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Unlock This CourseCharles Alexandre de Calonne took charge of France's finances in 1783. For three years he borrowed, and he spent freely so that lenders would think the kingdom was rich. By 1786 the trick had stopped working. Lenders were no longer willing to lend, and in August 1786 Calonne told Louis XVI the truth: the kingdom was heading for bankruptcy.
Calonne said that small savings would not be enough. France needed a new tax system. The heart of his plan was a land tax. Everyone who owned land would pay it, with no exemptions for the clergy or the nobles. He also wanted to help trade grow by ending the customs duties that goods paid when they moved from one French province to another.
Key terms:
Remember, a new law had to be registered by the parlements. Calonne was sure they would refuse a tax on the privileged. So he asked the king to call an Assembly of Notables instead. He hoped that hand-picked men would back the plan, and that their support would make it hard for the parlements to say no.
The Assembly opened at Versailles in February 1787. It had 144 members, including princes of the royal family, bishops, great nobles and judges from the parlements. Almost all of them belonged to the privileged Estates, the very people the land tax would hit.
They did not believe Calonne's figures. Necker's published accounts of 1781 had shown the king with money to spare, so how could the kingdom now be close to ruin? Many blamed Calonne's own spending.
They also did not want to lose their tax privileges. Above all, they argued that they had no right to approve a new tax. Only the nation's representatives, the Estates General, could do that.
The Notables accepted some smaller reforms but would not back the land tax. Calonne tried to win over the public with a pamphlet attacking the Notables. It failed.
In April 1787 Louis dismissed him. In May the Assembly was sent home. Nothing had been solved, and the whole country now knew how bad the king's finances were.
The king's new chief minister was Loménie de Brienne, the Archbishop of Toulouse. He had been one of the Notables who attacked Calonne. Once in office, he found that Calonne had been right. Brienne kept the land tax, with some changes, and added a new stamp duty on documents. With the Notables gone, he had to take his laws to the Parlement of Paris.
The May Edicts caused uproar. The parlements were courts of privileged nobles, yet people saw them as the only shield against a king who did as he pleased. Nobles led protests across France, which is why this is often called the revolt of the nobles. In Grenoble, in June 1788, townspeople climbed onto the roofs and threw tiles down at the king's soldiers. This was the Day of Tiles.
While the king argued with his judges, the money ran out. Nobody would lend to a government in such trouble, and without the parlements no new tax could be made to look lawful.
Brienne gave in to the demand he had heard for over a year. He announced that the Estates General would meet on 1 May 1789.
The treasury was empty. The government stopped making its payments in cash. In effect, the French crown was bankrupt.
Brienne resigned in late August. Louis brought back Necker, who was still popular. In September the May Edicts were dropped and the parlements returned.
These two years are short-term causes of the Revolution. They turned old problems into an open crisis.
Extract A (a practice extract written for this lesson, in the style of a modern history book)
In 1787 and 1788 the royal government stumbled from one humiliation to the next. Calonne's hand-picked Notables turned on him within weeks. Brienne fared no better. The Paris parlement defied him, and when the king tried to silence his judges, riots broke out in the provinces. By August 1788 the treasury was empty and the ministers were helpless. Calling the Estates General was not a plan. It was the surrender of a government that had run out of money, ideas and friends.
What impression does the author give about the government of Louis XVI in 1787-88? You must use Extract A to explain your answer. [6 marks]
The author gives the impression that the government of Louis XVI was weak and failing. This is shown by the author's choice of words. The government 'stumbled from one humiliation to the next', which suggests it was clumsy and had lost control of events. The ministers are called 'helpless', and calling the Estates General is described as a 'surrender', a word used for the losing side in a war. The author has also chosen to list only defeats: the Notables 'turned on' Calonne, the parlement 'defied' Brienne and riots broke out. Nothing is said about the reforms the ministers were trying to bring in or the reasons for them. The final list, 'money, ideas and friends', sums up the impression of a government with nothing left.
What lifts it to the top level: it names one clear impression, then explains how the author's loaded words and the choice to include only failures create it, instead of just repeating the extract.
Look at the verbs. Here 'stumbled', 'turned on' and 'defied' all show the government losing. Quote two or three of them in a few words each, say what each suggests, then add one thing the author has left out, such as what the reforms were for.