The punishment of the tax-collectors (traitants), prosecuted at the same time as superintendent Fouquet, the arbitrary redemption of rentes (annuities) on the city of Paris or on certain branches of the taxes, did not suffice to alleviate the extreme suffering of the people.  The talliages from which the nobility and the clergy were nearly everywhere exempt pressed upon the people with the most cruel inequality.  “The poor are reduced to eating grass and roots in our meadows like cattle,” said a letter from Blaisois those who can find dead carcasses devour them, and, unless God have pity upon them, they will soon be eating one another.”  Normandy, generally so prosperous, was reduced to the uttermost distress.  “The great number of poor has exhausted charity and the power of those who were accustomed to relieve them,” says a letter to Colbert from the superintendent of Caen.  “In 1662 the town was obliged to throw open the doors of the great hospital, having no longer any means of furnishing subsistence to those who were in it.  I can assure you that there are persons in this town who have gone for whole days without anything to eat.  The country, which ought to supply bread for the towns, is crying for mercy’s sake to be supplied therewith itself.”  The peasants, wasted with hunger, could no longer till their fields; their cattle had been seized for taxes.  Colbert proposed to the king to remit the arrears of talliages, and devoted all his efforts to reducing them, whilst regulating their collection.  His desire was to arrive at the establishment everywhere of real talliages, on landed property, &c., instead of personal talliages, variable imposts, depending upon the supposed means or social position of the inhabitants.  He was only very partially successful, without, however, allowing himself to be repelled by the difficulties presented by differences of legislation and customs in the provinces.  “Perhaps,” he wrote to the superintendent of Aix, in 1681, “on getting to the bottom of the matter and considering it in detail, you will not discover in it all the impossibilities you have pictured to yourself.”  Colbert died without having completed his work; the talliages, however, had been reduced by eight millions of livres within the first two years of his administration.  “All the imposts of the kingdom,” he writes, in 1662, to the superintendent of Tours, who is complaining of the destitution of the people, “are, as regards the talliages, but about thirty-seven millions, and, for forty or fifty years past, they have always been between forty and fifty millions, except after the peace, when his Majesty reduced them to thirty-two, thirty-three, and thirty-four millions.”