II.

Causes of the Revolution

From the beginning of the 20th century until the 1970s, the French Revolution was most commonly described as the result of the growing economic and social importance of the bourgeoisie, or middle class. The bourgeoisie, it was believed, overthrew the Old Regime because that regime had given power and privilege to other classes—the nobility and the clergy—who prevented the bourgeoisie from advancing socially and politically. Recently this interpretation has been replaced by one that relies less on social and economic factors and more on political ones. Economic recession in the 1770s may have frustrated some bourgeois in their rise to power and wealth, and rising bread prices just before the Revolution certainly increased discontent among workers and peasants. Yet it is now commonly believed that the revolutionary process started with a crisis in the French state.

By 1789 many French people had become critical of the monarchy, even though it had been largely successful in militarily defending France and in quelling domestic religious and political violence. They resented the rising and unequal taxes, the persecution of religious minorities, and government interference in their private lives. These resentments, coupled with an inefficient government and an antiquated legal system, made the government seem increasingly illegitimate to the French people. The royal court at Versailles, which had been developed to impress the French people and Europe generally, came to symbolize the waste and corruption of the entire Old Regime.

A.

Parlements and Philosophes

During the 18th century, criticism of the French monarchy also came from people who worked for the Old Regime. Some of the king’s own ministers criticized past practices and proposed reforms, but a more influential source of dissent was the parlements, 13 regional royal courts led by the Parlement of Paris. The parlements were empowered to register royal decrees, and all decrees had to be registered by the parlements before becoming law. In this capacity, the parlements frequently protested royal initiatives that they believed to threaten the traditional rights and liberties of the people. In widely distributed publications, they held up the image of a historically free France and denounced the absolute rule of the crown that in their view threatened traditional liberties by imposing religious orthodoxy and new taxes.

These protests blended with those of others, most notably an influential group of professional intellectuals called the philosophes. Like those who supported the parlements, the philosophes did not advocate violent revolution. Yet, they claimed to speak on behalf of the public, arguing that people had certain natural rights and that governments existed to guarantee these rights. In a stream of pamphlets and treatises—many of them printed and circulated illegally—they ridiculed the Old Regime’s inefficiencies and its abuses of power.

During this time, the parlementaires and the philosophes together crafted a vocabulary that would be used later to define and debate political issues during the Revolution. They redefined such terms as despotism, or the oppression of a people by an arbitrary ruler; liberty and rights; and the nation.

B.

Fiscal Crisis

The discontent of the French people might not have brought about a political revolution if there had not been a fiscal crisis in the late 1780s. Like so much else in the Old Regime, the monarchy’s financial system was inefficient and antiquated. France had neither a national bank nor a centralized national treasury. The nobility and clergy—many of them very wealthy—paid substantially less in taxes than other groups, notably the much poorer peasantry. Similarly, the amount of tax charged varied widely from one region to another.

Furthermore, the monarchy almost always spent more each year than it collected in taxes; consequently, it was forced to borrow, which it did increasingly during the 18th century. Debt grew in part because France participated in a series of costly wars—the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748), the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763), and the American Revolution (1775-1783). Large existing debts and a history of renouncing earlier ones meant that the country was forced to borrow at higher interest rates than some other countries, further adding to the already massive debt. By 1789 the state was forced to spend nearly half its yearly revenues paying the interest it owed.

B.1.

Attempts at Reform

Financial reform was attempted before 1789. Upon his accession to the throne in 1774, Louis XVI appointed the reform-minded Anne Robert Jacques Turgot as chief finance minister. Between 1774 and 1776 Turgot sought to cut government expenses and to increase revenues. He removed government restrictions on the sale and distribution of grain in order to increase grain sales and, in turn, government revenue. Jacques Necker, director of government finance between 1777 and 1781, reformed the treasury system and published an analysis of the state of government finance in 1781 as a means to restore confidence in its soundness. But most of these reforms were soon undone as the result of pressure from a variety of financial groups, and the government continued to borrow at high rates of interest through the 1780s.

Charles Alexandre de Calonne was appointed minister of finance in 1783, and three years later he proposed a new general plan resembling Turgot’s. He wanted to float new loans to cover immediate expenses, revoke some tax exemptions, replace older taxes with a new universal land tax and a stamp tax, convene regional assemblies to oversee the new taxes, and remove more restrictions from the grain trade.

B.2.

Assembly of Notables and Estates-General

To pressure the parlements into accepting the plan, Calonne decided to gain prior approval of it from an Assembly of Notables—a group of hand-picked dignitaries he thought would sympathize with his views. But Calonne had badly miscalculated. Meeting in January 1787, the assembly refused to believe that a financial crisis really existed. They had been influenced by Necker’s argument that state finances were sound and suspected that the monarchy was only trying to squeeze more money from the people. They insisted on examining state accounts. Despite a public appeal for support, Calonne was fired and replaced by Loménie de Brienne in April 1787.

Brienne was also unable to win the support of the assembly, and in May 1787 it was dismissed. Over the summer and early fall, Brienne repeatedly tried to strike a compromise with the Parlement of Paris. But the compromise fell through when the king prevented the Parlement from voting on proposed loans, an act that was seen as yet more evidence of despotism. In May 1788 the government abolished all the parlements in a general restructuring of the judiciary.

Public response to the actions of the king was strong and even violent. People began to ignore royal edicts and assault royal officials, and pamphlets denouncing despotism inundated the country. At the same time, people began to call for an immediate meeting of the Estates-General to deal with the crisis. The Estates-General was a consultative assembly composed of representatives from the three French estates, or legally defined social classes: clergy, nobility, and commoners. It had last been convened in 1614. Under increasing political pressure and faced with the total collapse of its finances in August 1788, the Old Regime began to unravel. Brienne was dismissed, Necker reinstated, and the Estates-General was called to meet on May 1, 1789.