INTENDANT, in certain countries an official title having the same general sense as "superintendent" (from Lat. intendere, to apply the mind to, watch over). Thus in Germany it is applied to the head of public institutions, e.g., State theatres, and in both France and Germany to certain military offices connected with the intendance militaire and Intendantur respectively, i.e. the equivalents of the British quartermaster-general's and financial departments of the War Office.
In France the name was used in early times to designate a functionary invested by the king with an important and durable commission. The most famous of these functionaries, however, the intendants of provinces (intendants des provinces) date from the last thirty years of the 16th century. Originally used to re store order after the civil wars, their functions were at first extra ordinary and temporary; but a few were retained as permanent state officials, and in time they came to be fairly generally distrib uted over the kingdom. The existing territorial divisions were kept, each intendant being placed over a generalite, save where slight modifications were necessary for administrative purposes. In the 13th and 14th centuries the monarchy had organized a species of inspection (chevauchee) over the provincial function aries, which was performed by the maitres des requetes. In the 16th century this inspectorate was revived and passed to intendant, who became the resident supervisor of the other func tionaries in his district ; its connection with the old chevauchee is plainly shown by the fact that the intendants were almost always selected from the maitres des requetes. The early intend ants had naturally been largely concerned with the troops ; even tually special military intendants (the only ones that exist in modern French law) were created, but the intendants des pro vinces retained certain military duties.
The early intendants were called indifferently intendants de justice or intendants de finances. Their powers were fixed by the commission they received from the king, whose direct general representatives they became in each genaralite, with authority over the other officials, whom they were empowered to censure, suspend, or sometimes even replace. They were in constant touch with the king's council, with which they were connected by their original rights as rnaitres des requetes. In the first half of the 17th century they met with some opposition from the governors of provinces, who had formerly been the direct political representa tives of the crown, and also from the parlements, which tradition ally intervened in the administration, especially by means of arrets de reglernent (decisions, from which there was no appeal, regulating questions of procedure, civil law, or custom). The intendants, however, were energetically supported, and so com plete was their triumph that in the i8th century governors of provinces could not enter upon their duties without formal lettres de residence.
The intendants had wide powers in the drawing by lot of the militia and in the royal corvees for the making and repair of the high roads, and were largely concerned with the administration of the taille, in which they effected useful reforms. They were the sole administrators of the principal direct and indirect imposts created in the second half of the 17th century and in the 18th century, and had full powers to settle disputes arising out of these taxes. Owing to the vast size of the districts allotted to the intendants (there were no more than 32 intendants in 1788), they were allowed to delegate their powers to sub-delegues, who were, however, not royal officials, but merely mandatories of the intendant. Decisions of the intendant could be carried to the king's council, and those of the sub-delegue to the intendant.
See Gabriel Hanotaux, Origines de l'institution des intendants des provinces (1884) ; D'Arbois de Jubainville, L'Administration des in tendants d'apres les archives de l'Aube (188o).