War finance and absolutist state development in early modern Europe: An examination of French venality in the seventeenth century

Journal of Early Modern History

Volumn 7, Issue 1-2, 2003, Pages 120-147

  Potter, Mark ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WYOMING   (United States)

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EID: 33750435073     PISSN: 13853783     EISSN: 15700658     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1163/157006503322487377     Document Type: Article

References (76)

1. Michael Roberts, "The Military Revolution, 1560-1660," in Essays in Swedish History, (London, 1967), 195-225. Roberts first presented this paper before The Queen's University of Belfast in 1955.
2. Among historical sociologists who look to warfare as a catalyst for political change, see Brian Downing, The Military Revolution and Political Change, (Princeton, 1992);
3. Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions, (Cambridge, 1979);
4. and Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990-1900, (Cambridge, Mass, 1990).
5. One need not adhere to Roberts' chronologically and technologically specific definition of the Military Revolution in order to posit a connection between rising military costs and state development in the early modern period. See Richard Bean, "War and the Birth of the Nation State," Journal of Economic History, 33 (March 1973): 203-221.
6. Roberts, 204-205;
7. Colin Jones, "The Military Revolution and the Professionalisation of the French Army under the Ancien Régime," in Michael Duffy, ed., The Military Revolution and the State, 1500-1800, (University of Exeter, 1980), 36-37;
8. Malyn Newitt, "Plunder and the Rewards of Office in the Portuguese Empire," in Duffy, 27.
9. David Bien, "The Secrétaires du Roi: Absolutism, Corps, and Privilege under the Ancien Regime," in Albert Cremer, ed., De l'Ancien Régime à la Révolution Française: Recherches et Perspectives, (Göttingen, 1978), 153-168.
10. Mousnier, La vénalité des offices sous Henry IV et Louis XIII, (Paris, 1971), 455-465;
11. William Doyle, Venality, (New York, 1996), 11-13;
12. John J. Hurt, "Les Offices au Parlement de Bretagne sous le régne de Louis XIV: aspects financiers," Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine, 23 (1976): 3-31.
13. Robert Gordon contrasts what I am calling feudal property rights with rights of absolute dominion. He describes the former as "property rights fragmented and split among many holders . . .; property relations of dependence and subordination; property subject to arbitrary and discretionary direction or destruction . . .; property surrounded by restrictions on use and alienation; property qualified and regulated for communal or state purposes; property destabilized by fluctuating and conflicting regimes of legal regulation." Each of these descriptions apply to venal offices. See Gordon, "Paradoxical Property," in John Brewer and Susan Staves, eds., Early Modern Conceptions of Property, (New York, 1996), 96.
14. Mousnier, 85, 117-124;
15. Doyle, Venality, 9-10.
16. Doyle, Venality, 11-13, 19-20.
17. Doyle recognizes the novelty of the crown drawing on the collective credit of venal officer corps beginning in 1689, but does not draw the connection to strengthened property rights. See Venality, 37.
18. On Louis XIVs political accommodation with members of the elite, see Albert Hamscher, The Parlement of Paris After the Fronde, 1653-1673, (Pittsburgh, 1976);
19. and William Beik, Absolutism and Society in Seventeenth-century France, (New York, 1985).
20. Pierre Jean Jacques Guillaume Guyot, ed., Traité des droits, fonctions, franchises, exemptions, prérogatives et privilèges annexés en France. . ., 4 vols. (1786-87), 3:22.
21. Paul Louis-Lucas, Étude sur la vénalité des charges et fonctions publiques, 2 vols. (Paris, 1882), 2:15-21.
22. Guyot, 4:7;
23. Guyot, 4:7.
24. Mousnier, 226;
25. Louis-Lucas, 2:100.
26. Mousnier, 221-226.
27. Again, offices of the royal domain fell under a different legal status. Following the Ordinance of the Domain in 1566, the crown sold these offices with heritability privileges attached, reserving for itself the perpetual option of buying them back. See Louis-Lucas, 2:80-82.
28. The establishment of the paulette also coincided with a royal bankruptcy and may have been designed as a trade-off to appease disgruntled office holders who were in large measure also holders of royal debt. James B. Collins, Fiscal Limits of Absolutism, (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1988), 82-87.
29. Mousnier, 267-270.
30. Indeed, the fears of lawyers, procurators and notaries were justified as families imposed a virtual dynastic hold over the most prominent magistracies over the course of the seventeenth century. See Jonathan Dewald, The Formation of a Provincial Nobility, (Princeton, 1980), 80;
31. and Hamscher, 3-31.
32. Mousnier, 275-282.
33. Hamscher, 25-29, 190-195.
34. Louis-Lucas borrows this particular formula for distinguishing between the King's rights and the holder's rights from the old-regime jurist Charles Loyseau. See Etude, 2:115-116.
35. Ralph E. Giesey emphasizes this distinction in his article "Rules of Inheritance and Strategies of Mobility in Pre revolutionary France," American Historical Review, 82 (April 1977): 283.
36. Louis-Lucas, 2:127.
37. Archives Départementales de la Seine Maritime (hereafter A.D.S.M.), 2B 149, fol. 30.
38. Louis-Lucas, 2:136.
39. Douglass North and Barry Weingast, "Constitutions and Commitment: The Evolution of Institutions Governing Public Choice in Seventeenth-century England," Journal of Economic History, 49 (1989): 805-808.
40. A. Lloyd Moote, The Revolt of the Judges: The Parlement of Paris and the Fronde, 1643-1652 (Princeton, 1971), 50, 61, 125;
41. Mousnier, 302.
42. In Aix, royal policy toward office holders elicited political opposition within the parlement, but Sharon Kettering considers negotiations over renewing the paulette to have had the least political impact. See Judicial Politics and Urban Revolt in Seventeenth-century France, (Princeton, 1978), 182-190, 210-211, 246-247.
43. Hamscher, 7-14.
44. I qualify the conditions for renewal of the droit annuel as "light" relative to the pre-Fronde era. Still, the financial obligations which the crown set as requirements for renewal could amount to significant sums. See John J. Hurt, Louis XIV and the Parlements, (Manchester, 2002), 71.
45. Colbert, "Avis sur l'Annuel," in Pierre Clément, ed., Lettres, instructions, et mémoires de Colbert, 7 vols. (Paris, 1869), 6:247-249;
46. Hamscher, 11-13.
47. Hurt, Louis XIV, 76; Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Mss. Fr., 18230 and 18231.
48. "Colbert à d'Argouges," 28 December 1674, in Clément, 2:369.
49. Archives Nationales (hereafter A.N.), E 1823, 5 January 1684.
50. A.N., E 1823, 26 February 1684.
51. A.N., E 1819, 31 December 1883;
52. Anette Smedley-Weill, Correspondance des intendants avec le Contrôleur Général des Finances, 1677-1689, 3 vols. (Paris, 1991), 3:234.
53. A.N., E 1874, 29 January 1693.
54. A.N., E 1919, 31 January 1702.
55. "Mémoire de M. Desmaretz au Roi," 1715, in A.M. de Boislisle, ed., Correspondance des contrôleurs généraux des finances avec les intendants des provinces, 3 vols. (Paris, 1874-97), 3:614-619.
56. Henri Basnage, "Traité des Hipotéques," in Les Oeuvres de Maître H. Basnage, 3rd ed. (Rouen, 1709), 20.
57. Gabriel Davot, Traité sur diverses matières en droit fiançais, 8 vols. (Dijon, 1751-1765), 3:438.
58. Guyot, 4:72.
59. David Bien has very effectively described the process by which the crown solicited corps of venal office holders to borrow for the royal treasury. See "Offices, Corps and a System of State Credit: The Uses of Privilege Under the Ancien Régime" in Keith Baker, ed., The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture, vol. 1 (Oxford, 1987), 89-114;
60. For the chronology that places the rise of such arrangements in the 1680s, see Mark Potter, "The Institutions of Absolutism: Politics and Finance in France, 1680-1715," Ph.D. diss., UCLA, 1997;
61. François André Isambert, Recueil général des anciennes lois françaises, depuis l'an 420 jusqu'à la révolution de 1789, (Paris, 1821-1833), 19:416-419;
62. Louis-Lucas, 2:398. The crown tried, and failed, in 1673 to establish a mortgage registry on a larger scale to cover all pledged real property.
63. "De Ris au Contrôleur Général," 25 August 1684; "Miroménil au Contrôleur Général," 17 November 1684; and "Contôleur Général aux procureurs généraux et procureurs du Roi," 1688, in Boislisle, 1:27, 33-34, and 157; A.N., AD IX, 448, Arrêts du conseil, 21 February 1683, 16 December 1684, and 7 July 1685.
64. 7 1323 and 1325, États de la recette et depense fiaitte au bureau des revenus casuels.
65. Hurt, Louis XIV, 78-81.
66. My sample derives from the letters of provision recorded by the Chambers of Account in Rouen and Dijon. In all, I examined 317 office transmissions in Burgundy and 295 in the généralité of Rouen. Archives Départementales de la Côte d'Or (hereafter A.D.C.O.), B 53-B 61, Enregistrements de la Chambre des Comptes; A.D.S.M., 2B 139-2B 153, Mémoriaux de la Chambre des Comptes.
67. A.D.C.O., B 54, fol. 76.
68. A.D.C.O., B 54, fol. 66.
69. A.D.S.M., 2B 148, fols. 113-115;
70. 2B 139, fol. 162;
71. 2B 149, fol. 162.
72. 7 721, Mémoire pour faciliter et avancer la levée d'un grand nombre de charges qui sont aux parties casuelles, accompanied by a letter of 21 August 1709.
73. Mark Potter, "Good Offices: Intermediation by Corporate Bodies in Early Modern French Public Finance," Journal of Economic History, 60 (September 2000): 599-626.
74. Hurt, Louis XIV, 83-89, 95.
75. A.D.S.M., C 1370-1373, Bureau des finances, Quittances des finances.
76. Potter, "Good Offices," 622.