Prior to the Seventeenth Century No
Frenchman Had an Income That
Touched the Seven-Figure Mark.
Tales of the magnificent extravagances of France under the Bourbons have
led a wondering later age to think that never since has gold been lavished
upon luxury with so free a hand. But a French writer, the Vicomte Georges
d'Avenel, has taken the trouble to make comparisons, and he has found that
the incomes of to-day are relatively much larger than they were one, two,
and three hundred years ago. The New York _World_ has summarized from the
_Revue des Deux Mondes_ M. d'Avenel's discoveries:
For purposes of exact comparison M. d'Avenel estimates all
fortunes and incomes of bygone times in terms of their
equivalent value to-day, not as mere nominal sums. Up to the
end of the sixteenth century, he shows, no one had an income
of $1,000,000.
Louis IX in the exceptional year of the crusade of 1251
spent $775,000. After the Hundred Years' War, in 1450,
Charles VII's budget was $212,000. In 1516 Francis I, who
was noted for his taste for luxury, had only $259,000 for
his person and his court.
Napoleon III's civil list amounted to $5,000,000, but Louis
XIV had less than $4,000,000 for all expenses of an
extravagant court.
Richelieu and Mazarin derived tremendous incomes from their
privileges, Mazarin leaving by will nearly $40,000,000 to
the king, who refused it and let it pass to Mazarin's eight
nephews and nieces.
Except these three no person up to the time of the
Revolution enjoyed an income of $1,000,000, and the revenues
of Richelieu and Mazarin were subject in fact to charges
really connected with the state.
The conclusion of this investigator is that the very rich of to-day are
six times as rich, or those of equal fortune are twelve times as many, as
the richest men of the old regime; and they are ten times as rich, or
twenty times as many, as the rich princes of the feudal period.