Treaties in the Conseil d’État

Abstract

The courts were among the many institutions which lost both power and prestige in the French Revolution. The pre-Revolutionary courts were important and powerful forces in France. Unfortunately, they became one of the main institutions into which the nobility retreated. As such they became a bastion of the forces of privilege, local power, and the status quo against the royal desires for modernization and centralization. The eighteenth century was one of constant turmoil in the relations between the crown and the courts, turmoil which reached its height during the temporary banishment of the Parlement of Paris at the end of the reign of Louis XV¹ and the forced registration of Turgot’s decrees in 1776 by Louis XVI at a formal lit de justice.²