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RAUDOT, JACQUES, lawyer in the parlement of Paris, counsellor in the parlement of Metz, magistrate, chief clerk in the department of Marine, a director of France’s maritime commerce, councillor of the Marine, honorary counsellor in the Court of Aids at Paris, intendant of New France from 1705 to 1711; b. in 1638; d. at Paris, 20 Feb. 1728.

The Raudot genealogy has been traced back as far as 1360 in the small French town of Arnay-le-Duc (in the province of Burgundy, not far from Dijon). By the middle of the 17th century the family apparently held a position of prominence in the local social hierarchy. Jacques’ uncle was mayor of the town and his father, Jean, besides being seigneur of Bazernes (department of Yonne) and Coudray (department of Aisne), was ranked in the king’s service as lieutenant in the election of Auxerre and clerk for extraordinary war expenses. What seems, however, to have suddenly propelled the Raudots from provincial obscurity to a role of importance in the Marine was Jean’s marriage to Marguerite Talon, a member of the prestigious Parisian branch of that family. Marguerite was the daughter of Jean Talon, receveur général des bœttes et monnoyes de France, and her cousin Marie was married to the father of the elder Pontchartrain, minister of Marine. It was perhaps through the latter connection that Jean Raudot became a farmer-general and on 1 May 1640 a king’s secretary. In any case, by the time of his death in 1660, he had prepared the way for his three sons, Jacques, Jean-Baptiste (b. 1657) and Louis-François (b. 1658), to pursue distinguished careers in the royal service. The two youngest became army officers of recognized merit, while Jacques entered the magistracy.

Little is known of Jacques’ early life, except that at some stage he further entrenched himself in the legal nobility by marrying Françoise Gioux, daughter of a lawyer in the parlement (probably the parlement of Paris). By Françoise he had two sons, Antoine-Denis (b. 1679) and Jacques-Denis, known as Raudot de Chalus (b. 1685), as well as one daughter, Marguerite-Françoise. Jacques evidently received an arduous training in the French judicial system, the type of thorough training that was increasingly required for Marine service by the early 1700s. Prior to 1673, he was an advocate in the parlement of Paris, but on 16 February of that year he became a counsellor in the parlement of Metz. On 26 May 1678, he was appointed counsellor in the Court of Aids at Paris where he was considered a good judge. Although his record of honourable service for over 26 years in the Court of Aids was probably enough in itself to qualify him for a colonial post, other factors must have entered into his selection. He was, after all, 66 when he received the commission on 1 Jan. 1705, appointing him conjointly with Antoine-Denis to the intendancy of New France.

Raudot’s contemporaries offered a number of theories on his appointment. Some thought he was being rewarded for his distinguished legal career; others claimed that he was sent to assist his son for only a three-year period; still others believed that he was simply benefiting, as his predecessor François de Beauharnois* de La Chaussaye had done, from his family ties with the minister. Pontchartrain, according to this last theory, was anxious to help him mend his fortune. While all of these explanations undoubtedly contain elements of truth, no single one of them is entirely adequate. It was true, for example, that Jacques was expected to assist Antoine-Denis and prepare him for future posts, but he alone received a salary and their respective commissions left no doubt that he was the man in charge. Then again, the minister never displayed any anxiety over the Raudots’ financial status. On the contrary, he expected them both to live off the father’s 12,000 livres salary and he insisted that they take half of it in Canadian letters of exchange which normally meant a loss of about 3,000 livres. Furthermore, even though they received none of their provisions in two different years, Pontchartrain insisted that they pay freight charges and import duties on those they received in other years. Thus it seems advisable to look beyond mere considerations of patronage to account for Raudot’s selection, perhaps to his character and outlook at the moment when he became intendant.

On 7 Sept. 1705, 55 days after leaving France, the Raudots – Jacques, Antoine-Denis, and Jacques-Denis – arrived at Quebec in company with Jacques’ nephew, the Chevalier Dussy. They were just in time to join Beauharnois for the long overdue ceremonies held to officially install Philippe de Rigaud, Marquis de Vaudreuil, as governor general. Appearing thus for the first time, they must surely have impressed the citizenry of Quebec. Though young, Antoine-Denis was keenly intelligent and possessed that sort of stoical bearing that generally inspires instant respect. But at this early stage, his father was clearly the more arresting figure; nor would Jacques, a man with a strong sense of his own importance, have had it any other way. A contemporary at Quebec described him as “a distinguished elderly man, a scholar with a touch of the pedant,” capable of discoursing knowledgeably on almost any subject. Certainly his dispatches to the minister, particularly those written when his violent temper was not blazing over some real or imagined slight, bear out this description by their excellent organization, abundance of detail, and easy style. Their contents also bespeak a man of legalistic efficiency, possessed of tremendous energy, and determined to exercise every particle of his authority.

But Jacques also appreciated the better things in life. He and his two sons lived together at Quebec in relative comfort, rapidly turning the intendant’s palace into a hive of social activity. Despite his 67 years, Jacques enjoyed the company of young people and displayed a lively interest in Quebec’s eligible widows – in spite of the fact that his wife didn’t die until 1710. He entertained them all with musical concerts performed in the latest metropolitan style of mixed voices and instruments. In fact his choice of diversion soon offended the moral scruples of the colony’s stern ecclesiasts, resulting in a series of sharp verbal exchanges that led in turn to complaints about his lack of respect for the clergy. This would not be by any means the last occasion when Jacques’ personality stimulated heated opposition, but it was clear nevertheless that he was a man of unique abilities who had been appointed to New France to deal with her unique problems.

Raudot had been introduced to these problems while still in Paris. He learned from several memoirs and from discussions with Canadian officials like Denis Riverin, that New France was teetering on the edge of economic collapse. The long war of the Spanish Succession had imposed an unbearable strain on Marine finances, making it impossible to transfuse needed capital into a colonial economy suffering from interrupted commerce, rising prices, and a shaky monetary system. Worse still, a continuing glut of the European beaver market had all but ruined the Canadian-financed and directed Compagnie de la Colonie – a reversal which touched most of New France’s merchants and administrators and which seemed to call for a new economic orientation. Actually, one of Raudot’s earliest resolves was to strive to create conditions whereby the habitants would leave the hunt for furs to devote themselves more earnestly to agriculture. But economic distress was only part of the problem. Raudot’s instructions indicated that the company’s directors were guilty of gross malfeasance and that the officers of other institutions, such as the Conseil Souverain, had introduced abuses that were purely the products of their own self-interest and very onerous to the poorer inhabitants. Here was a preliminary picture that would have jaundiced the most optimistic eye, and it is small wonder that Jacques Raudot came to the colony looking for signs of corruption and oppression and found them in every corner.

From the beginning of his tenure in 1705 until his departure in 1711, Raudot kept up a steady barrage of criticism directed against the colonial institutions, the officials who administered them and the people who lived within them. At one time or another he recommended sweeping changes in education, agriculture, the legal system, the seigneurial system, municipal regulations, and even the form of government. He divided the inhabitants of the colony into two groups, the vested interests or “oppressors” (for Raudot they included merchants, administrators, seigneurs, and even ecclesiastics), and the habitants or “oppressed.” But both groups were distinguished by poverty, avarice, insubordination, and ignorance. In fact ignorant was an indispensable word in Raudot’s vocabulary, which he employed especially to describe royal officials from the lowliest clerk to the governor general himself. In 1709 he informed Pontchartrain that there were “very few persons in this country . . . who have the qualities necessary to direct any undertaking.” The persons of quality were too concerned with their own selfish interests to care about New France’s general welfare, while the habitants were utterly without discipline because of their poor upbringing and lack of school training. It was even necessary to protect the parish priests from their insults.

For Raudot, an experienced magistrate accustomed to telling others what was best for them, these social conditions represented a challenge. Entrusting the financial affairs of the intendancy to Antoine-Denis, he concentrated all his energy on public order and justice in an effort to bring both the vested interests and the habitants into complete subordination, fearing yet benefiting from his paternalistic interest. To discipline the habitants of the countryside, he proposed three major reforms: the introduction of schoolmasters in each seigneury, who would be trained at the establishment of François Charon de La Barre in Montreal at a cost to the king of 2,000 livres; an increase in the authority of the militia captains as agents of royal authority in the parishes, to be effected by making them sergeants in the troops at 100 livres salary per year; and more rigorous enforcement of police ordinances, particularly those dealing with liquor and moral offences. This programme was crippled, however, by lack of funds, the untimely death of the Sieur Charon and the minister’s refusal to accept the proposals regarding the militia captains. Although Raudot issued hundreds of ordinances attempting to regulate everything from the number of bakers in Montreal to the preservation of fruit orchards, they were not usually obeyed. In 1708, he wrote in disgust, “intendants are disliked in this country because they are responsible for public order.”

But Raudot was even more concerned with curbing the power of the vested interests. On his arrival in the colony, he had been witness to the investigation of a near-riot in Montreal caused by a greedy merchant’s attempt to take advantage of a serious salt shortage. Referring to this and many similar abuses, Raudot declared to the minister: “. . . the Sieur Raudot regards, Monseigneur, these kinds of things as vexations which the superior attempts to inflict on his inferior.” He vowed to eradicate them wherever they existed. This was the spirit, for example, that he brought to the affairs of the Compagnie de la Colonie. Though he recognized that the company had suffered since its organization in 1700 from two main drawbacks, the depressed European beaver market and inadequate financing, he could not believe that the Canadian directors were entirely free of responsibility for the nearly one and a half million livres of debt that had accumulated by 1705. Consequently, even prior to his departure from Paris, he submitted a memoir composed of recommendations including one for the company’s administrative reorganization. Pontchartrain agreed, having long since concluded that the company’s plight was primarily attributable to corrupt administration. He instructed Raudot to suppress the board of directors, replacing it by two delegates. Rigid austerity was to be introduced and Raudot was to guard against making the same mistakes as Beauharnois, who had loaned large sums of the king’s money to the directors.

Raudot undertook to carry out these orders with his usual single-mindedness. At an assembly called to inform the directors of the minister’s decisions and to elect the two new delegates, he scolded his audience for their many faults and proceeded to foist his own choice of representatives upon them. When Ruette d’Auteuil, the attorney general of the Conseil Souverain, protested at these arbitrary proceedings, Raudot heatedly replied that the assembly had not been called to deliberate but to listen. Eventually, however, Pontchartrain learned of the intendant’s bullying and ordered him to hold a new assembly in 1706, where the election was to be “freely” decided by a plurality of voices. Although in later years Raudot’s attitude towards the company’s directors softened considerably, he never forgave Auteuil for this humiliation and for daring to challenge his authority. In fact he became convinced that the attorney general was the prime source of corruption in the Conseil Souverain and in the legal system generally.

Auteuil, the intendant informed Pontchartrain, had come to New France determined to be master of the legal system and had achieved his goal by building up a family cabal that interfered with cases, that controlled the subordinate legal officials through their fear, and perpetuated its independence by sowing discord between the governor and intendant. Under this 20-year tyranny, the Conseil Souverain had become a tool of the vested interests, a privileged forum in which “the military officials and the seigneurs of this country . . . think they can dispense justice themselves.” A poor habitant who wished to bring a legitimate lawsuit against one of these persons was inevitably stymied by any number of devices: long delays over procedural points; the threat of having the case appealed to the Council of State in France; or the refusal of the governor or commandant to grant the required permission in cases involving officers. Raudot contended further, using as his example Auteuil’s extra-legal activities in connection with a sensational land-title case which involved his sister-in-law, Madame de La Forest [Charlotte-Françoise Juchereau], that none of the foregoing abuses could be remedied until the attorney general was recalled. In this context, Pontchartrain could do little else but support his intendant and, in 1707, he dismissed Auteuil from all his functions. In full control at last, Raudot proceeded to bring every facet of the legal system under his personal supervision. He lifted cases from the provost courts at will, handling over 2,000 himself in one 14-month period, and he publicly humiliated judges he believed to be incompetent. As usual, his arbitrary actions provoked a steady stream of complaints to Versailles.

Raudot continued to search for fertile fields for reform. The large number of disputes over land-titles brought before him for judgement had convinced him that the seigneurial system was in need of some basic revisions. He submitted that since practically nothing in the mutual dealings of the Canadians was done according to proper legal procedures, the habitants were frequently without a clear title to their lands. Some had simple letters describing their land grants and others only their seigneur’s word. Accordingly, there was scarcely a concession that might not be disputed or a contract that might not be arbitrarily altered by the seigneur. Indeed, Raudot continued, the seigneurs had taken advantage of the confusion to introduce higher rentals and to exact additional obligations. Some, for instance, had included in their contracts the privilege of reclaiming their land from commoners, an obligation which gave them a decided advantage when a tenant of theirs wished to sell his land, but which had no basis in the custom of Paris. The seigneurs had also maintained largely unused obligations, like the right to operate a communal oven, in the hope of converting it into a money payment later on. Furthermore, they had exerted their influence in the Conseil Souverain to forestall the publication of at least one decree that was harmful to their interests. In sum, Raudot believed that only royal intervention could crush these abuses.

He called for two decrees that would tip the scales in favour of the habitants. The first would confirm the property rights of all landholders, together with the boundaries of their concessions, on the basis of five years’ tenancy. Such a measure, Raudot reassured the minister, was a fundamental prerequisite for the colony’s growth. The second decree would establish a universal fixed rental (a very low one, which took no account whatsoever of good or bad land), with payment on a more flexible schedule than was previously required and with the choice of payment in money or produce left to the habitant. In addition, obligations like the right to reclaim land from commoners, which Raudot considered as particularly harmful to the habitant, would be eliminated and the seigneur’s rights to a portion of his tenant’s fish catch, his woodlands, and even his corvée labour, were to be substantially reduced. Raudot sought further to humble the seigneurs by proposing that they should help finance rural education and should be entirely responsible for conducting the yearly census. He complained, too, that the seigneuries in New France were far too large and underdeveloped.

It is clear that if Raudot’s seigneurial recommendations had been implemented, the nature of the system would have been considerably altered. But they were not implemented. Although the minister definitely encouraged Raudot and actually set the machinery in motion for preparing the decrees, nothing was forthcoming. The officials in France perhaps felt that Raudot had exaggerated or that his solutions were too extreme. But the intendant had focused their attention on the shortcomings of the seigneurial system and had at least made clear the necessity for reform. Raudot must therefore have viewed with some satisfaction the promulgation of the Edicts of Marly in 1711 which endeavoured to deal with the problems of overextension and underdevelopment of landholdings.

Intrinsic to all of Raudot’s proposals for the reform of colonial institutions was the implication that the intendant’s range of authority needed to be substantially increased. As a centralizing paternalist, Raudot hungered for more power and this led almost inevitably to conflict with the governor general, who naturally viewed such ambition as a threat to his own authority. Actually, considering Raudot’s belligerent nature, the wonder is that it took three years for an explosion to occur. Yet during that time the interests of the two officials ran more or less in tandem; each was anxious to consolidate his newly acquired position; both agreed on the necessity of crushing the Auteuil cabal; they were united in their opposition to Lamothe de Cadillac’s [Laumet] schemes; and they were confronted by grave socio-economic questions that demanded their concerted action. Hence, in 1705, the intendant was able to write that Vaudreuil favoured the advancement of his son Jacques-Denis and that the governor was “a wise and reasonable man.” But by 1708, this harmony had so completely disintegrated that during the last half of his term in office Raudot was consumed by his desire to bring Vaudreuil down.

The exact origins of the dispute are unclear; it seems likely, however, that some personal insult first ignited Raudot’s combustible temper. At any rate, a series of satirical songs directed at the intendant and reportedly written by François Mariauchau d’Esgly, Vaudreuil’s captain of the guards, put the issue beyond the limits of mature discussion. Raudot fired off ordinances threatening heavy fines for anyone caught singing these songs, but he suspected that Vaudreuil was paying boys to popularize them and he complained that the salon of Madame de Vaudreuil [Louise-Élisabeth Joybert] had become a gathering place for slanderers. The social élite of the colony rapidly divided into factions, the military caste generally supporting Vaudreuil and the administrative officials sympathizing with Raudot. In the autumn of 1708, after the inhabitants of Quebec had been treated to several exchanges of insults and to the arrest by Vaudreuil of the Sieur de Marigny, a Raudot supporter, the dispute became an administrative one. The intendant protested that Vaudreuil had encroached on his prerogatives by supporting the decision of an assembly of Montreal military officers to cast out his appointee as the new surgeon of the troops and to replace him with their own choice. Raudot was so agitated and was so anxious to inform the minister of Vaudreuil’s conduct, that he dispatched a canoe in a frantic race to overtake the last vessel bound for France.

Although the canoe failed in its mission, Pontchartrain learned by word of mouth of the deteriorating relations between the colonial officials. In his dispatch of 1709, he condemned Vaudreuil for his actions in the surgeon incident, but he upbraided Raudot even more severely for repeatedly treating small matters with excessive passion. Unrepentant, the intendant responded with an incredibly peevish document, listing in no fewer than 80 folio pages all of Vaudreuil’s failings. He even made certain that his complaints would be retroactive to 1705, by explaining away all of the compliments he had earlier bestowed on the governor. Included in his charges were many of those usually levelled by Canadian intendants against the governors: Vaudreuil profited from illegal trade; he employed his interpreters to procure gifts from the Indians and to sell them liquor; he favoured his many relatives and subordinate officers, protecting them from legitimate legal pursuit; he conducted the colony’s defence badly and encouraged the engineer Jacques Levasseur de Néré to build useless fortifications at great expense; he undermined the confidence of the habitants in colonial institutions by appointing criminals as militia captains. But Raudot’s major complaint was that Vaudreuil carried on the colony’s affairs arbitrarily, ignoring the intendant’s rights. He contended, for example, that Vaudreuil appointed inspectors to the fortifications without any consultation; worse still, all too prominent amongst these inspectors were persons whom Raudot described as “singers of songs.” Only the minister, he declared, could correct such behaviour and avoid cause for future strife by clearly defining their respective spheres of authority.

As might be expected, Raudot offered a number of ideas on what such a definition should contain. His suggestions are not only interesting as an aspect of his dispute with Vaudreuil, but they reflect rather well the ambitious and condescending attitude of France’s legal nobility toward the old nobility at the beginning of the 18th century. He began by explaining that when Jean Talon* had left New France the governor remained in sole command, exercising the intendant’s powers for a three-year period. Through the ensuing decades, according to Raudot, successive intendants had striven to win back these powers, but in disputes the governor’s voice was decisive. It was this that Raudot most objected to. Using Vaudreuil as his example, he argued that while the governors were normally equipped to carry out military tasks, they were too poorly educated to be entrusted with the final say in the colony’s internal affairs. The intendant, on the other hand, was specifically trained for just these matters and was, moreover, naturally suited to be the minister’s “confidential agent.” It seemed only fitting then that the intendant should be free of contradiction on questions relating to commerce, justice, and public order – everything in short that was not primarily military. For example, in future he should share with the governor the power to appoint militia captains but should be solely responsible for supervising corvées, appointing inspectors and issuing licences for non-military purposes. In other words, Raudot believed that since the intendant was best qualified to govern, his powers should be increased and freed from the governor’s veto.

Despite the urgency of this plea for a realignment of administrative power, Raudot did not intend to remain in the colony to fight for it. In 1709, he asked for both his and Antoine-Denis’ recall, citing Vaudreuil’s hostility and the extremes of the Canadian climate as prime motives. But this sudden loss of enthusiasm for further service in New France in no way diminished his overall ambition, as was demonstrated by his request for the prestige post of honorary counsellor in the Court of Aids at Paris. Pontchartrain, replying in 1710, rejected his petition as preposterous but contributed the welcome news that Antoine-Denis was to return that year to fill the position of Intendant des classes – an advancement out of all proportion to his age and previous service. Jacques was to follow in 1711, but he was warned that further favours to himself and his family hinged on his willingness to leave the colony on good terms with Vaudreuil. With his own interests thus clearly at stake, Raudot managed to swallow his pride and, with the Sieur de Marigny acting as intermediary, effected a reconciliation, even meeting the governor at social functions. But it was a truce of expediency and when he departed on the Héros in July 1711, his successor Michel Bégon* not yet arrived and the affairs of the intendancy entrusted to Clairambault d’Aigremont, it was clear to all that he had never really forgiven Vaudreuil.

Thus the last three years of Raudot’s intendancy had been unproductive of the initiative which characterized the first three and, from the standpoint of administrative harmony, they were a failure. Yet he could look back on his Canadian experience with great personal satisfaction. For one thing, it had paved the way for his advancement. On his return to France, he was named a chief clerk in the Marine with special responsibility for war prizes. He was also a director of maritime commerce and, by 1722, had even fulfilled his great ambition to become honorary counsellor in the Court of Aids. In 1719, moreover, he had been appointed a counsellor of the Marine, a position of great honour and importance. Scattered evidence also exists to indicate that he augmented his fortune in New France. Certainly his enemies, who were legion, accused him of profiting from manipulations involving card money as well as from illegal trade. But better evidence comes from Raudot’s own feeble explanations when ordered by a French court in 1722 to account for 281,000 livres in his. possession. His statement that 113,000 livres were the product of savings from his salary and the sale of certain household goods prior to leaving for New France hardly rings true, especially when viewed against his many complaints of financial insolvency when he was in the colonet Raudot’s greatest cause for satisfaction derived from the advancement of his family in the royal service. By 1710 Antoine-Denis was well on the way to prominence in the highest circles of the legal nobility; de Chalus, who had come to the colony at 19 years of age as an ensign, left in his mid-twenties as a captain; likewise, the Chevalier Dussy, who had arrived without rank, left in 1708 on the brink of a lieutenancy. In this area, Raudot had succeeded admirably.

It is more difficult to assess the overall success or failure of Raudot’s intendancy. He was unquestionably one of the most intelligent and dynamic administrators ever sent to New France. With the incorruptible will of a born authoritarian, he endeavoured to examine each colonial institution in terms of its ultimate utility. When these investigations uncovered some privilege or practice that in his judgement tended to detract from the colony’s prospects for development, he sought vigorously to suppress it. His incisive dispatches on the judicial and seigneurial systems testify to his energy in this regard. Yet, as students of the seigneurial regime point out, he was guilty of gross exaggerations. Furthermore, he had a poor grasp of what was possible, often allowing his reformist zeal to blind him to the subtleties of Canadian conditions. This serious failing led him to make over-simplified recommendations that were too radical for the officials in France to adopt. But Raudot was also victimized by his own violent nature, which turned his relations with other officials into a series of petty squabbles. He considered any disagreement a personal affront and, as was the case in his relations with Vaudreuil, he inevitably allowed his emotions to take complete command. In the long run, perhaps his greatest contribution to New France was as an observer. For he focused attention on the workings of Canadian institutions and offered many lucid, if derogatory, descriptions of the colony’s inhabitants. His dispatches are amongst the best sources available for the historian of the epoch.

Donald J. Horton