ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the evolving financial relationships between the crown and local elite groups in the generalite of Rouen in Upper Normandy during the latter half of Louis XIV’s reign with a view to comparing the royal strategies and provincial responses in the Rouennais example to those found in Burgundy. The face of the ruling Rouennais elite thus differed in important ways from that of the ruling Burgundian elite. The market for offices and the ability of the crown to find buyers for newly created offices influenced the calculations of both crown and corps. Few historians of modern French state have adopted explicitly comparative approaches in order to weigh the significance of particular institutional distinctions for the political consolidation of the Kingdom in the seventeenth century. Louis XIV was able to divide the Norman elite along lines of privilege and access to power and resources, since the local leaders lacked the institutional arena to form a broad and tenable coalition.
