11.1.11 to 11.1.12

To carry out the decisions reached in his intimate and secret High Council, Louis relied chiefly on his provincial intendants . Their powers were completely undifferentiated, and their commissions varied according to changes in royal policy. Like the ministers at the centre, they depended upon the king for their security of tenure. In the provinces they could exercise powers of police; raise military forces; regulate industrial, commercial, and agricultural matters; enforce censorship; administer the financial affairs of various communities; assign and collect taxes; and wield considerable judicial authority in civil and criminal affairs. Inevitably, these agents of the central government created considerable friction and hostility. These new men, with no local roots, answerable only to the king and acting almost invariably in an authoritarian context, were deeply resented by older royal officials, by municipal authorities and guilds, and by local parlements and estates—all of whom operated through well-established channels and according to traditional local privileges. The use of intendants, who held neither venal nor hereditary office, was one way in which the limiting effect of the sale of office on royal policies could be circumvented. The authoritarian element of Louis XIV's reign is undeniable: he was determined that no institution or social class would escape the supervision of the crown and its ministers. Thus the power of patronage, which had been exercised for generations in provincial noble households, began to lose its political significance as the king's ministers built up their own alternative administrative clienteles. In particular, because the Frondes had remained a painful memory from his childhood, the king never allowed the great nobles a similar opportunity for revolt. Versailles became a place of surveillance for pensioned noblemen and their families whose only serious occupation was the traditional one of arms, for the pursuit of which Louis provided ample opportunities. The second rebellious group in the Frondes, the members of the Parlement of Paris, were likewise subjected to stringent controls. In 1673 Louis produced regulations stipulating that the court's remonstrances against royal enactments sent to it could in future only be made after the laws concerned had been registered. By this device the king effectively muzzled the magistrates' criticisms of royal policy. It was equally his intention to overcome the delaying tactics of the provincial courts, especially those situated close to vulnerable frontiers.