Louis XIV’s reign marked the emergence of a new system of conciliar government that would endure with some small changes for the rest of the Old Regime until the French Revolution. Under the legal traditions of the Old Regime the king governed France by making law and policy in council. While the king was the source of the law, he could only make law, including tax law, in council. The King’s Council was a legal fiction that included a variety of committees and subcommittees. Louis XIV rearranged the King’s Council to suit himself so that policymaking only took place on those bodies of the King’s Council that he himself attended. This so-called Louisquatorzian Revolution took place in three stages, although only the second would have a direct bearing on the financial administration of the crown.

The first stage took place abruptly on March 9, 1661, upon Cardinal Mazarin’s death, which removed the king’s mentor from the scene and allowed the king to emerge as his own principal minister. Louis XIV wanted to remove any weaknesses or any persons who might seek to obstruct his ability to govern France himself. He doubted the rigor of affairs handled by Chancellor Pierre Séguier, who was seventy-two years old and had served as chancellor since 1633. Louis saw disorder in the council over which Séguier presided. Ultimately, Séguier would be the last chancellor to share the task of governing royal finances together with the surintendant des finances simply by virtue of his presence on all branches of the King’s Council. Even while Séguier was chancellor, Surintendant des Finances Nicolas Foucquet could order expenditures on his signature alone. Mazarin’s household intendant, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, had warned the king as early as 1659 that Foucquet was running royal finances for his personal profit. Shortly before his death, Mazarin had elevated Colbert to be one of Foucquet’s two intendants of finances in order to keep track of Foucquet’s administration.

In his Mémoires Louis XIV wrote an evaluation of the men around him at that time. He referred to an informal group of three of them as his Council of Ministers, which he called the Conseil d’en haut.