Absolutism and Class at the End of the Old Regime. the Case of Languedoc

Absolutism and Class at the End of the Old Regime: The Case of LanguedocAuthor(s): Stephen MillerSource: Journal of Social History, Vol. 36, No. 4 (Summer, 2003), pp. 871-898Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3790355 .Accessed: 16/07/2013 13:06

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ABSOLUTISM AND CLASS AT THE END OF THE OLD REGIME: THE CASE OF LANGUEDOC

By Stephen Miller University of Alabama at Birmingham

This article is about nobles' opposition to royal absolutism at the end of the Old Regime. Discussion of this issue dates back to the late 1930s, when Georges Lefebvre showed that nobles exacerbated the crown's financial difficulties and brought about the revolutionary crisis of 1789. He argued that conflict between the king and nobility was as old as the monarchy. Louis XIV compelled nobles to submit to his authority, but his successors allowed them to regroup and stage a political comeback during the eighteenth century. Social and economic forces, what Lefebvre saw as a "feudal reaction", sustained the nobility's political resur- gence. He showed that lords levied dues on peasant communities with a new rigor to take advantage of rising prices during the second half ofthe eighteenth- century.1 A host of historians have disputed Lefebvre's thesis. Their most potent criticism has been the absence of material interests underlying political positions taken by the nobility. Alfred Cobban argued that property rights to antiquated dues and services, whether they belonged to nobles or bourgeois, bore slight resemblance to the social organization that prevailed in the Middle Ages. George Taylor maintained that noble wealth was "proprietary" rather than feudal and that this type of wealth was common to bourgeois as well. Denis Richet and Guy Chaussinand-Nogaret disputed Lefebvre's portrayal of noble political designs as a "feudal reaction". They argued that nobles acquired genuinely liberal convic? tions during the Enlightenment and were the primary opponents of arbitrary rule in the last years of the Old Regime.2

In recent years, several outstanding monographs have shifted debate away from social and economic issues. Historians have used theoretical insights of Alexis de Tocqueville and Jiirgen Habermas to show that cultural trends were responsible for the emergence ofa revolutionary conception of sovereignty. They have shown that attitudes and sensibilities of nobles and bourgeois, their assump? tions about politics and society, changed in the second half of the eighteenth century. Magistrates, lawyers and pamphleteers wrote innumerable appeals to the public against abuses of power. Public opinion replaced the royal will as the legitimate source of political authority, and Frenchmen were prepared to put the sovereignty of an elected assembly in place of the king's will. While this literature has advanced our knowledge of the political culture of the eighteenth century, it has not provided much research about the upper classes' relationship to the absolutist state. Tocqueville and Habermas argued that nobles and bour? geois interacted on an equal footing in a social space independent of the crown. Whether we accept Tocqueville's view that royal authority rendered corporate bodies and intermediate strata powerless, or Habermas's view that it was separate from and antagonistic to the dictates of public opinion, we are left with the idea that the king was a power unto himself. This conception of the monarchy is also implicit in Lefebvre's thesis that the king and nobility fought one another


872 journal of social history summer 2003

throughout the early modern period. Neither Lefebvre's classic interpretation nor recent scholarship on political culture has examined the social content of the absolutist state.3

The revelation of this social content has been one ofthe major breakthroughs of Marxist practitioners of historical materialism during the last few decades. Perry Anderson argued that the absolutist state preserved the core feudal rela? tion of exploitation, described by Marxist analysts as extra-economic coercion. According to this concept, producers controlled the means of production, land and artisan's tools, in feudal societies and were thus able to survive without sustaining a ruling class. The feudal ruling class therefore had to use extra-economic means to obtain surplus. It asserted the right to the production of peasants and artisans in kind or in money. Political and ideological arrangements upheld this right, and when they failed, the ruling class had recourse to force. In capitalist societies, individuals are free from arbitrary rights, but do not have direct ac? cess to means of production and subsistence. They must seek employment from property owners, who use this situation to realize profit. If under capitalism the mechanism for appropriating surplus is intrinsic to production, under feudalism it is extrinsic. Anderson argued that when lords could no longer enforce extra-economic coercion at the end ofthe fourteenth-century crisis, the central authority of kings emerged to solidify feudal relations. Although kings gradu? ally forced the nobility to obey their authority, they provided legal sanction to privileges and prerogatives, which allowed the nobility to continue to enjoy the social surplus by extra-economic means.

It was the very complexity ofthe architecture ofthe State which permitted a slow yet relentless unification of the noble class itself, which was gradually adapted into a new centralised mould, subject to public control ofthe intendants while still occupying privately owned positions within the officier system and local authority in the provinciai parlements.*

Robert Brenner strengthened Anderson's thesis by showing that French peas? ants' acquisition of property rights to the soil during the fourteenth-century crisis generated pressure for the construction of strong central authority. The establishment of invariable dues gave French peasants de-facto property rights over the majority ofthe soil. The only way elites could appropriate the country's wealth was by extra-economic means. Absolutist institutions, their religious and ideological justifications, and their ultimate guarantee in the king's army, grew in stages to give dominant groups extra-economic means to appropriate peasant surpluses. By contrast, English elites gained control over most of the soil at the end ofthe middle ages. The gentry could manage their economic affairs without a strong state and became suspicious ofa monarchy capable of threatening their interests as proprietors. Thus, during the seventeenth century, while French no? bles exalted the sun king in Versailles, English gentry fought the civil war and the Glorious Revolution to arrest the rise of absolutism.5

William Beik has shown the explanatory force ofthe concept of extra-econo? mic coercion when applied to the evidence of early modern France. His work on Languedoc shows that the full flowering of French absolutism under Louis XIV coincided with the consolidation of privileges and prerogatives. Nobles re? mained passive in the face of popular revolts and sometimes even encouraged


ABSOLUTISM AND CLASS AT THE END OF THE OLD REGIME 873

them during the first half of the seventeenth century as the regencies of Riche- lieu and Mazarin competed with lords for peasant surpluses and disregarded the authority of local office holders. Louis XIV brought this turbulent period to a close by offering the nobility an informal agreement: in return for accepting royal absolutism, nobles would secure possession of state offices, remnants of the seigneurial regime, a share of fiscal receipts, and a share of the king's prestige. Leading non-Marxist historians have reached similar conclusions. James Coilins and Robert Descimon have both shown that royal authority and venal office holding grew in tandem and that office holders and nobles shared the spoils of royal taxation. Indeed, a consensus has emerged among historians of Louis XIV's government that the king's power was limited and that his effectiveness derived in part from his ability to conciliate the interests of regional elites.6

If social history is to explain the upper classes' opposition to royal policies, it must examine mechanisms of extra-economic coercion to which their material interests were tied. We must analyze royal policy toward office holders and lords to understand opposition to arbitrary rule in the 1770s and 1780s. We there? fore carry Beik's study of seventeenth-century Languedoc into the eighteenth century in order to understand the fall of the absolutist state. We begin by ana- lyzing the distribution of provincial wealth. Widespread peasant proprietorship, the pervasiveness of sharecropping, and industrial work put out to artisans and peasant households left common subjects in control of Languedocien resources. Nobles and bourgeois depended on their control of local authority to appropriate this mass of resources. Large proprietors, mainly lords, obtained favorable rulings from their peers in the judiciary to levy resources on peasant communities and profit from market opportunities. State offices also allowed local elites to cull revenue from the fiscal system. Honorific ceremonies in village gatherings and the superior courts?the Parlement of Toulouse and the Cour des Comptes, Aides et Finances of Montpellier?consecrated the privileges and prerogatives of lords and office holders. These courts protected privileges and prerogatives by dint of their right to review all cases, including royal edicts, before turning them into laws. From this study of office holders and the regional economy, we turn to the crown's efforts to resolve budget crises of the 1770s and 1780s. The crown used the credit ofthe Estates of Languedoc, the highest financial body ofthe province, to raise millions of livres in loans after 1777. An oligarchy of high nobles, more often seen in Versailles and Paris than in Languedoc, directed the proceedings of the Estates. The crown delegated the Estates a share of the administration, including the regulation of peasant communities' revenues, in return for rais-

ing loans. The Estates, the intendant and the royal council struggled together to

protect resources underwriting the mounting debt. What nobles and tax-exempt bourgeois took from other subjects was revenue lost to the fiscal system. To pre? vent these losses, the Estates and the central administration helped communities defy seigneurial claims. They also implemented policies curtailing office holders' jurisdictions and suppressed the Parlement and the Cour des Comptes, Aides et Finances in 1771 and 1788. In the final section, we examine reactions to these

policies. In 1788 and 1789, nobles led a broad movement to make the Estates

representative of the three orders of the province. The Estates had helped the crown develop policies, which harmed elites' economic interests and humbled them before the public. Prepared without consulting the educated classes ofthe



province, royal policy seemed arbitrary. Reform ofthe provinciai estates seemed the way to counter the perceived despotism issuing from Versailles.

The distribution of provinciai resources

Marc Bloch observed long ago that labor services peasants owed lords and the size of demesnes dwindled between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. The peasantry established property rights over most of the realm during the following centuries as rents and dues became immutable. Bloch argued that royal courts of justice helped lords slowly regain land from the end of the One Hundred Years' War onward. Magistrates were landowners and could hardly avoid looking at society according to their class interests. They provided legal sanction to foreclosures when peasants went into debt paying dues and taxes, or purchasing basic agricultural supplies. The following table shows the percentage of land still belonging to Languedocien peasants at the end of the Old Regime.7

Percentage of land Region of Languedoc belonging to peasants

Diocese of Toulouse 20 MontpeHierain 312 (57.3 in the garrigues

and 27.6 in the plain) Village of Gratens in the diocese of Rieux 25 LeVivarais 68.1

While nobles and bourgeois owned most ofthe land, peasants were left in con? trol of it. Georges Freche found that sharecropping covered almost three-quarters ofthe Toulousain and Lauragais in the eighteenth century. It was widespread in the dioceses of Narbonne, Carcassonne, and St.-Pons, as well as in the southern Massif Central. Sharecropping not only allowed landlords to control the local population through customary ties of obligation, obedience and dependence? sharecroppers were more bound to their landlords than were tenant farmers?but also spared them the insipid task of managing production. Even if proprietors had risen above their prejudices and had sought to organize modern farms, they would have encountered two obstacles. Research of Georges Brunet and Em- manuel Le Roy Ladurie on village tax records shows that land in upper Langue? doc, as elsewhere in the province, was broken into hundreds of parcels and farms turned over to sharecroppers. The dispersion of the soil rendered the task of piecing together coherent estates impractical. Equally impractical would have been the task of overcoming independent attitudes of peasant micro-proprietors and subjecting them to the work discipline of a fully commodified labor force. Sharecropping was the traditional solution to these conditions, for it interested peasants in the cultivation ofthe soil. Population growth and hard work on crops such as maize and vineyards, which brought forth higher yields and returns per hectare, permitted landlords to tilt sharecropping further to their advantage in the second half ofthe eighteenth century. Freche estimated that the proprietor's part increased from one half to two thirds in the Toulouse region. Yet profits realized in this manner did not stern from rising levels of productivity per labor input, which had formed the basis ofthe agricultural revolution in England and



which would form the basis of French agricultural growth in the latter part of the nineteenth century. And even though landlords were able to squeeze more surplus out of sharecroppers, this type of land tenure still left at least a third of the product of noble and bourgeois lands to the peasantry in the Toulouse region and probably around a half elsewhere in the province.8

Civil dioceses of Languedoc before 1789

,?.._ Limil of civil dn

MEDITERRANEAN SEA

Industrial production evinced many of the same characteristics. Output in? creased considerably, and towns such as Mazamet, Lodeve, Clermont-de-Lodeve, Bedarieux, Carcassonne and Nfmes emerged as cloth-manufacturing hubs. Yet many workers were essentially peasants who turned to industry at times ofthe year agriculture required fewer laborers. The sub-delegate of Carcassonne reported in 1787 that forty percent ofthe thirty-thousand workers in the local textile in? dustry put down their tools six months of the year to engage in agriculture. The scales tipped further toward agricultural work after 1758 in Clermont-de-Lodeve and after 1778 in Nfmes as these towns suffered recessions that lingered until the end of the Old Regime. Cloth manufacturing in towns paled in comparison to all ofthe production carried out in peasant households to supplement income from agriculture. Comparing Lodeve to the upper Vivarais illustrates this point. Lodeve avoided the general decline in Languedocien textile production in the second half of the eighteenth century as its merchant manufacturers (marchand fabricants) brought production out of rural households and into urban factories. Yet its population of fewer than 9,500 inhabitants, of which maybe a quarter were



peasants, seems insignificant when compared to the estimate ofthe sub-delegate of the Vivarais that the upper half of his diocese contained twenty-thousand peasant households engaged in textile production in 1773. Moreover, merchant manufacturers of Lodeve still put most of the tasks involved in producing cloth out to rural households. Merchant manufacturers probably found it more ratio- nal to take advantage ofthe mass of peasant households attached to their parcels of land, and anxious to supplement their meager incomes by turning out cloth no matter how paltry the returns, than to risk investing in factories. Langue- docien industry was still largely dispersed among the peasantry and left to its supervision.9

State offices and peasant agriculture

Since peasant micro-proprietors, sharecroppers, and part-time artisans con? trolled such a large share of Languedocien resources, political relations remained essential to elite fortunes. Provinciai institutions upheld forms of extra-economic coercion, which allowed nobles and bourgeois to appropriate peasant surpluses. The oldest political relations of this type were tithes and seigneurial dues. These levies were not extremely lucrative in eighteenth-century Languedoc.10

Region of Languedoc Rate of Tithes on Certain Crops

Seigneurial dues as a Group of Languedocien lords percentage of their income

Nobles of the Toulousain 8-18.8 Toulousain parlementaires 10 Ecclesiastics of the Toulousain and the Midi-Pyrenees 2-3 20 great families of the Lauragais 10

Region of Languedoc Dues as a percentage of direct taxes

Toulousain and the Midi-Pyrenees 18.7 Vivarais 10-15 Albigeois 23.8 Belpech 13.8



Dues as a percentage Region of Languedoc of the gross product

Lords often made levies more lucrative by updating their titles (terriers) and demanding that peasants pay arrears. Lords usually had to rely on the authority of office holders in the judiciary to make peasants recognize updated titles. Evi? dence from Languedoc bears out Bloch's observation that lords' class familiarity with local magistrates allowed them to impose their claims on communities. Of two hundred and nine nobles present for the assembly of the Second Es? tate of the senechaussee of Montpellier in March 1789, twenty-four were office holders in the Cour des Comptes, Aides et Finances, and ten were magistrates in other courts. Of six hundred and thirteen nobles present for the assembly ofthe senechaussee of Toulouse in March 1789, eighty-one were parlementaires and two were magistrates in the Bureau of Finances. Concrete examples of this milieu were at least seven rural salons drawing together parkmentaire families, friends and other notables. Mme. de Lamothe, wife ofa councilor in the Parlement, held one in Saint-Felix-de-Caraman, and M. de Resseguier, the procureur general, held another on his domain of Secourieu in the Lauragais. Discussing lords' tendency to augment levies and curtail peasant use-rights on common lands, Nicole Cas- tan argued that, "The sharpest originality of the area under the jurisdiction of the Parlement of Toulouse does not reside in the arbitrariness ofthe system?it was no more arbitrary than elsewhere, tithes apart?but in the singular collu? sion ofthe seigneurie and judicial authority."11 The following table is based on grievances of peasant communities found in records of the intendant and his correspondence with Versailles, judicial records, and cases found in secondary works. While the table does not present a comprehensive set of rulings, it does show collaboration between lords and judicial bodies, including senechaussees, the Parlement, Cour des Comptes, Aides et Finances, Bureau of Finances and eaux etforets.12

Number of Type of ruling in favor of lords 1750-1789 rulings

Obliging recognition of revised terriers and/or forcing peasants to pay dues 18 Asserting lords' property rights over common lands and/or restricting 13

peasants' use-rights Granting lords poUticcd rights on the village level 10 Obliging peasants to pay fines 9 Granting lords honorific rights on the village level 7 Exempting lords from taxes or allowing them to consult tax rolls 6 Granting lords sole right to harvest grapes or sell wine during certain periods 5 Foreclosing on peasant tenures 4

As this table suggests, lords' ability to profit from their own land did not depend solely on laws of supply and demand. Lords often relied on the public authority of their peers in the judiciary to impose their claims on peasant communities and take advantage of market opportunities. Lords were able to use judicial



authority to obtain full property rights over woods and cultivated fields, as well as advantages at the time of the grape harvest. This use of political authority proved particularly lucrative in the second half of the eighteenth century as grain prices and wood prices increased. Viticulture spread throughout lower Languedoc in the 1770s, and though overproduction deflated prices after 1778, wine was still the province's leading agricultural export in 1788.13

Hundreds of rulings of the Parlement of Toulouse, a series extending from the 1740s to 1789, leave little doubt that lords used judicial authority to take advantage of market opportunities. Lords obtained a standard formula of rights by taking their peasants to court. A look at one of these rulings shows the rights at stake. M. Jean-Francois Denis d'Albi de Belbeze, councilor in the grand chamber of the Parlement and lord of high, middle and low justice of Bretx et Thil, initiated litigation against his peasants and consul (the title of community officials in Languedoc) in September 1787. The Parlement forbade inhabitants to send animais into his lands, woods, meadows, lucernes, vines, shores, wastelands, fodder plants and other possessions. It became illegal to cut or gather wood on his property. Belbeze acquired the right to proclaim the start ofthe grape harvest and have his grapes harvested two or three days before anyone else did. He obtained the right to consult the churchwardens' accounts, as well as those of the administrators of the goods and revenues of the poor. Tax assessments (compoix) would only go into effect after Belbeze's officers had inspected and signed them. The compoix, lists of property transfers, and titles were to be locked in the community archives, and three keys were to be made: one for Belbeze's judge, another for the consul, and a third for the clerk (greffxer).

Other articles of this ruling concerning political and honorific rights show that efforts to cull profit from domains took place within a traditional context shaped by the feudal past. The Parlement granted Belbeze the right to exercise justice and enforce it with officers. He was entitled to choose one of two consuls presented by the community. The consul was obliged to notify Belbeze's officers and give them the subjects for deliberation twenty-four hours before holding community assemblies. Belbeze secured the right to have his officers preside over the assemblies. The ruling stated that Belbeze could fine the consul one hundred livres for failing to show him administrative orders before sharing them with inhabitants. The most arresting aspect ofthe ruling was the symbolic rights it specified. The consul had to pledge loyalty to Belbeze in his chateau and wear a hood to processions, mass and other public functions. The local priest had to pay Belbeze homage and put him and his family in public prayers on Sundays and holidays. The priest was even obliged to bathe Belbeze and his family in incense before the assembled community during mass.14

Registers of the Parlement of Toulouse show that lords obtained all of these rights when they took their peasants to court. A minimum count of such rulings in the inventory ofthe series B, volume III, in the departmental archives ofthe Haute-Garonne reveals the following trend.

Years Number of rulings

1741-1756 87 1757-1773 136 1774-1789 235



While an inspection ofthe registers reveals some gaps in the inventory, the count confirms research of Jean Bastier and Yves Castan. They found that seigneurial relations seemed peaceful until the 1730s. The Parlement then began ruling in favor of lords and did so more frequently as the century wore on.15

The direct levies of office holders

James Riley has examined royal budgets and transactions with the highest tax farmers and receivers who placed funds in the royal treasury. Sums these financiers gleaned from taxes in return for providing the king with funds were no greater than tax-collection overhead in England. Moreover, the burden weighing on French subjects actually lessened over the course ofthe eighteenth century, as rates of inflation surpassed tax increases. Riley concludes that French taxation was neither oppressive nor excessive.16 Evidence from Languedoc, however, suggests that an examination of tax collection on the local level leads to a different conclusion. One of the reasons so many rallied to the crown during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was that it had the authority to levy resources on common subjects for the mutual benefit of the royal treasury and the local elite. Languedociens lived in a province of petite gabelle and thus had to buy 11 3/4 pounds of salt per capita at thirty-three livres ten sous the quintal, a cost of about five livres a head. Cahiers de doleances show that the gabelle was the province's most hated tax. Offices in the gabelle provided a cross section of the provincial elite with about a miilion and a half livres a year. Several judges of the Cour des Comptes, Aides et Finances of Montpellier invested in the gabelle. The councilor Jacques-Joseph Boussairolles pere was the syndic of the lessees of the royal salt marshes of Peccais, an integral part of the gabelle. In 1790, an

angry mob threatened to hang Jacques Archinar fils, a merchant from Nfmes and a fellow lessee of the salt marshes of Peccais, for his rapacious collection methods. Even the intendant Saint-Priest's son-in-law Bocaud held a share of Peccais. M. Fran^ois Joseph Catanie was a lawyer in the Parlement of Toulouse and a triennial verifier of the gabelle in Montpellier.17

Other indirect taxes were the ferme de Vequivalent and various municipal octrois. The equivalent collected taxes on fish, wine, and meat. The Estates of

Languedoc leased this tax farm for a period of six years for 1,442,000 livres in 1782 and 1,376,000 in 1788. An attorney (procureur) in the Parlement of Toulouse, a lord from Albi who was also a diocese tax receiver, and several merchants from Toulouse and Revel formed a company to lease the equivalent in 1788. They sub- leased the right to collect taxes in dioceses, parishes, towns, and neighborhoods, which were commonly further divided into separate subleases for wine, fish, and meat. Urban merchants and artisans complained in their cahiers de doleances of abusive collection methods and lawsuits initiated against them by receivers of the equivalent. With all of the sub-leases, this tax farm probably cost over five miilion livres and generated profits ofa miilion a year.18 Municipalities collected indirect taxes to generate revenue for their expenses. Toulouse, for instance, leased collection of its patrimonial revenues and taxes on merchandise entering the city (octroi) for 380,000 livres a year in the 1780s. The lessees made over fifty thousand in profit between 1782 and 1787. Those who purchased this tax farm between 1740 and 1781 included landowners (bourgeois) from Paris, a tax



receiver in the diocese of Mende, and a financier from Montpellier. In 1747, over twenty percent of the personnel of this tax farm were lawyers, and over thirty percent were landowners (bourgeois) and merchants. The tax farm for municipal revenues of Montpellier was reputed to have made the fortunes of many of the city's elite. Registers from the senechaussee of Carcassonne contain cases from the 1770s and 1780s involving merchants and a public works contractor who owned offtces in the municipal octroi. Jacques Barthelemy Noailles, a barrister at the Parlement, was a receiver of octroi in Beaucaire and triennial collector of the gabelle in Toulouse.19

Languedoc contained several other indirect tax farms. Saintaurant, a councilor in the Cour des Comptes, Aides et Finances, owned one ofthe two offices of receiver for the king's domains and woods in Montpellier. Each of the twenty- three dioceses of Languedoc contained at least one of these offices, and their profits mounted as high as fifty-thousand Uvres a year. Inspectors of manufactures collected two sous for each piece of textile production. These profits probably stagnated as the Languedocien textile industry stalled in the second half ofthe century. Mazamet, however, was an exception. Its production increased from about five-thousand pieces in the 1760s to nearly thirty thousand on the eve of the Revolution and swelled fees paid to inspectors to three-thousand Uvres. Cahiers de doliances contain numerous grievances of urban merchants and arti? sans about taxes collected on leather, skins and tobacco. Other tax collectors who pestered producers and consumers were receivers of lotteries and the king's casual revenues, as well as the director of tariffs on cards.20

Receivers of direct taxes?taille, capitation, and vingtiemes?also profited from the fiscal system. The sixty-six diocese tax-receivers made well over six-hundred- thousand Uvres a year in the 1780s. Several of these offices belonged to magistrates of the Cour des Comptes, Aides et Finances and Parlement.21 Collectors of direct taxes in Toulouse garnered more than fifteen thousand Uvres in 1786. A master of surgery, a notary, an attorney in the Parlement, a chevalier from Albi, and a commercial lawyer (postulant a la bourse) jointly bought the right to collect direct taxes in Toulouse in 1788.22

Those who owned posts of payer and treasurer managed the king's revenue and reaped considerable financial rewards. Seventeen of these office holders in Montpellier and Toulouse secured almost fifty thousand Uvres a year. Perhaps the wealthiest individual in the entire province, and certainly the wealthiest in Montpellier, was M. de Joubert, treasurer of the Estates of Languedoc. His post was midway between revenue collected in the province and the royal treasury. Joubert received and allotted provinciai taxes, managed loans taken out by the Estates, and arranged for the annual subsidy (don gratuit) to the king. He descended from an old Montpellierain family of the robe. His father had owned one ofthe executive offices ofthe Estates (syndics generaux), and a cousin married a prosperous local lord. Joubert garnered almost eight-hundred-thousand Uvres a year in the 1780s. Capitation rolls of Montpellier from 1789 show that he was the highest taxpayer in the city with an assessment seven times higher than those of councilors in the Cour des Comptes, Aides, et Finances.13

Besides gleaning profits from tax offices described above, magistrates also se? cured revenue from their posts in the judiciary. Judges and lawyers received an



annual sum from the royal treasury for the capital invested in their offices (gages) and collected fees from litigants.24

Corps ofLanguedocien office holders Gages

Cour des Comptes, Aides et Finances of Montpellier 318,810 Bureaus of Finances of Toulouse and Montpellier 163,179 Parlement of Toulouse 156,008 Divers diocese office holders 25,403 Office holders of senechaussees 24,104

Descimon found that capital invested in offices increased more rapidly than did gages paid to their owners over the course of the seventeenth century. He stated that office holders probably made up the difference with justice fees, sums gleaned from taxes, and other levies. Such fees irritated common subjects as much by the haughty manner in which they were collected as by the economic hardship they caused. An anonymous "good citizen from the province of Languedoc" wrote a tract typical of the spring of 1789. Describing magistrates as "an innumerable swarm of leaches", he argued that the remedy was to extinguish venality of office. "If ever there is such a chance it is now [with] the holding of the Estates General..."25

Languedocien magistrates Fees collected26

Office holders of the Parlement 362,500-2,888,236 Office holders of the Cour des Comptes, Aides et Finances 170,452 Office holders of senechaussees 84,600 Barristers of Toulouse and Montpellier 79,200 Toulousain attorneys (procureurs) 67,200 Treasurers of France of the Bureaus of Finances 60,000 Director of the provincial provostship (p@evote generale) 8,000

State offices, then, were an integral part of elite fortunes. Income from offices amounted to over ten per cent of the available product of Languedoc.27 Yet it would be wrong to imagine that office holders thought in such economic terms. Just as lords' efforts to profit from domains were inextricably bound up with concerns about political authority and honor, so were economic rights of office holders seen as mere corollaries to the honor of serving the king. Elaborate ceremonies in the sovereign courts celebrated judges' right to dispense justice in the king's name. The interior design ofthe Parlement placed judges in prominent positions. Strict etiquette, such as barristers' duty to wear a hat when addressing parlementaires, drew attention to the dignity of royal justice. A scene from 1774, the day Louis XVI reinstated the Parlement after Maupeou's coup, illustrates the honor of the magistracy. According to reports, the president Puivert shed tears when he heard the following passage of an address from the barrister Desirat:

The order of barristers ardently wished for this happy revolution. Its interests alone would have determined its stance. The glory of the magistracy belongs to us in a way: our honor is conjoined to that of the magistracy. Please consider these attachments, sir, at a time when such terrible disgraces tested our virtue.



Judges of the Cour des Comptes, Aides et Finances of Montpellier were nearly as esteemed. They passed in front of other corps during public processions and occupied places of honor in municipal assemblies. The court fought a legal battle during the 1770s to put an end to the "indecency with which it was received in the cathedral, by Messieurs of the Chapter." Benches reserved for the judges lacked a view ofthe choir. The court pursued the case all the way up to the royal council before finally emerging victorious. The magistrates then held a special meeting to discuss an entry into the cathedral that would best advertise their triumph.28

State Finances and the Estates of Languedoc

Financial troubles of the last decades of the Old Regime led the crown to curtail the rights of office holders and lords. This drama played itself out through the highest financial body of the province, the Estates of Languedoc. The Es? tates arranged for the allotment and collection of taxes, disbursed revenue for public works, and granted the king a portion of the taxes known as the don gratuit. Seats went to archbishops and bishops of the province's twenty-three dioceses, owners of twenty-three baronies, and sixty-eight deputies ofthe Third Estate. The vast majority of nobles could not enter the Estates, because the king only appointed illustrious families to bishoprics, and baronies were extremely expensive family property. To purchase one of the baronies, one had to raise a sum, which could run into the hundreds of thousands of Uvres, and descend from at least four generations of nobility. The Estates vigilantly reviewed buyers' lineages down to the end of the Old Regime. The practice of counting votes by head instead of order did not make the Estates any more representative, because members of the Third Estate owed their seats to the ownership of mu? nicipal offices or selection by bishops and lords, and many of them were not even commoners. Proposals of the archbishop of Narbonne, president of the Estates, consistently met with unanimous support. These estates bore slight resemblance to those restored on the initiative of the upper classes of Dauphine in 1788. Their unrepresentative character meant that the upper classes could not use them as means for opposing royal policy. Indeed, many members spent most of the year in Versailles and Paris, and only went to Languedoc for their meeting in Montpellier between December and February.29 Ceremonies welcoming the deputies lasted several days and included masses in the cathedral and parades through the city, as well as visits and laudatory addresses from the intendant and provinciai governor. When meetings drew to a close, four members were chosen to meet with the king himself in Versailles and present the province's grievances.

The Estates of Languedoc registered massive debt in the last twelve years of the Old Regime. Most of this debt stemmed from loans taken out for the royal treasury. Ministers realized that the Estates were a handy source of credit. The Estates raised loans at the relatively low rate of interest of five per cent, and unlike the Parlement of Paris, they never publicly criticized the administration when asked to authorize a loan. After borrowing less than thirty million Uvres through the Estates between 1733 and 1777, the crown borrowed over forty million during the next four years. Necker raised almost ten per cent of the loans taken



out to finance French involvement in the American War of Independence on the credit of the Estates of Languedoc. His successors borrowed seventy miilion over the following seven years. The monarchy serviced these loans by allowing the Estates to deduct revenue from the don gratuit to pay interest and scheduled reimbursements. The king and the Estates continually increased the don gratuit to cover the mounting debt. Debt service nevertheless exceeded payments to the king in 1787, when it mounted to nearly 10 miilion livres, and the king had to obtain a loan from the Royal Military Academy to save the Estates from bankruptcy. The Estates also underwrote loans taken out by the dioceses. These totaled about 12.5 miilion livres, and service payments over 500,000, in 1789. All of this borrowing distributed almost fifteen percent of the available product of Languedoc from tax-paying land to upper class creditors. A review of lists of creditors reveals many members ofthe Estates themselves, Parisian nobles, local proprietors, and members of the clergy.30

The crown rewarded the Estates of Languedoc for their assistance in financial matters. It permitted the Estates to distribute prodigious financial favors.31

Emoluments distributed in connection with

meetings of the Officials Estates in the 1780s

Count of Perigord, military governor of Languedoc, 15 7,425 his first and second secretaries

Dillon, the archbishop of Narbonne and president of the Estates 143,000 Deputies of the Estates 130,340 Arnvy officers: lieutenants, commanders, majors and governors 114,855 Intendant, sub-delegates, and personnel of the intendancy 107,307 Four directors and inspectors of public works 51,800 Three general syndics (executive officers of the Estates) 49,350 Petits etates of Velay, Albi and Gevaudan 36,771 Two secretary/clerks (greffiers) 18,100 State secretaries and their employees 12,000 The controller general of finances 3,000 The Estates' master of music 3,000 The provincial agent in Paris 1,600 The Estates' interior decorator 1,000

The crown also rewarded the Estates with a share of the provincial adminis? tration. The series H1 of National Archives contains the correspondence be? tween Versailles and Languedoc from 1774 to 1789. It shows that ministers corresponded with the intendant, the military governor, executive agents ofthe Estates known as syndics, the archbishop of Narbonne, and occasionally the count of Polignac, first baron of the Estates. Georges Fournier has noted that the crown granted the Estates a share of the administration of civil dioceses and communities of inhabitants. Administrative reports ofthe 1780s make clear that the Estates shared the administration of communities' debts and taxes with the intendant. Even sovereign courts could not force communities to pay debts without prior verification of these debts by the Estates and the intendant. The

royal council overturned rulings contrary to this regulation.32 According to a

royal ruling of 1787 concerning community woods,



Taxes are the first and principal task of communities ... For a community to be always capable of meeting this obligation ... it is necessary to facilitate the col? lection of revenue from common lands and resources that circumstances might offer the community to succeed in paying its tax burden. We have aimed all the regulations ... for the administration of local taxes in Languedoc toward this goal. These regulations are the work of a commission composed of the intendant and the Estates to which jurisdiction of all that concerns community taxes ... is attri- buted ... 33

The Estates of Languedoc and the Seigneurial Regime

The crown's growing reliance on the financial capacity of the Estates had a bearing on the seigneurial regime. Fournier has noted that the syndics of the Estates sought to put an end to rulings of the Parlement of Toulouse on seigneurial rights.34 Communities had less negotiable income with which to pay their tax quotas when lords scrupulously calculated dues, curtailed use-rights and imposed fines. The central administration had to see to the security of the tax base underwriting provinciai debt. Thus, when communities had sufficient resolve and resources to inform the intendant or a syndic ofthe Estates of rulings they thought were unjust, the intendant or syndic would often have the local court overruled and the grievances redressed. The intendant had his sub-delegate review a case from Sainte-Eulalie in 1776. The sub-delegate overruled a decision of a lawyer of the Parlement, who, as arbitrator, had entitled the largest local landowner, an agent de change of Carcassonne, to assert property rights over village common land. The royal council overruled the Parlement in 1783 and switched the burden of proving the validity or invalidity of tithes on new crops and menus grains such as millet from communities to tithe collectors. Calonne wrote to the intendant in 1784 that the marquis de Nerestang had failed to comply with a ruling of the royal council granting him only three months to present titles to a levy on grain sold at the market of St.-Didier in the diocese of Le Puy. The next year, inhabitants of Berat, a village in the diocese of Rieux, appealed a judgment obliging each one of them to go individually before M. Dufaur-Coaraze and make a new declaration of recognition (reconnaissance). In granting the peasants' request, the royal council argued that it was saving them money and workdays, and was sparing them a vexatious procedure. On two separate occasions, 1783 in Fanjeaux and 1787 in Marvejols, towns in the dioceses of Mirepoix and Mende respectively, the royal council restored property to peasants whom lords had expropriated through rulings of the Parlement. In 1786, the grand-prieur, lord of Fronton, a community near Toulouse, abandoned his effort to use the judiciary to influence the election of consuls, when the intendant allowed the community to prepare a legal challenge and take out loans for this purpose.35

Royal decisions in favor of communities tainted nobles' prestige. Peasants of Villasavary held a joyous public celebration of the triumph of liberty in 1784, when the royal council overruled the Parlement of Toulouse and stripped dame Rouch de Zebel of seigneurial rights. Zebel and her fellow lords ofthe Lauragais must have been mortified. The royal council overruled the Parlement in similar cases involving seigneurial rights in St.-Thibery, Bedarieux, Bezousse, St.-Felix,



and Le Cailar between 1775 and 1787. When peasants of Pouget, a community in the diocese of Beziers, asked the Parlement in 1785 to review its judgment granting the vicomte d'Alzon seigneurial rights, the case excited interest be? yond the locality. Alzon reported to his peers in the judiciary, "Vanity and ca- price ... have spread the spirit of insubordination ... the first Consul has too often forgotten the regards he owes his lord ..." When the Parlement con? firmed its prior ruling, the community appealed the case to the royal council and obtained a ruling in 1787 that Alzon had no right to impose his choice of consul. The syndic ofthe Estates of Languedoc then intervened in the affair and advised the royal council to broaden its verdict. It thereupon issued a new ruling specifying that the community did not have to inform Alzon before holding as? semblies, present him registers of deliberations, nor grant him a key to archives containing the compoix. The royal council ordered Alzon to refund all of the community's legal costs. This ruling prompted Resseguier, procureur general of the Parlement, to write to the controller general in 1787.

The Estates of Languedoc have long planned to establish a new hierarchy in the judicial order, raise a wall of separation against the Tribunal of the Laws, and emancipate communities composing the jurisdiction of the Parlement. Various rulings of the royal council, granted upon requests of the syndic of the Estates of the province, without hearing arguments to the contrary, have consolidated this plan progressively and insensibiy.

This complaint had little effect, for according to a decision ofthe royal council in 1788 in favor ofthe peasants of St-Michel-de-Vax, a community in the Albigeois,

Although we have prohibited the Parlement of Toulouse and all other courts and judges of the province from hearing cases pitting communities against officers of seigneurial justice, this court has nonetheless continued to hear cases and rule in favor of lords and their officers ... Although we had made all prior rulings on the express orders of His Majesty to his procureur-general ofthe Parlement of Toulouse, with prohibition to render such judgments in the future, this court has still ruled in favor of the sieurs de la Combe.

The crown took other measures to make the scales of justice less weighted against the peasantry. It organized a committee of lawyers to work under the intendant and give communities free advice on the feasibility of initiating liti? gation. The goal was to prevent communities from going into debt over costly legal battles. The intendant recognized that judges would oppose this committee, because it would reduce the volume of litigation passing through their courts. Less litigation meant fewer fees and less ofthe intangible satisfaction of render- ing justice in the king's name. The intendant especially feared that Toulousain lawyers would be unhappy to see their caseloads diminish and would induce the Parlement to oppose the committee of lawyers. The committee even gave the intendant advice about legal affairs of Toulouse. According to registers of the Hdtel de Ville from September 1786:

A council composed of citizens who were the most recommendable for their integrity and their wisdom administered the city ... Deputies of the Parlement headed this council and the most famous lawyers were among its members ...



Would it be fair? Would it be reasonable? To subordinate the decisions of this council to the personal sentiments of a few lawyers in whom the intendant is obliged to have confidence.38

The Central Administration and local office holders

David Bien has argued that venal offices were major sources of royal revenue. He analyzed the crown's practice of selling offices and then demanding that the office holders invest additional capital in their offices in exchange for higher re? turns on this capital and protection of their exclusive prerogatives. These types of dealings allowed the crown to raise revenue quickly in times of dire need.39 They were common under Louis XIV, and Louis XVI continued to raise loans through administrative corps such as the Estates of Languedoc. Yet borrowing on the credit of owners of offices was not very common in the last decades of the Old Regime and disappeared altogether with regards to office holders in the judiciary. Indeed, ministers came to see venal judges as obstacles rather than channels for raising revenue. Parlementaires were exempt from the gabelle, re? ceiving enough untaxed salt for themselves and their acquaintances. The city of Toulouse reimbursed sales tax (octroi) collected on consumer goods of the first president ofthe Parlement. Parlementaires presided over the political council of the Hotel de Ville, which brought together lawyers, capitouh, office holders ofthe senechaussee and fiscal officials. Parlementaires influenced the choice ofthe eight capitouh serving at the head ofthe municipal administration. Admission into the capitoulat was a momentous event for lawyers, procureurs and merchants of the Third Estate, for in addition to authority, the post also conferred nobility. Capi? touh consequently performed elaborate displays of deference for parlementaires and submitted to their judgment in municipal affairs.40

Reports and letters sent between the Estates, the intendant, the sub-delegate and the ministry, suggest that the city government wasted tax revenue and did not maintain infrastructure and public hygiene. Policy makers believed that attenuating the overblown influence ofthe Parlement and assuring a more equi- table representation ofthe different classes of inhabitants would better serve the crown's interests. Royal edicts of 1778 and 1783 loosened the Parlement's grip on municipal affairs. They expanded the municipal councils to include notables, bourgeois, canons, the archbishop and vicars. These figures were not nearly as beholden to the Parlement as were lawyers. The edicts stipulated that the eight capitouh belong to three classes of inhabitants: two gentihhommes, two former capitouh, and four lawyers, doctors, notaries, merchants, or bourgeois. Policy makers knew that introducing nobles into the capitoulat would create partners at the head of the city government. Gentihhommes capitouh had to work with the intendant and the ministry if they were to preserve their honor and not suc- cumb to the tutelage ofthe Parlement. The edicts stripped parlementaires ofthe presidency of municipal councils and gave it to a capitoul of the first or second class. The Parlement complained in 1783 that it had not been asked to verify that the edicts conformed to local customs. It argued,

Not to cry out against edicts, which change permanent establishments, would precipitate moderate government into despotism, not that of the prince, but of



the lower orders, despotism more harsh and degrading, which would suffocate all sentiment of virtue, patriotism, and public good in his subjects' souls.41

Reform of the municipal government allowed the Estates of Languedoc to receive more taxes from Toulouse. The municipality had traditionally kept a common treasury for patrimonial revenues and direct taxes. A deliberation ofthe Estates in 1782 objected to the municipal tax receiver's reliance on patrimonial revenue to meet the city's quota. He took out loans to pay the diocese tax receiver while allowing time for patrimonial revenue to enter his treasury. The receiver treated taxpayers as delicately as possible and permitted them to fall into arrears. The syndic of the Estates reported to Versailles in 1783 that parlementaires set a bad example, paying their taxes eighteenth months, and sometimes even two years late. The Parlement allowed the municipal receiver to collect six deniers for each livre, a particularly high fee, so that he would consent to these practices. An edict of 1783 reformed municipal finances by separating treasuries for taxes and patrimonial revenues into two distinct offices, reducing the receiver's fees, and obliging him to submit taxes directly to the treasurer of the Estates.42

The central administration showed even less respect for the Cour des Comptes, Aides et Finances of Montpellier. Magistrates of this court enjoyed a rank in lower Languedoc similar to that of parlementaires in upper Languedoc. They received untaxed salt and paid the highest capitation tax in the city apart from the treasurer ofthe Estates. The central administration encroached upon their right to settle financial disputes, their principal jurisdiction, in the latter part ofthe eighteenth century. Taxes in southern France were allocated according to records known as compoix, which listed land itself as common or noble regardless ofthe status ofthe owner. Nobles had to pay taxes for their non-privileged land. As we have seen, hundreds of rulings ofthe Parlement of Toulouse gave lords keys to community archives containing compoix. Access to these records allowed lords to use their influence with local authorities to change the status of their lands. Privileged land thrust an additional part of village tax quotas on other properties, squeezing each

peasant household and threatening villages' overall ability to pay. Communities therefore had an interest in redrafting compoix and forcing proprietors to show their titles. They rewrote over a quarter of all Languedocien compoix between 1700 and 1789. Redrafting compoix engendered much litigation at the Cour des Comptes, Aides et Finances. Inhabitants of Fabregues, a community in the diocese of Montpellier, updated their compoix in 1776 and asked proprietors to

prove the status of their noble land. While several proprietors saw their land included in the compoix, the countess of Bassy turned to the Cour des Comptes, Aides et Finances to dispute the inclusion of her scrublands (garrigues). Although the court ruled that the scrublands were not privileged, fines it placed on the

community for overtaxing them were of such a magnitude, an annual annuity of over five-hundred livres, that the countess actually profited at the expense of the community.43

These types of rulings led the intendant to try to lay hold of the Cour des Comptes, Aides et Finances's jurisdiction over tax assessments. Controlling this branch of administration would also allow the intendant to do away with a fee

charged by the court each time it registered a compoix and verify that fees charged by land surveyors did not plunge communities into debt. Matters came to a head


journal of social history summer 2003

in 1784, when the president of the Cour des Comptes, Aides et Finances, M. de Claris, informed the controller general that his court refused to register an edict concerning the drafting of compoix. The court remonstrated that the edict did away with the last vestiges of its authority despite solemn pledges of previous kings. It modified the edict to preserve its prerogatives several months later. The controller general tried to put an end to the dispute by having the chancellor overrule the court and undo its modifications. Yet the Cour des Comptes, Aides et Finances continued to judge disputes over taxation. It ruled in 1786 that land near the chapel of Notre Dame de Vals belonging to the sieur Ranbaud, priest of Ginestas, a parish in the diocese of Narbonne, be exempt from the taille. The intendant helped the community and consuh bring the case to the royal council, which issued an overruling in 1788. According to the overruling, the intendant was to insure that the land not enjoy privileges, that it contribute to all community taxes and that Ranbaud reimburse all of the community's legal expenses.44

Languedocien politics 1788-1789

Friction between the central administration and the upper classes of Langue? doc culminated in 1788 during the penultimate meeting of the Estates. The Estates tried to help the crown weather its budget crisis by agreeing to raise a loan of twelve million Uvres. The Estates also agreed to prolong the second vingtieme and raise the yield almost thirty per cent by requiring proprietors to make new declarations of their revenue. These projects were not easy to im- plement, because the royal will only became law when office holders of the sovereign courts wrote it into the law books, an act known as registration. This right allowed office holders to monitor the drift of royal policy. Like their coun? terparts in other provinces, the Parlement and the Cour des Comptes, Aides et Finances did not register the edict extending the second vingtieme and prohibited the ordinance stipulating that proprietors make new declarations of their revenue. The Cour des Comptes, Aides et Finances published a remonstrance in February 1788 singling out the Estates for criticism. It stated that members of the Estates profited from provinciai taxes, spent vast sums on luxury items, and did not represent the three orders ofthe province. A month later, the Parlement issued a remonstrance containing similar denunciations.45 Shortly after issuing this remonstrance, the Cour des Comptes, Aides et Finances and the Parlement, along with the other sovereign courts of the realm, were suppressed. While the public was in an uproar, the Estates of Languedoc remained silent.46

The sovereign courts intensified the political campaign upon their restoration in the fall of 1788. The Cour des Comptes, Aides et Finances published a statement in December 1788, "that a century of reason and justice must no longer allow the spirit of barbarism and superstition to subsist..." The court avowed itself "terrified by the rapid pace at which this imperfect constitution [of the Estates] has proceeded toward the last degree of degeneration." It labeled the archbishop of Narbonne a "despot".47 Individual nobles and magistrates published a dozen pamphlets denouncing the Estates of Languedoc over the course of 1788 and the beginning of 1789. These protests sparked over sixty assemblies of nobles, clergymen and leaders ofthe Thirds Estate, typically meeting together, between



the end of 1788 and the beginning of 1789. Like the pamphleteers, these assem? blies published their deliberations in a bid to sway the reading public. Writings generally called for a new provincial constitution, which would ensure sound financial management and representation for the three orders. Gentilshommes of the diocese of Narbonne, for example, published a letter entreating, "his Majesty to accord his people of Languedoc a provisional convocation of deputies of the three orders, freely and legally elected in their localities, and authorized to draft a system of constitutional provincial estates ... "48

Protests gained momentum in the spring of 1789 as thousands of cahiers de doleances denounced the Estates. Nobles ofthe senechaussee of Velay demanded, "The Estates of Languedoc, formed by ignorance and usurpation, and having degenerated into despotism, must be replaced by provincial Estates in which the three orders have legally elected representatives." They stipulated that this was the one demand their deputies to the Estates-General could not sacrifice to the general interests of the nation.49 According to the minutes of the assembly of the nobility of the senechaussee of Beziers,

The existence ofthe current administration qualifying itself the Estates of Langue? doc has profoundly injured the honor ofthe nobility; the nobility's civil existence is unrecognized, and its liberty annihilated ... Twenty-three Gentilshommes sup- plant and push out ofthe way the entire nobility of twenty-three dioceses ... They dare dispose of the property of all ... and do not fear maintaining possession of what is as abusive as it is unjust by smothering protests ofthe dispersed nobility ... The first article ofthe cahier will develop this most essential grievance to obtain ... truly constitutional estates ... composed of deputies from each order and freely elected in each diocese.

A decade and a half of friction between the Estates of Languedoc and the nobility underlay this political agitation. The Estates had not only permitted ministers to promulgate policies, which infringed upon the authority of lords and magistrates, but had also actually prompted ministers to develop these policies. Cahiers de doleances attest to nobles' attachment to rights of lords and office holders. John Markoff's statistical analysis of cahiers affirms that nobles rarely broached the subject "feudalism", because such a discussion could only work to their disadvantage. On those rare occasions when nobles did treat the issue, they usually complained of usurpations of privileges such as honorific seats in church and the right to wear a sword.51 Languedocien cahiers of the Second Estate did actually address "feudal" issues. The nobility of the senechaussee of Beziers asked the king to uphold seigneurial privileges as "the most sacred form of property". Nobles of the senechaussee of Carcassonne argued that positive laws and the most ancient possessions validated privileges attached to noble fiefs. "The nobility [of Montpellier], Sire, begs you again to reject all requests which would tend to destroy or modify property relative to feudal or seigneurial rights, be they real or honorific. The nobility does not intend to renounce them." The Second Estate of Toulouse stated that peasants should not participate in the election of seigneurial officers. Nobles were just as concerned about the rights of office holders. Nobles of Velay demanded "that no citizens invested with a civil or military office be deprived without a legal judgment: that the Estates-General form a tribunal charged with pronouncing on all dismissals and



those that may have been illegally pronounced ..." The cahier of the nobility of Montpellier asked his majesty to put an end to violations of the judicial order, namely overrulings of local courts and reforms reducing the number and competence of office holders. The cahier stated that the nobility was distinguished by its zeal for serving his majesty and was destined to protect the national spirit. It argued that noble privileges were "singularly appropriate to monarchical government." The nobility of the senechaussee of Toulouse stated that "All illegal evocation of litigation ... [and] overrulings by the royal council should no longer occur under any circumstances. The officers of [the Parlement] ... will once again be declared irremovable ..." Nobles of Castres and Carcassonne also stated that evocations of litigation from local courts to the royal council were unconstitutional.52

Conclusion

State offices, then, were central to the economic and political interests of the upper classes, and especially the nobility. Peasants owned between twenty and seventy percent of the soil of Languedoc, depending on the region, and worked the rest of it as sharecroppers. While textile production began to concentrate in factories in the second half ofthe eighteenth century, the overwhelming major? ity of industry remained in the households of peasants and rural artisans. Nobles and bourgeois depended on extra-economic coercion to appropriate this mass of resources controlled by common subjects. State offices gave them the author? ity to compel peasants and artisans to surrender the resources of the province. All office holders, whether noble or bourgeois, were landowners. It was there? fore only natural for them to invest landlords with legal authority to enforce levies, appropriate disputed properties, and hold political and honorific rights on the village level. Offices also provided their owners with lucrative gages from the king and fees from other subjects. Honorific ceremonies in villages and law courts celebrated the rank of lords and magistrates. The right of registration al? lowed office holders in the judiciary to defend prerogatives and tax exemptions of local elites. Financial difficulties of the last decade of the Old Regime led the monarchy to tamper with elites' entrenched positions in local government. Ministers' use ofthe credit ofthe Estates of Languedoc to obtain funds stretched the provinciai budget to the limit and induced the intendant and the Estates to try to protect resources underwriting the debt. They could only obtain un- encumbered access to these resources by infringing upon office holders' rights. Thus, in a series of high-profile confrontations, the central administration and the Estates overturned magistrates' rulings, curtailed jurisdictions of lords and office holders, and suppressed the sovereign courts during the 1770s and 1780s.

Such policies seem to confirm Tocqueville's thesis that administrative centralization disrupted the bonds of feudal society, undermined hierarchy and corporate privileges, and enabled the crown to hold the nation in thrall. By dispossessing nobles, clergymen and magistrates of the ability to command respect for their privileges, the monarchy nurtured a civil society averse to all signs of inequality and unwittingly contributed to its own demise. Following Tocqueviile, we could conclude that royal policy showed many elites the evanescence of their exclusive rights and imbued subjects with irreverence for honors and privileges. The



movement joining the three orders of Languedoc in a common call for a new provincial constitution and representative estates could be seen as evidence ofa political culture in which the educated classes interacted on the basis of common ideals, not corporate privileges.53

Other elements of our analysis show that the monarchy did not centralize authority to the extent Tocqueville supposed. Financial practices were anything but modern and bureaucratic. The monarchy alienated the right to collect taxes on every revenue-generating resource it could identify. Tax farmers' collection methods, subject to no bureaucratic control but their own, aroused the ire of merchants and artisans of Languedocien towns. Financial difficulties tended to exacerbate this tendency rather than generate pressure for reform. Ministers' desperate search for sources of credit led them to strengthen the most aristocratic and traditional body in the province, the Estates of Languedoc. Moreover, our evidence shows that administrative centralization had a long way to go before it would come to the end of venal judges' authority and remove lords from village affairs. The Cour des Comptes, Aides et Finances and the Parlement issued far too many rulings in favor of lords for the royal council to overturn them all. Indeed, it appears that lords actually exercised more authority over communities in the 1780s than in the 1730s. Even the crown's efforts to strip the Parlement of its influence over Toulouse, and the Cour des Comptes Aides et Finances of its jurisdiction over tax assessments, were inconclusive. These courts held fast to their jurisdictions down to the end of the 1780s.

Our analysis makes clear that inequality was intrinsic to the Old Regime. The absolutist state generally protected property, which included nobles' right to independent authority, both as lords and office holders. The monarchy still upheld laws guaranteeing an unequal distribution of taxes despite policies in? tended to make elites shoulder more of the burden. Nobles were the primary beneficiaries of these old regime customs and could defend them by virtue ofthe sovereign courts' right of registration. It appears that these legally binding forms of inequality ultimately caused bourgeois to turn against nobles and absolutism in 1789. Works of Colin Lucas and George Comninel, which have synthesized much ofthe literature appearing since the 1960s, are two ofthe most influential interpretations of the conflict between nobles and bourgeois to emerge in the last few decades. They both argue that well-to-do commoners, many of whom enjoyed privileges and held offices, turned against the nobility when it seemed that the Estates-General would solidify privileges and cement their subordinate station within the upper classes.54 The inequality embedded in absolutist insti? tutions was also responsible for the popular revolts of the revolutionary period. Tocqueville argued that the central government, working through the intendants, had extended its tentacles so thoroughly over the countryside that nobles and well-to-do commoners no longer played a role in the administration of communities. Local elites abandoned the countryside for towns and had little contact with the peasantry. Privileges were all that remained to nobles of their former status as feudal lords. Tocqueville maintained that the rural population became resentful of privileges when it saw no authority sustaining and justifying their existence.55 Our research reveals more social intercourse between villagers and the upper classes than Tocqueville believed. Peasants and rural artisans did not necessarily need royal centralization to expose the injustice of privilege.



They bore the onus of seigneurial rights, office holders' exactions, and honorific ceremonies. Common subjects confronted the reality of inequality on a daily basis.

Tocqueville's apprehension about administrative centralization was not en? tirely different from local elites' fear of despotism. Tocqueville argued that the magistracy preserved conventions and formalities, which were "so many obsta? cles to royal absolutism."56 Languedocien nobles genuinely feared that royal ministers were ruling arbitrarily. They saw themselves as the first servitors of the king, expected to manage local affairs in his name and share his prestige. The central administration troubled these assumptions in the 1770s and 1780s by censuring the rights of lords and magistrates in the full view of the public. If the central administration was able to flout rights of the king's leading sub? jects, what limits did its power know? Like any ruling class, nobles associated their own liberty with that of society as a whole. Yet anxiety about despotism was not the result of a veritable impetus absorbing all power toward the center. While the laws of the realm generally upheld nobles' right to autonomous au? thority, both as magistrates and lords, the actual locus of decision-making was not subject to their direct control. Under exceptional circumstances, such as the financial straits ofthe 1780s, which drove the Estates of Languedoc to the brink of bankruptcy, the crown could enact aberrant policies. Nobles undoubtedly as- similated doctrines current in the eighteenth century promoting representative government, responsible finances, the inviolability of private property, and an independent judiciary. Representative provinciai estates would give the Third Estate the political voice all enlightened Frenchmen believed it deserved. Be- sides, involving the upper Third Estate in political affairs would make the regime more stable. Above all, nobles sought a provinciai administration responsive to their concerns and capable of resisting the perceived despotism emanating from Versailles.

Department of History Birmingham, AL 35294-3350

ENDNOTES

1. Georges Lefebvre, The Coming ofthe French Revolution, tr. R. R. Palmer (Princeton, 1947) 14, 16, 140; Lefebvre, Les paysans du Nord (Lille, 1924), 157-171. 2. Alfred Cobban, "The Myth of the French Revolution" in Aspects of the French Revo? lution (New York, 1968), 96-97; George V. Taylor, "Noncapitalist Wealth and the Origins ofthe French Revolution," American Historical Review 72 (1967); Denis Richet, "Autours des origines ideologiques lointaines de la Revolution Francaise: Elites et despotisme," Annales xxiv (1969); Guy Chaussinand-Nogaret, La noblesse du XVUle siecle: De lafeodalite auxLumieres (Paris, 1976). 3. Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the French Revolution, tr. Stuart Gilbert (New York, 1955); Jiirgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation ofthe Public Sphere, tr. Thomas Burger (Cambridge, MA, 1989). Leading works inspired by Tocqueville and Habermas are Dale K. Van Kley, The Damiens Affair and the Unravelling of the Ancien Regime, 1750-1770 (Princeton, 1984); David Bell, Lawyers and Citizens: the Mahingofa Political EUte in Old Regime France (Oxford, 1994); Roger Chartier, The Cultural Origins of



the French Revolution tr. Lydia Cochrane (Durham, 1991); Sarah Maza, Private Lives and Public Affairs: the Causes Celebres of Prerevolutionary France (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1993).

4. Perry Anderson, Lineages ofthe Absolutist State (London, 1974), 18-20,47-8,54-55, 97. Louis Althusser was the most influential proponent ofthe concept of extra-economic coercion. ForMarx, tr. Ben Brewster (London, 1969) and Politics andHistory: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Hegel and Marx, tr. Ben Brewster (London, 1970). 5. Robert Brenner, "Agrarian Class Struggle and Economic Development in Pre? industrial Europe," Past and Present 70 (1976). Brenner has developed this comparison in the postscript of Merchants and Revolution (Princeton, 1993). 6. William Beik, Absolutism and Society in Seventeenth-Century France (Cambridge, 1985), 4, 13, 331,335-337; James Coilins, The Fiscal Limits of Absolutism (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1988), 111,122,136,144,146,155,164,214;RobertDescimon,C.Jouhaud, La France dupremierXVIIe siecle 1594-1661 (Paris, 1996), 78,155,173,189-190. Other leading works which have helped establish that royal authority was tied to the interests of the noble class are Pierre Goubert, D. Roche, Lesfrancais et VAncien Regime (Paris, 1984); Daniel Dessert, Argent, pouvoir, etsocieteau Grand Siecle (Paris, 1984); David Parker, The Making of French Absolutism (Cambridge, 1983). 7. Data in this table come from Georges Brunet, Les campagnes toulousaines: Etude geographique (Toulouse, 1965), 356; Albert Soboul, Les campagnes montpellierainesalafin de VAncien Regime (Montpellier, 1958), 23,38; Leon Dutil, L'etat economique du Languedoc dlafinde VAncien Regime (Paris, 1911), 71; Alain Molinier, Stagnations et croissance: Le Vivarais aux XVIIe-XVIIfe siecles (Paris, 1985), 160.

8. Georges Freche, Toulouse et la region midi-Pyrenees au siecle des Lumieres vers 1670- 1789 (Paris, 1974), 45, 64, 163, 166, 248; Georges Brunet, Les campagnes toulousaines, 152-153,154-157, 324, 332-333, 343, 356-357, 360-361; Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, The Peasants of Languedoc, tr. John Day (Urbana and Chicago, 1974), 248-250. Leon Dutil also believed that the Languedocien soil, including the Toulousain, was broken into thousands of parcels. L'etat economique du Languedoc, 70-72. The population of Languedoc grew from between 21.6 percent in the Vivarais between 1734 and 1780 and 67 percent in the Montpellierain between 1750 and 1789. This rate of growth was superior to that obtaining in the rest of France. Soboul, Campagnes montpellieraines, 44; Molinier, Stagnations et croissance, 233; Georges Fournier and Michel Peronnet, La Revolution dans le departement de VAude (Le Coteau, 1989), 85. For the relationship between population growth and labor intensive work on maize and vineyards see Paul Mercadal, Mmtastruc-La-ConseiUere et ses environs (Montastruc-La-Conseillere, 1973), 148-149 and Emile Gigou, Les conquerants de la costiere (Paris, 1981), 52-54, 60, 67.

9. Comparing reports of the intendants Baville (1697) and Ballainvillier (1788) shows that the total value of industrial output increased from 18,393,000 to 30,170,000 livres. Guillaume Geraud-Parracha, Le commerce des vins et des eaux-de-vie en Languedoc sous VAncien Regime (Montpellier, 1955), 3-4; Remy Cazals, Les revolutions industrielles a Mazamet (Toulouse, 1983); Archives Departementales de l'Herault (hereafter A.D. H.) C2599; J.K.J. Thomson, Clermont-de-Lodeve 1633-1789: Fluctuations in the Prosperity of a Languedocien Cbth-Making Town (Cambridge, 1982), 432-433, 435; Marcel Gournon, Les etapes de Vhistoire de Nimes (Nfmes, 1939), 113, 121; Christopher H. Johnson, The Ufe and Death of Industrial Languedoc, 1700-1920 (Oxford, 1995), 9-13; Pierre Bozon, Le vie rurak en Vivarais: ?tude geographique (Valence-Sur-Rhone, 1963), 144; Dutil, L'etat economique du Languedoc, 291.

10. Data in these tables come from Archives Parlementaires lre serie, t. IX discours du 24 septembre 1789; A.D. H. C45; Freche, Toulouse et la region midi-Pyrenees, 507-508, 512, 524; Molinier, Stagnations et croissance, 152, 154-155; Pierre Rascol, Les paysans de



I'Albigeois alafindel'Ancien Regime (Auriilac, 1961), 128,227; Robert Forster, The NobiUty of Toulouse in the Eighteenth-Century (Baltimore, 1960), 50; Jean Bastier, Lafeodahte au siicle des Lumieres dans la region de Toulouse (1730-1790) (Paris, 1975), 260, 309; Jean Cazanave, La transition revolutionnaire aBelpech (Toulouse, 1989), 14, 20, 57.

11. Nicole Castan, Les crimineh de Languedoc: Les exigences d'ordre et les voies du ressen- timentdans une societe pre-revolutionnaire (1750-1790) (Toulouse, 1980), 112. For the as? sembly in Montpellier see Jean-Pierre Donnadieu ed., Etats Generaux de 1789: Senechaus- sees de Beziers et Montpellier (Proces Verbaux et cahiers de doUances) (Maurin, 1989), 517- 529; Archives Departementales de la Haute-Garonne (hereafter A.D. H.G.) 1 L 548; M. l'Abbe G.B. Morere, Histoire de Smnt-FeUx-de-Caraman: Baronnie des ?tats de Languedoc: Premiere ville maitresse du diocese de Toulouse (Toulouse and Paris, 1899), 104; Paul de Casteras, La societe Toulousaine alafindu dix-huitieme siecle (Toulouse, 1891), 15.

12. Archives Nationaies (hereafter A.N.) Hl/748/180, Hl/940, Hl/942/2, Hl/1054, Hl/1063; Archives Departementales de l'Aude (A.D. A.) 5 C 9; Archives Municipales de Toulouse (A.M. T.) AA312; A.D. H.G. B1866; A.D. H. C959, C2340; "Memoire particulier que presentent au Roy toutes les communautes en corps de la Val de Dagne, dans le diocese de Carcassonne, et notamment d'Arquettes en lad(ite) vallee, le 15 mars 1789," in Gilbert Larguier ed., Cahiers de doUances Audois (Carcassonne, 1989), 368- 370; Freche, Toulouse et la region midi-Pyrenees, 537-538; Jean-Marie Negri, Poussan en Languedoc: Nos seigneurs et notre histoire (Nimes, 1988), 67-71; Francoise Sabatie, "Stag? nation demographique, reaction seigneuriale et mouvements revolutionnaires dans la region de Toulouse: Le cas de Buzet-sur-Tarn," Annales Ustoriques de la Revolution Fran? coise 204 (1971), 190-193; Emile Appolis, "Une iongue querelle au sujet des droits d'usage," Annales historiques de la Revolution Francoise 120 (1950), 353-354; Jean Puget, Tolairan en Corbieres (Perpignan, 1990), 143; Julien Yche, Etude historique sur Gruissan (Quillan, 1985), 72, 75-77; R. Terrenq, La vie communale a Baziege (Toulouse, 1970), 60- 62,64-67,68;Ca&tan,JmticeetrepressionenLanguedocdl'epoquedesLumieres (Paris, 1980) 69,78-80,154; Castan, "Les rivalites a l'interieur des communautes rurales en Languedoc a la fin du XVHIe siecle," Etudes sur I'Herault 4-5 (1982), 16; Claude Marquie, L'industrie textile Carcassonnaise au XVIIIe siecle. Etude d'un groupe social: Les marchanh-fabriquants (Roumac, 1993), 248; Henri Bru, La Revolution dans le Tarn (AM, 1989), 17; Peter McPhee, Revolution and Environment in Southern France (Oxford, 1999), 22,56; Abbe A. Delouvrier, Histoire de Paulhan etdeses environs, sous I'Ancien Regime (Montpellier, 1892), 211; Delouvrier, Histoire de la vicomte d'Aumelas etdela baronnie du Pouget (Millau, 1990), 222 (first published in Montpellier in 1896); Rene Amanieu, "Une personalite de la fin du XVIIIe siecle: Philippe Picot, seigneur de Lapeyrouse," Annales du Midi 71 (1959), 146, 148, 176-177; Bastier, Lafeodahte, 56-57; Fournier, Democratie et vie munkipak en Languedoc du milieu de XVllle au debut du XIXe siecle (Toulouse, 1994), Tome 1, 275-276, 314; Fournier, "Communautes rurales en Bas Languedoc au XVIIIe siecle," in Communautes du Sud: Contribution a I'anthropologie des collectivites rurales occitanes, ed. Daniel Fabre and Jacques Lacroix (Paris, 1975), 339; Edna Hindie Lemay, Dictionnaire des constituants (Paris, 1991) (listing for Cerise-Francois-Melchoir, comte de Vogiie); Rascol, Les paysans de I'Albigeois, 107; G. Saumade, Fabregues 1650-1792 (Montpellier, 1908), 79-80, 417-419, 442-455, 555; Adrien Escudier, Histoire de Fronton et du Frontonnais (Toulouse, 1905), 198-200; Gigou, Les conquerants de la costiere, 86-87; Gigou, Une cite au pays d'Oc de Posquieres a Vauvert (Paris, 1978), 107-108, 120-121; Antoine Grenier, Florensac a travers les ages (Beziers, 1964), 45; Andre Negre, Histoire de mon village: Sainte- Eulalie ?aux Bois* (Caen, 1970), 191, 214-216, 234-235; E G. Laffon, Histoire de Soint- Orens-de-Gameville (Paris, 1992), 53; Etienne Griilou, Verfeil en Toulousain (Toulouse, 1979), 32-33.

13. The price of grain rose more rapidly in Languedoc than it did in France as a whole. Freche, Toulouse et la region midi-Pyrenees, 692. For wood prices see Fernand Braudel and Ernest Labrousse, eds., Histoire economique et sociale de la France, vol. II, (Paris, 1970), 479. For viticulture see L'Intendant Ballainvilliers, Memoires sur le Languedoc suivi du Traite



sur le commerce en Languedoc (Montpellier, 1989), 278-279. (The work was originally written in 1788).

14. A.D. H.G. B 1859.

15. Bastier, La feodalite, 286; Yves Castan, "Attitudes et motivations dans les conflits entre seigneurs et communautes devant le Parlement de Toulouse au XVIIIe siecle," in Villes de VEurope Mediterraneenne et de VEurope occidentale du Moyen Age au XIXe siecle: Actes du Colloque de Nice (27-28 Mars 1969), 233.

16. James C. Riley, The Seven Years War and the Old Regime in France: The Economic and Financial Toll (Princeton, 1986), 234.

17. For grievances in the cahiers de doleances, see Donnadieu ed., Etats Generaux de 1789. Marcel Marion's calculation of what each inhabitant paid in pays de petite gabelle, multiplied by the population of Languedoc yields the approximate product ofthe gabelle. From this figure, we subtracted the total of what the king received from the gabelle and the total costs of collecting this sum in Languedoc. Histoire financiere de la France depuis 1715 (Paris, 1927), tome I, 17-18. For the costs of collecting the gabelle see A.D. H.G. 1 L 701. For the lessees ofthe gabelle see Henri Michel, "Herault," in Grands notables du Premier Empire, ed. Louis Bergeron and Guy Chaussinand-Nogaret (Paris, 1980), 68, 70; Francois Rouviere, Histoire de la Revolution dans le departement du Gard (Nfmes, 1887), vol. I, 224; A.D. H.G. C365; A.D. H. B44.

18. For the costs of the lease see A.D. H.G. C2424, C2430. For those who leased the equivalent see A.D. H. A125. For the cahiers see Donnadieu ed., Etats Generaux de 1789. For the profits of the entire lease see evidence in Jacques Vidal, Lequivalent des aides en Languedoc (Montpellier, 1963), 305-306,343-344; A.D. H.G. C2386; Saumade, Fabregues, 514; Geraud-Parracha, Le commerce des vins, 187, 214.

19. For finances of the Toulousain octroi see Edmond Lamouzele, Essai sur Vadministration de la ville de Toulouse alafinde VAncien Regime (1783-1790) (Paris, 1910), 17, 23. For the acquirers and personnel of this tax farm see Monique Gebhart and Claude Mercadier, Loctroi de Toulouse a la veille de la Revolution (Paris, 1967), 18, 138-140. For comment about fortunes built on the octroi of Montpellier see "Montpellier en 1760", 80. For the octrois of Carcassonne and Beaucaire see A.D. A. B78; A.D. H. B44.

20. For the magistrate who held an office in the domains and woods see Pierre Vialles, ?tudes historiques sur la cour des comptes, aides et finances de Montpellier d'apres des archives privees (Montpellier, 1921), 83; Cazals, Les revolutions industrielles a Mazamet, 36-37. For the cahiers see Donnadieu ed., Etats Generaux de 1789. The other tax-collecting offices are found in "Montpellier en 1760", 75-76.

21. A.N. Hl/9441; Jean Sentou, Fortunes et groupes sociaux a Toulouse sous la R

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