Editing Gabelle (section)

==Smuggling==
Because all of the ''Pays'' had extreme disparities in tax rates and salt consumption, opportunities for [[smuggling]] were rife within France. In 1784, [[Jacques Necker]], a French statesman of Swiss birth and finance minister of [[Louis XVI of France|Louis XVI]] until the French Revolution, reported that a [[Minot (unit)|minot]] of salt, which was 49 kilograms (107.8 pounds) cost only 31 sous in Brittany, but 81 in Poitou, 591 in Anjou, and 611 in Berry.<ref name=Kurlansky02/>

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. The obvious means of smuggling salt was to buy it in a region where it was cheap and to sell it illegally in regions where it was expensive, at a higher price, but still less than the legal price. Such smugglers were called ''faux-sauniers'', from ''faux'' ("false") and the root ''sau''-, referring to salt. They were able to amass large fortunes and seen by French citizens as heroes against an arbitrary and oppressive tax of a common good necessary to life. 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. They were despised by common folk as they were, without cause, able to search people and their homes to find illegal salt. The ''gabelous'' carried weapons and were known to [[Sexual assault|grope women for pleasure]] under the false pretence of looking for salt. Women were often used to smuggle salt under their dresses and sometimes used false derrières known as ''faux culs'' (from [[Latin obscenity#Cūlus: the anus|Latin]] ''culus'' meaning the human [[Buttocks|fundament]]).<ref name=Kurlansky02/> By the end of the eighteenth century, female smuggling was so common in some areas, especially in the west, that more women were arrested than men. It has been estimated that between 1759 and 1788, out of the 4788 arrests in Laval, 2845 women and children were arrested, amounting to more than half.<ref>{{cite book |last=Brias |first=Bernard |date=1984 |title= Contrebandiers du sel: La vie des faux sauniers au temps de la gabelle |location=Paris |pages=84–90 }}</ref>

Under the 1640 codification of ''gabelle'' law by [[Jean-Baptiste Colbert]], participating in ''faux saunage'', warranted a range of harsh punishments. Merely housing a ''faux-saunier'' could lead to imprisonment, fines, and, if repeated, death. ''Faux-sauniers'' could be sentenced to up to ten years on a galley if they were caught without weapons, and to death if caught while armed. Other forms of ''faux-saunage'' included sheepherders letting their flock drink from salty ponds, traders overly salting cod during transportation, and fishing at night (so that fisherman with great knowledge of waterways could not smuggle salt). French nobles, if caught buying contraband salt, would immediately lose their status of nobility following their first offense. In 1773, along the [[Loire|Loire River]], which separated the regions of Brittany and Anjou, with respective salt prices of 31 sous and 591 sous, over 3000 soldiers were stationed in response to the massive amounts of smuggling that took place.<ref name=Kurlansky02/>