Another ship has entered the port. It was a merchant ship from La Rochelle in the north, who brought pickled cod from the North Atlantic to the inhabitants of Bordeaux, as well as the latest news from the north.

"The king has returned to the palace! The renegade nobles were forgiven, and all those who participated in the civil war were pardoned, as if nothing had happened! A middle-aged man with a loud voice stood on the dock and told everyone about the latest situation in the country.

At the beginning of January of this year, due to the threat of the rebellious aristocracy and the citizens of Paris, Mazarin was forced to flee to Saint-Germain with the king and the queen mother. The nobles who occupied Paris announced the confiscation of all royal property, the confiscation of the property of all the king's henchmen, including Mazarin, and demanded the restoration of their feudal privileges and the abolition of the centralization policy that had been reinforced by the prime ministers of Richelieu and Mazarin.

The rest of Paris was completely mired in a farce. The Dukes of Languville, Beauvret, and Bouillon, who provided military and financial support for the rebellion, quarreled all day long over all sorts of matters, including liaison with the Spaniards and the sharing of the costs of the troops that followed them in the rebellion.

The men quarreled, their women went on frequent hunts, and there were daily rumours of love in Paris, where plebeian slingers fought for the opportunity to serve as flower guards for the aristocratic ladies, and almost every day people were injured or killed. Some of the most famous ladies were also happy, such as the famous Madame Languville, who bore a son to Prince Mahirak, giving the rebellion even more crimson elements.

Louis XIV's situation was turned around by a dispute between the Prince of Conte and the Prince of Condé. Dissatisfied with the small amount of power he had, Prince Condé, who had made great contributions in Rocroix and Lens, decided to support the king instead. Break with their younger siblings. Prince Condé led his invincible army to capture the fortress of Charondon. Then besiege Paris. Preparing to send the king and others back to power, the nobles of Paris were forced to ask the Habsburgs for help.

However, this decision of the aristocracy aroused the resentment of ordinary Parisian citizens, who, with simple patriotic fervor, resolutely opposed the introduction of wolves. Some of the patriotic aristocratic parliamentarians did not want the great France to lose the fruits of the victories of the Richelieu era, to allow the Spanish or Austrians to intervene in the internal affairs of France, and to divide France into feudal territories again. Therefore, these two forces united and abandoned the nobility. He submitted to the king and disbanded his own army.

Seeing that the general trend had turned, the rebellious nobles in Paris could only bow their heads helplessly and sent representatives to ask for forgiveness from the king. The Empress Anne pardoned them, and the civil strife in France subsided, and by this time the poor Spaniards had just organized an army into the south of France (the rest of the army was either quelled in Catalonia or fought against Tyrrenne in Flanders), unaware that the two sides of the French rebellion had been reconciled, and were still marching forward until they were defeated by the French army. Return to Spanish territory.

The news of the subsidence of the Stone-throwing Party came as a relief to the people on the Bordeaux docks. After all, the civil war was the most terrible thing, and now everything is settled in Paris and its suburbs. Then it's a good thing for people in the rest of France. But the ordinary citizens of Bordeaux are happy, but not the merchants from other countries. Spanish merchants (who are few in number, the country doesn't seem to have a very strong commercial atmosphere) lamented, Dutch and English merchants looked like water, and Portuguese, Swedish, Genoa, and Venetian merchants looked indifferent.

As for Contin, the head of the East Coast station, who stayed behind at the city's trading station, at first he also had an indifferent attitude towards everyone, and at most felt a little regret that France, a large country with a population of 22 million, could not fight. However, when he returned to the Bordeaux trading station and received the latest news from the Pasquier family, he was so angry that the news of the civil unrest in France had subsided: because the French had just introduced the latest policy against foreign goods.

The French once again reaffirmed the importance of protective tariffs! As we all know, the French have been developing their own industry since the time of Richelieu, and even in the years when the Thirty Years' War broke out and the finances were not sufficient, the government still allocated huge sums of money every year to encourage the development of domestic industry, and achieved certain successes. However, after France itself entered the war, an era of material shortages began, so the French government lowered tariffs on foreign goods so as not to increase domestic prices too much.

Later, as the war progressed, the level of tariffs in France also rose and fell, sometimes high and sometimes low, but on the whole it went upward, which showed France's strong will to develop its own industry. This time, after the stumbling party unrest subsided, it was only natural that the French would once again offer high tariffs, a great headache for all foreign businessmen.

France is, after all, a big country, a big country with great ambitions and a clear head. Unlike the Ottoman fools, the Kingdom of France knew exactly what it needed and what it didn't need, so she might be able to tolerate a lot of foreign merchants for a short time, but she would never let her own interests drain for a long time. After all, this is an era when mercantilism is extremely popular!

Condin took the secret letter of the Pasquier family and looked at it carefully: the tax rate on herring in the Netherlands has risen to 7.5%, the tax rate on Situbar salt in Portugal has increased to 18% (competing with the salt storage zài strict zhòng in Nantes, France), the tax rate on woolen wool in England is the normal 5%, well, I see the tax rate on East Coast textiles, it is a staggering 25%!

God, is this trying to start with my Great East Coast? Fine sweat immediately oozed from Konding's forehead. The previous tax rate of 17.5% on East Coast textiles was already frighteningly high, but now it has risen to a frenzied 25%. Under this tax rate, the largest sales of ordinary white cotton cloth on the East Coast would become unprofitable, and only dyed cloth, calico and some other high-end textiles could rely on their own technical advantages to sustain the price increase.

This is the French protecting their cotton textile industry! Condin made his judgment for the first time.

And in fact, it's pretty much the same. Although France produces a certain amount of wool of its own, the woolen industry is generally underdeveloped, and it is even inferior to the Spaniards, who do not like to produce. In addition, the Spanish Netherlands and the United Provincial Republic in the northeast of the country are very developed regions in textile technology and industry, and the textile industry in Italy in the south has only begun to decline in recent years, so the French woolen industry has been suppressed in the north and south from ancient times to the present, and has never been able to develop.

However, the advent of cotton gave the French an opportunity, and the high profits of cotton further strengthened their resolve. Therefore, almost ten years ago, the French government began to invest heavily in the development of the cotton textile industry. They imported state-of-the-art machines from the Netherlands and a large number of skilled workers from the South Netherlands, and then began their own development journey. It's a pity that this road is destined to be extremely difficult for the French, and the East Coast Republic, which occupies the first-mover advantage in the cotton textile industry, uses its huge industry to fight a price war with the French, so that the nascent French textile industry suffers the baptism of cold current.

Then, the "hateful" East Coasters also took advantage of their control of the price of cotton to aggressively raise the price of raw materials, forcing France, Sweden, Venice and other countries that had recently started the cotton textile industry to complain, and their domestic factories were under-opened, resulting in huge losses, and many merchants withdrew.

However, Sweden and Venice are in great difficulty, and France, which has a huge domestic market, is not ready to give up. They have repeatedly raised import tariffs on East Coast textiles, from 2% at the beginning to 25% now, which is shocking. Condin estimated that if the East Coast textiles could still occupy a large share of the French market, the French might be angry and would directly ban the import of East Coast textiles. This is no joke, the French could do it, and the British could do it a few years later when they flooded their country with Dutch goods. All in all, they just can't tolerate a massive outflow of their silver, and they just can't see others making money and are forced to do it themselves.

The French are now almost certain that your goods will be sold at me again, and do the people on the East Coast have a way to fight back against them? Conding thought about it, and sadly found that it didn't seem to be. It is frustrating that they are helpless against a country of more than 20 million people and relatively unified internally, unable to influence their policies, let alone overthrow their government.

Should we withdraw from the vast French market, and close the Bordeaux trading station as we closed the Danzig trading station? Thinking of this possible consequence, Condin couldn't help but shudder, then he would have to roll up his bed and go back to the east coast to farm, right? Because other commercial stations basically have owners, they don't have the face to squeeze over to be a deputy stationmaster or something.

Kang Ding circled around the office several times like an ant in a hot pot, and then finally settled down and began to write a letter to Mo San. The French had set new import tariffs on goods from the East Coast (including textiles, leather goods, metal appliances, soda ash, refined flour and other goods), and the East Coasters had taken away more than 800,000 yuan of profits from France every year before that, and trade was greatly affected when this matter came out. Where to go next, Mo San must give an answer as much as possible. (To be continued......)