4 The ordeal of the parlementaires To fund the War of the Spanish Succession (1702–1714), Michel Chamillart, the controller general, increased current taxes, invented new taxes, borrowed heavily and manipulated the currency, the customary methods long called into use by hard-pressed finance ministers.1 Like Pontchartrain, but with greater frequency, he also extracted large sums from the parlements; and his successor, Nicolas Desmarets, continued to pursue them financially. Long before the war ended, the magistrates had reached the limits of their financial endurance, with their offices heavily mortgaged and dwindling in value and office income drying up. On the subject of venality, the late reign of Louis XIV indeed sub- jected the magistrates to a grinding ordeal. The Augmentations de gages of 1702–1703 In 1701, as preparations for the war began, the magistrates were busy paying the government 5.67 million livres in augmentations de gages for the renewal of the droit annuel (chapter 3, Table 1), their money going directly into various war-related treasuries. Based on past experience, they had reason to expect a financial respite of several years. But in late 1702 Chamillart surprised the tri- bunals when, in an unprecedented move, he demanded a new augmentations de gages in the same amount as in 1701 – another 5.67 million livres. To soften the blow, he set a higher rate of interest, the 16th denier (6.25 per cent), but the whole project took the parlements aback and led to somewhat mixed results. Chamillart began by asking First President Harlay to persuade the Parlement of Paris to accept the augmentations de gages voluntarily, intending to use its example to induce the provincial parlements to fall into line. As a royal client par excellence, Harlay could be trusted, if anyone could, to serve the king’s interests. Surprisingly, however, the first president protested strongly, his first demur on a financial issue, picturing his magistrates as destitute, having sold their ‘silver plate and other movables’ to satisfy the augmentations de gages 95 John J. Hurt - 9781526137487 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 09/29/2021 10:34:29AM via free access Louis XIV and the parlements of 1701. The first president countered with an offer to have the Parlement pay half of the sum it paid then.2 Chamillart rejected any compromise. The Parlement of Paris, he repeated, must provide as much money in 1702 as it had in 1701. When Harlay contin- ued to object, the controller general told him curtly that if the magistrates did not pay in full, the king would create new offices to make up the shortfall. This, as he reminded Harlay, would damage their financial interests even more. On 28 November 1702, a defeated Harlay dutifully endorsed the augmentations de gages before the assembled chambers of the Parlement; and the magistrates accepted the augmentations de gages under the threat of a new office creation.3 Chamillart immediately set to work on the provincial tribunals, citing the nominal consent of the Parlement of Paris as an example to them all; and he repeated his threat to create new offices if the provincials did not agree to pay the new loan in full. Most agreed to pay the sums demanded soon after they received Chamillart’s letter; those which demurred did so in vain, with the exception of Metz. Because the Treaty of Ryswick (1697) had taken away some of its terri- tory, Metz obtained a reduction, bringing the anticipated yield of the new loan to 5.4 millions. Overall, the controller general had reason to be pleased. No finance minister before him had coerced the parlements into accepting an aug- mentations de gages of this size without the club of the paulette renewal.4 As favourable auspices, several tribunals paid for their augmentations de gages at once. The reliable magistrates of Aix borrowed their money within weeks and even helped the Parlement of Grenoble to find loans in Aix, permitting the latter also to settle its account swiftly. Similarly, the Parlements of Dijon, Metz, Besançon and Tournai all kept to reasonable schedules in raising their funds. But total collections in these six middle-sized parlements came to only 1.35 million, just 25 percent of the expected 5.4 millions.5 Four million livres had to come from the Parlement of Paris and the larger provincial institutions – Bordeaux, Rennes, Rouen and Toulouse; but all these fell short of the goals that Chamillart assigned them. The magistrates of Bordeaux, unable as a group to borrow their 340,000 lives, promised instead to pay a penalty of 750 livres apiece, one-fifth of an individual’s augmentations de gages capital. In the end, they paid 51,000 livres of the 67,000 livres to which this amounted, a shortfall of 16,000 or 24 percent.6 The Parlement of Toulouse, which owed 521,000 livres for augmentations de gages, paid 375,000, a deficit of 146,000 livres, 28 percent.7 The Parlement of Rennes needed 760,000 livres for its augmentations de gages, the largest sum among all provincial tribunals, but as Président à Mortier Bréquigny told Chamillart, not even six judges were financially able to pay their share. The Bretons had little success when they tried to borrow money in Rennes, Nantes and Paris, and they rejected Chamillart’s proposal that they agree collectively to a penalty of 800 livres each. In the end, the Parlement allowed its magistrates to act as individuals, either paying the augmentations de 96 John J. Hurt - 9781526137487 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 09/29/2021 10:34:29AM via free access Ordeal of the parlementaires gages or the 800 livres forfeit as they saw fit. But no one surrendered the 800 livres; and less than half took the augmentations de gages. Of the 760,000 livres that Chamillart wanted, only 300,000 livres came in – a deficit of 460,000, or 60 percent. The Parlement of Rouen did worse. As of 10 March 1703, it had paid almost none of its augmentations de gages; and an exasperated Chamillart called Rouen financially the slowest of all the superior courts. Vernouillet, the acting first president, was among those most embarrassed: he had sold his silver plate to pay the previous augmentations de gages, he said, and could do no more. In the end, Rouen probably paid about 178,500 livres, a shortage of 566,000 livres, or 76 percent.8 To add to Chamillart’s displeasure, the Parlement of Paris failed to produce the 1.8 million livres that it had pledged. As of June 1703, the Paris judges had handed over some 1.2 million livres, but that left a balance of 600,000. An irate Chamillart demanded the names of the delinquent magistrates and threatened to strip them of their offices. After stalling as long as it could, the tribunal listed forty-six guilty judges, almost all of them the younger men in the Enquêtes and Requêtes chambers. Whether these judges were in real jeopardy is open to ques- tion. Chamillart had also warned delinquents in the Parlement of Bordeaux of severe consequences if they did not pay their augmentations de gages; and nothing happened to them. Under this pressure, however, some of the Paris offenders came up with another 200,000 livres, reducing the tribunal’s deficit to about 400,000 livres. There, however, it stubbornly remained.9 Table 6 sum- marizes the results of Chamillart’s efforts to wrest forced loans from the parle- ments in 1702–1703. Table 6 Augmentations de gages of 1702–1703 Aug. gages owed Aug. gages paid Parlement (£) (£) Deficit (£) Paris 1,819,200 1,400,000 1,419,200 Bordeaux 11,67,000 1,151,000 1,116,000 Rennes 1,760,800 1,300,000 1,460,800 Rouen 1,745,200 1,178,500 1,566,700 Toulouse 1,521,600 1,375,000 1,146,600 Dijon 1,435,200 1,435,200 Grenoble 1,306,000 1,306,000 Aix 1,268,000 1,268,000 Metz 1,145,000 1,145,000 Pau 1,152,000 1,,,,,152,000(?) Besançon 1,173,420 1,173,420 Tournai 1,110,000 1,110,000 Totals 5,403,420 3,794,120 1,609,300 97 John J. Hurt - 9781526137487 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 09/29/2021 10:34:29AM via free access Louis XIV and the parlements Hard on the heels of the augmentations de gages of 1701, Chamillart had extracted nearly 3.8 million livres from the parlements without the leverage of the paulette renewal and therefore without the help of the ‘privileged’ mortgage. Although this result compared favourably with Pontchartrain’s ‘voluntary’ augmentations de gages of 3.15 million in 1689, Chamillart was dissatisfied. He had assured the king that he would collect in full, and he had counted upon the 1.6 million that did not come in. The funds owed by the Parlement of Rouen, for example, had been promised to naval officials and to the war treasury at Lille.10 Perhaps Chamillart also suspected the parlements of traces of political resis- tance, if not of a personal affront. Certainly it was the first time since the East India project of the early 1660s that they had cooperated less than fully in a financial affair. In any event, and whether as retribution or out of financial necessity, Chamillart immediately returned to the parlementaires for still more money, subjecting them to a third financial demand within the narrow span of three years. The Chambres des Eaux et Forêts, 1704–1705 In an edict of February 1704, issued soon after the semi-failure of the augmen- tations de gages, the king created a new Chambre des Eaux et Forêts in every parlement in the realm.