4 - Nosseigneurs les élus and the officers of the Estates

Summary

With the Estates General in session for only a few weeks every three years, power and responsibility was devolved to its representatives and officers in the chamber of élus. No less an authority than Chrétien Guillaume de Lamoignon de Malesherbes, first president of the Cour des Aides of Paris and later an enlightened minister of Louis XVI, observed in the remonstrances he addressed to Louis XV in July 1763 ‘that as many disputes are settled and as much business conducted in this chamber of élus as in the most active intendance’. As rivals and fierce critics of the élus, Malesherbes and his colleagues sought to denigrate the Burgundian administration by maintaining that, despite their immense workload, ‘in reality the élus only assemble in Dijon once each year, that this assembly lasts for about two months and, in the intervals, there are no other meetings’. In their absence the daily administration ‘is necessarily handed over to subordinates who are permanently resident in Dijon’.

Despite the polemical tone of the remonstrances, which were written during a particularly bitter jurisdictional quarrel with the Estates, many subsequent historians have been happy to repeat these allegations as part of a more general critique of the competence and integrity of the élus. In his discussion of the province's fiscal system, Bouchard was unequivocal: ‘the élus of the clergy and the nobility played almost no role at all. The majority of the time, they resided in a monastery, a château or in another town than the capital of the province’.