Various Institutions.—The permanent army which, as has been stated above, was first established under Charles VII., was developed and organized during the ancien régime. The gendarmerie or heavy cavalry was The army. continuously increased in numbers. On the other hand, the francs archers fell into disuse after Louis XI.; and, after a fruitless attempt had been made under Francis I. to establish a national infantry, the system was adopted for this also of recruiting permanent bodies of mercenaries by voluntary enlistment. First there were the “old bands” (vieilles bandes), chiefly those of Picardy and Piedmont, and at the end of the 16th century appeared the first regiments, the number of which was from time to time increased. There were also in the service and pay of the king French and foreign regiments, the latter principally Swiss, Germans and Scots. The system of purchase penetrated also to the army. Each regiment was the property of a great lord; the captain was, so to speak, owner of his company, or rather a contractor, who, in return for the sums paid him by the king, recruited his men and gave them their uniform, arms and equipment. In the second half of the reign of Louis XIV. appeared the militia (milices). To this force each parish had to furnish one recruit, who was at first chosen by the assembly of the inhabitants, later by drawing lots among the bachelors or widowers without children, who were not exempt. The militia was very rarely raised from the towns. The purpose for which these men were employed varied from time to time. Sometimes, as under Louis XIV., they were formed into special active regiments. Under Louis XV. and Louis XVI. they were formed into régiments provinciaux, which constituted an organized reserve. But their chief use was during war, when they were individually incorporated into various regiments to fill up the gaps.
Under Louis XV., with the duc de Choiseul as minister of war, great and useful reforms were effected in the army. Choiseul suppressed what he called the “farming of companies” (compagnie-ferme); recruiting became a function of the state, and voluntary enlistment a contract between the recruit and the state. Arms, uniform and equipment were furnished by the king. Choiseul also equalized the numbers of the military units, and his reforms, together with a few others effected under Louis XVI., produced the army which fought the first campaigns of the Revolution.
One of the most distinctive features of the ancien régime was excessive taxation. The taxes imposed by the king were numerous, and, moreover, hardly any of them fell on all parts of the kingdom. To this territorial inequality System of taxation. was added the inequality arising from privileges. Ecclesiastics, nobles, and many of the crown officials were exempted from the heaviest imposts. The chief taxes were the taille (q.v.), the aides and the gabelle (q.v.), or monopoly of salt, the consumption of which was generally made compulsory up to the amount determined by regulations. In the 17th and 18th centuries certain important new taxes were established: from 1695 to 1698 the capitation, which was re-established in 1701 with considerable modifications, and in 1710 the tax of the dixième, which became under Louis XV. the tax of the vingtièmes. These two imposts had been established on the principle of equality, being designed to affect every subject in proportion to his income; but so strong was the system of privileges, that as a matter of fact the chief burden fell upon the roturiers. The income of a roturier who was not exempt was thus subject in turn to three direct imposts: the taille, the capitation and the vingtièmes, and the apportioning or assessment of these was extremely arbitrary. In addition to indirect taxation strictly so called, which was very extensive in the 17th and 18th centuries, France under the ancien régime was subject to the traites, or customs, which were not only levied at the frontiers on foreign trade, but also included many internal custom-houses for trade between different provinces. Their origin was generally due to historical reasons; thus, among the provinces reputées étrangères were those which in the 14th century had refused to pay the aids for the ransom of King John, also certain provinces which had refused to allow customs offices to be established on their foreign frontier. Colbert had tried to abolish these internal duties, but had only succeeded to a limited extent.
The indirect taxes, the traites and the revenues of the royal domain were farmed out by the crown. At first a separate contract had been made for each impost in each élection, but later they were combined into larger lots, as is shown by the name of one of the customs districts, l’enceinte des cinq grosses fermes. From the reign of Henry IV. on the levying of each indirect impost was farmed en bloc for the whole kingdom, a system known as the fermes générales; but the real ferme générale, including all the imposts and revenues which were farmed in the whole of France, was only established under Colbert. The ferme générale was a powerful company, employing a vast number of men, most of whom enjoyed various privileges. Besides the royal taxes, seigniorial imposts survived under the form of tolls and market dues. The lords also often possessed local monopolies, e.g. the right of the common bakehouse (four banal), which were called the banalités.
The organization of the royal courts of justice underwent but few modifications during the ancien régime. The number of parlements, of cours des aides and of cours des comptes increased; in the 17th century the name of conseil supérieur Courts of law. was given to some new bodies which actually discharged the functions of the parlement, this being the period of the decline of the parlement. In the 16th century, under Henry II., had been created présidiaux, or courts of final jurisdiction, intended to avoid numerous appeals in small cases, and above all to avoid a final appeal to the parlements. Seigniorial courts survived, but were entirely subordinate to the royal jurisdictions and were badly officered by ill-paid and ignorant judges, the lords having long ago lost the right to sit in them in person. Their chief use was to deal with cases concerning the payment of feudal dues to the lord. Both lawyers and people would have preferred only two degrees of justice; and an ordinance of May 1788 realized this desire in the main. It did not suppress the seigniorial jurisdictions, but made their extinction a certainty by allowing litigants to ignore them and go straight to the royal judges. This was, however, reversed on the recall of Necker and the temporary triumph of the parlements.
The ecclesiastical jurisdictions survived to the end, but with diminished scope. Their competency had been considerably reduced by the Ordinance of Villers Cotterets of 1539, and by an edict of 1693. But a series of ingenious legal Ecclesiastical courts. theories had been principally efficacious in gradually depriving them of most of the cases which had hitherto come under them. In the 18th century the privilege of clergy did not prevent civil suits in which the clergy were defendants from being almost always taken before secular tribunals, and ever since the first half of the 17th century, for all grave offences, or cas privilégiés, the royal judge could pronounce a sentence of corporal punishment on a guilty cleric without this necessitating his previous degradation. The inquiry into the case was, it is true, conducted jointly by the royal and the ecclesiastical judge, but each of them pronounced his sentence independently. All cases concerning benefices came before the royal judges. Finally, the officialités had no longer as a rule any jurisdiction over laymen, even in the matter of marriage, except in questions of betrothals, and sometimes in cases of opposition to marriages. The parish priests, however, continued to enter declarations of baptisms, marriages and burials in registers kept according to the civil laws.
The general customs of the pays coutumiers were almost all officially recorded in the 16th century, definite procedure for this purpose having been adopted at the end of the 15th century. Drafts were prepared by the officials The “customs.” of the royal courts in the chief town of the district in which the particular customs were valid, and were then submitted to the government. The king then appointed commissioners to visit the district and promulgate the customs on the spot. For the purpose of this publication the lords, lay and ecclesiastical, of the district, with representatives of the towns and of various bodies of the inhabitants, were summoned for a given day to the chief town. In this assembly each article was read, discussed and put to the vote. Those which were approved by the majority were thereupon decreed (décrétés) by the commissioners in the king’s name; those which gave rise to difficulties were put aside for the parlement to settle when it registered the coutume. The coutumes in this form became practically written law; henceforward their text could only be modified by a formal revision carried out according to the same procedure as the first version. Throughout the 16th century a fair number of coutumes were thus revised (reformées), with the express object of profiting by the observations and criticisms on the first text which had appeared in published commentaries and notes, the most important of which were those of Charles Dumoulin. In the 16th century there had been a revival of the study of Roman law, thanks to the historical school, among the most illustrious representatives of which were Jacques Cujas, Hugues Doneau and Jacques Godefroy; but this study had only slight influence on practical jurisprudence. Certain institutions, however, such as contracts and obligations, were regulated throughout the whole of France by the principles of Roman law.
Legislation by ordonnances, édits, déclarations or lettres patentes, emanating from the king, became more and more frequent; but the character of the grandes ordonnances, which were of a far-reaching and comprehensive nature, underwent a change during this period. In the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries they had been mainly ordonnances de réformation (i.e. revising previous laws), which were most frequently drawn up after a sitting of the states general, in accordance with the suggestions submitted by the deputies. The last of this type was the ordinance of 1629, promulgated after the states general of 1614 and the assemblies of notables which had followed it. In the 17th and 18th centuries they became essentially codifications, comprising a systematic and detailed statement of the whole branch of law. There are two of these series of codifying ordinances: the first under Louis XIV., inspired by Colbert and carried out under his direction. The chief ordinances of this group are that of 1667 on civil procedure (code of civil procedure); that of 1670 on the examination of criminal cases (code of penal procedure); that of 1673 on the commerce of merchants, and that of 1681 on the regulation of shipping, which form between them a complete code of commerce by land and sea. The ordinance of 1670 determined the formalities of that secret and written criminal procedure, as opposed to the hearing of both parties in a suit, which formerly obtained in France; it even increased its severity, continuing the employment of torture, binding the accused by oath to speak the truth, and refusing them counsel save in exceptional cases. The second series of codifications was made under Louis XV., through the action of the chancellor d’Aguesseau. Its chief result was the regulation, by the ordinances of 1731, 1735 and 1747, of deeds of gift between living persons, wills, and property left in trust. Under Louis XVI. some mitigation was made of the criminal law, notably the abolition of torture.
The feudal régime, in spite of the survival of seigniorial courts and tolls, was no longer of any political importance; but it still furnished the common form of real property. The fief, although it still implied homage from the vassal, no longer involved any service on his part (excepting that of the arrière-ban due to the king); but when a fief changed hands the lord still exacted his profits. Tenures held by roturiers, in addition to some similar Land tenure. rights of transfer, were generally subject to periodical and fixed contributions for the profit of the lord. This system was still further complicated by tenures which were simply real and not feudal, e.g. that by payment of ground rent, which were superadded to the others, and had become all the heavier since, in the 18th century, royal rights of transfer had been added to the feudal rights. The inhabitants of the country districts were longing for the liberation of real property.
Serfdom had disappeared from most of the provinces of the kingdom; among all the coutumes which were officially codified, not more than ten or so still recognized this institution. Serfdom. This had been brought about especially by the agency of the custom by which serfs had been transformed into roturiers. An edict of Louis XVI. of 1779 abolished serfdom on crown lands, and mitigated the condition of the serfs who still existed on the domains of individual lords. The nobility still remained a privileged class, exempt from certain taxes. Certain offices were restricted to the nobility; according to an edict of Louis XVI. (1781) it was even necessary to be a noble in The three estates. order to become an officer in the army. In fact, the royal favours were reserved for the nobility. Certain rules of civil and criminal procedure also distinguished nobles from roturiers. The acquisition of fiefs had ceased to bring nobility with it, but the latter was derived from three sources: birth, lettres d’anoblissement granted by the king and appointment to certain offices. In the 17th and 18th centuries the peers of France can be reckoned among the nobility, forming indeed its highest grade, though the rank of peer was still attached to a fief, which was handed down with it; on the eve of the Revolution there were thirty-eight lay peers. The rest of the nation, apart from the ecclesiastics, consisted of the roturiers, who were not subject to the disabilities of the serfs, but had not the privileges of the nobility. Hence the three orders (estates) of the kingdom: the clergy, the nobility and the tiers état (third estate). An edict of Louis XVI. had made a regular civil status possible to the Protestants, and had thrown open offices and professions to them, though not entirely; but the exercise of their religion was still forbidden.