What Cosimo III was deeply proud of did not resonate with Louis XIV, and although it was true that he was always called the second Saint Louis, Louis XIV called himself the Sun King from the beginning, and he did not need any noble name from the Church!

Perhaps in a few hundred years, Louis XIV himself will become an adjective rather than a noun, and when people speak of a powerful king, a wise ruler, or even a rich and generous man, they will say, "He really looked like there was a Louis XIV!",

Louis XIV certainly had no idea of churches, relics or stained glass paintings – if he didn't know anything about Florence or Tuscany as a whole, he might have stopped for a moment to admire the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore and its collections.

But the more splendid the church, the more desolate Florence became.

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Perhaps for Cosimo III and those who were entitled to enter and leave the Palazzo Pitti, how hard the humble and poor people were doing had little to do with them. But the next day, Louis and the crown prince Louis Jr. changed their attire, dressed as an ordinary noble father and son, and walked out of the Pitti Palace with their attendants and priests.

The saddest of these people is the Dauphin Louis Jr., who has always had sweet and romantic fantasies about Florence, after all, there are many world-renowned scholars and artists from this free city once favored by the muses, and their brushes and fountain pens depict how many prosperous scenes and how many moving stories are told?

They hailed Florence as the Garden of Eden, a city where the people were carefree and rich, the ground under their feet seemed to be plated with silver, the tableware was gold, the walls were hung with silk carpets and draperies, and petite maidens and handsome teenagers indulged in luscious love under the shade of grape leaves.

Now all they could see were gray houses, narrow alleys and dim skies.

If a house is left uninhabited for a long time, it will accumulate dust and lose its vitality, and the same is true of a city - Florence was once known as the crown and jewel of the peninsula for its developed textile, commercial and banking industries, but the woolen business here became obsessible after the British and French began to enter the industry, and the position of banking was taken away by Genoa, Venice and the Netherlands, and as for commerce, Italy and Ottoman Turkey all had the same problems. The new route allowed merchants to move from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic coast, eliminating the need for merchants to pass through the land routes monopolized by the Ottoman Turks, and the need to spend precious time and energy in Italy, which was inevitable as the ports of France, Spain, and Portugal rose rapidly, and the city-states of Italy slowly declined.

If the Duchy of Tuscany could have survived for a while with the tangible and intangible assets accumulated during the Renaissance, then Cosimo III, who had no talent for governance, was a disaster.

Every Italian, when it comes to Cosimo III, has to say that he has been in power for twenty years, and the only right decision he made may be to marry his daughter to the Duke of Colonna, the illegitimate son of the King of France, and euphemistically rejected the woo of the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I, although from the events that followed, the hidden dangers of the Duchy of Tuscany also began at this moment, but no one can deny that under the rule of the Duke of Colonna, the people of the Duchy of Tuscany finally got a little respite.

But this was a long time later, and the Dauphin Louis looked at the buildings that had been decorated with all his might, but still showed a bit of decay, old ships and broken bridges, and his heart was disappointed and disappointed. He and his father traveled through many cities, Paris, Versailles, Nantes, Marseille, Calais, Dunkirk...... There are also the two cities of Slovenia before it, and it is not surprising how dilapidated one city is, but this is not Slovenia, which is located between two powerful countries and cannot guarantee even the slightest independence, but Florence, Italy.

"Twenty years ago," said Madame Milady, who had come to guide the noble father and son, who might not have taken the king and the crown prince to see what they really wanted to see, "it wasn't so bad here, but since Cosimo III came to power—yes, like your father, His Highness, after his accession to the throne, his mother ruled in his place, and that lady was hesitant to do things, and to follow the rules, not too good, but not too bad. ”

"Here are some other things I want you to see and hear. Louis lowered his head and said duly, and little Louis nodded at once, he had been attentive enough before, and now he was trying to combine what Madame Milady said with what he saw.

"Since you have only come from Rome and have made a little pilgrimage," said Madame de Milady, "let us begin with faith and morality." She smiled and glanced at the Dauphin—Madame Milady, a man of Bishop Mazarin, a few years older than Louis XIV, and though she was also a witch, youth preferred to rest on her than mortals, but the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and lips could not be concealed, and she did not want to hide them, which, together with her sunken eye sockets and cheeks, gave her a strange charm that a young woman could not possess.

She looked like a rose in late autumn, withered, but still clinging to the branches, and the color and fragrance were more intense when the years were gone.

She blinked at the Crown Prince's gaze, and the Crown Prince, with his perseverance, did not blush, but Louis XIV was laughing softly—a smile that reminded Madame Milady of the oolong they had met when they first met—how many people had she had played as a secret agent of the Bishop of Mazarin, and she had almost been shot to death by her new master, to whom she was to be allegiated—if she had died, the Count of d'Artagnan would have told the joke for the rest of her life.

Of course, she should not have teased the other Louis, for his father was still with him, Madame de Milady coughed twice, dispelling the ambiguity she had deliberately created: "Let me go on," she curtsied her knees in repentance, and then continued: "I have been here for a while, gentlemen, and I find that the Florentine code may be thicker than the French one." ”

"As far as I know, the French code is enough to make students who want to become judges and lawyers feel miserable. Louis said that after he became pro-government, although he deleted a lot of red tape, he also added a lot of articles.

"There is really only one line in the law books of the principality," said Madame Milady, "Cosimo III de' Medici." ”

"The Grand Duke, after his pro-government, added many decrees, but let me see that they were not only of little benefit to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, nor to Florence, to Pisa, to Siena, nor to other places, but also to himself. Madame Milady said, "Your Highness, I had the honour of being ordered by the King to help Madame Marie Mancini, the Duchess of Colonna, to govern Gayola. ”

"I know. The crown prince nodded, France is his, Gayola is the elder brother, this does not even need Louis XIV to tell him personally, Queen Theresa has already told him, this territory can be said to be the dowry of Madame Marie Mancini, according to tradition and law, it should indeed belong to his brother Yes, unless his brother has no heirs, his descendants can inherit Gayola, and it depends on when Gayola will break away from the inner world and officially appear in front of people's eyes.

"Madame Marie Mancini," said Madame de Milady, opening her fan, patting her breast, with some wistfulness, "she is not a wicked person, but she is willful, arrogant, hysterical, and perhaps had some foolish thoughts, but fortunately she was at least willing to listen to your father, and some of my advice. ”

"Do you know what I was most worried about back then?" Madame de Milady looked at the Ponte Vecchio in the distance, which was once the center of the Florentine jewellery and antiques trading center, and was so bustling with people that there were few people except the shops on either side of the bridge: "She was often driven by momentary emotions to do things that made people laugh and cry—I will not go into them here, because there are many that directly relate to the parts that you are not allowed to touch now," she nodded apologetically to the Dauphin: By mentioning this lady, I want to tell you that Cosimo III was no less impulsive than Marie Mancini, or rather short-sighted. ”

She straightened up and pointed into the distance, "See that small house?"

"See," said the Crown Prince, "it looks new and doesn't fit in well with the surrounding buildings." ”

"This is the new customs set up by Cosimo III. Madame Milady said with a sarcastic smile: "Your Highness, you should know that this is the tenth customs house in Florence after the merchants entered Tuscany. ”

The Dauphin Louis was visibly stunned for a moment, he could not understand what was called the tenth customs, and there was not only one customs, because Calais, Dunkirk, Nantes and other places had customs, and he had personally visited them, and he had also come to see how the merchants passed through the customs in Canada.

"Yes," said Madame Milady, "it was all ordered by Cosimo III. ”

"It might be a bit silly to say that. Little Louis asked, "But will all these customs be used to inspect and collect taxes?"

"The check is secondary," said Madame Milady, "the key is in the collection of taxes, no, this question is not stupid at all, because when I heard about it, my first reaction was the same as yours, yes, all goods entering Florence from the outside, even a bundle of wool, have to go through ten checkpoints, and then pay taxes ten times." ”

"Would any merchant be willing to come?" blurted out little Louie.

"Of course not, the economy here is already sluggish, and as soon as the story of the ten customs offices in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany spreads, even fewer people are willing to come here. ”

"Why does Cosimo III have so much money?" Little Louis thought about it, the Duchy of Tuscany has been firm in its neutrality since Cosimo I, neither to the Habsburgs, nor to France or Spain, after all, they can't even prepare their own army, so Cosimo III needs money, it shouldn't be used to fight, as for their extravagant life, the original taxes of Tuscany can also be satisfied, why did he make such a ridiculous thing?

"Because he has to pay for the public etiquette office. ”

"What is the Office of Public Etiquette?" asked Louis Jr., "is it...... Like the one that my father banned not long ago?" he was referring to a patrol set up shortly after the reign of Louis XIV, composed of retired veterans, who could fine or send people to prison in order to put an end to the Parisian habit of dumping excrement and garbage in the streets and rivers.

At that time, the streets of Paris at least allowed people to step out of the carriage and jump off the horse without worrying about being buried in the dung up to their knees, and they did not have to be afraid of the sound of "be careful!" when walking in the moonlight, the urine would be accompanied by a "be careful!" would make you smell and drench, and you could gradually see fish and swimmers in the Seine.

At that time, feces and urine had to be collected and taken away by manure trucks, but as the renovation of Paris was carried out more and more, the sewer works were completely completed a few years ago, and the old shacks were replaced by new apartments, which was quite rare, so the veterans either retired or went to work elsewhere.

"What do you think?"

"Probably not. The crown prince sighed and said that he too could see the muddy water of the river and the pavement, which had been washed but still had a lot of solid dirt remaining.

"This so-called public etiquette office was set up purely to meet the personal needs of Cosimo III, but it required even more people and effort than any other department in Florence. At this time, they also walked to the city hall, which was decorated with lilies on the lintel of the hall that had belonged to the Medici family, and had been given to the city of Florence by Cosimo di Giovanni de' Medici, the head of the Medici family at the time.

There were two execution tables on the town hall square, one on the left and one on the right, as if they were some kind of decoration, and Louis calculated that they had seen five from the Pitti Palace.

There were a surprisingly large number of people here, and they saw some young men who were rope-trapped, and judging by their dress, they did not look like celebrities and wandering girls, or their guests.

(This chapter will be updated tomorrow with a thousand words.) ）