Opening Towns, Closing Frontiers

Abstract

tChanges after 1650 opened up a new distinctive phase of urban development that eventually ushered in the modern city in France.¹ Peace inside the kingdom raised questions about the need to keep up urban enceintes. Local choices often coincided with royal interests, though benign neglect probably brought down more walls than active demolition. The collaborative nature of relations between the crown and towns became increasingly coercive under Louis XIV and his successors.² The crown’s growing monopoly on violence after the Fronde and discursive claims to sovereignty, together with the growing oversight of royal intendants in municipal affairs, brought about a steady loss of municipal independence.³ Urban notables usually proved pliable because they became even more closely tied to royal officialdom as Ville and État merged. Royal cooptation of municipal officials culminated in the 1690s when the crown, strapped for money to fund its wars, converted most municipal posts into venal offices, though later in 1717 the Pvegency moved to roll back these measures. The exclusion of middling urban groups from town councils and royal offices over the eighteenth century together with higher fiscal exactions through forced loans bred resentment and eventually contributed to the monarchy’s overthrow in 1789.⁴

Les grandes villes sont fort du goût du gouvernement absolu…

—Louis-Sébastien Mercier