=268. Failure to reform conditions inherited from the feudal period.=—The absolute monarchy played a vital part in the history of French commerce, not only by its disregard of commercial interests abroad, but by its lack of business sense in home affairs. As the details will appear in the following pages it is necessary here to call attention only to some general points. The kings did not complete the unification of the country by breaking down the feudal toll barriers, of which some remained until the Revolution. They encouraged the separation of classes, just as they allowed the separation of sections; the French were split into groups, mutually jealous and hostile, which lacked the feeling of common interest, and were unable to cooperate. The most serious distinction between classes was in regard to taxation. Nobles and clergy were granted privileges, often of a kind that hindered production, while they paid very little to the public treasury. The productive classes, on the other hand, the business men and laborers, bore nearly the whole burden. The weight of this burden was tremendous, for the machinery of government had become more and more complicated and more and more inefficient with the passage of time, so that the government had to demand a great deal from the taxpayers to accomplish very little in the public service. An idea of the condition in the eighteenth century can be gathered from the fact that the peasant is estimated to have paid from one half to four fifths of his gross income to a government which gave him almost nothing in return. =269. Bloom of French commerce in the fifteenth century as shown in the business of Jacques Cœur.=—Returning now from this political survey to the history of commerce proper, we find before the year 1500 one name standing out prominently in the history of French commerce, that of Jacques Cœur, a merchant of Bourges. A contemporary says of him: “His ships carried to the East the cloths and merchandise of the kingdom. On their return they carried back from Egypt and the Levant different silk stuffs, and all kinds of spices. On their arrival in France some of these ships ascended the Rhone, while others went to supply Catalonia and the neighboring provinces, competing in this way with the Genoese and the Catalonians in a branch of trade that up to that time they alone had exploited.” At the height of his fortunes, about 1450, he had a silk factory in Florence, did business with England and thought of establishing an office in Flanders also. The work of Cœur survived him, and French commerce developed rapidly in the intervals of peace following. Great interest was felt in France in the explorations of the sixteenth century, and though the French were behind the Spanish and Portuguese in the work, they led the English and Dutch, and the names of Verrazano (an Italian in the French service) and Cartier testify to their energy.