Organisation of the gabelle
Salt taxes - the hated
gabelle - were a crucial component of royal revenue, involving a whole series of diffierent levies, some on consumption, some on sales, some on circulation. Their administration involved the General Farm in maintaining a vast organisation aimed at imposing a monopoly of sales and imposing control over the salt trade at every level.
The fundamental organisation of the
gabelle was laid down by a series of Ordonnances in 1680. For the purposes of the salt-tax France was partitioned into six different regions. The lion's share of revenue was contributed by the
pays des grandes gabelles, which embraced Northern and Central France, including Paris, Orléans and the traffic along the Seine and Loire. Here the consumer was compelled to buy salt from stores controlled by the Farm, and duty could increase price of salt tenfold. The
petites gabelles in the South-East was also subject to duties, though here consumption was less tightly regulated. The
pays rédimés des gabelles in the West and south West
was historically free from salt-tax, although subject to some tariffs. The remaining regions were the salt producting areas: the
pays de salines (Lorraine, Alsace,Trois-Évêchés and Franche-Comte) and the
pays de quart bouillon (Normandy, where salt was produced by evaporation from sea water). Finally there were the
pays francs, the most important of which was Brittany.
This division made for extreme and arbitrary differences in prices: salt which sold for two or three livres-per-minot in Brittany might for fifty-six or more livres-per-minot across the border in the grandes gabelles.
