La démission du parlement de Navarre (mai 1765)

The parlement of Navarre, which was located at Pau (1620–1789), had a very distinctive existence during the crisis years 1760–70. The first to experience a purge in May 1765, through a series of forced resignations of magistrates, which culminated in the Maupeou reforms of 1771, this parlement was the last to resume its functions after ten years of exile in 1775. If no one doubts the urgent need for a reform of the judiciary in the eighteenth century, and as part of it a virtual revolution at the heart of the magistracy, the methods adopted by the royal government have not ceased to divide French historians, who have rarely gone beyond the parameters of contemporary debate, which contrast two revolutions: that of the king for the common interest and that of the office holders for the interests of the nobility. The crisis of 1765 had originated in a local disciplinary problem but in a context of exacerbated national protests over taxation and resulted in a purge of most of the magistrates, amid a local indifference that was scarcely mitigated by the few gestures of support from fellow magistrates. A careful study of the parlementaire discourse of the new officers appointed by Maupeou, the ‘interlopers’, drawn from the bourgeois members of the local Bar, reveals in reality a disturbing continuity with that of the ‘expelled’ magistrates. Ridiculed by public opinion, harassed by the Estates of Béarn and by the intendant, and on top of that poorly rewarded for their devotion to the royal authority, the new magistrates, who had suffered a total lack of appreciation, displayed to extremes the defensive attitudes of the traditional office holders. This unwavering stand throws new light on the continuities of a political culture and modifies as too simplified and one-dimensional assessments of the principles and discourse of the parlementaire opposition

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