A caveat should be entered here. The evidence is far too fragmentary to make a wholly accurate estimate of the amount of income generated for the War Ministry from its own sources, such as contributions and confiscations levied on enemy and neutral territory, the fining of officers, and revenue from provinces administered by the Secretary of State for War. But John Lynn's estimates are so different to my own it is important to try to come to a rough assessment.

Lynn's estimates depend upon the misreading, in my view, of one key document and a doctoral thesis, and upon a narrow base of knowledge of the ministerial correspondence. The summary list of extraordinary receipts into the Extraordinaire des Guerres which still exists for 1678 appears to total 13.4 million livres. Of this, about 75 per cent came from contributions; about 5 per cent from confiscations; and the other 20 per cent came from a mixture of windfall revenues, bankers' bills of exchange processed by the Extraordinaire de Guerres for other people, fines on officers for misconduct, extra surplus revenue budgeted but not used, customs tolls on the Rhine, the sale of materials, and profits from sick soldiers hors de combat. But this list has been grievously misinterpreted by Lynn.