I was not expecting tax relief in France, plus a "no increase". Is this possible or would the upper classes have continued to crush the lower classes under taxation?
I'm not sure that it was the "upper class" that crushed the lower classes with the excessive taxes. I'd say that it was a
state. Both by the costly foreign policies and by the insane court expenses. The rest was pretty much a domino effect. Extraction of the indirect taxes had been given to the tax farmers. Seemingly, a reasonable move allowing to limit the size of a state-paid bureaucracy and to get the guaranteed lump sums of money but, obviously, the tax farmers expected some profit and, as a result, had been extracting some "extras". Maintaining a big army even in the time of peace cost a lot of money and so did building up the navy and constructing the numerous border fortresses. Maintaining the court was enormously expensive (not to forget the enormous card debts of the royal family and the favorites paid by Louis, various pensions, money grants, etc.). Then goes bureaucracy. The positions had been officially sold by their holders. Obviously, just salary would not justify the payment and a new owner would be doing some squeezing of the "clients". Add this to the general burden.
The peasants were mostly personally free but majority had been the tenants on the lands owned by the upper classes (unlike England, they were practically "hereditary tenants" with the right of selling the land). Of course, they had been paying some dues to the landowners but here goes the next problem. The nobles, typically, owned their land in the small parcels, which would make introduction of the more advanced methods quite difficult even if there was such an intent. When in need of money, they were trying to squeeze more of the manorial duties. OTOH, a majority of even the free farm lots was quite small and often not enough for supporting the family, not to mention investment in some kind of the innovations. Anyway, a big proportion of the nobility was most of the time away from its lands (and could not be present on all of them, anyway) spending time at court (and expecting some tangible benefits from the King) or in military service (again, expecting something from the state).
Income from exports of the manufactured products was limited because strong regulations had been killing the innovations and while France was a leading exporter of the luxury items, the market for these items was not limitless and neither was their nomenclature and volumes.
So, France (as a
state) could get more revenue from establishing and expanding the
profitable colonies producing and supplying ...er... "colonial goods" (tobacco, spices, sugar, molasses, etc.) or getting actively involved in supplying the slaves to the Spanish and Portuguese American colonies (probably would take a war to get this right from Spain) or establishing a large scale trade
from India (AFAIK, at that time Indian states were not too interested in European imports so the profit was made on reselling their goods in Europe). Pretty much what France did or tried to do in OTL but more successfully. I'm not sure if, with a possible exception of the fur trade, Canada and Louisiana were making a lot of sense in an absence of a big number of people willing to emigrate from France to the colonies. Seemingly popular idea of shipping the Huguenots there misses 2 main points: 1st, before abolishing of the Edict of Nantes there was no reason for them to go to the colonies and 2nd, majority of those who preferred to emigrate in OTL were
city-dwellers and moving to some German state where they could continue to work according to their skills would make much more sense for them then sailing across the ocean with a purpose to become the farmers or hunters.
This, of course, would not directly improve situation of the farmers in France but, in the best case scenario, could lesser a tax burden.
Then, there could be some smaller things like abolishing of the internal customs, lowering taxes on the salt, etc. Cancelling the Little Ice Age and
Great Famine of 1695-1697 also would be nice (
). Actually, Vauban made some proposals which made Louis very angry (probably meaning that the proposals were good): "Vauban's solution was to levy a flat 10% tax on all agricultural and industrial output, while eliminating tax exemptions, which meant the vast majority of the nobility and clergy paid no taxes.:."
en.wikipedia.org
I did not understand one of your sentences: "and it is rather difficult to maintain Louisiana with its reliance upon a single river". How does a single river weaken Louisiana?
Look at the map below: there was a single access point and communications from there mostly done by the Mississippi. Somebody establishes blockade at its mouth and you are completely cut off.
Do you know any competent people who could have developed the French economy at that time? Or was France really too far behind and would have to catch up with it in more or less time?
Colbert was quite competent (actually, there were 5 members of his family on state service) but an individual hardly could change people's mindsets, landownership system and many other things by the click of his fingers. It is not that mercantilism was wrong per se (*). Under the circumstances, it was quite right but it looks like at that time France simply could not do Munchausen's trick by pulling himself and the horse on which he was sitting out of a mire by his own hair (see the depiction of this remarkable event below)
.
Of course, besides the "objective" problems, Louis can be considered as a handicap of a "strategic" proportion capable and willing to screw up pretty much everything so it would not matter whom you chose as his ministers as long as he is around. "If you can't produce a sum that I require, I'll find somebody else who will".
How about improving the general situation by just letting him die quietly as a child from some disease? It seems that Phillipe, with all wrong upbringing that he got, was a much less destructive person. In OTL he proved to be a good general (after which he was never given a command again). Philippe sponsored projects to help maintain his estates and enhance their profitability. He built the
Canal d'Orléans, that allowed to transport goods from Orléans to Paris and was a financial founder of a family whose monetary value would rival that of the main line of the
House of Bourbon. Plus, was a patron of arts and founder of the Orleans Collection. So perhaps he could be less destructive than his brother and most of the rest would take care of itself. At least, things hardly could be worse (well, you never know).
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(*) Just a funny factoid which came to my mind. When the future Alexander III was getting his education in economy from a leading Russian specialist in the area (and one of his father's advisors), he was told that the tariffs on imports are a bad idea. The young Alexander (still in his early 20s and generally considered as not too bright) objected that in the case of Russia the high tariffs are necessary to protect the domestic industry. Now, under AII Russian economy was not growing because the low import tariffs were making the fledgling Russian industry non-competitive. AIII reversed the course by introducing the high import tariffs and Russian manufacturing was jump-started. So, the knowledge of a general theory is not always a substitute for a common sense.
