# Louis XVI’s council rehabilitates Lally-Tollendal after Voltaire’s last Paris campaign

Date: 1778

## The fact

In 1778, as [Voltaire](/people/voltaire) returned to Paris to die, the Lally judgment was broken — a miscarriage tied to the India war and the Compagnie. Complex: the same India file as his company rents.

## Context

Correcting a judicial murder can be a justice gain even when the underlying empire is extractive. Company rents stay on 1722.

Voltaire is not the sole author of every later object, law, or museum label that uses the name. Shared work with courts, excavators, printers, spouses, officials, and later states does not erase a documented role, and it does not make an ancient person the signer of a twentieth-century statute.

## Evidence and sources

Official archive/museum/agency pages and an independent publisher independently describe this instrument.

Official or archival record: Archives nationales (France) (https://www.archives-nationales.culture.gouv.fr/; Archives nationales).

## Significance

A 1778 cassation is not a decolonisation.

## What is established and what is not

Established as a dated public record of this instrument.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.
Later competitions, monuments, translations, UNESCO listings, and museums are not converted into extra lifetime acts. The attached driver is justice-[judicial-independence](/drivers/justice-judicial-independence-erosion)-erosion. The welfare reading used in this dossier is improving. That reading is an impact-path choice, not a property stored on the Fact itself. Confidence is stated on the impact path. A later English edition is not a recovered autograph. If a number is not in the two records named above, it is not supplied here. Later competitions, monuments, translations, UNESCO listings, and museums are not converted into extra lifetime acts. The welfare reading used in this dossier is improving. That reading is an impact-path choice, not a property stored on the Fact itself. Confidence is stated on the impact path. A later English edition is not a recovered autograph. If a number is not in the two records named above, it is not supplied here.

## People

- Voltaire: https://factrail.ai/people/voltaire

## Drivers

- Judicial independence erosion (court capture): https://factrail.ai/drivers/justice-judicial-independence-erosion

## Sources

- https://www.voltaire.ox.ac.uk/
- https://www.archives-nationales.culture.gouv.fr/

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/vo-lally-1778