27

From 1661 to 1685, Jean-Baptiste Colbert launched a major reform of the Department of Waters and Woods (Eaux et Forêts), known as the Grande Réformation. Commissaires (auditors) were simultaneously sent to every administrative district of the kingdom containing woods to suppress abuses, raise up forests, and generally restore an earlier state of things, deemed ideal. In Southern France, Louis de Froidour was met with destroyed sylvas, left in the hands of the residents of the local communities and their countless domestic animals. The descriptions he sent back to Colbert were echoed by a large eschatological literature authored by the forest wardens of the Grand Siècle, who unanimously feared wood shortages. However, a quantitative survey of the archives left by Froidour points to a very different conclusion. While damaged by local usage, the forests provided the help local populations expected of them, and the latter in turn protected ligneous plantations as much as possible. This gap between the two views should bring a reasssessment of the role played by the king’s agents; maybe these «ruined forests» were nothing more than a cultural representation.