An account of eighteenth-century debt management by a Provencal aristocrat, continued by his widow after his death. Although a private document, it also traces the governmental and societal changes in what is now Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur. This notebook belonged to the financially beleaguered Comte Charles-Jean-Louis Dominique de Blégiers de Pierregrosse (1716-1790), of Comtat-Venaissin. It begins in his hand, laying out personal debts and debts due against the estate, and includes detailed terms and payment schedules. There is information relating to his creditors, which appear in three main groups: artisans and tradesmen, family and friends, and religious institutions. The first of these include fairly standard debts for purchases and services rendered, such as bills owning to one Mistral, a silversmith from Valréas. The second includes money he owed to his mother-in-law, Madame d'Alissac (he had married Charlotte Françoise de Pays d'Alissac in 1761). Creditors also include local religious institutions, which include the Dominicans of Vaison, the nuns of Saint Ursule de Valréas, the Sainte Marthe d'Avignon Hospital, the Cordeliers d'Avignon, and two 'Jews of Carpentras', Mordecai and Salomon Crémieu - probably the chief rabbi and merchant Mordecai Crémieux and his brother, also a rabbi. (See: Jean-Claude Cohen, The Jewish communities of Avignon and Comtat Venaissin, 2000). As a part of Provence Alpes-Côte d'Azur, Combat-Venaissen was not part of France, but was under the control of the Papal States from 1274. Although spared the upheaval of the French Revolution, the region was dominated by religious orders which levied various fees and taxes on the general population.
The second part of the work concerns the debts and estates of the Comte's sister, Anne de Blegiers, whose estates he inherited in 1790. Her death evidently consolidated the Comte's landholdings, and included those of his uncle Martial d'Amblare, but both estates were likewise saddled with debt. The Comte did not long outlive his sister, and the manuscript in his hand ends in November 1790, shortly before his death. In the event, the Comte died just before major political upheaval shook the region. In 1791, five hundred years of the region's rule from Avignon and the papacy came to an end, An unauthorised plebiscite was held under pressure from French revolutionaries, and the inhabitants voted for annexation by France. The papacy did not recognise this formally until 1814, but inhabitants of the region suddenly found themselves citizens of a new republic. The tumult evidently had an impact on the family's finances, as is shown by the appearance in this ledger of the hand of the Comte's widow Charlotte, who completes the last few pages and annotates earlier entries. Writing in what she calls Year III of the Republic (1795), her notes reveal that she has sold two parcels of land to settle some of her husband's prodigious debts, including the seventeen thousand francs owing to religious houses. She evidently felt that these shrewd business dealings held the key to recovering the family finances. The prominence of the Comte's mother-in law and wife in his financial dealings demonstrates the involved and active role of women in estate and financial management in this period. This ledger offers an insight into debt management, women's agency, and the changing face of France in the late eighteenth century.