Abstract EN:

Pressed upon by the economists, the regency started consolidating the high ways in order to increase their trading capacity. This undertaking was developed by louis the fifteenth but decried by the philosophers because it took no account of the country and yet made use of the "corvee" and of expropriations without compensation. Louis the sixteenth enacted a local road policy, turning the "corvee" into taxes and reorganising the scheme on a local basis. The constituent assembly went even further, paying compensations to those who had been expropriated, giving the management to the departement authorities, and organising road taxes with greater fairness. And yet financial set-backs put an end to those noble designs. The national convention recentralised and summoned the people to maintain the military roads. Finally, turnpike-roads appeared in the last years of the directory. Although the roads were in a sad condition at the beginning of the consulate, a sound financial position enabled this government to stop the wear by means of tolls and subventions. Under the empire, a tax on salt, special supplies and local duties enabled road-building to start anew: road-planning was from then on organised on a rational basis.