The land registry of Bertier de Sauvigny is a series of maps of the parishes of the generality of Paris surveyed from 1776 to 1791, often referred to as plans d'intendance. Bertier de Sauvigny, Intendant of Paris, sought to distribute taxes more equitably, by assessing the overall revenues of each parish. This cadastre was not yet drawn up by parcel, but by large masses of crops within each parish, because the parish was the geographical level for distributing the taille, in a country of personal size, and this choice was also quicker and met with less opposition. Surveying work was carried out parish by parish by professional, often local, surveyors. The work was supervised by the intendant's subdelegates. Surveyors were small, relatively low-paid office-holders, often working with their families, whose training was essentially practical and empirical. They were coordinated by Pierre Dubray, the intendant's geographer and surveyor. The surveyor identified the boundaries of the parish to be surveyed. He then measured the surfaces by large masses of crops, by triangulation, essentially using a gunter's chain, a try square and Pythagoras' theorem for his calculations. Measurements were expressed in local units and in king's arpent. They were recorded in a procès-verbal, which was used to draw up a plan. The whole was sent to the intendant, and the surveyor was paid if the work was judged to have been well done. He often exceeded the one-month deadline. In all, the project took 15 years to complete, but most of the work was carried out between 1783 and 1788. There was little opposition. This land register probably inspired the first Napoleonic cadastre, which was also drawn up by crop mass. Certain figures were copied from one cadastre to the other. Area comparisons show the accuracy of Bertier de Sauvigny's measurements. Today, the surveys and plans from this cadastre are preserved in the repositories of the departmental archives, under the name of plans d'intendance, and are sometimes accessible online. They constitute first-rate historical sources, used for studies on a wide range of subjects.
The need for a land registry
Fiscal concerns The cadastre of Bertier de Sauvigny was produced between 1776 and 1791, under the authority of Louis Bénigne Bertier de Sauvigny, Intendant of the Generality of Paris. It was a survey of the landscape of the generality of Paris, carried out as part of a tax reform, the tarification of the taille, pursued by successive Intendants of Paris, Louis Jean Bertier de Sauvigny and then his son Louis Bénigne Bertier de Sauvigny. With the creation of this land register, Bertier de Sauvigny sought to gain a better understanding of the agricultural potential of each parish, in order to obtain a better return on the tax by distributing it fairly. It also responded to a preoccupation with territorial inventory that was spreading throughout the monarchical administrative apparatus. At the same time, the idea that mathematical accuracy and tax fairness should go hand in hand was gaining ground in society. This project was part of the modernization drive that swept through the Ancien Régime in the second half of the eighteenth century, a period during which various administrative and fiscal reforms were attempted, often with little success. Bertier de Sauvigny achieved concrete results: the establishment of the average value of land in each parish and a theoretical tax rate for each farm.
A cadastre for each crop mass The cadastre drawn up under his authority did not represent individual land lots, but instead took a survey by mass of crops (vines, fields, pastures, etc.) for the entire parish, which was then responsible for distributing the tax equitably among its inhabitants. In a land of personal tax, i.e. personal income tax, this was sufficient. A parcel-based cadastre was only necessary in countries of royal tax, where property rather than income was taxed, as in Haute-Guyenne, in the generality of Limoges or in Auvergne, or further south in Languedoc, where compoix were drawn up. In countries of personal tax, the population was very wary of attempts to establish a parcel-based cadastre, seen as a means of increasing the tax burden. In 1763, Henri Bertin, the controller-General of finances, was unsuccessful in this task. Bertier de Sauvigny's cadastre met with less opposition. Bertier de Sauvigny had all the less reason to undertake a parcel-based cadastre since the Court of Aids, in 1768, reaffirmed that the royal power could not interfere in the distribution of the taille (tax) in the parishes. Moreover, when he took over from his father Louis Jean Bertier de Sauvigny as Intendant of Paris, the latter had already limited the room for maneuver of parish taille collectors through a series of tariffs. Last but not least, a cadastre by masses of crops was much quicker to compile than a parcel-based cadastre. At the beginning of his administration, Bertier de Sauvigny was content to order surveys when he noticed anomalies. It was only gradually that the cadastral survey was systematized.
Land registry men Bertier de Sauvigny relied on subdelegates and surveyors to draw up his cadastre.
Subdelegates The generality of Paris was divided into thirty-four elections and subdelegations, each headed by a subdelegate who assisted and represented the intendant. This is far more than in the other generalities of the kingdom. The subdelegate was chosen by the intendant. He was compensated by the intendant's gratuities, honoraria and judicature or municipal offices. He was often stable, sometimes succeeding his father in the position. He was assisted by a clerk and, like the intendant, performed duties in a variety of fields: justice, police, roads and finance. As regards the establishment of the land registry, the subdelegate organized the surveying of parishes and participated in their classification. He was responsible for administrative control of the surveying work, approving reports and plans, and reporting to the chief engineer-geographer, Pierre Dubray, on the quality of the surveyors' work. The surveyors did most of the fieldwork.
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