The purpose of this paper is to analyze quantitatively the careers of the intendants de province (intendants de justice, police et finances) by adopting the method of prosopography. The intendants have been regarded as an important mechanism in local administration in France. Given extensive competence and stationed in the intendance, they wielded the powerful local control. They were commissaires who were appointed by the king, and the royal government was able to dismiss them at any time. This is different from the officeholders (officiers) who purchased government posts (offices) under the venality-system and were irremovable. In recent years, however, it has been questioned whether their local administration was effective in practice, because the intendants themselves came from the maitres des requetes, that is to say, the officeholders. To clarify this subject, the author makes a comprehensive examination of 317 intendants nominated from 1661 until the French Revolution, focusing upon their past careers and courses of promotion. In most cases, a great majority of intendants started their careers as conseillers of sovereign courts, especially Parlement de Paris, that were the higher officeholders. However, future intendant took up the post of conseiller in his youth and his term of office was exceedingly short. He then assumed the office of maitre des requetes as soon as possible and began his administrative career. Maitres des requetes were of couse officeholders who formed the corps, but they were subject to the influence of the Crown, which cultivated them as faithful magistrates to the king. They became habituated to the operations of royal government and accumulated practical experience and knowledge needed for local administration in the Conseil du roi. The Crown selected its most trusted and competent agents from them. Several intendants advanced to higher positions in the administrative bureaucracy such as conseillers d'Etat, controleurs generaux des finances, and secretaires d' Etat. Therefore, intendants certainly were recruited from officeholders, but the womb from which the intendants came, namely, maitres des requetes, took on a particular character unlike other officeholders, and new factors such as loyalty, talent and experience were taken into consideration at the time of their nomination. Consequently, intendants and maitre des requetes formed a caste of new ruling elites, as the system of recruitment of intendants germinated the modern bureaucracy.