He determined to support the royal authority against the parlement, the perennial block to reforms of the tax farming system or the privileges of the propertied classes, which in league with the provincial magistratures was seeking to arrogate to itself the functions of the states-general.

The struggle erupted over the trial of the case of the duc d'Aiguillon, ex-governor of Brittany, and of La Chalotais, procureur-général of the province, who had been imprisoned by the governor for accusations against his administration.

Maupeou installed the council of state to administer justice pending the establishment of six superior courts in the provinces and of a new parlement in Paris, in which the magistrature would no longer be a hereditary prerogative but become salaried officials appointed by the Crown.

[3] Voltaire praised this revolution, applauding the suppression of the old hereditary magistrature, but by the aristocrats and the noblesse de robe, Maupeou's policy was regarded as the triumph of tyranny.

The remonstrances of the princes, of the nobles, and of the minor courts, were met by exile and suppression, but by the end of 1771, the new system of the parlements de Maupeou was established, and the Bar, which had offered a passive resistance, recommenced to plead.

Maupeou and Terray were replaced on 24 August 1774 by Miromesnil and then by Malesherbes, recalled from his exile in 1775 to be Secretary of State of the Maison du Roi, and by the economist Turgot.

"By pressing the issue of sovereignty to an ultimate confrontation in this way," remarks Keith Michael Baker[6] of Maupeou's staffing his remodelled courts with men willing to exercise judicial functions within limits imposed by the royal will, "he undermined in practice exactly that belief in a constitutional middle ground between liberty and despotism that Guillaume-Joseph Saige had been concerned to deny in theory".