Finding money was a primary preoccupation for Mazarin throughout his entire time as first minister. His new taxes on Parisians and the nobility had provoked the first Fronde, but the end of the Fronde did not resolve the problem. The government had borrowed huge amounts to finance the campaigns against the first Fronde and against Condé, and also had to pay for the continual travels of the Regent and the young King, and the elaborate festivities, parades, cavalcades that accompanied their travel and every major event. The royal budget for 1653 was about 109 million "livres", which amounted to eight hundred tons of silver or sixty tons of gold. Expenditures were the greatest between 1656 and 1659. Twenty-seven agreements were made with bankers, who loaned the government 98 million "livres" to supplement the money collected through ordinary taxes.