There are two fundamentally important organisational expedients that Cardinal Richelieu pursued in the 1620s and 1630s which had long-term implications for the functioning of the naval treasury. First of all, as the self-styled grand maître, chef, et surintendant général de la navigation et du commerce de France, Richelieu established the principle of depending on a single trésorier. In order to expand Richelieu's control over the navy at the expense of local admiralties, and to rein in the independence of individual trésoriers, power was concentrated in favoured individuals in the naval treasury and efforts were made to accommodate their personal interests and ambitions. In 1628, the navy's need for reliable funding prompted Richelieu to allow François Le Conte, already a trésorier of the Extraordinaire des Guerres, to exercise de facto responsibility for funding the navy. Le Conte would eventually formally occupy all three offices of trésorier de la Marine du Ponant. The decision to rely on a single yet financially robust trésorier enabled the navy to handle unprecedented expenses of 4 million l. in 1628, which principally resulted from the blockade of the Huguenot stronghold at La Rochelle between December 1627 and November 1628. The extent to which Richelieu was willing to circumvent formal procedures in the service of the navy's interests was clear when the start of open conflict with Spain in 1635 caused the government to rush the closure of the navy's open and unfinished exercices. Scrutiny of Le Conte's états au vrai of 1631 to 1634 revealed pervasive levels of financial misappropriation, particularly at Brest, but the navy urgently needed its debts to be settled since naval preparations were required to respond to the Spanish capture of the Lérins islands off Cannes in September 1635, and to the subsequent threat posed by the enemy fleet to Toulon and Marseille. In response, Richelieu manipulated Le Conte's états au vrai to ensure that they would pass unobstructed through the Chambre des comptes of Paris, thus enabling the trésorier to focus on the navy's forthcoming financial needs. Through a strengthened Conseil de la marine, which began to oversee the activities of the trésoriers, Richelieu was therefore able to exert greater control over the naval treasury and to formalise its organisation according to his interests.