Distribuer l'argent du roi au XVIII^e siècle

Under the Ancien Régime, the finances of the King of France were shrouded in secrecy until the famous Necker decided to publish estimates of the monarchy's income and, above all, expenditure. The public then discovered the staggering amount of the pensions that Louis XVI was paying to a large proportion of the nobility. At the time of the Revolution, the National Assembly decided to investigate and revealed the way in which public funds derived from tax coercion had been used to subsidise courtiers. This book tells the story both of the investigation and of the object investigated. By describing for the first time, using unpublished archives, the uses of this social practice that linked the king to the nobility, the author casts a new light on the forces behind the final crisis of the Ancien Régime and traces the genesis of the first retirement system for the State civil service.