send people to prison – when the peasants' relatives wanted to get them out of prison, they had to pay not only the full amount of taxes, but also the extra cost of doing so, which often led many people to go bankrupt.

The "gentry", who wielded power in the French countryside, passed on all the taxes to the poorest and most powerless, watched them go bankrupt and wait for the government to auction off their estates at a ridiculously low price, and then the land incorporated into their names would henceforth be free of taxes or pay very little taxes, while the levies levied by the higher authorities would continue to be passed on to the poor or artisans.

In this vicious circle, a large number of French people have gone bankrupt, and in the last four years alone, many bankrupt craftsmen have left for the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal, where they often make a fortune by their industriousness and strong market demand; In addition, those ordinary French who have no skills can only try their luck as sailors, join the army, or go to overseas colonies, and the number of French sailors in the Netherlands is as high as 50,000 or 60,000, and the number of bankrupt French peasants who work is even more insignificant.

And this is just the beginning, as the land annexation process becomes more and more stringent, and the French tax base is gradually reduced, the country will sooner or later have a big mess. This chaos was not the same chaos as the present aristocracy against the king, but a profound social upheaval that swept across France, or, to use the terminology of the East Coast, "revolution". Now that the flame of revolution has been lit, perhaps in another hundred years, the flame of revolution will completely consume these nobles, merchants and clergy.

"These garbage-like goods are coming and going from each other, and the people are miserable. See, in the years after the Battle of Rocroix, France did not need to import much grain, but last year, Dutch grain ships from the port of Nantes brought them tens of thousands of Rasses of Polish and Muscovy rye. The civil war caused by the Frondes, the foreign war with the Habsburgs, and all sorts of domestic problems made the once rich France gradually impoverished, and the fields were abandoned and the vineyards were abandoned. Contin, dressed in a well-made tweed coat and an expensive beaver hat, stood on the quays of the port of Bordeaux, a little windy, and thought with great emotion.

Compared with the peasants on the east coast, who have very little tax (in fact, the tax system on the east coast is still very imperfect, which means that a lot of tax is missed), the life of these low-level farmers in France is too difficult. Wheat growers could not afford to eat their own wheat, so they could only eat the sea wheat brought by black-hearted merchants from the Levant; The craftsmen worked hard all year round, only to find it difficult to feed their families – the peasants could not afford to spend, but the taxes were rising; Young people who have just returned to their hometowns after making some money in their lives in overseas colonies are immediately blocked at home by tax collectors who have rushed to hear the news, and often end up being severely beaten by tax collectors who collude with tax collectors and tax police, and their property is drained......

"How can you live like this!" Condin shook his head, deciding not to look at the growing number of beggars on the Bordeaux docks, but to return to the cabin and talk to Frank about how to get to Paris for a PR campaign. Frank's family is a big agent of East Coast goods in the provinces of Lower Gallon, Languedoc, and Provence in the south of France, and has made a lot of money over the years, and has long been inseparable from the interests of the East Coast. This, coupled with Frank's personal friendship with Mo Ming and his status as a natural person shareholder of the Southern Railway Company, allowed him to talk to him about more in-depth topics, such as how to bribe French officials and influence their policies.

Of course, as to whether the ships of the Navy of the Republic of the East Coast were making cameos in the Caribbean, both sides tacitly avoided the question, Frank would not ask, and Condin would not say, as long as the two sides knew what to do. In the past six months, the East Coast Navy has withdrawn the last warship hovering in the Caribbean Sea, and now it has all gathered in the waters from the Gulf of Guinea to the northeast of Brazil, where many smuggling ships are also active in La Plata, where the East Coast people intercept and expand the market for domestic goods in La Plata. As for the resurgence of the smuggling trade in the Caribbean after the departure of the East Coasters, there is no way to do it, and we can only count on the Spanish compradors to solve it themselves, who have a lot of political resources in the Viceroyalty of Peru, and it is not difficult to pay some price.

On 13 December 1651, after taking shelter from a storm on the way, Frank's brig arrived at the port of Nantes. The two of them also disembarked with their entourage, preparing to find a time to travel to Paris. (To be continued)