In France, the gabelle was originally an indirect tax that was applied to agricultural and industrial commodities, such as bed sheets, wheat, spices, and wine.
[2] In 1229, when the Albigensian Crusades were brought to a close by King Louis IX and his mother (Blanche of Castile), France gained control of the Rhône Estuary and nearby Mediterranean coast.
On 16 March 1341, King Philip VI established the first permanent royal tax on salt in France, known as the Pays de grandes gabelles.
Repressive as a state monopoly, it was made doubly so by the government obliging every individual above the age of eight years to buy weekly a minimum quantity of salt at a fixed price.
"countries"; to be understood as an obsolete word for "region"), and classified as follows: Because all of the Pays had extreme disparities in tax rates and salt consumption, opportunities for smuggling were rife within France.
[3] The large differences in cost between various pays clearly show the reason behind the active smuggling of salt that took place in France until the gabelle was abolished.
In turn, the customs guards tasked with arresting the faux-sauniers were called gabelous, a term obviously derived from the gabelle they sought to uphold.
[3] There are many reasons for the French Revolution, but the unfair taxes and financial burden imposed upon the lower-classes and peasants was a main facet of the general population's discontent.
In 1790 the National Assembly decided that all persons imprisoned for breaking laws pertaining to the gabelle were to be freed from prison and that all charges and convictions were to be permanently dropped.