... to pay. The debts that were acquired were so excessive that it cost almost half of the annual revenue. Another reason was that the French government borrowed money on terms less favourable that the British or Dutch because in France there was no publicly supported bank through which government credit could be cheaply channelled. French kings had always spent too much on wars as in their participation in the Seven Years' War and the American War of Independence. This sent the financial state of France into a deteriorating state. Another reason was that there was no annual budget. The corruption of the independent financiers who handled the state's finances was another factor to the financial crisis. This position could easily be retained by the buying of an office of accountant to a government department or through membership of Farmers- Generals; who collected most of the indirect taxes. It ...

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