The act broadened the jurisdiction of the nationwide policing force Maréchaussée to include burglary and popular disorder and confirmed its power to arrest any offender.[2] It also sought to combat abuse of their authority by putting enforcement under the supervision of local royal courts.[2]
History
The Ancien regime ruled without a penal code. On the other hand, they had a code of criminal procedure in the form of the ordonnance criminelle de 1670.[3]
Objectives
Major goals of the ordinance, were: to let no crime go unpunished; to prevent an innocent person for being convicted of a crime he did not commit; and to enable the judge to apply the criminal law with exactitude, which is to say, to establish a precise proportionality between the offense and the punishment for the offense.[4]