292 THE MESTA
the intendentes.1 In addition to these measures, the crown took
a considerable share of various Mesta incomes, which amounted
to an annual average of nearly 2,500,000 maravedis during the
period 1715-58.
Further evidence of the Bourbon intention to secure the full
measure of royal incomes from the Mesta is found in a set of
orders of the Royal Council issued in 1741. These required that
local justices and intendentes should exact from all Mesta shep-
herds the full rates of the increased salt and millones taxes, from
some of which the sheep owners had previously enjoyed exemp-
tion.2 Moreover, the old practice of requiring forced loans or
extra Servicios from the Mesta was also renewed on one occasion.’
Finally, in 1748, the export duties on wool, which for centuries
had been levied at a nominal rate, were considerably increased.
This measure was accompanied by the naive observation that,
in order to encourage the pastoral industry to bear these new
demands, the old servicio y montazgo was to be forthwith sus-
pended. It was finally abolished altogether in 1758.4
ɪ Branchat, Derechos que Correspenden al Real Patrimonio en el Reyno de Valencia
(Valencia, 1784-86, 3 vois.), iii, pp. 51-55-
j Arch. Mesta, Prov. iv, 5 (1741); Brieva, Colecciin, p. 262. The millones
taxes were the contributions toward the extraordinary subsidies of that name;
they were levied upon meat, vinegar, and other provisions. This decree is not
printed in Brieva, Colecciin de 6rdenes pertenecientes al Ramo de IaMesta (Madrid,
1828), which purports to give the texts of all royal decrees on the Mesta from 1731
to 1828. As in other instances, the omission is probably accounted for by the un-
favorable character of the document, from the point of view of the Mesta and of
Brieva, its archivist.
, Arch. Mesta, Cuentas, March, 1746.
4 Brieva, Colecciin, pp. 75, ιo8; Desdevises du Dezert, L’Espagne de Vancien
régime: Institutions, p. 387. The above explanation of the substitution of increased
export duties on wool for the old servicio is from an unpublished essay written
about 1790 by the learned economist Juan Sempere y Guarinos on the export
duties of Spain: Acad. Hist., Ms. B-128, no. 6. According to a report of royal
officials in 1758, the servicio was then being collected at nine points: Entrada de
la Serena, S. Maria de Val de Di6s, Huscaro, Villadiego, Socuellamos, Medellfn,
Mérida, Alcintara, and El Campillo. The data of this report reveal, however,
that all but the first three of these were toll points for maestrazgo sheep taxes,
some of which retained the old name of servicio y montazgo. Apparently the only
royal tolls of the latter name at this time were being collected at La Serena, Val
de Di6s, and Huscaro, and the amounts were probably insignificant. The royal
tax of travesfo, levied on riberiegos, or local non-Mesta migrants, which was then
ROYAL SHEEP TAXES OF THE AUTOCRACY
29З
The greatest Spanish Bourbon, Charles III (1759-88), was
quite ready to continue the intelligent policy indicated by these
measures of 1748 and 1758. His convictions with regard to the
uselessness of the Mesta as an organization were quite definite,
the more so because of his earlier experience with the pastoral
industry in his Neapolitan kingdom. He soon made it plain that
if the crown was to derive any revenues from this source, they
must come from a healthy and normal industry, and not from a
pampered, senile, mediaeval, gild-like monopoly. The king was
still credited on the Mesta accounts with shares of income from
fines and penalties, but the amount dwindled, largely because
of the aggressive campaign waged by Charles himself and his
able ministers against the collection of these very penalties by
Mesta officials. By April, 1781, when the last entry of these
royal ‘ dividends ’ occurred, their total had fallen to less than
6000 reales.1
The Mesta members paid the regular taxes of the realm, but
they did so as participants in a great industry and not as mem-
bers of a nearly defunct organization. The alcabala, to which
they had long contributed, was still levied,2 as were also the
various royal imposts on wool exports, and on pasturage in the
Serena region of Estremadura and in the lands of the military
orders.3 From the first year of the reign of Charles III, however,
the days of the Mesta and even of the migratory sheep industry
were numbered. The reports of his various commissions and
experts convinced that far-sighted monarch that the situation in
Castile was the same as in southern Italy. Ample statistical
material was available to show the great excess of returns from
arable over those from pasturage, and even to demonstrate the
being collected at sixteen points, mostly in La Mancha and in the vicinity of
Toledo, was also abolished at the same time; cf. Brieva, p. 27.
1 The real equalled a fraction less than five cents. The Mesta accounts for that
year, the last for which complete data are available, show a deficit of nearly ro,o∞
reales.
’ Its disastrous effects upon domestic trade in the eighteenth century are de-
scribed by Sempere y Guarinos in Biblioteca Espanola Eeonimieo-PolUiea, iii,
pp. ccxxv-ccxxvii; Concordia de 178j, i, fol. 341, discusses the alcabalas paid by
sheep owners at that time.
* Canga Argiielles, Diec. de Haeienda, ii, p. 505.