ABSTRACT
Between the late 1660s and early 1690s, the French navy underwent an unprecedented operational and administrative expansion, the latter of which was reflected in the extensive Ordonnance pour les armées navales of 1689.1 Naval minister and contrôleur général Jean-Baptiste Colbert (tenure of responsibility: 1663-83) and later his son, the marquis de Seignelay (1683-90), had presided over a series of naval reforms in an effort to create a strong battle fleet that would compete with the English and Dutch fleets by incorporating the latest tactical and technological refinements. Rebuilding the navy had been a comprehensive effort that required not only the acquisition and construction of ships, but also the management of a complex logistical network; extensive investments in ports and arsenals in Toulon, Brest and Rochefort; the formation of a conscription system to supply the navy with over 40,000 sailors; and the oversight of an administrative system of maritime intendants and commissaires with a broad array of responsibilities.2 Whereas the Colbertian navy was certainly built on a network of ‘fisco-financiers’ where administrative and subcontracting roles were often conflated,3 the growth of Louis XIV’s navy echoed, it would seem, a wider determination by the king to reassert monarchical sovereignty and establish firm royal control over the armed forces.
