He checked in daily with the soft-spoken woman he'd nicknamed Angel.
He also contemplated a thorough-going reform of the ferme generale, but contented himself, as a beginning, with imposing certain conditions on the leases as they were renewed - such as a more efficient personnel, and the abolition for the future of the abuse of the croupes (the name given to a class of pensions), a reform which Terray had shirked on finding how many persons in high places were interested in them, and annulling certain leases, such as those of the manufacture of gunpowder and the administration of the messageries, the former of which was handed over to a company with the scientist Lavoisier as one of its advisers, and the latter superseded by a quicker and more comfortable service of diligences which were nicknamed" turgotines."He also prepared a regular budget.
They called themselves the Apostolic Catholic Church, but hearing themselves nicknamed Paulicians by their enemies, probably interpreted the name in the sense of "followers of St Paul."
He also defended the rights of the commoners of Ely threatened by the "adventurers" who had drained the Great Level, and he was nicknamed afterwards by a royalist newspaper "Lord of the Fens."
By a series of delays he caused the failure of the naval expedition prepared at Sluys against England in 1386, and a second accusation of military negligence led to disgrace of the royal princes and the temporary triumph of the marmousets, as the advisers of the late king were nicknamed.
