[Sidenote: The Royal Council]
The highest rung in the ladder of officialdom was the Royal Council. It was composed of the half dozen chief ministers and about thirty councilors who helped their chiefs to supervise the affairs of the kingdom,—issuing decrees, conferring on foreign policy, levying taxes, and acting on endless reports from local officials.
[Sidenote: Local Administration. The Intendants]
The Royal Council had numerous local representatives. There were the bailiffs and seneschals, whose actual powers had quite disappeared, but whose offices served to complicate matters. Then there were the governors of provinces, well-fed gentlemen with fat salaries and little to do. The bulk of local administration fell into the hands of the intendants and their sub-delegates. Each of the thirty-four intendants —the so-called "Thirty Tyrants of France"—was appointed by the king's ministers and was like a petty despot in his district (généralité).
The powers of the intendant were extensive. He decided what share of the district taxes each village and taxpayer should bear. He had his representatives in each parish of his district, and through them he supervised the police, the preservation of order, and the recruiting of the army. He relieved the poor in bad seasons. The erection of a church, or the repair of a town hall, needed his sanction. When the Royal Council ordered roads to be built, it was the intendant and his men who directed the work and called the peasants out to do the labor. With powers such as these, it was little wonder that the intendant was called Monseigneur—"My lord."
[Sidenote: The Parlement of Paris]
The system of Royal Council, intendants, and sub-intendants would have been comparatively simple, had it not been complicated by the presence of numerous other political bodies, each of which claimed certain customary powers. First of all, there was the Parlement, or supreme court, of Paris, primarily a judicial body which registered the royal decrees. If the Parlement disliked a decree, it might refuse to register it, until the king should hold a "bed of justice"—that is, should formally summon the Parlement and in person command it to register his decree.
[Sidenote: Provincial Estates]
Then there were provincial "Estates," or assemblies, in a few of the provinces. [Footnote: Such provinces were called pays d'état and included Brittany, Languedoc, Provence, Roussillon, Dauphiné, Burgundy, Franche Comté, Alsace, Lorraine, Artois, Flanders, Corsica, etc. The local assemblies in these pays d'état were by no means representative of all the inhabitants. The remaining provinces, in which no vestiges of provincial self-government survived, were called pays d'élection: they included Ile de France, Orléanais, Champagne and Brie, Maine, Anjou, Poitou, Guyenne and Gascony, Limousin, Auvergne, Lyonnais, Bourbonnais, Touraine, Normandy, Picardy, etc.] These bodies, survivals of the middle ages, did not make laws but had a voice in the apportionment of taxes among the parishes of the province, and exercised powers of supervision over road-building and the collection of taxes.
[Sidenote: Town Councils]