The Following Is an Excerpt from a Letter Written by the King's

The following is an excerpt from a letter written by the king's representative in Burgundy, the prince of Condé, to Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis XIV's controller general (Thinking Like a Historian) . In it, the prince reports on his efforts to compel the leaders of the province to pay taxes levied by the royal government: "Since then the Estates have deliberated every day, persuaded that the extreme misery in this province-caused by the great levies it has suffered, the sterility [of the land] in recent years, and the disorders that have recently occurred-would induce the king to give them some relief. That is why they offered only 500,000 for the free gift. Then, after I had protested this in the appropriate manner, they raised it to 600,000, then 800,000, and finally 900,000 livres. Until then I had stood firm at 1.5 million, but when I saw that they were on the verge of deciding not to give any more . . . I finally came down to the 1.2 million livres contained in my instructions and invited them to deliberate again."
Based on this passage, one can conclude that

A) Louis XIV's power was absolute in all areas of French life.
B) Louis XIV had to negotiate with local elites to achieve his desired objectives.
C) Louis XIV had little if any real power in the provinces.
D) Louis XIV achieved his domestic goals through force of arms.