by Will Durant
Believing that an open trial was necessary to convince the public of the Queen’s innocence, Louis submitted the case to his enemies, the Paris Parlement. The trial was the cause célèbre of the century in France, as that of Warren Hastings became in England three years later. The judgment of the Parlement was pronounced on May 31, 1786. Cardinal Rohan was declared innocent, as more deceived than deceiving, but the King deprived him of his state offices and exiled him to the Abbey of La Chaise-Dieu. Two accomplices received sentences of imprisonment; Cagliostro was freed. Mme. de La Motte was publicly stripped and whipped in the Cour de Mai before the Palais de Justice; she was branded with a V (for voleuse, thief), and was condemned for life to the notorious Salpêtrière women’s prison. After a year in this maddening confinement she escaped, joined her husband in London, wrote an autobiography explaining everything, and died in 1791.
The nobility and the Paris populace rejoiced over the acquittal of the Cardinal, and blamed the Queen for bringing the matter to a public trial; the general feeling was that her known appetite for jewelry had excused the Cardinal for believing the forged letters. Gossip went so far as to accuse her of being Rohan’s mistress,15 though she had not seen him in the ten years before his arrest. Once more she had preserved her virtue and suffered damage to her reputation. “The Queen’s death,” said Napoleon, “must be dated from the Diamond Necklace Trial.”16
II. CALONNE: 1783-87
On November 10, 1783, the King appointed Charles-Alexandre de Calonne controller general of finance. Calonne had served successfully as intendant at Metz and Lille and had earned repute for engaging manners, buoyant spirits, and monetary skill—though he himself, like the government that he was called to rescue, was hopelessly in debt.17 He found only 360,000 francs in the treasury, against a floating debt of 646,000,000, increasing by fifty million francs a year. Like Necker he decided against additional taxation, fearing that this would arouse revolt and depress the economy; instead he negotiated a lottery, which brought in a hundred million livres. He appealed to the clergy, and won from it a don gratuit of eighteen million livres on his promise to suppress Beaumarchais’ edition of Voltaire. He reminted the gold coins, making a profit of fifty million for the treasury. He borrowed 125,000,000 from the bankers. Hoping to stimulate business, he allotted great sums for city sanitation and the improvement of roads, canals, and harbors; Le Havre, Dunkirk, Dieppe, and La Rochelle benefited; the great docks at Cherbourg began. On the theory that a government must always put up a prosperous front, he allocated funds readily to courtiers, and asked no questions about the expenses of the King’s brothers and the Queen. The King himself, despite good intentions, allowed the outlay for his household to rise from 4,600,000 livres in 1775 to 6,200,000 in 1787.18
The more Calonne spent, the more he borrowed; the more he borrowed, the more interest had to be paid on the debt. In August, 1786, he confessed to the bewildered King that all expedients had been exhausted, that the national debt and the annual deficit were greater than ever, and that only the extension of taxation in the nobility and the clergy could save the government from financial disaster. Knowing that the Paris Parlement, now in undisguised alliance with the nobility of the sword, would resist this suggestion, he proposed that a group of distinguished men, to be chosen by him from all three classes throughout France, be summoned to Versailles to consult for the financial salvation of the state. The King agreed.
The Assembly of Notables convened on February 22, 1787: forty-six nobles, eleven ecclesiastics, twelve members of the Royal Council, thirty-eight magistrates, twelve deputies from the pays d’état (regions enjoying special privileges), and twenty-five municipal officials; 144 in all. Calonne addressed them with courageous candor about abuses which, however deeply rooted in time and prejudice, must be abolished because “they bear heavily upon the most productive and laborious class.” He condemned the general inequality of subsidies, and “the enormous disproportion in the contributions of different provinces and subjects of one same sovereign.”19 He expounded proposals more radical than Turgot’s, and presented them as having been approved by the King. Had they been adopted they might have averted the Revolution. Some of them, carried over from Turgot, were accepted by the Notables: a reduction in the salt tax, the removal of tolls on internal commerce, the restoration of free trade in grains, the establishment of provincial assemblies, and an end to the corvée. But his request for a new and universal tax on land was rejected. The noble and ecclesiastical members argued that this subvention territoriale would require a survey of all land, and a census of all landowners, in France; this would take a year, and could have no effect on the current crisis.
Calonne appealed to the people by publishing his speeches; neither the nobles nor the clergy relished this resort to public opinion. The Assembly retaliated by demanding from Calonne a full account of revenues and expenditures during his ministry. He refused to comply, knowing that a revelation of his methods and outlays would ruin him. The Assembly insisted that economy in expenditures was more needed than a revision of the tax structure; moreover, it questioned its authority to establish a new system of taxation; such authority belonged only to a States-General (États Généraux—i.e., a national conference of deputies chosen by the three états, or classes). No such meeting had been called since 1614.
Lafayette, one of the Notables, approved most of Calonne’s proposals, but distrusted the man. He accused Calonne of having sold some of the royal lands without the King’s knowledge; Calonne challenged him to prove the charge; Lafayette proved it.20 Louis XVI had resented Calonne’s appeal to the public over the heads of the government; he realized, from a succession of disclosures, that Calonne had deceived him about the condition of the treasury, and he saw that he could get no co-operation from the Notables as long as Calonne was controller. When Calonne asked for the dismissal of his critic the Baron de Breteuil, who was a personal friend of Marie Antoinette, she advised the King to dismiss Calonne instead. Wearied with the turmoil, he took her advice (April 8, 1787). Calonne, learning that the Parlement of Paris was planning to investigate his administration and his private affairs, decamped to England. On April 23 Louis sought to appease the Notables by promising governmental economies, and publicity of state finances. On May 1, again on the advice of the Queen, he appointed one of the Notables to be chief of the Council of Finance.
III. LOMÉNIE DE BRIENNE: 1787-88
He was archbishop of Toulouse, but so notoriously a freethinker that the philosophes hailed his advent to power. When, six years before, he had been recommended to succeed Christophe de Beaumont in the metropolitan see, Louis XVI had protested, “We must at least have an archbishop of Paris who believes in God.”21 One of his most satisfying coups as minister of finance was to have himself transferred to the archbishopric of Sens, which was much richer than that of Toulouse. He persuaded the Notables to approve his plan for raising eighty million francs by a loan, but when he asked consent to the new land tax they again pleaded lack of authority. Seeing that the Notables would do no more, Louis politely dismissed them (May 25, 1787).
Brienne attempted economies by asking cuts in the expenditures of each department; the departmental heads resisted; the King did not sustain his minister. Louis reduced his household expenses by a million francs, and the Queen accepted a similar reduction (August 11). Brjenne had the courage to refuse monetary demands by the court, by the friends of the Queen, by a brother of the King. It is to his credit that he carried through the reluctant Parlement (January, 1788), against the resistance of most of his fellow prelates, the royal edict extending civil rights to Protestants.
He was unfortunate in having come to power at a time when crop failures and the competition of British imports had spread an economic recession that lasted till the Revolution. In August, 1787, hungry rioters in Paris shouted revolutionary slogans and burned some ministers in effigy. “The feeling of everybody,” noted Arthur Young on October 13, “seems to be that the Archbishop will no
t be able to exonerate the state from the burden of its present situation; … that something extraordinary will happen; and a bankruptcy is an idea not at all uncommon.”22 And on the seventeenth: “One opinion pervaded the whole company, that they are on the eve of some great revolution in the government; … a great ferment in all ranks of men, who are eager for some change; … and a strong leaven of liberty, increasing every hour since the American Revolution.”23
The reforms which Calonne and Brienne had advocated, and which the King had accepted, had yet to be registered and recognized as law by the parlements. The Paris Parlement agreed to freeing the grain trade and commuting the corvée into a monetary payment, but it refused to sanction a stamp tax. On July 19, 1787, it sent to Louis XVI a declaration that “the Nation, represented by the States-General, alone has the right of granting to the King the resources which might prove indispensable.”24 The Paris public approved this pronouncement, forgetting that the States-General, as thus far known in French history, was a feudal institution heavily weighted in favor of the privileged classes. Not forgetting this, the nobility of the sword approved the declaration, and henceforth allied itself with the parlements and the noblesse de robe in that révolte nobiliaire which prepared the Revolution. Louis hesitated to call the States-General, lest it should end the absolutism of the Bourbon monarchy by asserting legislative powers.
In August, 1787, he presented to the Parlement an edict for a tax on all land in all classes. The Parlement refused to register it. Louis summoned the members to a lit de justice at Versailles, and ordered the registration; the members, returning to Paris, declared the registration void, and again demanded a States-General. The King banished them to Troyes (August 14). The provincial parlements rose in protest; riots broke out in Paris; Brienne and the King yielded, and the Parlement was recalled (September 24) amid popular rejoicing.
The conflict was renewed when the Parlement refused to sanction Brienne’s proposal to raise a loan of 120,000,000 livres. The King called a “royal session” of the Parlement (November 11, 1787), at which his ministers presented arguments for registering the measure. The Parlement still refused, and the Duc d’Orléans cried out, “Sire, it is illegal!” Louis, in an unusually reckless burst of temper, answered, “That makes no difference! It is legal because I wish it”—thus plainly asserting absolutism. He ordered the edict registered; it was done; but as soon as he had left the hall the Parlement revoked the registration. Informed of this, Louis exiled the Duc d’Orléans to Villers-Cotterêts, and sent two of the magistrates to the Bastille (November 20). Protesting these and other arrests without trial, the Parlement sent to the King (March 11, 1788) “remonstrances” containing words that pleased nobles and commoners alike: “Arbitrary acts violate irremovable rights. … Kings rule either by conquest or by law. … The nation asks from his Majesty the greatest good that a king can give to his subjects—liberty.”25
The ministry thought to pacify the Parlement by yielding to its demand for publication of the government’s revenues and expenditures. This made matters worse by revealing a deficit of 160,000,000 livres. The bankers refused to lend more to the state unless the Parlement sanctioned the loan; the Parlement vowed it would not. On May 3, 1788, it issued a “Declaration of Rights” which reminded Louis XVI and his ministers that France was “a monarchy governed by the king, following the laws,” and that Parlement must not surrender its ancient right to register royal edicts before these could become laws. It again called for a States-General. The ministers ordered the arrest of two Parlement leaders, d’Éprémesnil and Goislard (May 4); this was done amid wild confusion in the hall and angry protests in the street. On May 8 Brienne announced the intention of the government to establish new courts, headed by a Cour Plénière which alone would henceforth have the power of registering royal edicts; the parlements were to be restricted to purely judicial functions, and the whole structure of French law was to be reformed. Meanwhile the Paris Parlement was “put on vacation”—in effect suspended from operation.
It appealed to the nobility, the clergy, and the provincial parlements. All came to its support. Dukes and peers sent to the King protests against abrogating the traditional rights of the Parlement. An assembly of the clergy (June 15) condemned the new Plenary Court, reduced its “gratuitous gift” from a past average of twelve million livres to 1,800,000, and refused any further aid until the Parlement should be restored.26 One after another the provincial parlements rose against the King. The Parlement of Pau (capital of Béarn) declared it would register no edicts rejected by the Parlement of Paris; and when force was threatened against the magistrates the people took up arms to protect them. The Parlement of Rouen (capital of Normandy) denounced the ministers of the King as traitors, and outlawed all persons who should use the new courts. The Parlement of Rennes (capital of Brittany) issued similar decrees; when the government sent soldiers to dismiss it these were faced by the armed retainers of the local nobility.27 At Grenoble (capital of Dauphiné), when the military commander proclaimed a royal edict dissolving the local parlement, the populace of the town, reinforced by peasants summoned by the tocsin, pelted the reluctant troops with tiles from the roofs, and compelled the commander, on pain of being hanged from his chandelier, to withdraw the edict of the King (June 7, 1787, the “Journée des Tuiles,” or Day of Tiles). The magistrates, however, obeyed a royal order to go into exile.
The Grenoble community made history by its reaction. Nobles, clergy, and commonalty resolved to re-establish the old Estates of Dauphiné for a meeting on July 21. Since the Third Estate had led the victory on the “Day of Tiles,” it was accorded “representation equal to that of the two other orders combined; and it was agreed that in the new assembly voting should be by individuals and not by classes; these agreements set precedents that played a part in the organization of the national States-General. Forbidden to meet at Grenoble, the Dauphiné Estates met at Vizille, a few miles away; and there, under the leadership of a young lawyer, Jean-Joseph Mounier, and a young orator, Antoine Barnave, the five hundred deputies drew up resolutions (August, 1788) upholding the registration rights of the parlements, demanding abolition of lettres de cachet, calling for a States-General, and pledging itself never to consent to new taxes unless a States-General sanctioned them. Here was one beginning of the French Revolution: an entire province had defied the King, and had declared, in effect, for a constitutional monarchy.
Overcome by the almost nationwide revolt against the royal authority, the King surrendered, and decided to summon a States-General. But, as 174 years had passed since the last meeting of this body, and the growth of the Third Estate made it impossible to use the old forms of procedure, Louis XVI issued to the people (July 5, 1788) an extraordinary appeal as an order of the Royal Council:
His Majesty will endeavor to approximate earlier practices; but when these cannot be determined he wishes to offset the deficiency by ascertaining the will of his subjects. … Accordingly the King has decided to command that all possible researches concerning the aforementioned matters be made in all the depositories of each and every province; that the results of such investigations be transmitted to the provincial estates and assemblies, … which in turn shall apprise his Majesty of their wishes. … His Majesty invites all scholars and educated persons in his kingdom … to direct to the Keeper of the Seals all information and memoirs connected with matters contained in the present decree.28
On August 8 Louis summoned the three classes of France to send deputies to a States-General which was to meet at Versailles on May 1, 1789. On the same day he suspended the Cour Plénière, which soon faded from history. On August 16 the government in effect acknowledged its bankruptcy by announcing that till December 31, 1789, the obligations of the state would be paid not all in currency but partly in paper, which all citizens should accept as legal payment. On August 25 Brienne resigned, loaded with favor and wealth, while the Paris public burned him in effigy. He retired to his rich see at Sens, and there, in
1794, he killed himself.
IV. NECKER AGAIN: 1788-89
Reluctantly the King asked Necker to return to the government (August 25). Now he gave him the title of secretary of state and a seat in the Royal Council. Everyone, from the Queen and the clergy to the bankers and the populace, applauded the appointment. A multitude gathered in the courtyard of the Versailles Palace to welcome him; he came out and told them, “Yes, my children, I remain; be comforted.” Some fell on their knees and kissed his hands.29 He wept, in the manner of the time.
Disorder in the administration, in the streets, in the official and the public mind had come so close to political disintegration that the best that Necker could do was to maintain stability until the States-General convened. As a gesture to restore confidence, he put two million francs of his own into the treasury, and pledged his personal fortune as partial guarantee of the state’s engagements.30 He revoked the order of August 16 requiring bondholders to accept paper instead of money; government bonds rose thirty per cent on the market. The bankers advanced the treasury sufficient funds to tide over the crisis for a year.