The growth of a large royal army, however, was only one effect of the increased level of military activity. The financial administration of the country also underwent a drastic reorganization, which had far-reaching economic and social consequences. The king, despite his ambitions, possessed neither the resources nor the administrative machinery to maintain a large army. The medieval idea that the king should live off the revenue of his own domain persisted into the 18th century and helps to explain the formal distinction made until the reign of Francis I (1515–47) between ordinary and extraordinary finance—i.e., between revenue emanating from the king’s patrimonial rights and taxes raised throughout the kingdom. By the reign of Francis I, the king, even in times of peace, was unable to make do with his ordinary revenue from rents and seigneurial dues. In 1523 Francis established a new central treasury, the Trésor de l’Épargne, into which all his revenues, ordinary and extraordinary, were to be deposited. In 1542 he set up 16 financial and administrative divisions, the généralités" class="md-crosslink">généralités, appointing in each a collector general responsible for the collection of all royal revenues within his area. In 1551 Henry II added a treasurer general; from 1577 the bureaux des finances, new supervisory bodies composed of a collector general and a number of treasurers, made their appearance in each généralité.
The actual collecting of taxes, moreover, was increasingly handed over to tax farmers. The more efficient methods of collection by tax farmers enabled the crown to gather a larger proportion of its revenue than previously but did not solve the problem of royal finance. Even the extraordinary taxes, now added to the crown’s ordinary revenue, notably the taille (a direct tax levied on all but the nobility and the clergy), customs duties, and the purchase tax on wine, fish, meat, and especially salt (the gabelle), were not adequate resources for Renaissance princes whose chief glory lay in the expensive art of war. The taille, the only direct tax, which weighed most heavily upon the underprivileged classes, went up from about 4.5 million livres under Louis XI (1461–83) to 55 million under Jules Cardinal Mazarin in the mid-17th century.
Successive monarchs were forced, therefore, to seek additional revenue. This was no simple matter, because French kings traditionally could not tax their subjects without their consent. Indeed, there were many areas of the country where the taille itself could not be collected and where the king was dependent upon local agreements. The early Valois kings had negotiated with the Estates-General or with the provincial Estates for their extra money; but in the middle of the 15th century, when the Hundred Years’ War with England was reaching a successful conclusion, Charles VII was able to strike a bargain with the Estates. In return for a reduction in overall taxation, he began to raise money to support the army without having to seek the Estates’ approval. In some areas of central France, the pays d’élection, the provincial assemblies, ceded their right to approve taxation and disappeared altogether. But, in those provinces where the provincial Estates survived (the pays d’état), the right to vote the amount of royal taxation also survived. During the Italian wars, meetings of the Estates became more frequent as the king’s financial demands became more strident, and, though the Estates never felt themselves able to refuse to provide money, they retained the right to provide less than the monarch requested. The king continued to rely upon the support of the provincial assemblies to provide extra revenue long after 1614, when the cumbersome Estates-General ceased to play a role in opposing financial resources for the crown. The growth of a professional bureaucracy
But the king also found another means of filling his exchequer that had nothing to do with traditional methods: he began to sell offices on a large scale. Venality, or the sale of offices, was not novel in early 16th-century France; traces of the practice can be found in the 13th century. But it was Francis I who opened the floodgates. The number of judges proliferated. In the Parlement of Paris alone, the king created two new chambers, each containing 20 members, and a further score of judges. In 1552 Henry II established a new kind of court, the présidial, whose jurisdiction lay between the parlement and the bailiwick. Each of the 65 new courts had a complement of nine judges; this brought in a sizable revenue but appears to have made little difference to the efficiency of the judicial system. Nor were judicial offices the only ones put up for sale; it was also possible to purchase financial offices, such as those of treasurer general, treasurer, or the immediately inferior élu. It has been estimated that during the 16th century some 50,000 offices were sold by the crown.
The partial rationalization of the financial system produced an increasing number of professional advisers, who formed the embryo of a bureaucratic elite. In the course of the 16th century, as specialization grew apace, the king’s council became a much more complex institution. The Conseil d’État (Council of State), with its various subdivisions, formed the hub of royal government. Its members were drawn from a variety of backgrounds. The king’s immediate family expected to be consulted, as did great officers of the crown, such as the chancellor, the constable, and the admiral. Also included in the council were the great territorial magnates, members of powerful aristocratic families, and the country’s leading prelates. There were also masters of requests (maîtres de requêtes), lawyers whose expertise was invaluable when the council sat in a judicial capacity. But in the council the professional element that assumed the greatest significance in the course of the 16th and 17th centuries was the holders of the office of secretary of state. In the early years of the 14th century, royal secretaries had already acquired the right to sign documents on the king’s authority. From this stage, granted the stability of the crown, the development of the office from a position of subordinate but considerable importance to one of complete indispensability was predictable. Henry II gave four of his secretaries the official title of secrétaire d’état, and in 1561 they became full members of the royal council. Closely associated with them and destined to overshadow them in importance in the first half of the 17th century were the superintendents of finance, formally established in 1564, though exercising an already well-established function. Their responsibility was to control and safeguard royal finances and especially to prepare annual budgets containing estimates of revenue and expenditure for the following year. They also played a leading part in assessing the amount to be levied each year from the taille and in deciding upon the imposition of new taxes. Below the superintendents but also in the royal council in the 16th century were the intendants of finance. Originally masters of requests, they became a separate group specializing in the increasingly complex task of advising the sovereign in financial matters. In time, their role outstripped in prestige that of the other masters of requests who counseled the king.