Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 2.djvu/95

 financial centre to perform for him the same functions that the bourses of Genoa and Antwerp were fulfilling for Charles. The attempt had some success, and similar bourses were started at Toulouse (1556), and at Rouen (1563). Henry II on his accession acknowledged the debts of his father, and the royal credit sensibly improved. At the outset the King was obliged to pay 16 per cent, for advances, but by 1550 the rate had fallen to 12 per cent. But confidence was rudely shaken when in 1557 the King suspended the payment of interest on the debt, which at that time amounted perhaps to five million crowns.

We can thus get a glimpse of the methods by which the enormous expenses of these and subsequent wars were liquidated. All the spare cash of Europe, withdrawn from commerce and industry, flowed at a crisis into the King's coffers; the road was opened to national bankruptcy, which was general soon after the treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis. Princes had learnt to borrow, but they had not learnt to pay. The sources of wealth were diverted from profitable and useful enterprise to destructive war; and in the long run not even the financiers profited, though in the interval some capitalists built up fortunes, which are almost comparable with those of our own day.