Introduction

Chapter Three emphasised the extent to which royal office-holders intermediated on the crown's behalf to finance its war-driven expenditure. Part II continues to develop this theme of private capitalisation of the navy by examining in detail the paymasters on whom the navy relied, and the consequences of treating an administrative office as a method of achieving a complex symbiosis of mobilising access to private funds and allocating financial rewards for doing so. Chapter Four begins by first outlining the purpose and responsibilities of the office of trésorier général de la Marine and then examining why Louis XIV's government depended on the trésoriers as short-term funding facilitators. Chapter Five then investigates what the costs, risks, and rewards of this office were for its holder, particularly in the 1700s. The argument of these chapters is that the crown depended on the trésoriers to overcome both the chronic insufficiency of its budgeting procedures, which consistently underfunded the navy in the short term, and the difficulties it faced in generating sufficient cash flow. The crown's reliance on the trésoriers’ private access to credit was intentional, rather than an oversight. These chapters therefore shift attention to the importance of striking the correct balance between the financial risks and rewards of acting as a trésorier, and underscore the potentially disastrous consequences that any imbalance might have for the navy's operational viability.