PRANCE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 418 The expenses of the war amounted in 1639 to 86,000,000 livres. But this effort was not lost. The money exacted from the people served to create arm- ies of more than 100,000 men. The emperor and the King of Spain were decisively vanquished, and France was for half a century the superior power of Europe. Colbert—Mazarin completed the work of Richelieu, by forcing the emperor (1648) and the King of Spain (1659)»to sue for peace. But he had too great a need of money to be able to diminish the taxes, or to restore the equilibrium of the budget. When Louis XIV. took the reins of the government (1661) he found the finances in confusion and the army dis- organized. It took several years to re-establish order in the kingdom. Colbert took charge of the finances, and Lottvois began to reorganize the army. Like Henry IV. Colbert wanted to enrich the treas- ury by making the people richer. Son of a cloth merchant, he was especially interested in commerce and in industry, particularly in the manufacture of. cloths. Although he may have taken some measures favorable to agriculture, he labored above all to increase the commerce of France, and to develop manufactures. He thought that the surest means of selling manufactured products was to gain the con- fidence of patrons by selling none but well-made goods. In order to give a good reputation to stuffs of French manufacture, he wished that all manufac- turers should be obliged to employ the same processes, so that a buyer might always be sure of what he was buying. He had regulations drawn up, which pre- scribed the manner of weaving and dyeing, the ma-