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Hello and welcome to revolutions.
Episode 3.7, the Ciance Royal.
Last week, we stepped away from the financial crisis that was busy rocking the Ancian regime
to take a look at the wider world of international politics, diplomacy, and war
that the French Revolution was about to explode into the middle of.
And as I kind of suspected what happened,
in trying to mash that much information into that small of a body,
I flubbed a few details along the way.
So we get to start with two quick corrections.
One from listener Joe,
when I was talking about the major political turnover in Russia
at the end of the seven years' war,
I should not have said,
then the old czar died,
because it was not some dude who died at the end of 1761,
it was, in fact, the Empress Elizabeth.
My apologies to Empress Elizabeth
for confusing her with some dude.
Second, as a number of listeners pointed out,
Frederick the Great had no children. Of course he had no children. It's actually a whole little
subchapter of Prussian history all its own. So, I should have said that his successor,
Frederick William II, was not quite the man his uncle was, because Frederick William I
second was Frederick the Great's nephew, not his son. Though, while I'm here, I may as well
throw in that Frederick William II will get to style himself king of Prussia, rather than king
in Prussia because his uncle Frederick the Great did arbitrarily assert a preposition change
roundabout the first partition of Poland.
Okay, so getting back to the main story, we left off two weeks ago with the ousting of
Comptroller General Cologne from the royal ministry after he failed to convince the Assembly
of Notables to approve his reform package.
Taking his place, sort of, was the Archbishop of Toulouse, Lomeni de Brienne.
Having established himself as one of Cologne's most voicemontes, most voicemanship.
vocal critics in the Assembly of Notables,
Breyan was brought into the ministry in May 1787,
in the hopes that he would be a more effective advocate of reform
than the politically condescending Cologne had been.
I say Breanne only sort of took Cologne's place
because Breanne was not appointed Comptroller General.
That job went to a historical non-entity you don't need to worry about.
Brien was instead appointed head of the Royal Council of Finance.
And the Royal Council of Finance was an old ministerial committee that for as long as anyone could remember
had been filled with ceremonial appointees who never really met as a group and who wielded no power.
But the pushback from the Assembly of Notables led to the revival of the Council as a real institution,
the idea being that the Royal Finances needed broader oversight than had been provided by the previous string
of secretive and despotic controllers general.
So though it is correct in spirit to say that Brienne succeeded Cologne,
just remember that his position is head of the Royal Council of Finance, not Comptroller General.
But for the moment, this was as far as the king was willing to go when it came to increasing oversight.
The notables, however, emboldened by their ousting of Cologne and the placement of their own man inside the government,
wanted still more.
They wanted assurances that if they approved the reforms, that deficits wouldn't come back.
They wanted annual publication of the king's expenses.
They wanted more of a say, and who sat on the Council of Finance, or better yet, they wanted
a totally independent auditing committee who would be tasked with assisting a controller
general.
But the king was reluctant to commit to anything that would diminish his majesty, and he refused
to give in to these new demands.
This led to a protracted back and forth through May 1787 that went nowhere fast.
The notables were willing to improve new temporary loans, but they were clearly not going to accept any of the major reform initiatives.
Public opinion had started to factor into their deliberations, and they were relishing in their role as defenders of, you know, whatever.
On May the 21st, the Marquis de Lafayette gave voice to the rising call to reconvene the Estates General,
it being the only institution that could truly exercise oversight over the monarchy.
And listening to all of this, Brienne decided that though he had just recently been one of its leaders,
the Assembly of Notables had now outlived its usefulness.
It had been called to give the King political cover, and all it was doing now was obstructing his will.
So, Brienne announced that he was going to go ahead and take the reform package, dutifully modified to reflect your suggestions,
to the Paris Parlamas for immediate registration.
And on May the 25th, 1787, the Assembly of Notables was said,
disbanded. It was time for the real fight to begin. The magistrates of the Paris Parlamas,
of course, had been sitting on the sidelines just waiting for their chance to get into the game.
And now that the Assembly of Notables had refused unconditional support, and Cologne had been
driven from the ministry in disgrace, they were basically jumping up and down and saying,
please, please, please, put me in coach. After their showdown with Chancellor Mopu back in the
early 1770s had left them weak and divided, they now recognized this.
as a golden opportunity to get the upper hand on the king.
Of the leaders inside the parlamas, I will note two in particular.
One, a fiery arch-conservative, the other a young liberal noble.
Their political leanings would naturally take these two men in opposite directions
once the parliama stopped being the center of attention,
but for now, they fought on the same side.
The fiery arch-conservative was Jean-Jacques Duval de Preméille.
Raised in Paris and trained in the law, De Premineal entered the Parlamas as a young counselor,
just as it was being brought back to Paris after the fall of Mopu in 1774.
The young lawyer quickly established himself as one of the most eloquent and passionate defenders of the traditional rights of the Parliam,
earning him enemies at court, especially when he gleefully jumped into the middle of the diamond necklace affair,
and used it as an opportunity to rail against the queen in particular and the monarchy in general.
But though this cast him as one of the principal opponents of the Bourbon dynasty,
he was no radical liberal, and certainly no revolutionary.
He railed with equal vengeance against the whole long tradition of the Enlightenment.
His entire life and career was dedicated to establishing the preeminence of the aristocracy,
and he believed that in the current crisis the role of the parlamas should be to obstruct whatever the king proposed,
forcing him to call the Estates General, which would naturally be controlled by and serve the ends of,
the nobility.
His ally in the fight against the royal ministry was a young lawyer who came at the crisis
from a completely different trajectory. This was 28-year-old Adrian Dupor.
Duporre was not the orator de Premonil was, not by a long shot. But he saw clearly that
the Ancien regime was dying and that the kingdom needed a new constitution that would bring
France into the modern age. He was an admirer of the American Revolution and was associated
with Lafayette and believed that the Estates General had to be called, and that their
job should not just be to approve new taxes, but also to draft this whole new constitution for France.
But critically, Duport was a liberal noble, not some crazy liberal Republican.
The aristocracy could and should play a major role in the new political order, but not as
courtiers who led on the basis of old privileges, but rather as citizens who led by virtue of
their education, experience, and superior merit.
After the Assembly of Notables was dissolved, the Paris Parlamas convened in a special
session to await the king's attempt to register the reform package.
This special session was called a Court of Peers, which was nothing more than the members
of the Paris Parliam being joined by the Seven Princes of the Blood and a few other high-ranking
nobles.
and in the case of this particular court of peers, that meant that 21 men who had served in the
Assembly of Notables now sat in the Paris Parliament.
But that little detail is not nearly as important as the other new twist in the fight,
because when Brienne started presenting the reforms for registration,
the resulting debate did not occur in a private room close to the public.
There would be, for the first time, an audience.
In the early going, this audience was drawn primarily from the 2,000 or so clerks and bailiffs and young lawyers who were attached to the workings of the Parlamas and for whom this debate was the center of the universe.
Mostly younger and mostly liberal and or radical, they cheered speakers who preached resistance and hissed at those who advised compliance.
The existence of the audience will soon become a key feature of the French Revolution, which is in pretty marked contrast to the English.
and American revolutions, where all the great oratory was directed at fellow members of parliament
or, say, the Continental Congress. But the leaders of the French Revolution always had a crowd to
play to, and the impact of turning governance into theater would play a major role in how things
would unfold. When Brienne started presenting the reforms at the end of June 1787, though,
he started with the easy stuff, items that were sure to be registered without a fight, including
turning the corvay into a money tax, establishing free trade and grain, and the creation of
provincial assemblies to assess and collect the new taxes.
This was all mostly non-controversial stuff for the members of the Paris Parliama.
Though, as we will see next week, the bit about provincial assemblies would find much
stiffer resistance in the provincial parliamas, who were not too keen on some kid
horning in on their turf.
But the Paris Parliama finally started pushing back on July the 2nd,
when Brienne brought in the proposal to enlarge the scope of the stamp tax.
The stamp tax was loved by the ministry for the same reason it was hated by the parliament.
Its burden would primarily fall on the upper classes rather than the poor peasants,
whose life did not revolve around paper the way that it did for, say, merchants, bankers, and lawyers.
As the magistrates rose one by one to denounce the stamp tax,
more than a few of the younger liberals delighted in getting to rehash the very same argument
made by the daring American revolutionaries who had so bravely stood up to the tyranny of King George
over this exact same issue.
The tactic that the Parlamas used to fight the extension of the stamp tax was to delay registration
until the king sent along his detailed plan for how the royal books would be kept in the future.
They didn't want to approve a new tax just to watch it all disappear into Marie Antoinette's jewelry
collection, pause for laughter and applause.
The king refused and pointed out that this was way beyond anything the Parlamas had a right to demand.
Then the magistrates pointed out to the king that technically what he was asking them to do was way beyond what he had a right to demand.
On July the 26th, they issued a remonstrance calling on his majesty to withdraw the stamp tax and convened the estate's general.
Breend decided not to press the issue and he did pull back the stamp tax.
But that was mostly because the stamp tax was small potato.
compared to the other big revenue initiative that needed to be registered, the universal tax on land.
You know, the linchpin of the whole project.
Brienne had modified the land tax to be for specific monetary amounts determined annually,
rather than Cologne's endlessly rising tax into infinity.
But even with this modification in place, on July the 30th, the Parlamov flat out said,
no, we cannot register this, it's a new tax, and new taxes mean you have to.
have to call the estates general.
But everyone knew that the king's next move would not be to call the estates general.
Instead, it was clearly time for a good old-fashioned Lee de Justice, which, as you'll recall,
was that unbeatable constitutional trump card held by the king.
On August the 6th, the Paris Parliama was called as a body up to Versailles for the ceremony
of forced registration.
On the hottest day of the year, some 400 magistrates and ministers packed into a hall at the palace of Versailles to hear the king's official statement that in his estimation the reforms were necessary, and so he was registering them by his own royal will.
Unfortunately, for the Monarchy's Public Relations Department, the official ceremony of the Lee de Justice involved the king being seated on a bed of pillows.
Don't ask.
And while the ceremony unfolded, you know the one where he was forcing through edicts critical to the survival of the monarchy, the king fell asleep.
He started snoring.
Guys had to, like, raise their voices to be heard.
It was hot and it was stuffy, and he was sitting on a bed of pillows, but still, Louis, man, have a cup of coffee.
When the Parlamas reconvened the next day in Paris, they immediately went back on the attack and bluntly declared that the previous days,
Lee de Justice to be an illegal usurpation of power.
Then, Adrian Dupor opened up a major broadside on former controller General Cologne,
holding him responsible for the criminal mismanagement of the Royal Treasury.
Cologne, exiled to Lorraine, did not like the sound of these accusations one bit,
and quietly slipped over to England, making him arguably the first emigre of the French Revolution.
He planned to stay abroad until the heat was off, and did try to stay abroad.
come back when the Estates General got called the following year, but by then he was a reviled
public whipping boy and forbidden to return. He would wind up attaching himself to the emigre
court of the Comte d'artois, and then when the revolution just kept going, he resettled back in
London. He would not return to France until 1802, when Napoleon let him back in just in time to die
a month later. But Dupour's attacks on Cologne were not about attacking Cologne. They were about
attacking the king, and to the continued cheering of the audience, Depremantil, DuPore,
and their colleagues declared their outright refusal to execute the king's illegal edicts.
The king, as you can imagine, was not amused.
On August the 14th, every member of the Paris Parliament was handed an individual Letra de Cache,
ordering them to leave the radically energized Paris and reconvene in the sleepy town of Tuat.
Aletre de Cache was simply assigned order directly from the king, and it could be used for all kinds of things.
But one of those things was delivering penal judgments that could not be appealed, as in, you are now exiled to Trois, leave immediately.
Lettres de Cache were hugely unpopular, and pretty high up on everyone's list of tyrannical abuses that needed to be reformed, as in the king shouldn't be allowed to do this anymore.
But for the moment, it had the force of absolute law.
The magistrates left Paris and reconvened at Tuor, far away from the adoring audiences they had been playing to, and removing them from the salons and clubs where they had been urged nightly to continue resisting the king.
The exile of the parliament was met by protests from a few of the lesser courts around Paris, and also by a few street demonstrations, though we're talking about dozens of people here not thousands.
It was enough, though, for the king to order regular armed patrols through the streets of Paris,
and then further, the closing of all those private clubs where men and women had met to chat about
current events.
And at this point, I am contractually obligated to mention, as every historian does, that the chess club was among those closed,
which indicates just how sweepingly paranoid the king was becoming.
On August the 26th, Brienne was officially elevated to the post of principal minutes.
minister. And though he, too, was obviously annoyed at the Parlamas and Transigence, he decided it was
time to start walking back from whatever brink they were all approaching. He took no action against
the lesser courts for their shows of solidarity, and then he started sending conciliatory letters to the
parliament to arrange a compromise. Now, I've seen this compromise described as both Brienne
exercising shrewd political judgment and totally caving into pressure. And I got to say, I tend towards the
latter because the basis of the compromise is that the king would withdraw the land tax,
collect the existing Vatiem more rigorously, and then take out new loans to cover any shortfalls.
It's hard to see this as anything but a complete caven.
He basically gave up everything he had been previously fighting for.
The parliament was of course amenable to this compromise, and after spending a month bored out
of their minds in Toa, on September the 13th they accepted the deal, though they reaffirmed
in no uncertain terms that they would never register a new tax. A week later, they were recalled
to Paris where they were met by cheering crowds, fireworks, and a nice big bonfire where Cologne was
burned in effigy. It was good to be home. But though this compromise satisfied the magistrates
of the Paris Parlamas, it scared the bejesus out of the regime's bankers. The expected land tax
was basically the thing that had been holding them at bay. But Brienne,
somehow managed to talk his way through it, and pointed out that though the projected deficit
for 1788 was a cool 160 million livres, most of that was for loan repayments that would then
be coming off the books. By collecting the Vatiem more efficiently, revenue would go up over the
next few years, well, costs came down. So yes, we'll need to take out a few more annual loans
until we hit equilibrium about five years down the road, but every year the size of the loan
will drop until we're out from under this thing. The bankers were still understandably nervous,
but when Brighn refused to commit troops to the United Provinces to fight the invading Prussians,
which is happening right now, temporarily bumping the battle between the King and Parlamas off the front
page, that kind of brutal fiscal reasoning had to ease their minds a little bit, even if the rest
of France was utterly scandalized. Now, the Parliam took a much-needed vacation after returning
from exile, so it wasn't until November that they reconvened to register the loans that would be
necessary to make Brieen's fiscal compromise work. But by now divides were starting to open up
amongst the magistrates. The older conservatives were happy with the compromise and willing to register
the new loans Brien requested, but the younger liberals felt betrayed. They believe that this had all
been about pushing France in a new direction, not falling back into old habits. Brian soothed them by recommending
to the king that the estates general be called at some point in the next five years,
calculating, of course, that by then the crisis would be passed, and the estates would simply
get together, say good job, and then go home. But a funny thing happened on the way to the
compromise. The king totally went off script right in the middle of it, like literally right in the
middle of it. On November the 19th, 1787, the king came down in person to convene the parliament in a
Science Royal, a royal session. And this was not a li de justice. There wasn't any ceremonial hoopla.
The king was not sitting on a bed of pillows, and it was not about forced registration. This was
simply the king attending a session of the parliament. As part of the non-houp law, the magistrates
were told that they could speak their minds freely, and a few of them did, some maybe a little too
freely for the king's taste. But still, all seemed like it was on track. But still, all seemed like it was on
track, and Breyen believed that they had the votes to approve the loans. But then just before the
votes were counted, the king suddenly veered off track, possibly influenced by a reactionary minister who
whispered something in his ear, possibly that the vote was about to go against his majesty, and boy,
that would be embarrassing. The king suddenly spoke up and said, okay, these loans are necessary.
I've promised to call the Estates General. My word should be sufficient for you, so I order you to
register the edicts. The magistrates were taken aback. With this stunning turn hanging in the air,
the Duke de Leon, the one prince of the blood who was well and truly estranged from the court at Versailles,
got up and stammered an objection, saying that the king's actions were illegal, but Louis dismissed him
and said, it is legal because I will it. Then he got up and left. The magistrates looked
arounded each other in confusion and decided to continue the session agreeing that the king was
at this point way outside of his prerogatives. The next day, the king ordered a letter
de cachet against Orleans and two of his associates, exiling them from Paris. Then he ordered
the parliamaut to send him a delegation at once with the registration he had ordered in hand.
And as much as they hated it, there was little they could do but comply. Then the king expunged
the record of the Seance Royale to eliminate all record of resistance to his will.
This royal session was supposed to mark the end of the conflict, or at least a temporary truce,
and instead it kicked everything up a notch. If King Louis had hurt his position by falling
asleep during the Lee de Justice back in August, he positively wrecked his position by staying
awake for the Seance Royal. In immediate response to all of this, Adrian Duport,
opened up proceedings on the legality of Letres de Cache, resulting in a January 4 remonstrance to the
king that they needed to be abolished. The king took no notice. Now over the winter, the fight really
moved out into the provinces because just as the disastrous Ciance Royal was being held in Paris,
the various provincial assemblies that the Paris Parliama had approved way back in June
started to meet. But obviously, given the resulting political antagonism, the character and
direction of these assemblies became hot-button issues out in the provinces. But I'm going to
hold off on talking about that right now so I can finish up this round of fighting between the
king and the Paris Parlamas, because when that round ends with the promulgation of the May edicts,
the fight will move decisively out into the provinces. And we can start next week's episode with a
little catch-up, rather than trying to cram everything in here today. So the final showdown
of this particular round of fighting in Paris came in April 1788. Rumors had begun to swirl that
the king had grown so tired of the Parlamas carping that he planned to break them by force,
and everyone started bracing not for polite exile, but for an outright royal coup. The widespread
belief that they were about to be attacked, led them to launch into even deeper and more
bitter attacks on the despotism of King Louis XVIth. The legality of November's
Cianz Royale was called back into question, and on April the 17th, a large delegation
traveled to Versailles to present the king with their complaints, complaints that were
simply rejected out of hand. So on April the 30th, De Premé Neal crafted a major remonstrance,
laying out the legitimacy of a Montesquieu-style constitutional monarchy
and the illegitimacy of whatever the hell King Louis thought he was doing.
In a further decree on May the 3rd called the Declaration of the Fundamental Laws of the Kingdom,
De Premonil stated flatly that the right to levy taxes lay with the Estates General and the Estates General alone,
an institution that had now been seized on as a panacea for all that ailed France.
Louis responded by digging even deeper into his royal prerogatives, known as rank despotism to everyone else.
Lettras de Cache were issued on May the 4th against a prima neal and another guy, whose name I won't bother you with.
I wish the other guy had been Adrian Dupor, it would have made this a much neater little story,
but King Louis does not seem to care about making it easier for me to explain this stuff to you.
On May the 5th, the two men sought refuge inside the parliament itself.
And for the whole day a standoff ensued.
The magistrates refused to hand over their two colleagues to the king's men,
and the king's men were hesitant about just barging in and grabbing them.
But after a day of noble resistance, the parliament agreed to hand the two men over.
They were arrested and then imprisoned on May the 7th.
The very next day, the royal ministry issued the famous May edicts,
and that is what we are going to talk about next week.
designed to break utterly the parliament now and forever.
The May edicts will instead spark a backlash throughout the kingdom
that will lead directly to the king's decision to convene the estate's general
not at some point in the next five years, but right away, specifically in May 1789.