[Verse 1] Picture Versailles with its ledgers in lace, every office for sale like a trinket, a place— magistrate, treasurer, clerk of the hall, tens of thousands of titles, a bureaucrat's mall. Call it venal — that means purchasable, bought with a coin, the crown sold its power so the purse could rejoin, while the bishop and baron just wave through the gate, exempt from the taille, let the peasant pay freight. [Chorus] No unified fisc, no consent in the room, just a patchwork of privilege writing its own doom. Farm the taxes, sell the chair, let the clergy go free, that's the Ancien Régime's arithmetic of debt and decree. Remember the rhyme: who's exempt, who's enchained — a crown full of credit but a purse that's chained. [Verse 2] Enter the Ferme générale, tax farmers in coats, they front the crown money, then collect on the notes, squeezing the salt tax, the tobacco, the wine, skimming a margin before the treasury sees a dime. Then came the war drum, a billion livres spent helping Americans while the ledger's bent — by seventeen eighty-eight, hear the numbers collide: half of all spending just servicing the ride. [Chorus] No unified fisc, no consent in the room, just a patchwork of privilege writing its own doom. Farm the taxes, sell the chair, let the clergy go free, that's the Ancien Régime's arithmetic of debt and decree. Remember the rhyme: who's exempt, who's enchained — a crown full of credit but a purse that's chained. [Verse 3] Necker writes a Compte rendu, seventeen eighty-one, a pamphlet of comfort pretending they'd won — legerdemain with the numbers, a sleight-of-hand sum, hiding the war loans, showing surplus to come. Calonne tries the honest road, a land tax for all, nobles and clergy summoned, Assembly and hall — Notables refuse him, they won't foot the bill, so the king calls the Estates, against his own will. [Verse 4] Seventeen eighty-nine, the old orders convene, three estates at one table, each guarding its scene, but the granaries groan and the numbers won't lie — you can't tax your way out while the privileged stay dry. [Bridge] Compare it to London, where Parliament bent the knee first — consent came before coin, so the lending never burst. Here the crown begs for credit with no voice at the gate, no bargain, no Commons, just privilege and weight of a debt piled on debt with no body to swear "we'll pay what we promise" — so the lenders won't share. [Chorus] No unified fisc, no consent in the room, just a patchwork of privilege writing its own doom. Farm the taxes, sell the chair, let the clergy go free, that's the Ancien Régime's arithmetic of debt and decree. Remember the rhyme: who's exempt, who's enchained — a crown full of credit but a purse that's chained. [Outro] Venal offices, farmed-out gold, a Compte rendu that never told, Calonne's land tax, Notables' no, Estates-General — here we go.
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