Gabelle, an indirect tax, specially one on salt, the term applied to a State monopoly in France in that article, and the exaction in connection with which was a source of much discontent; the people were obliged to purchase it at government warehouses and at extravagant, often very unequal, rates; the impost dates from 1286; was abolished in 1789.
Definition taken from The Nuttall Encyclopædia, edited by the Reverend James Wood (1907)
Gabelentz, Hans Conon von der * Gabelsberger, Franz Xavier