3 In order to meet rising military expenditures, states were constantly engaged in a search for new sources of income that would produce cash. Since demesne rents did not produce such cash incomes, states attempted to reduce their traditional dependence upon them.'^’ Instead, they attempted to make as much use as possible of the increasingly developed commodity and cash economy for their financial needs. States introduced a series of indirect taxes in the form of customs duties, excise taxes, and other fees, which, as Louise Sommer argues, “infolge ihrer grosserer Einträglichkeit und Entwicklungsfahigkeit vor allem infolge der Unmerklichkeit bei der Auflage einen höheren fiskalischen Erfolg versprach. Administrative techniques developed during the medieval period were unable to meet the demand for a permanent and continuous fiscal administration created by the rapidly expanding public sector.^ One characteristic of medieval administration was that it made no distinction between the private and public functions of the reigning prince, with the two functions flowing together in the administration of his household. Toa large extent, the activities of the medieval administration were characterized by haphazardness.® There were no specialized administrative routines based on a strict division of labor, there was very little regularized bookkeeping and auditing, and there was no systematic registration and keeping of records. No central treasury existed which might provide a continual picture of the fiscal situation, and what fiscal planning did eventually take place was very modest in scope. The only types of budgets preserved from the medieval period are simple salary lists of the personnel included in the court administration; military expenditures, for example, were treated as extraordinary expenses right up until the end of the fifteenth century, when armed retinues similar to standing military units, such as the socalled “compagnies d’ordonnance” in France, were set up. This is understandable in view of the fact that the military system based on the feudal »’ 6 series 12, 4 (1970), 502. Note Stensgaard’s interesting hypothesis concerning the connection between the growth of the public sector and the demographic and agrarian crisis phenomena of the seventeenth century (p. 504). ® Although the situation in Sweden during the reign of Charles XI was different, since the revenues to maintain the state apparatus were to be generated mainly from the rents paid to the crown. ® Louise Sommer, Die österreichischen Kameralisten (2 v., Vienna, 1920—1925), I, 11. ’’ See Hermann Heller, Gesammelte Schrijten (3 v., Leiden, 1971), III, 227—228, who emphasizes the inability of medieval administrations to meet the increasing fiscal needs of the state. ® The fiscal administration of the Catholic church, however, was an exception; it had achieved a high level of administrative systematization and rational organization already during the fourteenth century. See Clemens Bauer, “Die Epochen der Papstfinanz,” Historische Zeitschrift, 138 (1928), 462—463, 470.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=