There can be no doubt that the depletion of the kingdom under Louis XIV began even as that monarch was triumphing over the rest of Europe. We see the first signs of this in the most glorious years of the king's reign. France was ruined well before she ceased to conquer. Who has not read the terrifying essay on administrative statistics that Vauban has left us? The reports that the intendants submitted to the duke of Burgundy at the end of the seventeenth century, even before the unfortunate War of the Spanish Succession, all allude to the nation's increasing decadence, and they do not speak of it as a very recent fact. One says that the population in his region had been decreasing rapidly for some time. Another reports that a certain city, which had once been wealthy and prosperous, is today without industry. Still another writes that once there was manufacturing in his province, but today factories lie abandoned. And in another, farmers previously derived much greater yield from their land than they do now. Twenty years before, agriculture was flourishing. Population and output have diminished by a fifth over the course of roughly thirty years, an intendant in Orléans observes at about the same time. Citizens who esteem absolute government and princes who are fond of war should be urged to read these reports.