When deputies of the Constituent Assembly established a new administrative pyramid in France, in the first months of the Revolution, they entrusted the application of these laws to the « procureur général syndic » of each department. Elected by the departmental electoral assemblies, the « procureur général syndic » was theoretically the institutional synthesis of two objectives, difficult to reconcile : the local democratic imperative and the territorial control exercised by a central executive. The tension inherent in this administrative post maintained a certain ambiguity concerning the real powers of these men. Depending on the department, the « procureur général syndic » appears either as a secondary administrator without much power of decision or as a key element in the construction of a departmental identity. A unity appears, however, when one analyses their recrutment and their careers. The prosopographical approach places this institution into a larger« problematique » of the construction of the State by the formation of a new administrative elite.