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 Languedoc
Author(s): Stephen Miller

Source: Journal of Social History, Vol. 36, No. 4 (Summer, 2003), pp. 871-898
Published by: Oxford University Press
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ABSOLUTISM
AND CLASS
AT THE END OF THE
THE CASE OF LANGUEDOC
OLD
REGIME:
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 resurwith a new
gence. He showed that lords levied dues on peasant communities
rigor to take advantage of rising prices during the second half ofthe eighteenthcentury.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?
and were the primary opponents of arbitrary
tions during the Enlightenment
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
of the monarchy is
that the king was a power unto himself. This conception
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
coercion at the end ofthe fourteenth-century
extra-economic
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 Richelieu 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
coercion to which their material
must examine mechanisms of extra-economic
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 analyzing 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
Parlement of Toulouse and the Cour des Comptes, Aides
the superior courts?the
the privileges and prerogatives of lords
et Finances of Montpellier?consecrated
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 raising 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

summer 2003
874
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
Region of Languedoc
Diocese of Toulouse
MontpeHierain
Village of Gratens in the diocese of Rieux
LeVivarais
Percentage of land
belongingto peasants
20
312 (57.3 in the garrigues
and 27.6 in the plain)
25
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 Emmanuel 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

ABSOLUTISM
AND CLASS
875
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
ofcivildn
,?.._Limil
SEA
MEDITERRANEAN
Industrial production evinced many of the same characteristics. Output in?

creased considerably, and towns such as Mazamet, Lodeve, Clermont-de-Lodeve,
hubs. Yet
Bedarieux, Carcassonne and Nfmes emerged as cloth-manufacturing
were
who
turned
to
at
times
ofthe
workers
essentially peasants
industry
year
many
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

876
summer 2003
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 rational 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. Languedocien 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
Seigneurialdues as a
percentage of their income
Group of Languedocien lords

Nobles of the Toulousain
Toulousain parlementaires
Ecclesiastics of the Toulousain and the Midi-Pyrenees
20 great families of the Lauragais
Region of Languedoc
Toulousain and the Midi-Pyrenees
Vivarais
Albigeois
Belpech
8-18.8
10
2-3
10
Dues as a percentage of direct taxes

18.7
10-15
23.8
13.8

ABSOLUTISM
AND CLASS
Region of Languedoc
877
Dues as a percentage
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
and M. de Resseguier, the procureur general, held
one in Saint-Felix-de-Caraman,
another on his domain of Secourieu in the Lauragais. Discussing lords' tendency
to augment levies and curtail peasant use-rights on common lands, Nicole Castan 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
in the singular collu?
was no more arbitrary than elsewhere, tithes apart?but
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
with Versailles, judicial records, and cases found in secondary
correspondence
set of rulings, it does
works. While the table does not present a comprehensive
show collaboration between lords and judicial bodies, including senechaussees,
the Parlement, Cour des Comptes, Aides et Finances, Bureau of Finances and eaux
etforets.12
Type of ruling in favor of lords 1750-1789
Obliging recognition of revised terriers and/or forcing peasants to pay dues
Asserting lords' propertyrights over common lands and/or restricting
peasants' use-rights
Granting lords poUticcdrights on the village level
Obliging peasants to pay fines
Granting lords honorific rights on the village level
Exempting lords from taxes or allowing them to consult tax rolls
Granting lords sole right to harvest grapes or sell wine during certain periods
Foreclosing on peasant tenures
Number of
rulings
18
13
10
9
7
6
5
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
Lords were able to use judicial
and take advantage of market opportunities.

878
summer 2003
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
1741-1756
1757-1773
1774-1789
Number of rulings
87
136
235

ABSOLUTISM
AND CLASS
879
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
overhead in England. Moreover, the burden weighing
greater than tax-collection
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,
of tax collection on the local level leads to a
suggests that an examination
different conclusion. One of the reasons so many rallied to the crown during
and eighteenth centuries was that it had the authority to levy
the seventeenth
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 subleased 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

880
summer 2003
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 twentythree 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-hundredthousand 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

ABSOLUTISM
AND CLASS
881
annual sum from the royal treasury for the capital invested in their offices (gages)
and collected fees from litigants.24
Corps ofLanguedocien office holders
Cour des Comptes, Aides et Finances of Montpellier
Bureaus of Finances of Toulouse and Montpellier
Parlement of Toulouse
Divers diocese office holders
Office holdersof senechaussees
Gages
318,810
163,179
156,008
25,403
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
Office holders of the Parlement
Office holders of the Cour des Comptes, Aides et Finances
Office holders of senechaussees
Barristersof Toulouse and Montpellier
Toulousain attorneys (procureurs)
Treasurersof France of the Bureaus of Finances
Director of the provincial provostship (p@evote generale)
Fees collected26
362,500-2,888,236
170,452
84,600
79,200
67,200
60,000
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.

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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

ABSOLUTISM
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in the American War of Independence

on
out to finance French involvement
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
Estates in the 1780s
Officials
Count of Perigord, militarygovernor of Languedoc,
his first and second secretaries
Dillon, the archbishopof Narbonne and president of the Estates
Deputies of the Estates
Arnvy officers: lieutenants, commanders, majors and governors
Intendant, sub-delegates, and personnel of the intendancy
Four directorsand inspectors of public works
Three general syndics (executive officers of the Estates)
Petits etates of Velay, Albi and Gevaudan
Two secretary/clerks(greffiers)
State secretaries and their employees
The controllergeneral of finances
The Estates' master of music
The provincial agent in Paris
The Estates' interior decorator
15 7,425
143,000
130,340
114,855
107,307
51,800
49,350
36,771
18,100
12,000
3,000
3,000
1,600
1,000
The crown also rewarded the Estates with a share of the provincial adminis?
be?
tration. The series H1 of National Archives contains the correspondence
tween Versailles and Languedoc from 1774 to 1789. It shows that ministers
corresponded with the intendant, the military governor, executive agents ofthe
the
Estates known as syndics, the archbishop of Narbonne, and occasionally
count of Polignac, first baron of the Estates. Georges Fournier has noted that
of civil dioceses
the crown granted the Estates a share of the administration
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,

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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 attributed ... 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,

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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... the first Consul has too
price ... have spread the spirit of insubordination
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
a community in the Albigeois,
1788 in favor ofthe peasants of St-Michel-de-Vax,
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-generalofthe 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 rendering 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 ...

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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 equitable 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 succumb 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

ABSOLUTISM
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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
land. As we have seen,
owner. Nobles had to pay taxes for their non-privileged
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

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 implement, 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

ABSOLUTISM
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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
which would ensure sound
generally called for a new provincial constitution,
financial management and representation for the three orders. Gentilshommes of
the diocese of Narbonne, for example, published a letter entreating, "his Majesty
of deputies of the
to accord his people of Languedoc a provisional convocation
three orders, freely and legally elected in their localities, and authorized to draft
"48
a system of constitutional
provincial estates ...
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 supplant 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 cahierwill 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
cahiers of the Second
church and the right to wear a sword.51 Languedocien
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

890
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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 unencumbered access to these resources by infringing upon office holders' rights.
the central administration and
Thus, in a series of high-profile confrontations,
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

ABSOLUTISM
AND CLASS
891
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
towns. Financial difficulties tended
merchants and artisans of Languedocien
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
These courts held fast to
jurisdiction over tax assessments, were inconclusive.
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
of
and well-to-do commoners no longer played a role in the administration
Local elites abandoned the countryside for towns and had little
communities.
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
to expose the injustice of privilege.
not necessarily need royal centralization

892
summer 2003
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?
was
thority, both as magistrates and lords, the actual locus of decision-making
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 assimilated doctrines current in the eighteenth century promoting representative
government, responsible finances, the inviolability of private property, and an
provinciai estates would give the Third
independent judiciary. Representative
Estate the political voice all enlightened Frenchmen believed it deserved. Besides, 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 noblessedu 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 Transformationofthe 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 EUtein Old Regime France (Oxford, 1994); Roger Chartier, The Cultural Origins of

ABSOLUTISM
AND CLASS
893
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 16701789 (Paris, 1974), 45, 64, 163, 166, 248; Georges Brunet, Les campagnes toulousaines,
324, 332-333, 343, 356-357, 360-361; Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie,
152-153,154-157,
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 Vhistoirede Nimes (Nfmes, 1939), 113, 121; Christopher H. Johnson, The
Ufe and Death of IndustrialLanguedoc, 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

894
summer 2003
I'Albigeoisalafindel'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 revolutionnaireaBelpech (Toulouse, 1989), 14, 20, 57.
11. Nicole Castan, Les crimineh de Languedoc: Les exigences d'ordre et les voies du ressentimentdans une societe pre-revolutionnaire(1750-1790) (Toulouse, 1980), 112. For the as?
sembly in Montpellier see Jean-Pierre Donnadieu ed., Etats Generaux de 1789: Senechaussees de Beziers et Montpellier (Proces Verbaux et cahiers de doUances) (Maurin, 1989), 517529; 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-huitiemesiecle (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), 368370; 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 historiquesde 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(Paris, 1980)
62,64-67,68;Ca&tan,JmticeetrepressionenLanguedocdl'epoquedesLumieres
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 baronniedu 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'anthropologiedes collectivitesrurales 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 traversles ages (Beziers, 1964), 45; Andre Negre, Histoire de mon village: SainteEulalie ?aux Bois* (Caen, 1970), 191, 214-216, 234-235; E G. Laffon, Histoire de SointOrens-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

ABSOLUTISM
AND CLASS
sur le commerce en Languedoc (Montpellier, 1989), 278-279.

written in 1788).
895
(The work was originally
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 VEuropeMediterraneenne et de VEuropeoccidentale du Moyen Age au XIXe siecle:
Actes du Colloque de Nice (27-28 Mars 1969), 233.
16. James C. Riley, The Seven YearsWar 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
A.D. H.G. C2386; Saumade,
aides en Languedoc (Montpellier, 1963), 305-306,343-344;
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 historiquessur la cour des comptes, aides et finances de Montpellier d'apres des archives
privees (Montpellier, 1921), 83; Cazals, Les revolutions industriellesa 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 Revolution
(1789-1799) (Toulouse, 1969), 90, 92.
22. Lamouzelle, Essai sur Vadministration,37,41.
23. The seventeen office holders included the treasurer of Toulouse, directors of the
bureaus of letters, of powders and saltpeter, of distribution of bread and munitions to
soldiers, three provincial treasurers oimortes-payes, one of war, artillery, and engineering,
three payers of gages to the Cour des Comptes, Aides et Finances, three to the Bureau
of Finances, and one to the college and university. "Montpellier en 1760", 72-73, 7778; A.M. T. BB134. For Joubert see A.D. H. B23646; A.N. Hl/748/278, Hl/748/279,
Hl/748/293, Hl/944/1; Jacques Necker, De Vadministrationdes finances de la France (Paris,
1784), Tome 1,306.

896
summer 2003
24. Gages are found in A.N. P5538 and P5817. These sources list gages paid to office
holders ofthe senechaussees of Toulouse and Montpellier. The figure we present for office
holders in dioceses is based on the assumption that they received the same gages as
their colleagues in Toulouse and Montpellier. The same method was used to determine
gages paid to office holders ofthe senechaussees. Philip Dawson, Provinciai Magistrates and
Revolutionary PoUtics in France, 1789-1795 (Cambridge, 1972), 37. We were unable to
locate gages paid to Montpellierain barristers, a corps of venal officers. Vialles, Etudes
historiquessur la Cour des Comptes, 234.
25. A.N. Hl/942/2; Descimon and Jouhaud, La France du premier XVUe siecU, 190.
26. Estimates of parUmentaires'legal fees vary. Forster estimated them at between 2000
and 3000 Uvresa year. The NobiUty of Toulouse, 105. Paul de Casteras showed that each
parlementaire collected almost twenty thousand a year in legal fees. La societe toulousaine
alafindu dix-huitieme siecle (Toulouse, 1891), 153-155; Vialles, Etudes historiquessur la
cour des comptes, 113-114, 230; Leonard Berlanstein, The Barristers of Toulouse in the
Eighteenth Century (Baltimore, 1975), 2, 68; Dawson, Provinciai magistrates, 82-83. We
did not discover fees collected by the thirty-some barristers of Montpellier, so we assumed
that they were similar to those collected by Toulousain barristers, giving us the total listed
in the table. "Montpellier en 1760", an unedited anonymous manuscript, Archives de la
villedeMontpelUer: lnventairesetdocuments (Montpellier, 1920), 30-31; A.N. Hl/748/278;
Th. Puntous, Les etats particuUersdu diocese de Toulouse aux Xy/lle et XVIIIe siecUs (Paris,
1909), 406-407. The figure for the director of the general provostship of the province
includes gages and fees. We were not able to locate gages and fees accruing to judges of
various other courts such as the Mastery of Waters and Forests, coinage courts, salt-tax
courts, municipal tribunals, merchants' courts, and numerous others.
27. Multiplying the population of Languedoc by the average income of inhabitants
yields the approximate total product of the province. The population of Languedoc was
1,607,000 in 1778-1787, the average annual income of a French subject was 126.95
Uvres, and the total product of Languedoc was therefore about 204,008,650 Uvres. All
regimes of exploitation must allow for the reproduction of capital and labor power. At a
bare minimum, peasants needed 48% of their income for subsistence and another 17%
for reseeding. Thus, the total available product was about 72,668,540 livres. These figures
come from Jacques Dupaquier, Histoire dela populationfrancoise, tome 2 (Paris, 1988), 7;
Braudel and Labrousse, eds., Histoire economique et sociale ae la France, II, 531; Molinier,
Stagnations et croissance, 155-156. Molinier bases his figures on J. Marczewski, Le revenue
national: la croissance (Paris, 1952).
28. Berlanstein, The Barristers of Toulouse, 7-8. Desirat's speech is quoted fromjeanBaptiste Dubedat, Histoire du ParUment de Toulouse (Paris, 1885), 639; Vialles, Etudes
historiquessur la cour des comptes, 52-55.
29. For a deed of sale of a barony, see A.D. H. A66. For the investigation of a baron's
lineage, see A.N. Hl/748/180. Present at annual meeting of the Estates were the count
of Polignac, a resident of the quartier St.-Germain of Paris, whose wife was a close
friend of Marie-Antoinette; the cardinal de Bernis, archbishop of Albi, who had been
secretary of foreign affairs under Louis XV; Dillon, archbishop of Narbonne, president of
the Assembly ofthe Clergy after 1785, and neighbor ofthe count of Polignac in Paris; the
count of Perigord, a relative ofthe King; Lomenie de Brienne, archbishop of Toulouse; the
marechal de Castries, the highest military figure ofthe realm; and the baron of Hautpoul,
known in Versailles as Ie magnifique.
30. For royal borrowing through the Estates prior to 1777 see,Paul Rives, Etudes sur Us
attributions financieres des etats provinciaux et en particuUerdes Etats de Languedoc au dixhuitieme siecU (Paris, 1885), 95,103. For borrowing between 1777-1781 see Bibliotheque
Nationale, Collection Joly de Fleury, 1438, fol. 214. For loans ofthe Estates from 1782 to
1788 see A.N. Hl/748/62 p. 383, Hl/748/65 p. 314-328, Hl/748/138, Hl/938; A.D. H.

ABSOLUTISM
AND CLASS
897
2E 56/583,2E 58/141,2E 58/157,2E 58/190,2E 58/193,2E 58/197,2E 58/199,2E 61/107.

For the crisis of 1787 see A.N. F4/1245. For loans of dioceses see A.N. Hl/748/289.
31. A.N. Hl/748/62 p. 400, Hl/748/100 p. 274,1257-1308, Hl/748/134, Hl/748/248,
Hl/748/278, Hl/748/282, Hl/748/289, Hl/983, Hl/944/1, Hl/1050, Hl/1063, Hl/1107;
A.D. H.G. C2432; A.D. H. A66; Jean Petot, Histoire de Vadministrationdes ponts et chaussees
1599-1815 (Paris, 1958), 309-314; M. Maxime Rioufol, La Revolution de 1789 dans le
Velay (Le Puy, 1904), 21. We estimated that sums distributed at the petits etates of Albi
and Gevaudan were the same as those distributed in Velay.
32. A.N. Hl/748/283;
A.N. Hl/1063.
33.
A.DH.A125.
34.
Fournier, Democratie et vie municipale, Tome 1, 46.
35. A.N. Hl/748/180, Hl/1054; A.M. T. AA312; A.D. H. A125; Negre, Sainte-Eulalie,
191, 207, 219, 231, 233, 235; Escudier, Histoire de Fronton, 198-200.
36. A.N. Hl/1431; A.D. H. C2018; Cazais, Autour de la Montagne Noire au temps
de la Revolution 1774-1799 (Carcassonne, 1989), 68; Delouvrier, Histoire de la vicomte
d'Aumelas, 206-232. Bezousse and Le Cailar were in the diocese of Nfmes. St.-Felix was
in the Lauragais. St.-Thibery was near Agde. Bedarieux was located in the diocese of
Beziers.
37. A.N. Hl/748/180.
38. A.D. H.G. C265.
39. David Bien, "Offices, Corps and a System of State Credit: The Uses of Privilege
under the Ancien Regime," in Keith Baker ed., vol. I, The French Revolution and me
Creation of Modern Political Culture, (Oxford, 1987), 89-114.
40.
Casteras, La societe toulousaine, 153-155.
41. A.N. Hl/1014; Philippe Nelidoff, La municipalitede Toulouse au debut de la Revolution

(Toulouse, 1996), 14-16, 29-30; Dubedat, Histoire du Parlement, 661-663; Lamouzele,
Essai sur Vadministration,4-5, 12-13.
42. A.N. Hl/1014.
43. G. J. Cavanaugh comments on nobles' ability to use their influence to escape taxation
in pays de taille reeue. "Nobles, Privileges, and Taxes in France: A Revision Re viewed,"
French Historical Studies 8 (1974), 685; Freche, "Compoix, propriete fonciere, fiscalite et
demographie historique en pays de taille reelle (XVIe-XVIIIe siecles)," Revue d'histoire
moderne et contemporaine 18 (1971), 324-325, 334-340; Saumade, Fabregues, 417-419.
44. B. Faucher, ttat civil et documents cadastraux (Toulouse, 1948), 18-19; Vialles, Etudes
historiquessur la cour des comptes, 69; A.N. Hl/1050, Hl/1054.
45.
A.N. Hl/748/244;
A.N. Hl/748/65 p. 522-523.
46. For the Estates' aid to the king between 1787 and 1789 see A.N. Hl/748/135,
Hl/748/165.
47. A.N. Hl/942/2.

898
summer 2003
48. Denunciations of the Estates of Languedoc, including pamphlets written by nobles

and magistrates, as well as published deliberations of assemblies of clergymen, nobles and
bourgeois, are found in the following sources: A.N. H1/748/65 pp. 419, 522-523; A.N.
Hl/748/134; A.N. Hl/748/244; A.N. Hl/942/2; A.N. BIII, 92; A.D. H.G. 51B29; A.M.
T. AA 116, AA 319; A.D. H. C4685; A.D. A. 4E 206 AA 85; Philippe Nielidov, "foats
Generaux et particularismes locaux," Revue du Torn 136 (1989), 602-603; Pierre Gorlier,
Le Vigan a travers les siecles: Histoire d'une citi Languedocienne (Montpellier, 1955), 205206; Edmond Falgairolle, Vauvertpendant la Revolution Frangaise (Nfmes, 1897), 9-10.
49.
Rioufol, La Revolution de 1789 dans le Velay, 108.
50. A.N.Ba21.
51. John Markoff, The Abolition ofFeudalism (University Park, PA, 1996), 47.
52. All of these cahiers are found in the following sources: A.N. Ba21; A. D. A. WB 2062;
A.D. H. 1 E 1427; A.D. H.G. 1 L 548; Ciaude Devic and J. Vaissete, Histoire generale de
Languedoc (Toulouse, 1872-1896), vol. 14, 2703-2710; Rioufol, La Revolution de 1789
dans le Velay, 108.
53. Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the French Revolution, 16-20, 27, 30,137, 206.
54. Colin Lucas, "Nobles, Bourgeois and the Origins of the French Revolution," Past
and Present 60 (1973); George C. Comninel, Rethinking the French Revolution: Marxism
and the Revisionist Challenge (London, 1987), 201.
55. Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the French Revolution, 27,30.
56.
Ibid., 117.


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

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Absolutism and Class at the End of the Old Regime: The Case of Languedoc

Author(s): Stephen Miller

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journal of social history

throughout the early modern period. Neither Lefebvre's classic interpretation

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AT THE END OF THE OLD REGIME

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journal of social history

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AT THE END OF THE OLD REGIME

Industrial production evinced many of the same characteristics. Output in?

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journal of social history

peasants, seems insignificant when compared to the estimate ofthe sub-delegate

Rate of Tithes on Certain Crops

Group of Languedocien lords

Dues as a percentage of direct taxes

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AT THE END OF THE OLD REGIME

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journal of social history

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AT THE END OF THE OLD REGIME

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journal of social history

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AT THE END OF THE OLD REGIME

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and the Estates of Languedoc

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AT THE END OF THE OLD REGIME

in the American War of Independence

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journal of social history

The Estates of Languedoc

and the Seigneurial

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AT THE END OF THE OLD REGIME

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Would it be fair? Would it be reasonable? To subordinate the decisions of this

and local office holders

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AT THE END OF THE OLD REGIME

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journal of social history

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AT THE END OF THE OLD REGIME

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journal of social history

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AT THE END OF THE OLD REGIME

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journal of social history

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AT THE END OF THE OLD REGIME

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I'Albigeoisalafindel'Ancien Regime (Auriilac, 1961), 128,227; Robert Forster, The NobiUty

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