After the brilliant victories of his early reign, Louis XIV. had suffered severe reverses. He was gravely in need of money to repair the military organization. New resources must somehow be found, and that immediately. The only adequate answer which presented itself took the form of taxation imposed upon the business interests of the realm. The glovers of Grenoble, accordingly, in 1691, organized themselves into the _Corporation des Gantiers_, or Corporation of Glovers, to determine how heavily their industry should be taxed in support of the régime. While they felt loyally obliged to contribute all they were able to the king’s cause, by the very act of their organizing and by virtue of the funds they furnished, they became masters at home, respected by the monarch, independent and self-governing. Their sacrifice of money to the government had, in the same hour, bought them their freedom in all that pertained to their local affairs. The importance of this initial association for an economic purpose scarcely can be overestimated. The Corporation later proved the unit of strength which was to render the glovers, as a body, invincible through the endless chain of vicissitudes, political, moral and industrial, which all but swept away, in the next hundred years, the totality of progress gained in the seventeenth century. In 1590 Grenoble had not 10,000 inhabitants. In 1692 Vauban values the population at 33,000. During the seventeenth century, then, its numbers had more than tripled, and this must needs strike one as the more remarkable inasmuch as city life in that epoch was little developed. Such growth, as we have seen, went hand in hand with the evolution of its industries. In 1692, Vauban wrote: “The city contains a very numerous bourgeoisie, and is filled with a high quality of artisans which furnish a great variety of products to the largest part of the province. Its increase has been such that it actually is bursting out of its new ramparts. The city has dire need of expansion; all ranks of people demand it irresistibly.” In 1700 Vauban submitted a plan for enlarging extensively the city proper. This was not to be realized, however, until one hundred and forty years later. Already the tide had turned. The people were passing out through the gates of Grenoble, never to return. The eighteenth century was destined to be such a period of sacrifice and retardation, in a material sense, as the town had never known, even in the pestilence-ridden, war-mad days which preceded the advent of Lèsdiguieres.