Gabelle of salt

gabelle the is a Taxe on the salt having existed in France with the Moyen-âge and the modern time. It was then one of the Aides or taxes indirect.

The word comes from the Italian gabella (“tax”), itself perhaps coming from the Arab qabāla . The Gabelou S took care of the harvest of the gabelle one.

Principle

The general principle is the following: the salt is the subject of a royal Monopole. It is stored in Greniers with salt, where the population buys it already taxed. The gabelle one accounts for, at the time modern, approximately 6% of the royal incomes.

Salt was a long time the only means of preserving food and was thus a strategic element. With salt, one manufactured saltings and one dried fish and soft meats. It was also component nutritive essential for the cattle. Lastly, it was under the Ancien Mode used like currency of exchange and it had even a function of Salaire, which one finds the etymological direction in Latin salarium in which meant “ ration of sel ” then, by extension, the practice of the treatment, the wages to the Roman epoch.

French history

Already instituted like a temporary tax by Saint Louis in 1246, then taken again by Philippe IV Beautiful the in 1286, the gabelle one becomes a permanent tax under Philippe VI of Valois which generalizes it in all the kingdom. In 1343, by ordinance of the king, salt becomes a state monopoly.
The gabelle one will be abolished by the constituent National Assembly on December 1st 1790. But the tax on salt reappeared nevertheless in 1806, under Napoleon I {{er}}, and it was removed definitively only by the Law of finances of 1946.

Covering

As for much of royal taxes and taxes, the gabelle one often “is leased”, i.e. entrusted to intermediaries (farmers) which advance its product with the king, with load for them to recover the sums which had by the population.

Leased since 1578, Colbert entrusts the covering of the Impôt on salt to a company of treating: the Farm or Gabelle , often also entitled Firm of the King. He creates only one and single financial institution by replacing the attics with salt. In each province, Farmers general, directing employees controllers: the gabelous manage their district. The Firm pay with the King a sum fixes and is refunded then on the subjects as good seems to him. To extract the maximum of profit, the farm multiplies the house searches and uses all the Procédés vexatious. In the countries of “ large gabelle ”, the taxpayer is not free to buy the quantity of salt which is appropriate to him: the farm fixes what must be to him bought.

This minimal quantity is called the “ Salt of having for the pot and the salt box ”. The charitable officers and establishments enjoy the right of “ frankly salted ” and buy salt without tax. They can even receive the silver value of the salt which they do not want to use.

At the beginning of the 18th century, one counts 253 attics in the whole of the areas of large gabelle including 110 along the the Loire.

See: Firm of the King

Country of gabelle

The perception of gabelle is not uniform. It depends on the country :

the frank countries , free from taxes, either because they are exempted by it at their meeting to the kingdom of France, or because they are maritime areas: Artois, Flanders, Brittany, the Vendée, Aunis, Low-Navarre, Béarn;
the rédimés countries (or Pays rédimés of gabelles the) which have, by a contractual payment, bought an exemption with perpetuity: Poitou, the Limousin, Auvergne, Saintonge, Angoumois, Périgord, Quercy, Of Bordeaux, Guyenne;
the country of saltworks : Lorraine, Alsace, Franche-Comté, Lyons, Dombes Provence, Roussillon;
the country of quarter-bubble . Salt is collected there while making boil the impregnated marine salt sand. The sauneries pour the quarter of their manufacture to the attics of the king: Cotentin;
the country of small gabelle , where the sale of salt is ensured by attics salt, but where consumption is generally free: Dauphine, Vivarais, Gévaudan, Rouergue, Languedoc;
the country of large gabelle , one must obligatorily buy there an annual quantity fixed salt, which transforms the gabelle one into a true direct tax: Normandy, Champagne, Picardy, Ile-de-France, Maine, Anjou, Touraine, Orléanais, Berry, Burgundy, Bourbonnais.

Example

Croixille, currently in the department of the Mayenne, parish of Maine, province of large Gabelle, is bordering Brittany, province of salted franc. Enormous disproportion between the price of salt in the two provinces involved, on the border consisted the river of the Vilaine, a smuggling and a guerilla perpetual between the Gabelous and the Faux-sauniers and this, in spite of the rigors of the law. When the Brittany was attached to the kingdom of France, it was under the condition that its preferences, rights and habits would be unchanged. The Impôt on salt was thus not applied to him. Thus, when salt was worth 11 to 13 grounds delivers it to Croixille , it was not worth, in the parish bordering that a ground. In other words, salt treated to, with Croixille, 55 to 60 books the minot (approximately 50kg) whereas on other bank of the Vilaine, in Brittany, frank country, it was worth only 2 to 3 books.

This tax founds a radical separation between the Brittany and the Anjou and the Maine and brings an unrestrained smuggling to each border of frank country and country of large gabelle. It is creation, according to Francoise of Persson of “ a country in margin, that where the fraud is reine ”.

Smuggling

It appears among the most unpopular taxes and generated a specific Contrebande, that of the “salt-smugglers”. One of the salt-smuggler the most known by the number of its arrests (as well as the other members of its family) is Jean Chouan.

The Faux salt maker was a smuggler who was going to buy, for example in Brittany, on other bank of Unpleasant, of the salt which it resold in Maine, after having made it pass in fraud without paying the gabelle one. It incurred the judgment with the galères if it worked without weapons, the capital punishment if it had weapons. Between 1730 and 1743,585 false salt makers were off-set in News-France to help with the settlement of the colony.

In the same way, to the wire of the the Loire, the main road of salt from the marshes of the Atlantic to the heart of the France brings an unrestrained smuggling on ground as on water.

Under Louis XVI, the situation had not changed. In Brittany, salt delivers it cost more Liard and half (3/8 pennies) when in Maine “ country of gabelle ”, it treated to 12 to 13 pennies; from where the frequency of the Smuggling or “ false-saunage ”. The Gabeleurs, in Bas-mainiot “ the Gabeleux ” were the clerks of the farm. They were in particular charged to recover the gabelle one.

The ways of smuggling could lead to misery, the prison, even the galères. Salt-smuggler, with the imitation of a population in search of his survival, Jean Chouan is the representative of a combat against an iniquitous tax mode. At the time, the salt traffic was the subject of an intense smuggling at the internal borders. It was estimated that there was about half of the bordering population of the Marches of Brittany which lived more or less of this false-salt making, that is to say as conveyer, receiver or retailer.

Popular risings

It is also at the origin of popular risings. Most important of them is probably that of 1542 with 1548, following the attempt at unification by François I {{er}} of the modes of the gabelle one: the Of Bordeaux, the Angoumois and the Saintonge revolt. The notable ones and the general governor of Guyenne are massacred. The Connétable Anne de Montmorency restores the order in blood, but Henri II must bend and let the provinces return to their former statute. They will be then qualified “rédimées”.

In 1639, the attempt at suppression of the “ quarter-bouillon ” caused the Révolte of the Flip-flops in Normandy.

In 1675, during the Revolt of the Red Bonnets occurred in Brittany and started by tax measures on the Stamped paper, the tobacco and the crockery of tin, the simple evocation of gabelle can put fire at the powders like at the end of July 1675 during the Pardon of Saint-Urlo.

See too

External bonds

gabelle XIVe-XVIIIe centuries.
More on gabelle the

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