Society for French Historical Studies

Local Elites at the End of the Old Regime: Troyes and Reims, 1750-1789
Author(s): Lynn A. Hunt
Source: French Historical Studies, Vol. 9, No. 3 (Spring, 1976), pp. 379-399
Published by: Duke University Press
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 Local Elites at the End of the Old Regime:
Troyes and Reims, 1750-1789
Lynn A. Hunt

Historians have long debated the nature of the Old Regime and of the
Revolution against it, but until recently most historical work focused
primarily on national and regional institutions or groups. Of late,
however, local politics, especially those of the Revolutionary period,1
have received more scholarly attention. This essay will examine the
politics of two relatively large manufacturing towns in that crucial
period-the closing decades of the Old Regime.
Troyes and Reims were the two largest towns in the province of
Champagne and among the twenty or thirty largest towns in France;
Troyes had 28,000 people and Reims had 32,000 people in 1789.2 Like
most of the larger towns and cities, Troyes and Reims each had a
subdelegue (the deputy of the intendant), a bailliage court for civil and
criminal cases, an election court for tax cases, a maitrise des eaux et
forets with jurisdiction over forests and waterways in the king's domain,
and a contingent of the marechaussee (mounted highway police). All
of these officials and institutions had jurisdictions extending beyond
the city limits into the surrounding region. Troyes and Reims also
served as the regional centers of commercial control and exploitation.
They drew food, workers, and raw materials, principally wool, from

Ms. Hunt is assistant professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley.

Most of the research for this article was made possible by support from the Michigan
Society of Fellows.
1 See, for example, Colin Lucas, The Structure of the Terror: The Example of
Javogues and the Loire (Oxford, 1973) and William Scott, Terror and Repression in
Revolutionary Marseilles (London, 1973).
2 For the population of the largest French towns see Imile Levasseur, La Population
franraise (Paris, 1889), I, 227. For Reims see Henri Jadart, "La Population de Reims a
l'6poque de la Revolution," Travaux de l'Academie nationale de Reims, XCVI (1893-
94), 57-70. For Troyes see Albert Babeau, La Population de Troyes au dix-huitieme
siecle (Troyes, 1873), p. 16.

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380 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES

surrounding rural areas. Since textiles were manufactured in Troyes

(cotton) and in Reims (wool), both towns had large numbers of workers
and influential merchant groups. Both were diocesan centers; Troyes
had a bishop and Reims an archbishop.
Troyes and Reims, which were located in the hinterland relatively
close to Paris, were not, of course, exact models of every medium-size
French town. The central government controlled towns like Troyes
and Reims more closely and more easily than it could control towns
farther from Paris. Since Troyes and Reims were located in the pays
d'elections, they had fewer special advantages and privileges than the
towns in the pays d'etats, whose autonomy was defended by provincial
estates. The absence of a port distinguished Troyes and Reims from
Toulon or Brest, just as the absence of a parlement or provincial
estates distinguished them from Grenoble or Montauban. Yet Troyes
and Reims had marked similarities to the majority of the medium- and
large-size towns, most of which had neither ports nor parlements. Like
Troyes and Reims, Amiens, Abbeville, Orleans, Tours, Montpellier,
Nimes and many other towns were the regional manufacturing centers
of the hinterland.4
Although they were located in the same province and were con-
nected by relatively good roads5 Troyes and Reims were separated by
important social differences. Many of them will only emerge in the
course of analyzing their rulers, yet it would be useful to describe
briefly their geographical settings, for basic ecological differences in-
fluenced their social structures. Although the river Vesle was not
navigable, roads from Burgundy, Champagne, and Lorraine carried
traffic through Reims toward Flanders and Great Britain.6 The town
was surrounded by gentle hills covered with vineyards producing
grapes for Champagne wine. Inside the town scores of large-scale enter-
prises produced woolen cloth and employed thousands of urban and
rural dwellers. The combination of wine and woolen industries gave
Pleims the prosperous look Arthur Young described,7 and the diversity

3 Central control is described by Nora Temple, "The Control and Exploitation of

French Towns during the Ancien R6gime," History, LI (1966), 16-34.
4 The difference between port towns and those of the hinterland is examined by
Edward Whiting Fox, History in Geographic Perspective: The Other France (New York,
1971).
5 Guy Arbellot, "La Grande Mutation des routes de France au milieu du XVIIIe
sibcle," Annales: E.S.C., XXVIII (1973), 765-91, especially map 1, "Le R6seau routier de
la Champagne en 1789."
6lmile Chantriot, La Champagne, etude de geographie regionale (Paris, 1906), p. 149.
7 Travels during the Years 1787, 1788, and 1789, Undertaken More Particularly with

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LOCAL ELITES AT THE END OF THE OLD REGIME 381

of the Reims economy made its social and political structures more
complex than those of Troyes, whose economy was based almost
entirely on the single industry of cotton-cloth manufacturing.
Troyes was the market center for the poorest region of the prov-
ince, the Champagne pouilleuse. Its chalky soil yielded miserably little
sustenance to its inhabitants, and as a consequence, agricultural
laborers readily turned to spinning and carding in the off-season. When
Troyes itself became a major manufacturing center, the landless poor
migrated townward. Although its fairs had long ceased to give Troyes
the commercial and artistic prominence it enjoyed in the Middle
Ages, the town still derived commercial importance from its position
as the point of intersection on several major royal highways: No. 19
from Paris to Basel, No. 60 from Orleans to Nancy, No. 77 from Nevers
to Sedan, and No. 71 from Paris to Dijon.8 The "naked and monoto-
nous plain" surrounding Troyes made road construction relatively
easy and thus facilitated urban growth even as it failed to feed the
growing population.
Three institutions or offices made most of the immediate decisions
affecting public life in Troyes and Reims: the town council, the sub-
delegate, and the chief police magistrate. The town council controlled
town finances, public works, and what remained of the town militia.9
The council was elected by the townsmen, but it was directly respon-
sible to the subdelegate, the king's deputy in local affairs. The subdele-
gate (subdelegue) held his post by commission from the intendant of the
generalite. Although theoretically his commission could be revoked at
any time, in practice a few local families monopolized the office for long
periods.10 The chief police magistrate (lieutenant-general de police)
sat on the town council either as an adviser (Troyes) or as a participant
(Reims). He regulated bread prices and quality, supervised public
places from the markets to the inns, and enforced public ordinances
covering public hygiene, local publications, and religious observances.
In addition the chief police magistrate presided in his own court over

a View of Ascertaining the Cultivation, Wealth, Resources, and National Prosperity of

the Kingdom of France (2nd ed.; London, 1794), I, 146-47.
8 These were the numbers of the roads in 1789.
Theophile Boutiot and Imile Socard,
Dictionnaire topographique du departement de l'Aube (Paris, 1874).
9 Jacques Paton, Le Corps de ville de Troyes
(1470-1790) (Troyes, 1939), and Gaston
Humbert, Institutions municipales et administratives de la ville de Reims sous l'Ancien
Regime (Paris, 1910).
10 For an excellent
description of the development of the office of subde'lgue see
Julien Ricommard, "Les Subdelegues des intendants aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siecles," Infor-
mation historique, XXIV (1962), 139-48 and 190-95; XXV (1963), 1-7.

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382 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES

trials involving infractions against his ordinances."l This crucial urban

office was venal, and like all venal offices its sale had to be approved by
the crown.
Despite the crown's occasional efforts at reform, access to these
offices remained closed to all except a few notables. This was most
obviously true for the subdelegates of Troyes and Reims because they
were hand-picked by the intendant at Chalons-sur-Marne from local
magistrate families noted for their loyalty and long service to the
crown.12 But it was also true of the town councils, even though many
townsmen voted in the elections for councilmen. Local notables mo-
nopolized council offices by manipulating a two-stage election process.
In Troyes the delegates chosen by the "corporations" had to elect town
councillors according to a quota prescribed by royal edict in 1773.
Prior to the edict merchants and royal officials alternated in a see-saw
battle for dominance: in the first half of the eighteenth century the
merchants controlled the council, but after the introduction of the
royal edicts of 1764-65 (the Laverdy reforms)13 the officials of the
bailliage court predominated. When the reform edicts were withdrawn,
members of both groups requested a royal decree to resolve their
increasingly acrimonious conflicts, and the king's regulation divided
the most important municipal offices equally between merchants and
royal officials.14
The election procedure in Reims was more complicated, but it too
ensured the control of the notables. The adult, tax-paying males chose
electors by districts (rather than by corporations as in Troyes), and the
electors in turn chose the town councillors. Through a system of
patronage and clientage the merchants, nobles, and royal officials of
Reims had maintained exclusive control of the lay municipal offices
11Julien Ricommard, La Lieutenance generale de police a Troyes at XVIIIe siecle,
1700-1790 (Troyes, 1934).
12 The Paillot family held the office of subdelegate in Troyes throughout the entire
eighteenth century. There was more turnover in Reims, but the candidates were always
prestigious royal officials. Ricommard, "Subdelegu6s," (1963), 1-7.
13 Maurice Bordes, La Reforme municipale du Controleur General Laverdy et son
application: 1764-1771 (Toulouse, 1967).
14 The "Reglement pour l'administration municipale de la ville de Troyes" of
December 18, 1773, prescribed the quota for town "notables" as follows: one clergyman;
two nobles or military officers; one bailliage official; one member of another jurisdiction;
one bourgeois living nobly; two advocates or doctors; four merchants; one officer from
the militia; one notary or proctor; one barber-surgeon, printer, or other member of the
arts liberaux; and one clothier or artisan. Paton, Le Corps de ville, pp. 165-71. No more
than two aldermen (echevins) could be royal officials or merchants. The four aldermen
controlled most municipal affairs.

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LOCAL ELITES AT THE END OF THE OLD REGIME 383

for 150 years.15 Unlike their counterparts in Troyes, however, the lay
notables of Reims were forced to share their power with local clergy-
men, for the crown had given the Church of Reims the right to choose
six clerical deputies to sit on the town council. Despite the differences
between the councils one telling similarity stands out: the lower classes
were almost entirely excluded from office. The guilds chose one or two
token delegates, but the textile workers who constituted the majority
of the urban population (and all women) had no representatives and
only rarely had the right to vote.16
By introducing the powerful office of chief police magistrate in
the early eighteenth century the crown exacerbated previously existing
tensions within local ruling circles and in some places markedly
altered the local balance of power.17 This occurred because the new
office included in its jurisdiction much of what formerly had been
controlled by the aldermen of the town council. Moreover, appeals
from the new jurisdiction went directly to the parlement over the head
of the bailliage court. The bailliage court of Troyes upstaged the
merchant-dominated council by buying the office and sharing its pre-
rogatives and responsibilities as a group. In 1781 the king finally sepa-
rated the office from the court and sold it to one man, a former bailliage
magistrate. In Reims the sale of the office had even more serious
political consequences because the king sold it to the archbishop rather
than to the bailliage court. This gave the Church the most extensive
legal jurisdiction in the town, but it also increased local resentment
against the Church and especially its archbishop. The archbishop al-
ready enjoyed the right to tax all grain coming into Reims' market (the
droit de stellage)l8 and to name clerical deputies to the town council.
Perennial protest against these special privileges united the various
groups of lay notables in Reims to an extent which was uncommon in
most French provincial towns.
15 Gustave Laurent, Reims et la region remoise a la veille de la Revolution, vol. V of
Cahiers de doleances pour les ttats Generaux de 1789: Departement de la Marne (Reims.
1930). According to Laurent the powerful families in Reims were popularly known as
the "Nous-ferons" because they controlled town affairs.
16 In 1789 the council in Troyes included one goldsmith as the representative of
artisanal groups. The two delegates chosen from the guilds in Reims held office only
four years in contrast with the regular nine-year terms of the elected deputies.
17 Ricommard (Lieutenance generale de police, pp. 33-60) describes in great detail the
effects of the introduction of the office of chief police magistrate in Troyes. The office
was first established in Paris in 1667 and then extended to all major towns in 1699.
18 Since 1522 the archbishop of Reims had had the right to tax all grain sold in the
market at Reims. In 1727 this was extended to all grain sold within four lieues of Reims.

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384 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES

If we look more closely at the men holding these offices in Troyes

and Reims, we shall see that they occupied similar social positions in
the local community: they were the most prestigious members of the
highest-ranking urban social groups. Pierre-Jean Paillot had been the
subdelegate of Troyes since 1742.19 His son and assistant, Louis-Nicolas
Paillot, was the lieutenant-general of the bailliage court, and Pierre-
Jean himself had held the office of king's proctor in the election court.
In 1718 the Paillot family had recovered its noble status by lettres
patentes, a step which was made necessary by their ancestors' decision
to engage in commercial activity.20 The subdelegate of Reims, Nicolas
Polonceau, was apparently not noble, but he too was a royal official.
The intendant of Champagne chose him in 1768 over the other candi-
date, Patouillart de Chevrieres, the king's proctor in the election court
of Reims.21 Polonceau was a councillor in the bailliage court, and in
1779 he was allowed to make his son his assistant.
The chief police magistrates also began their careers as royal offi-
cials. Fran(ois-Nicolas Sourdat, the police magistrate in Troyes after
1781, previously held the office of king's advocate in the bailliage court.
His father had been the lieutenant-criminel of the same court.22 Gerard
Jacob, the archbishop's choice for the post in Reims, was a recently
ennobled royal official, who had held various local offices for over thirty
years.23 Sourdat alone of the four major officials was a relatively young
man of forty-four in 1789. The subdelegates were both over seventy, and
Jacob was probably in his late fifties or early sixties.

Bibliothique municipale de Reims, CR I MM, "Memoire a consulter et consultation pour

les lieutenant, gens du conseil, et echevins de la ville de Reims" (attributed to Blavier).
The tax was equal to about 1/28th of the grain's value, and it was protested by everyone,
including the subdelegate. Archives d6partementales du Departement de la Marne, C 410,
letters of the subdelegate (1774-77) describing the advantages of suppressing the droit de
stellage. The archbishop's singularly powerful position also provoked factional conflict
within the council of Reims. In 1760, for example, the merchants of Reims successfully
protested against the election of one of the archbishop's partisans as procureur-syndic.
When the merchants' candidate, Cliquot-Blervache, won the office in a new election, the
merchants organized a charivari which was directed against several officials linked to the
archbishop. AD, Marne, C 322.
19 Alphonse Roserot, Dictionnaire historique de la Champagne meridionnale (Aube)
des origines a 1790 (Troyes, 1942), IV, 1522.
2o Armorial general ou registres de la noblesse de France (1868-1908; reprint edition,
Paris, 1970), I, 429.
21 AD, Marne, C 2978.
22 Bonaventure Nicolas Sourdat was the lieutenant criminel from 1751 until 1763.
Roserot, Dictionnaire historique, IV, 1530.
23 AD, Marne, C 2507, fol. 259, "Lettres de noblesse a Gerard Jacob, pr6evt de l'6chevi-
nage de Reims (March, 1776)." In 1756 Jacob had taken office as the president of the
traites foraines in Reims. AD, Marne, C 2523, fol. 49.

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LOCAL ELITES AT THE END OF THE OLD REGIME 385

Although the town councillors were drawn from a wider variety

of urban groups than the subdelegates or the police magistrates, they
too won office because they were prestigious members of the local
community. The mayor or lieutenant des habitants of Reims, Souyn,
was a nobleman from a sword family.24 The procureur-syndic, Dessain
de Chevrieres, had been the king's proctor in the election court since
1774 and in 1785 became a councillor in the bailliage court.25 The
clergymen on the council of Reims were the highest-ranking members
of the local church hierarchy.26 Among the seven merchants on the
council were the town's largest employer of textile workers, Pon-
sardin,27 and a rich wine merchant, Ruinart de Brimont, who had
purchased the ennobling office of secretaire du roi.28 In all the Reims
council included four nobles and two secretaires du roi (23 per cent of
the council).
In contrast to the council in Reims with its roster of Old Regime
luminaries the council of Troyes included few nobles and clergymen:
only one of every six councilmen there were members of the first and
second estates in contrast with nearly one of every two in Reims. Rival
groups of nonnoble magistrates and merchants dominated the Troyes
council. The mayor, Claude Huez, was the senior councillor in the
Troyes bailliage court. He had succeeded his father in 1743 and held
office in the court until September 1789, when he was torn limb from
limb in one of the wildest riots of the first year of the Revolution.29
Three other bailliage magistrates and two officials in the election court

24Francois-JosephSouyn was sixty-nine in 1789. He married into the Lepagnol

family, another prominent noble family in the Reims region. Pol Gosset, "L'g1migre
remois Souyn A Quiberon," extract from Courrier de la Champagne (Feb. 13, 1900),
Bibliotheque municipale de Reims, CR V 1707 bis. Basic information on all town coun-
cillors can be found in the local almanacs: Almanac historique de la ville et du diocese
de Reims, 1789, and Almanac de la ville et du diocese de Troyes, 1789.
25 AD, Marne, C 2225, fol. 146 (1773) and AN, V1 519 (1785). Dessain de Chevrieres
was thirty-nine in 1789.
26omile Bouchez, Le Clerge du pays remois pendant la Revolution (Reims, 1913).
27 Ponce Jean Nicolas Ponsardin inherited his father's business, which was founded
in 1730. In 1788 he employed 1,000 workers on 100 handlooms. AD, Marne, C 472,
report by the subdelegate Polonceau of June 3, 1788, on the "ltat des fabricants qui sont
le plus distingues en Champagne."
28 Claude Ruinart de Brimont bought the office of secretaire du roi in 1777. Accord-
ing to his dossier (AN, V2 45) he had married into the Tronsson family of wealthy
wholesale merchants. One of them, Etienne Tronsson-Tronsson also sat on the town
council in 1789. In 1789 Ruinart was fifty-eight.
29 Huez' uncle and cousin had also been members of the court in
Troyes. In 1789
Huez was sixty-five. AN, V1 335, letter of provision of office, 1743. For Huez' fate in the
first year of the Revolution see Lynn A. Hunt, "The Municipal Revolution of 1789 in
Troyes and Reims," Ph.D. dissertation (Stanford University, 1973).

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386 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES

also sat on the council. They were joined by eight merchants, including
the two wealthiest textile merchants in the region, Fromageot and
Berthelin. Berthelin, a nobleman, had been the mayor before Huez,
and Fromageot, his business partner and brother-in-law, had been the
procureur-syndic for fifteen years prior to 1788.30
Whether noble or bourgeois, merchant or official, the town coun-
cillors possessed more property than most of their fellow townsmen. In
Reims they paid three times the average property tax (contribution
fonfiere), which was more than the tax paid by any social group except
the nobles.31 The marriage contracts made by the councillors of Troyes
were evaluated at nine times the value of the average marriage con-
tract,32 and three-fourths of the councillors were listed among Troyes'
340 highest taxpayers in 1792.33 Thus we can describe the councilmen
of Reims and Troyes as members of an economic elite.
Although as a group these officials were both prestigious and
wealthy, there were decisive differences between the rulers of the two
textile towns. In Reims the council reflected a local society dominated
by the most familiar of the Old Regime's groups: clerics from a rich
and powerful local Church; nobles of ancient origin; and bourgeois,
both merchants and officials, persistently and successfully buying their
way into the ranks of the nobility. In Troyes the council, on the other
hand, anticipated the urban politics of nineteenth-century provincial
towns with their grande bourgeoisie of merchants, landowners, and
officials.34 Yet the nobles were not the chief object of bourgeois hostility
in either town. In Reims the bourgeois notables united with the lay

30 Henri de la Perriere, "Notes sur

l'6poque revolutionnaire tirees de la corre-
spondance de la Maison Fromageot et Berthelin de Troyes." Memoires de la Societe
academique de l'Aube, XCIV (1931), 97-145.
31I have found tax records for nineteen of the twenty-six remois town councillors
(73 per cent). They paid an average contribution fonciere of 894 livres (median of 600
livres), which contrasts with an average for all taxpayers of 285 livres. The average for all
taxpayers is based on a sample of "A" through "J" of the contribution fonciere of 1792.
The nobles paid an average tax of 1940 livres in 1792. The next weathiest group, the
merchants, paid an average of 527 livres. If anything, this comparison underestimates
the wealth of the pre-Revolutionary rulers, since many of them suffered economically
during the Revolution. Archives communales (hereafter cited as AC) de Reims, Register
194, fonds moderns.
32 Ifound marriage contracts for eight of the twenty-three troyen councillors (35
per cent). They average 84,230 livres whereas the average for the entire population mak-
ing marriage contracts was 8,884 livres for the period 1770-89. AD, Aube, IIC Suppl.
36, "Table alphab6tique des contrats de mariage, 1754-an VI."
33 Of the five councillors who were not listed among Troyes' 340 highest taxpayers
at least one had died by 1792. AC, Troyes, G* 1.
34 See, for example, Andr6-Jean
Tudesq, Les Grands Notables en France (1840-
1849): 1Etude historique d'une psychologie sociale (Paris, 1964).

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LOCAL ELITES AT THE END OF THE OLD REGIME 387

nobles to oppose the prerogatives of the Church. And in Troyes, since

neither the nobility nor the clergy had much influence or power in
local affairs, most political conflict took place within the bourgeoisie
between the merchants and the royal officials. We can find more evi-
dence of these differences in local politics by broadening our examina-
tion of office-holding to include the most important regional offices,
those in the bailliage courts.35
Comparison of the bailliage courts of Troyes and Reims demon-
strates how different local institutions could be in the eighteenth cen-
tury, for although they had the same kinds of jurisdictions and judicial
functions-that is, the same place in the national bureaucracy-their
places within the local communities differed greatly. In 1789 there
were fewer office-holders in Reims' court, but a larger proportion of
them held offices above the rank of "councillor,"36 and proportionately
more of them were nobles than in Troyes' court: at least one-third of
the magistrates of Reims were noble as opposed to one-eighth of those
in Troyes.37 In Reims the court had close ties with the law faculty of
the university: at least four magistrates had studied there, and two of
them were members of the faculty.38 Possibly the presence of a pres-
tigious university law faculty was in part responsible for the aristocratic
composition of Reims' court, for its fame drew students and faculty
from many parts of France. Whatever the reason the court in Reims
attracted many nobles to local judicial office while the court of Troyes
remained the bailiwick of local bourgeois families for whom judicial
office was the crowning glory of their careers.
This fundamental difference between the courts in Reims and
Troyes was not new in 1789. During the period 1750-89 only seven men
bought the office of councillor in Reims while fifteen did so in
Troyes.39 The difference is significant because the office of councillor

35 A more wide-ranging treatment of the bailliage courts can be found in Philip

Dawson, Provincial Magistrates and Revolutionary Politics in France, 1789-1795 (Cam-
bridge, Mass., 1972).
36 The Reims Almanach of 1789 lists one president, one honorary president, three
lieutenants, three councillors, and one king's proctor. The Troyes A lmanach of 1789
lists two lieutenants, eleven councillors, one king's proctor, and two king's advocates.
37 I used the lists provided by Louis de la Roque and -douard de Barthelemy to
determine noble status: Catalogue des gentilshommes de Champagne qui ont pris part ou
envoye leur procuration aux assemblees de la noblesse pour lslection des deputes aux
Sitats Ge'neraux de 1789 (Paris, 1863).
38 Gustave Laurent, "La Faculte de droit de Reims et les hommes de la Revolution,"
Annales historique de la Revolution francaise, VI (1929), 329-58.
39 My information on buying of offices is based upon the letters of provision of
office issued between 1750 and 1789. These can be found in the Archives nationales,

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388 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES

was the one most accessible to local bourgeois families. It was not the
result of lower prices for office in Troyes, since the buyers there paid a
higher finance charge than did the buyers in Reims.40 There seem to be
two different reasons for the relative lack of bourgeois interest in
Reims' court offices: on the one hand that court was less prestigious and
hence less attractive as an investment than its neighbor to the south,
because in Reims, the Church had jurisdiction over most of the town
and much of the region;41 on the other hand Reims' noble families
traditionally placed their sons in the court and thereby restricted the
access of ambitious bourgeois families.42 As a consequence bourgeois
families in Reims did not establish as strong a tradition of judicial
office-holding as did the bourgeois dynasties of Troyes.
Because it attracted fewer bourgeois buyers the court in Reims
exhibited a pattern of social mobility which was very different from
that in Troyes. Nonnobles in Reims usually bought office in the
bailliage court after service in some other capacity: among the seven
men buying office between 1750 and 1789 were a law professor, a
lieutenant of the marechaussee, a king's proctor in the election court,
and a president of the grenier a sel. As a result most of them were
relatively old when they purchased office; their median age was forty-
six. Not one of the seven succeeded a relative in office or had relatives
on the court, whereas two of the fifteen new councillors in Troyes
succeeded their fathers, and two others had uncles on the court. The
median age of the Troyes councillors upon taking office in Troyes was
twenty-nine.

series V1, and most of them are duplicated in AD, Marne, series C (bureau des finances)
and AD, Aube, series 1B, "Mandements du roi." Series V1 is the most complete.
40 The councillors in Troyes
paid a median finance charge of 600 livres, as contrasted
with a median of 486 livres for the councillors of Reims. The finance charge, which was
listed in the letter of provision of office, represented a fixed proportion of the value of the
office.
41 The subdelegate Sutaine-Maillefer attributed the problems of the bailliage court
in Reims to its ?elatively small jurisdiction. The ducal bailliage, the archbishop's court,
was much more powerful, and as a consequence the subdelegate had difficulty finding
prospective magistrates: "il y a plus de quinze ans [this was written in 1758] que le
discredit des charges empeche de les lever; et la plupart de celles qui sont remplies sont
possedes par des conseillers qui ont et6 s'etablir dans d'autres villes, ou qui ont pris
d'autres emplois ...." AD, Marne, C 321 (1758).
42 The president of the court in Reims in 1789 was Antoine-Raoul Sutaine-Duvivier,
the son of the former subdelegate Sutaine-Maillefer. The Sutaines were a large noble
family with several branches in the Reims region. Bibliotheque municipale de Reims,
CR V 1709, "Notice biographique sur M. Sutaine-Duvivier," 1855. Jean-Simon LUvesque
de Pouilly, Sutaine-Duvivier's predecessor, came from a rdmois family which had been
noble since 1698. Henri Jadart, "Jean-Simon Levesque de Pouilly," Travaux de l'Acad-
emie nationale de Reims, CXXXI (1912-13), 349-77.

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LOCAL ELITES AT THE END OF THE OLD REGIME 389

In neither town, however, did the court serve as an escalator for

social mobility. In Troyes, where the bourgeoisie appeared to have
greater access to office than in Reims, the same nonnoble families domi-
nated the court for generations if not centuries, and they did not
readily admit newcomers to their ranks. The Paillots, the Comparots,
the Corrards, the Huez, and the Sourdats all provided at least two
generations of magistrates, and together they formed a tight-knit group
which controlled not only the bailliage and the election courts but
also aimed to dominate town affairs through the town council. Mer-
chants did not find the doors to judicial office easy to open in either
town. I have found only one magistrate whose father was a merchant.43
Merchants in Troyes and Reims turned elsewhere for recognition;
those who were wealthy enough bought ennobling offices in Paris or in
other regional courts.44
For the most part office in the bailliage court was a social dead
end, for although it represented the highest regional status for a non-
noble, it rarely served as a stepping-stone to the satisfaction of na-
tionally oriented ambitions prior to the Revolution. Only one office-
holder was ennobled during his years of service on the court,45 and
few men moved on to more prestigious positions. Despite some differ-
ences membership in the bailliage courts in towns with sovereign
courts was also quite stable. Montpellier, for example, had a cour des
comptes, aides et finances, so the senechaussee court (the southern
equivalent of the bailliage) was not the apex of the local office-holding
hierarchy. Instead, the senechaussee served as the consolation prize for
the younger sons of families holding office in the cour des comptes: of
the twenty-two men who purchased the office of councillor in the
senechaussee between 1750 and 1789, at least nine came from families

43 Camusat-Descarrets of the court in Troyes was the son of a merchant. He married

the daughter of a local noble in 1777. AD, Aube, 2E 6/136. It is possible that one or two
other magistrates had merchant fathers, since I do not know the social origins of all
of them.
44 Merchant families formed dynasties paralleling those of the magistrates. Some
members became noble, but the merchants did not retire from business as soon as they
had enough capital to invest in land. The Berthelins of Troyes, for example, had been
important in the region since the sixteenth century. Once ennobled, some members of the
family retired to country estates, but the eldest son continued the textile business.
Although one Berthelin did sit on the bailliage court, this did not inaugurate a family
tradition. Edme Berthelin, the brother of the former mayor, bought the office of secre'-
taire du roi in Lyon. Jean-Edme Berthelin, the former mayor, bought the office of
tresorierin the parlement of Pau.
45 N.-F. Dereins was ennobled in 1775 for his services as lieutenant-criminelof the
bailliage court and as mayor of Troyes. AD, Marne, C 2507, fol. 221.

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390 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES

of the cour des comptes and at least three were nobles.46 Yet as in
Troyes and Reims, the Montpellier councillors rarely graduated to
office in more important courts: only one councillor in the last half of
the eighteenth century moved up to the cour des comptes. Although
more offices were sold in the Montpellier court in this period than in
Troyes or Reims, the buyers held them just about as long in Mont-
pellier as in Troyes and Reims.47
Since offices in the bailliage courts were the plums of the institu-
tional hierarchy in Troyes and Reims, their owners were considered
and certainly considered themselves natural leaders of the community.
Their numbers on both town councils reflected this shared perception
of their high social status. But because the courts differed in their social
function within the community, the magistrates as a group related
differently to other prominent urban groups. Nobles and socially ambi-
tious bourgeois mixed well on the bailliage court of Reims, and
together they joined the wholesale merchants and a few high-ranking
members of the liberal professions to form a relatively cohesive though
heterogeneous group of lay notables on the town council. The magis-
trates of Troyes, on the other hand, formed a more separate and dis-
tinct group than did their colleagues in Reims precisely because they
were more exclusively bourgeois. In Troyes, nobles, office-holders, mer-
chants, doctors, and lawyers did share control of the town council, but
as a group they were not as socially coherent as their counterparts in
Reims. Residential patterns indicate this difference.
As a sample of the residential patterns of the local political rulers
I have determined the addresses of men holding office in the town
council, the bailliage and election courts, and the marechaussee, as well
as those of the chief police magistrate and the subdelegate.48 In both
towns the rulers congregated in the medieval center: the parishes of
Sainte-Madeleine and Saint-Jean in Troyes and the parishes of Saint-
Hilaire and Saint-Pierre in Reims. Of the forty rulers whose addresses
are known in Reims (87 per cent of the total sample) 36 or 90 per cent
lived in one of the four center parishes, and 26 or 63 per cent lived in

461 compiled information on offices purchased in Montpellier from AN, VI and

checked the names against those in Pierre Vialles, iStudes historiques sur la Cour des
comptes, aides et finances de Montpellier (Montpellier, 1921) and Louis de la Roque and
1douard de Barthelemy, Catalogue des gentilshommes en 1789 et des familles anoblies
ou titrees (Paris, 1866), I, 15-23.
47 In Troyes councillors held office a median of twenty-one years; in Reims, twelve;
and in Montpellier, fourteen.
48 The addresses come from the almanacs and various tax-rolls.

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LOCAL ELITES AT THE END OF THE OLD REGIME 391

either Saint-Hilaire or Saint-Pierre. Of the forty rulers in Troyes whose

addresses are known (77 per cent of the total sample), all but three
lived in either the parish of Sainte-Madeleine or Saint-Jean (one of
these lived out of town). Within the medieval center of Troyes, how-
ever, social groups were more segregated than in Reims. Ten royal
officials lived on the rue du Bourg-Neuf in the parish of Sainte-
Madeleine in Troyes. Their social center was the salon of Madame
Comparot de Longsols, the wife of a bailliage magistrate and town
council member. At her soirees magistrates associated with nobles and
clergymen, and in 1787 they met there with the exiled members of the
parlement of Paris.49 A few blocks away on the rue de l'fpicerie in the
parish of Saint-Jean wealthy textile merchants had their own salons in
the homes of mesdames Berthelin and Fromageot. These two adjoining
but separate social centers were evidence of the division of Troyes'
rulers into parallel dynasties of magistrates and merchants.
No two streets in Reims had the importance of the rue du Bourg-
Neuf and the rue de l'lpicerie in Troyes. Nobles, magistrates, and
merchants lived as neighbors in Reims, and we can probably infer
from this that they also gathered socially. When combined with the
alluring presence of many resident nobles and upwardly mobile bour-
geois, this social proximity made emulation of the nobility a powerful
social cement in Reims. As a result political as well as social interac-
tions were more harmonious in Reims than in Troyes, where mer-
chants and magistrates repeatedly expressed their social differences in
the political arena as well as in their choice of residence.
Intermarriage prevented the cleavage from widening into an irrep-
arable break in Troyes by bringing together families from opposing
dynasties. The subdelegate of Troyes and his son were related through
marriage to a prominent bailliage magistrate; to the president of the
election court and two other election magistrates; to the town's most
prominent merchants, Fromageot and Berthelin; to a nobleman sitting
on the 1789 town council; and to the noble commander of the local
army garrison.50 In all, twenty-seven of the fifty-one rulers of Troyes
were related to each other through marriage.51
The rulers of Troyes and Reims were all men of wealth, educa-

49 Etienne Georges, "Les Soir6es de la rue du Bourg-Neuf (1787-1788) chez le

Conseiller J. B. Comparot de Longsols," Annuaire de l'Aube, LXII (1888), 17-37.
50 AD, Aube, 2E 1/291, Aug. 6, 1775.
51 This minimal figure is based on the marriage contracts in AD, Aube, series 2E.
Unfortunately I do not have comparable information for Reims.

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392 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES

tion, and leisure.52 Most of them owned luxurious townhouses as well

as country estates, and they shared many social interests; they attended
salons, they read the same books, they prided themselves on their
philanthropic endeavors, and some of them joined Masonic lodges.53
Through these various forms of social intercourse they developed
common ideals and attitudes which separated them from the lower
working classes. The men who shared this world lived literally and
figuratively on the other side of town from the artisans, shopkeepers,
and textile workers.
Nevertheless, the social harmony of the rulers could be threatened
by discordant economic forces and social values. The merchants de-
pended more exclusively upon liquid capital than did the land-owning
nobles and bourgeois officials,54 and therefore their social status flowed
from a different source: the merchants gained access to the ruling
group in the end because they had wealth to offer, whereas the nobles
claimed superior legal status and the officials vaunted their professional
status. Theoretically the most divisive social distinction was the legal
boundary dividing nobles and bourgeois, for it cut across merchants
and officials. But this line was not fixed, and it does not appear to have
become inflexible in the 1780s. Bourgeois merchants and officials con-
stantly climbed the social ladder, even in Troyes. Between 1760 and
1789 the bureau des finances in Chalons-sur-Marne recorded letters of
52 If we consider the members of the town council, the bailliage and election courts,
the marechaussee officers, the chief police magistrate, and the subdelegate as the mem-
bers of the ruling group, then the average contribution fonciere paid by rulers in Reims
was 765 livres. I have found the taxes for thirty-two rulers (67 per cent.). AC, Reims,
"Contribution fonciere, 1792." I have found the marriage contracts for 35 per cent of
the rulers in Troyes. They averaged 85,282 livres. AD, Aube, IIC Suppl. 36, "Table
alphabetique."
53 Troyes and Reims each had two Masonic lodges before the Revolution. There is
evidence that many of Reims' rulers belonged to the Triple Union. Gustave Laurent,
"AperCus sur l'histoire des loges manonniques 'a Reims," BM, Reims, RBM 567, typed
ms. In Troyes, however, participation seems to have been limited to a group of noble
army officers on the one hand, and minor functionaries and members of the liberal
professions on the other. ?mile Socard, La Franc-Mafonnerie a Troyes, 1751-1820 (Troyes,
1877). Possibly this difference contributed to the differences between the two ruling
groups.
54 This economic difference can be seen in the marriage contracts. I have found the
contracts for four of the merchants sitting on the town council. Eighty-five per cent of
their wealth at marriage was listed as mobiliers: profits of trade, inventories, commercial
paper, and investments in manufacturing and commerce. In contrast, only 35 per cent
of the wealth of the royal officials at marriage was in mobiliers. The royal officials in-
vested primarily in immobiliers or immovable wealth: land, houses, and rentes. AD,
Aube, 2E 7/300 (Bourotte), 10/1126 (Fromageot), 10/1151 (Jeanson-Bajot), 9/138 (Lemuet)
-the four merchants; and 9/102 (Cadot), 6/136 (Camusat-Descarrets), 10/1153 (Comparot
de Longsols), 10/1127 (Coquart), 10/1186 (Dereins), 10/1196 (Gauthier), 9/127 (Gentil),
9/110 (Huproye), 11/156 (Massey)-the royal officials.

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LOCAL ELITES AT THE END OF THE OLD REGIME 393

nobility for two royal officials, two merchants, one militia captain, and
one writer in Reims and for two merchants and one royal official in
Troyes.55 Three letters were granted in the 1760s, three in the 1770s,
and three in the 1780s.
Once in office, whether capitalist or landowner, noble or bour-
geois, the rulers of Troyes and Reims learned how to cooperate politi-
cally and to share the benefits of political dominance. Although
political conflict did on occasion endanger the ruling group's unity,
conflict was always regulated, either by the rulers themselves or, in
extreme cases, by the central government. Factional strife between
merchants and officials abated whenever the rulers were threatened
from the outside. When the monarchy created new offices, the rulers
pooled their resources, and those of their fellow townspeople, to buy
them up. And when the townspeople rioted in protest against high
prices and unemployment, the rulers created emergency committees
to find food and to direct local repressive efforts.56 Indeed, external
threats such as government intervention and food riots were probably
the most compelling causes of ruling group solidarity and cooperation,
for it was in response to such threats that the rulers became conscious
of themselves and their interests as a group. This process occurred
periodically during the Old Regime, but the rulers emerged most
clearly as a group, both in the minds of the rulers and the ruled, in the
crisis years immediately preceding the Revolution.
The events of the pre-Revolution awakened the townspeople's
interest in constitutional issues. First the rulers and the educated classes
and then the bulk of the urban population mobilized politically to
assert their collective interests. The Assembly of Notables which met
in early 1787 included one representative each from Troyes and Reims,
but it had little impact on local affairs. The first national event to affect
the people of Troyes was the exile of the parlement of Paris. For five
weeks members of the bailliage court and resident nobles entertained
the Parisian magistrates, and by the time their colleagues returned to
Paris Troyes' magistrates closely identified themselves with the parle-
ment's resistance to the crown.57
The creation of provincial assemblies in the pays d'elections might

55 AD, Marne, C 2507 (1763-80) and C 2508 (1780-90).

56 The chief police magistrate collaborated with officials from the various royal
jurisdictions and the town councillors whenever high prices threatened to provoke riots.
Ad hoc committees were formed in Troyes, for instance, during the shortage of 1782-83.
This practice was revived in 1789. Ricommard, Lieutenance generale de police, chap. 6.
57 Albert Babeau, Histoire de Troyes pendant la Revolution (Paris, 1873), I, chap. 2.

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394 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES

have transformed local politics in both Troyes and Reims. The edicts
of June-September 1787 regularized local involvement in national
politics by introducing a new set of administrative bodies which were
headquartered in the towns.58 Troyes and Reims each had a "depart-
mental assembly" (assemble'e de departement or assemblee d'election)
which was subordinate to the provincial assembly meeting in Chalons-
sur-Marne. The assemblies were given far-reaching authority in such
vital local matters as taxation and public works, but they never really
had time to establish regular operations before the Revolution. Al-
though the assemblies provided political experience to only a small
group of men, most of whom were already local rulers,59 their creation
did make the townspeople aware that even the king knew that constitu-
tional reforms were necessary.
Evidence of this accumulated rapidly in 1788. The beleaguered
king's attempted judicial reforms of May 1788 succeeded only in pro-
voking a flood of protest from the courts and their supporters.60 After a
summer of resistance by the parlements and by the bailliage courts,
including those of Troyes and Reims, the crown abandoned its reforms
and agreed to convoke the Estates General on May 1, 1789. Then the
parlement of Paris alienated its supporters by insisting that the Estates
General follow the procedures of the last Estates General convoked in
1614. Many towns officially protested, for even the provincial as-
semblies had as many deputies for the Third Estate as for the first two
orders combined ("doubling the third") and voted by head instead of
by order. The gains made in 1787-88 were not to be surrendered in
1789.
Although national and regional political elites were engaged in
the struggle for political participation by the end of 1788, the real

58 Jean Egret, La Pre-Revolution franfaise, 1787-1788 (Paris, 1962).

59 The provincial assembly of Champagne included three delegates from Reims and
Troyes: Souyn, Huez, and Fromageot. Almanach de Troyes, 1789. The assemblee d'election
of Troyes included six clergymen, six nobles, and twelve delegates for the Third Estate.
Three of the twelve were bailliage magistrates, two were election magistrates, and one
was an officer of the marechaussee. Most of the other six were landowners in the region,
and at least one of them was a nobleman (Berthelin de Rosieres, the son of Jean-Edme,
the former mayor). The assemblee de departement of Reims included at least two mer-
chants, both of whom had been members of the town council in the past. Two-thirds
of the representatives for the Third Estate of the department of Reims came from rural
areas rather than Reims itself. Almanach de Reims, 1789. For the functions of these
local assemblies see Albert Babeau, "L'Assemblee d'election et le bureau intermediaire
de Troyes (Etude sur un essai de decentralisation au siecle dernier)," Memnoires de la
Societe academique d'Agriculture, des Sciences, Arts et Belles-Lettres de l'Aube, XXXV
(1871), 151-88.
60 Egret, Pre-Revolution francaise, chap. 6.

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LOCAL ELITES AT THE END OF THE OLD REGIME 395

breakthrough for most urban-dwellers came in the meetings to write

grievance lists and elect deputies to the Estates General.61 According to
the regulations issued by the king in January 1789, every town like
Troyes and Reims met first by corporations, and then the delegates
from the corporations met in a town meeting. Weeks of discussion in
March created a new civic consciousness by making the townspeople
aware of their particular urban problems and identity, of their rulers
as a group, and of their disparate group interests. In short, the towns-
people were politicized. Yet despite growing political awareness and
impending economic dislocation in the form of rising prices and in-
creasing unemployment, the ruling groups retained their control in
this final confrontation before the Revolution. Nearly half the cor-
porate delegates to the town meetings were artisans or shopkeepers in
Troyes and Reims,62 but their representation dropped to about one-
fifth when the towns chose deputies to the bailliage level meetings.
Between 60 and 70 per cent of the degelates to the regional meetings
had been either royal officials or town councillors under the Old
Regime.63
The reasons for this predominance are not difficult to surmise. As
political participation and conflict widened in the years previous to the
Revolution, new men did appear on the political stage, but until July
1789 the old hands had all the advantages-a long experience in
group cooperation as well as practice in the arts of political conflict,
and with each innovation of the pre-Revolutionary years they gained
more political knowledge. In the meetings of the corporations and of
the towns they asserted their political leadership on the basis of past

61 The importance of this period is emphasized by George V. Taylor, "Revolutionary

and Nonrevolutionary Content in the Cahiers of 1789: An Interim Report," French
Historical Studies, VII (Fall 1972), 479-502.
62 Forty-five per cent of the corporate delegates in Reims were artisans or shop-
keepers as compared to 37 per cent in Troyes (the latter figure is an underestimation,
however, since it does not include the 15 per cent whose occupations could not be deter-
mined). Cahiers de doleances pour les Stats Generaux de 1789: Departement de la Marne,
ed. Gustave Laurent (ipernay, 1906-1911; Reims, 1930), IV, 204-06. Cahiers de doleances
du bailliage de Troyes (principal et secondaires) et du bailliage de Bar-sur-Seine pour
les ?tats Generaux de 1789, ed. Jules-Joseph Vernier (Troyes, 1909-11), I, 7-209 (delegates
listed with each proces-verbal).
63I compared the lists of delegates given by Laurent and Vernier with a list I
compiled of office-holders from 1770 to 1789 given in the almanacs. Troyes chose twenty-
four deputies and Reims chose thirty for the regional meetings. One-third of each group
were merchants or clothiers; about one-fifth were royal officials; and one-fifth to one-
fourth were members of the liberal professions. Thus measured in terms of social com-
position the town deputies elected in March 1789 included a slightly higher proportion
of representatives from the working classes (artisans and shopkeepers in this case) than
did the town councils.

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396 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES

experience and present abilities. The townspeople were learning how

to choose their own leaders in these months, but until July and August
they were unable to replace the men who had ruled them in the past.
In July and August the unity of many local ruling groups disinte-
grated, but the ability of former rulers to maintain their positions of
power varied from town to town. In Troyes the revolutionary commit-
tee elected in August incorporated and outnumbered the members of
the town council, which as a body ceased to function. Only six former
rulers (9 per cent) were elected to the committee.64 In Reims the town
council, on the other hand, continued to meet separately throughout
1789, and almost half the deputies elected to the revolutionary com-
mittee had held office under the Old Regime.65
The explanation for these different fates lies in the structure of
the ruling groups and their responses to the political crisis of 1787-89.
By July 1789 the townspeople of Troyes had identified their bailliage
court magistrates with the Old Regime. In the absence of a visible
group of nobles or a powerful local church they were the highest-
ranking local group dependent for its status on Old Regime distinc-
tions (offices). Since 1787 the magistrates had been linked in the public
eye with the parlement of Paris, which by 1789 had completely lost its
image as defender of liberty and had become instead the chief symbol
of aristocratic reaction. A magistrate represented Troyes at both
sessions of the Assembly of Notables and at the Provincial Assembly of
Champagne. Five of the six delegates from Troyes to the "departmental
assembly" (assemblee d'election) were magistrates in either the bailliage
or the election courts, and several magistrates were chosen to represent
the town at the regional meetings to elect deputies to the Estates Gen-
eral. When the central government collapsed in July, the magistrates
did not relinquish control. In the midst of food riots the town council
convoked an emergency committee composed of army and marechaussee
officers and the magistrates of the bailliage court.66 Thus until the end,
until the townspeople forced the town council to accept the election of
a committee, the magistrates in alliance with the council refused to
share political power with their fellow townsmen. It is hardly surpris-

64 List of committee members given in AC, Troyes, A Registre 54, August 29, 1789.
Sixty-four deputies were elected.
65 Forty-seven of the forty-nine deputies elected to the committee in Reims are listed
in AC, Reims, Registre 226, fonds moderns, "Delib6rations du Comit6 permanent,"
August 21, 1789.
66All twenty-five members of this ad hoc committee can be considered members of
the ruling group.

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LOCAL ELITES AT THE END OF THE OLD REGIME 397

ing, consequently, that the leaders of the counterrevolution in Troyes

in 1789 were the bailliage court magistrates.67
The Church in Reims, rather than the town council or the
bailliage court, became the chief target of hostility directed at the local
Old Regime. This happened for two reasons: the lay rulers had long
fought for the elimination of the church's privileges in the town; and
in the regional or bailliage meetings of the clergy, the archbishop and
other high-ranking clergymen demonstrated their unwillingness to
accept reforms.68 Hence when a committee was elected in August, the
townspeople did not choose any clergymen to sit on it. The ruling
group in Reims also benefited from the relative heterogeneity of its
composition; since nobles, magistrates, merchants, and members of
the liberal professions all had nearly equal representation in the ruling
coalition, the townspeople could not identify any single lay group with
the Old Regime. The ruling coalition retained its unity and control by
admitting new men in the pre-Revolutionary years 1787-88. A noble-
man represented the town at the Assembly of Notables and Provincial
Assembly, but two merchants joined the chief police magistrate as
delegates from Reims to the departmental assembly. When on July 20
the town council learned of the fall of the Bastille, it immediately
created a committee of former town council members, army officers,
police officials, and the thirty electors of the Third Estate.69 By includ-
ing the electors the council wisely showed its preference for the town's
recently elected representatives over the court magistrates. Finally,
when the townspeople requested the election of a committee, the
council readily acquiesced and thereby retained its control.
Through the years of the pre-Revolution and during 1789 the
ruling group of Reims consistently demonstrated greater political flexi-
bility and openness than its counterpart in Troyes. When merchants
bought ennobling offices, their status was recognized by election to the
council. Similarly, nonnoble officials with lengthy service in the lower
courts were allowed to purchase office in the bailliage court. Entrance
into both institutions meant access to a social world dominated by the

67 In
September 1789 the bailliage court declared the committee illegal and re-
instated the town council as the sole authority in Troyes. Lynn A. Hunt, "Municipal
Revolution of 1789 in Troyes and Reims," chap. 4.
68 In Troyes the cures dominated the meetings of the clergy, but in Reims the high-
ranking clergymen controlled the formulation of a grievance list and the election of
clerical deputies.
69 AC, Reims, Registre 116, fonds anciens, "Conclusions du Conseil de Ville," July
20, 1789.

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398 FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES

nobility. Upward mobility, then, was possible even if it was carefully

regulated. The boundaries separating urban social groups in Troyes
were not as fluid as they were in Reims, and upward mobility meant
leaving the town for another social world. Merchants who bought
ennobling offices moved to the country, and local noble families showed
little interest in holding office in the royal bureaucracy. As a conse-
quence the courts and the council did not serve as a meeting ground
for the nobility and the bourgeoisie. The nonnoble officials, merchants,
and members of the liberal professions were left by themselves to con-
tend for local power; and since local office was their chief claim to
status, rather than a recognition of that status, they did not readily
admit new men to share in it.
Perhaps more than anything else this brief examination of political
office in Troyes and Reims shows that local politics at the end of the
Old Regime were informed by the peculiarities of each town. The
character of the ruling groups likewise varied from place to place and
reflected the economic, social, and political balances within each town.
The multifarious economy of Reims, for example, made possible a
diversified ruling circle of wine merchants and woolen manufacturers,
of judges and clergymen. The more restricted administrative and eco-
nomic functions of Troyes limited the ruling group there to cotton
merchants and magistrates. Thus local resources influenced local politi-
cal options by creating or constraining the possibilities for coalitions.
Despite these differences, however, we can describe the rulers of
Troyes and Reims as political elites composed of local notables. The
rulers of 1788-89 were men of wealth and status chosen by other
property-owners to represent their interests in local affairs. By the mid-
eighteenth century, wholesale merchants, lawyers, and doctors had
been integrated into the ruling circle of royal officials and noblemen.70
Once selected for office, the rulers developed a community of interest
based on the demands of ruling: ruling linked noble and bourgeois,
landowner and merchant; and their social alliances reinforced this
pragmatic understanding.71 Hence, while quarrels between nobles and
nonnobles, old nobles and new nobles, plagued national institutions,
70 Colin Lucas' distinction between those who traded and those who did not is too
harsh; the line demarcating the elite in Reims and Troyes was drawn somewhere in the
middle of the merchants and the members of the liberal professions, and it divided those
who had access to local offices from those who did not. "Nobles, Bourgeois and the Origins
of the French Revolution," Past and Present, no. 60 (1973), pp. 84-126, esp. p. 93.
71 This may be taken as the political concomitant of the economic community of
interest uniting bourgeois and noble described by George V. Taylor in "Noncapitalist
Wealth and the French Revolution," American Historical Review, LXXII (1967), 469-96.

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LOCAL ELITES AT THE END OF THE OLD REGIME 399

local rulers learned how to adapt to the new social values nurtured by
capitalism and urban growth.
In the years just before the Revolution local elites became con-
scious of their group identity as local notables. But the Revolution
with its intense politicization of local life shattered first their political
and then their social bonds. By 1792 merchants and lawyers stood apart
from nobles and clergymen, and by 1794 the bourgeoisie itself was
divided. Yet even though the Revolution washed away the local govern-
ments of the Old Regime and with them the unity of the ruling elites,
it spared those individuals who were willing to ride the wave and
accept the new regime. And in the end the national political style
which emerged after the Revolution was much like that first fashioned
in the towns of the Old Regime.

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