ABSTRACT
Historians of early modern France have long recognized a connection between warfare and the venality of offices, or the practice of raising revenues by creating public offices for sale to private individuals. As the 1688 outbreak of war drew near, rather than simply undermining the interests of venal office holders, Louis XIV followed a dual-edged approach, securing their property rights while squeezing financial support from them. In 1786, a time at which ‘venality seemed as fixed as ever into the nature of things,’ a team of jurists led by the magistrate Pierre Jean Jacques Guillaume Guyot wrote what they hoped would become the definitive guide to the laws concerning royal offices. Shoring up the succession rights of venal offices worked in the favor both of officers, able to rest more secure in their hold over their property, and of the crown, with its strategy of war finance that elicited the financial intermediation of privileged corps.
