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Updated: September 9, 2025
When, in the early part of the century, the advantages of a good system of high-roads began to be perceived by the government, the convenient idea came into the heads of the more ingenious among the Intendants of imposing, for the construction of the roads, a royal or public corvée analogous to that of private feudalism. Few more mischievous imposts could have been devised.
At the end of a few weeks he returned to Dijon, where it had been resolved to receive him in triumph; but, like a wise and experienced man, he shunned these attentions, arranging so that he arrived at Dijon at four o'clock in the morning. The other Parliaments, with these examples before them, were afraid to act, and allowed the Intendants and their emissaries to have it all their own way.
What if intendants, holding office at the will of the Comptroller-General, had to do more than live, and found it prudent to realise as large a fortune as possible, not only against disgrace, but against success, and the dignity fit for a new member of the Noblesse de la Robe? Would not the system, then, soon become intolerable?
Fortunately I have a good supply of tents, and any men for whom you cannot find quarters in the villages can be placed under canvas. You can draw as much wine as you require for three months' rations from the stores here, and two months' rations of flour. I will direct the intendants to take up carts for the transport of the supplies you take from here.
The German women plundered; the German secretaries plundered; the German cooks and intendants plundered; even Mustapha and Mohammed, the German negroes, had a share of the booty. Take what you can get, was the old monarch's maxim. He was not a lofty monarch, certainly; he was not a patron of the fine arts; but he was not a hypocrite, he was not revengeful, he was not extravagant.
No wonder that the eighteenth-century apostle of frenzied finance, John Law, should have laconically described France as a land "ruled by a king and his thirty intendants, upon whose will alone its welfare and its wants depend."
The panels of wainscoting upon the walls were surrounded by delicate arabesques, and hung with paintings of historic interest portraits of the kings, governors, intendants, and ministers of state who had been instrumental in the colonization of New France.
The most important and hated direct tax was the taille or land tax, practically a tax on peasants alone. The total amount to be raised was apportioned among the intendants by the Royal Council, and by the intendants among the villages of their respective districts.
When the noisy party arrived at the Fleur-de-Lis, they entered without ceremony into a spacious room low, with heavy beams and with roughly plastered walls, which were stuck over with proclamations of governors and intendants and dingy ballads brought by sailors from French ports.
It is also due, to the monarch, to add, that from the authors, whom we have cited, it is evident, that when he began to perceive the true state, of the transaction, though from false principles of honour, and policy, he would not revoke the edict, he wished it not to be put into great activity, and checked the forwardness, of the Intendants general in its execution.
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