In France, municipal liberty survived feudalism. At a time when lords no longer administered the countryside, towns maintained the right to govern themselves. Until the end of the seventeenth century, towns still resembled small democratic republics, in which officials were freely elected by, and responsible to, all the people; municipal life was public and active; and citizens remained proud of their collective rights and quite jealous of their town's independence.

It was not until 1692 that elections were generally abolished for the first time. Municipal functions were then transformed into venal offices, meaning that in each town the king sold to a small number of residents the right to govern the rest in perpetuity.

This change sacrificed the prosperity of the towns along with their liberty. Although the transformation of public functions into venal offices often proved beneficial in regard to the courts, because the primary requisite of a good judicial system is that judges must be completely independent, it invariably did serious harm when it came to the administration proper, where the paramount requirements are responsibility, hierarchy, and zeal. The government of the old monarchy was under no illusion on this score: it was careful not to adopt for itself the regime that it imposed on the towns, and it refrained from transforming the functions of subdelegates and intendants into venal offices.