Gabelle

The gabelle was the French state monopoly of the salt trade, in some regions a salt tax, and one of the most hated and unequal forms of revenue in the country's history. It grew from a duty on salt producers at Aigues-Mortes under Louis IX, and on 16 March 1341 Philip VI established the first permanent royal tax on salt; everyone over the age of eight had to buy a minimum amount each year. Rates differed widely between six groups of provinces: in 1784 Jacques Necker reported that a minot of salt cost 31 sous in Brittany but 611 in Berry, and smugglers (faux-sauniers) risked the galleys or death. Abolished in the French Revolution, it was reinstated by Napoleon and finally abolished in 1945.