A Letter to King Louis XIV

This blog post is set in 17th century France from the perspective of a French peasant who has just been allowed to tour Versailles. This letter is to King Louis XIV on my thoughts on his well being compared to us the peasants.

Dearest King Louis XIV,

I have toured your palace Your Highness and it is gorgeous. So much attention to detail and decoration. It is truly amazing. But all the money spent to make your palace so amazing had me thinking about how little us people in the countryside have.

Bread costs so much none of us can afford it. When times get really tough though we have to grind up animal bones to substitute as flour. Our harvests have been bad because of the lack of good weather to farm in so no ones making enough money to afford food causing people to die.

The little that we make from our few salvageable crops gets paid in taxes.

While these taxes do go pay for our military that is helping expand Frances borders, we feel that there’s too much worry about new land and not what happens to your already loyal citizens. I know a great King like you wouldn't want his subjects suffering so much so I am writing this letter.

We want to be able to help make France as great as it possibly can be but we can’t do this if all of us are starving and dying from lack of food and poverty. We need the taxes and the cost of food lowered your Majesty if we are expected to survive. With the amazing work you’ve done for the rest of France we know you’ll be able to help us.

From,

Your Faithful Subjects

"French Peasants" Vincentians. http://vincentians.com/blog/the-poor-in-the-17th-century-in-france-ii/