Also encouraging the technical expertise of Flemish cloth manufacturing in France, he founded royal tapestry works at Gobelins and supported those at Beauvais.

In 1648, he and his wife Marie Charron, received 40,000 crowns from an unknown source; and in 1649 Colbert became the councilor of state, i.e. a political minister.

In January 1664 Colbert became the Superintendent of buildings; in 1665 he became Controller-General of Finances; in 1669, he became Secretary of State of the Navy; he also gained appointments as minister of commerce, of the colonies, and of the palace.

Supported by the young king Louis XIV, Colbert aimed the first blow at the man accused of being the greatest of the royal embezzlers, the superintendent Nicolas Fouquet.

The sovereign functioned as its president, but Colbert, though only an intendant for the first four years, operated as its ruling spirit, enjoying as he did king's favor and confidence.

[5] Having introduced a measure of order and economy into the workings of the government, Colbert called for the enrichment of the country by means of commerce.

Through Colbert's dirigiste policies,[citation needed] France fostered manufacturing enterprises in a wide variety of fields.

[3] By his firm maintenance of the corporation system, each industry remained in the hands of certain privileged bourgeois; while the lower classes found opportunities of advancement closed.

He possessed a remarkably fine private library, which he delighted to fill with valuable manuscripts from every part of Europe and the Near East where France had placed a consul.

Wishing to increase the prestige of the image of France and the French royal family, Colbert played an active role in bringing the great Italian architect-sculptor, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, to Paris (June–October 1665), in order to design the new East Facade of the Louvre.

This was a striking coup and caused a sensation because Bernini, the most famous artist in all of Europe, had never before (or after) consented to travel any significant distance to meet a patron, however highly ranked, but had to agree in this case for reasons of diplomacy between France and the Holy See.

He gave many pensions to men of letters, among whom we find Molière, Corneille, Racine, Boileau, P D Huet (1630–1721) and Antoine Varillas (1626–1696); and even foreigners, as Huygens, Carlo Roberto Dati the Dellacruscan.

Evidence exists to show that by this munificence he hoped to draw out praises of his sovereign and himself; but this motive certainly does not account for all the splendid, if in some cases specious, services that he rendered to literature, science and art.

Colbert played a subordinate role in the struggle between the king and the papacy over royal rights concerning vacant bishoprics, and he seems to have sympathised with the proposal that suggested seizing part of the wealth of the clergy.

In his hatred of idleness, he ventured to suppress no less than seventeen fêtes, and he had a project for reducing the number of persons devoted to clerical and monastic life by increasing the age for taking vows.

He showed himself initially unwilling to interfere with heresy, for he realised the commercial value of the Huguenots (French Protestants), who were well represented among the merchant classes.

When the king resolved to make all France Roman Catholic and revoked the Edict of Nantes,[9] he followed him and urged his subordinates to do all they could to promote conversions.

[10] Six ships of the French Navy bore his name: In literature, the power struggle between Colbert and Fouquet is one of the main plotlines of Alexandre Dumas, père's novel The Vicomte of Bragelonne, the second sequel to The Three Musketeers.

Dumas paints Colbert as an uncouth and ruthless schemer who stops at little, in contrast to the more refined Fouquet, counselled by Aramis, but also as a visionary patriot.