The ferme générale (French pronunciation: [fɛʁm ʒeneʁal], "general farm") was, in ancien régime France, essentially an outsourced customs, excise and indirect tax operation. It collected duties on behalf of the King (plus hefty bonus fees for themselves), under renewable six-year contracts. The major tax collectors in that highly unpopular tax farming system were known as the fermiers généraux (singular fermier général), which would be tax farmers-general^{[lower-alpha 1]} in English.^[1]

In the 17th and 18th centuries the fermiers généraux became immensely rich and figure prominently in the history of cultural patronage, as supporters of French music, major collectors of paintings and sculpture, patrons of the marchands-merciers and consumers of the luxury arts in the vanguard of Parisian fashions. In his 1833 novel Ferragus, writer Honoré de Balzac attributes the sad air that hangs about the Île Saint-Louis in central Paris to the many houses there owned by fermiers généraux. Their sons or grandsons purchased patents of nobility and their daughters often married into the aristocracy. Especially members of impoverished aristocratic families were eager to marry daughters of the fermiers généraux in order to restore the wealth they had prior to their ruin. This was called in popular French redorer son blason (literally "to re-gild one's coat of arms").^[2]

Before the French Revolution in 1789, the public revenue was based largely on the following taxes:

• The Taille – Direct land tax imposed on French peasant and non-noble households, based on how much land they held. In some provinces, the principle of taille réelle was used, which meant that the tax was based on the actual market value of the real estate. In a majority of provinces the taille personnelle was applied: the tax level was the result of an arbitrary and gross estimation of the real estate value. Noblemen, public office holders and the inhabitants of the large cities were exempt from the taille.
• The Taillon – Tax for military expenditure.
• The Vingtième (one-twentieth) – Based solely on revenue (5 percent of net earnings from land, property, commerce, industry and from official offices).
• The Gabelle – A very complicated system of taxes and outsourced regional monopolies on salt, with enormous price disparities between the different provinces (e.g. the salt price in Paris was thirty times higher than in Brittany) that were a strong enticement to smuggling.
• The Aides – National tariffs on various products, including wine and tobacco.
• The Traites – Custom duties for either the import or export of goods to and from France, or for the transport of goods from one French province to the neighbouring one (internal customs).
• The Octroi – A local tariff levied on products entering the cities, especially Paris.
• The Droits féodaux (feudal rights), a long list of petty duties for every possible event or activity in a peasant's life (the right to marry, to inherit, to use the mill, to use the roads of the local aristocrat, to be exempt from doing mandatory chores for the local lord, etc.), to be paid to the local lord, the King or both and generally considered by the peasant to be arbitrary and humiliating.
• The Dîme ("the tenth [part]) – A mandatory tithe to support the state church and its clergy, collected by the local vicars, monks or bishops (and so, not a tax in the legal sense). The Dîme had to be paid either in legal tender (money) or in material assets by all residents regardless of their religion.

The Ferme générale was one of the most hated components of the Ancien Régime because of the profits it took at the expense of the state, the secrecy of the terms of its contracts, and the violence of its armed agents.^[4] Criticism of the Ferme générale also include:

• Public bodies were deprived of a resource
• Service rendered was not always better in the long term
• The cost could be higher for the taxpayer, who paid his taxes plus the margin taken by the Ferme générale
• The recovery of debts (of tax arrears) by the Ferme générale could be brutal
• Depriving itself of a resource, the community became involved in debt, and had to find new taxes to obtain additional money

Therefore, at the end of the 18th century, the French state had become involved in considerable debt, which factored among the causes of the French Revolution.

The farmers-general of the Ancien Régime figure prominently in the history of cultural patronage in France. The enlightened farmer-general Le Normant de Tournehem was the legal guardian of Madame de Pompadour, responsible for her education - in turn, thanks to her influence, he was made director-general of the Bâtiments du Roi in December 1745, and held the post, overseeing royal building works at the King's residences in and around Paris, until his death in 1751. As American architect Fiske Kimball observed, “Without artistic prejudices, he was a man of ability, honesty and simplicity, who devoted himself to efficient administration".^[5]

Farmers-general also figured among prominent supporters of French music and collectors of paintings and sculpture, such as Pierre Grimod du Fort, and as patrons of the marchands-mercier, a type of merchants who dealt with decorative art objects.

As consumers of luxurious art the farmers-general were at the vanguard of Parisian fashion, like Ange Laurent Lalive de Jully, a patron of arts who embraced the early form of neoclassicist style in decorative arts called the goût grec (lit. "Greek taste"). Others merely made themselves notorious for their squander, like Ange Laurent's brother Denis Joseph de La Live d'Épinay, the estranged husband of the writer and saloniste Louise d'Épinay. The gourmand Alexandre Balthazar Laurent Grimod de La Reynière was the son of the farmer-general Laurent Grimod de La Reynière.

Sons or grandsons of farmer-generals often purchased patents of nobility, with their daughters marrying into aristocracy.^[6]

In his Voltaire, A Life^[7] (pp. 427–31), Ian Davidson describes events on Voltaire's estate at Ferney, north of Geneva, in the 1770s.

In 1770, hundreds of watchmakers fled the political ructions in Geneva and went to make a new life at Ferney. Voltaire helped them to set up a new watchmaking business. He negotiated a tax exemption for the watchmakers with the duc de Choiseul, Prime Minister of France. But by 1774, the business was prospering and the tax farmers started to take an interest. Three-way negotiations between the tax farmers, Voltaire and Turgot ensued. In December 1775, Turgot confirmed the watchmakers' exemption from the salt tax (gabelle) and from road maintenance duties (corvée) and a figure was agreed to compensate the tax farmers for loss of revenue. Voltaire addressed a public meeting on 12 December and the watchmakers accepted the settlement.

Two days later, Voltaire wrote to his friend Mme de Saint-Julien:

... while we were gently passing our time in thanking M. Turgot, and while the whole province was busy drinking, the gendarmes of the tax farmers, whose time runs out on 1 January, had orders to sabotage us. They marched about in groups of fifty, stopped all the vehicles, searched all the pockets, forced their way into all the houses and made every kind of damage there in the name of the king, and made the peasants buy them off with money. I cannot conceive why the people did not ring the tocsin against them in all the villages, and why they were not exterminated. It is very strange that the ferme générale, with only another fortnight left for them to keep their troops here in winter quarters, should have permitted or even encouraged them in such criminal excesses. The decent people were very wise and held back the ordinary folk, who wanted to throw themselves on these brigands, as if on mad wolves.

According to Davidson, good sense prevailed despite this violence, Voltaire was appointed a tax commissioner, profits peaked in 1776 and the watchmaking business survived the revolution and continued "well into the nineteenth century".