The Bourbon Kings of France (28 page)

For a time the King retreated to Versailles. He was so overwhelmed by the problem of the deficit that he spent whole days cursing and weeping. However, the Assembly of Notables was still there, and in a rebellious mood. Eventually Louis chose a new Controller-General. Archbishop Loménie de Brienne was the last ecclesiastical statesman of France. He was a no less colourful figure than Calonne and, like him, had been recommended by the Queen. A true child of the Enlightenment, the Archbishop collected books, works of art and women (he suffered from secondary syphilis). A Deist rather than an atheist, he had no real Christian beliefs and had only entered the Church to restore the fortunes of his ancient but impoverished family.

Although Brienne revised Calonne’s new tax to make it more palatable, his proposals were rejected out of hand by the Notables. He therefore dismissed them and, without much hope, had recourse to the Parlement of Paris, who promptly rejected both a proposed stamp tax and a property tax, and demanded the publication of the national accounts, and—menacingly—the summoning of the States General. In August 1787, perched on the purple velvet cushions of the
lit de justice
, Louis forced them to register the new taxes, whereupon the Parlementaires declared the taxes illegal; they were banished to Troyes where they continued to demand a States General. The
révolte nobilaire
dragged on. At one point Philippe d’Orléans told Louis publicly, in his timid, stuttering voice, that he was breaking the law of the land; the Duke was banished to the country, becoming a popular hero. Poor Marie Antoinette, whose extravagances were insignificant compared with those of Orléans, was christened
‘La Reine Déficit’
and hissed at the Opera. In May 1788 Louis XVI copied his grandfather and took away most of the Parlements’ powers, replacing them by forty-seven new courts, together with a plenary court (whose membership was to resemble that of the English House of Lords) for the registration of royal edicts. The King also abolished all remaining use of torture in legal proceedings.

But the deficit remained. Brienne tried desperately to reduce the expenses of the royal household, dismissing half the staff, such as the falconers, selling the wolfhounds and boarhounds, while a number of royal châteaux were sold or demolished to avoid the cost of maintenance, and pensions were slashed. But it was not enough. The Archbishop turned desperately to the Church, as a last resort. In Tocqueville’s view, ‘There has probably never been a clergy more praiseworthy than that of Catholic France just before the Revolution’; but among the few failings which he discerned was ‘an instinctive, sometimes unjustified attachment to the rights of their corporation’. Brienne begged them to pay higher taxes. Their answer was, ‘No, the people of France are not taxable at pleasure.’ The final crisis came in August 1788 when the Archbishop discovered that the treasury was bankrupt. He suspended all payments, raised a little money from floating bonds and appropriated the funds of the Invalides, the Théatre Française and the Opéra. He then resigned, thankfully (for as long as he lived, Brienne could never afterwards speak of his time as Controller-General without shaking).

Meanwhile, the royal authority was breaking down all over France. There had been riots in favour of the Parlements; and very nearly civil war in Grenoble in June, on ‘The Day of the Tiles’, when troops refused to fire on the mob. Louis capitulated. Amid wide rejoicing, he recalled the perennially popular Necker, who swiftly borrowed sufficient funds. The King dissolved the new courts and brought back the Parlements. On 24 September 1788 the Parlement of Paris registered the royal edict that the States General would be summoned in January of the following year.

In every bailiwick and parish solemn little councils met, not only to elect a representative but also to draw up a
Cahier des Doléances
(List of Grievances). It must be explained that the States General had never been an established legislative assembly; by tradition it was an extraordinary body which the King only summoned in times of crisis or national dissatisfaction. (As recently as the mid-1950s, a large group of French deputies, the Poujadistes, were demanding the calling of a States General.) Its members had always represented the ‘estates’ or classes, rather than the country. Now, however, the Third Estate was determined to speak for the nation as a whole.

The Parlementaires had assumed that the coming assembly would be modelled on that of 1614. But the middle classes insisted furiously that the Tiers Etat must be doubled, to take account of the increased numbers of the bourgeoisie, and that the Three Estates should vote together instead of separately. Their proposals meant that the Tiers Etat would dominate the States General. The Parlementaires rejected these presumptuous demands, and were then amazed to find themselves hooted in the streets—their popularity had vanished overnight. No one had anticipated such a development. Calonne wrote to Louis from London, ‘I was unaware of the degree to which a division had developed between the nobility and the Third Estate in many provinces of the kingdom. I tremble to hear of it.’ Necker supported the Tiers Etat and the King gave way, announcing that their representation would be doubled. Marie Antoinette, who seemed to be learning a little political sense, declared that she was the ‘Queen of the Third Estate’. Alas, Louis’s insistence that the Estates vote separately lost him any support he might have hoped to gain from this concession.

The French Revolution was not a foregone conclusion. It is true, as Tocqueville says, ‘that if it had not taken place the old social structure would still have collapsed everywhere, here sooner, here later, except that it would have continued to crumble piecemeal.’ But by insisting on summoning the States General, the ruling classes had brought about the very thing they had sought to avoid—the loss of their privileges. The Third Estate alone were united, in their determination to secure radical changes; both the clergy and the nobility were divided among themselves; country priests were against the rich prelates, while the little hedge squires from the backwoods resented the great courtier lords and the Parlementaires. The privileged orders had made a revolution of which they were to be the first victims.

The situation was made even more explosive by the economic troubles. For all the new ideas, the country’s economy still depended almost completely on grain production and there was a disastrous harvest in 1788; all the poorer classes, artisans and peasants alike, suffered miserably from a catastrophic rise in the price of bread. The winter of 1788–89 was one of the worst France had ever known. In the countryside brigands roamed unchecked.

Yet in Paris, despite feverish talk of reform and the occasional riot, the atmosphere was one not only of optimism but of gaiety. And the people were as fond of Louis as ever. A German traveller, von Vitzin, who visited France in 1788, wrote that love of monarchy was ingrained in the French—‘the humblest chimney-sweep is enraptured with joy when he sees his sovereign.’ Throughout all the recent storms and troubles Louis had never lost his popularity. In the provinces he was still applauded; at Arras a local notary, M de Robespierre, told people to thank God for their King.

The States General met at Versailles in the
Salle des Menus Plaisirs
(‘The Hall of Lesser Pleasures’) on the morning of 4 May 1789. In the procession to its opening, the Host was carried before the King, fittingly, for this was to be the last great ceremonial appearance of the most sacred temporal institution in Western Europe. Louis, wearing the purple hat of state, walked under a canopy, followed by the Princes of the Blood. The deputies were led by the 291 members of the First Estate, the clergy, in their robes; after whom walked the 270 deputies of the Second Estate, the nobility, with swords, plumed hats and gold-braided cloaks. The 578 deputies of the Third Estate, the bourgeois, were in ridiculously old-fashioned black suits, a humiliation which made them all the more touchy; at the Mass in the church of Saint-Louis they insisted on occupying the front seats. None the less, a few noblemen had chosen to walk with them, including M d’Orléans and a certain Comte de Mirabeau.

Despite bickering between the three estates, the King was treated with the utmost respect. The hall rang with repeated shouts of
‘Vive le Roi!’
and clapping, even during his address. Surprisingly, Marie Antoinette was also acclaimed with cries of
‘Vive la Reine!’
which she acknowledged by curtseying to the assembly—redoubled cheers won another, even deeper curtsey.

However, during these crucial days the King and Queen were overwhelmed by a heart-breaking domestic tragedy. The Dauphin Louis-Joseph had been dying since the last months of 1788; his deformed spine protruded, while one lung had been almost destroyed by tuberculosis—Hézecques tells us that by the beginning of 1789 his face had become distorted with pain. A feverishly precocious child, abnormally intelligent for his years, the Dauphin bore his sufferings with touching bravery; he watched the opening procession of the States General from a balcony, lying on a day-bed. When he died in June 1789, Louis collapsed and was in tears for weeks, while Marie Antoinette’s hair went grey. To observe the customary mourning, the court went to Marly. When some representatives of the Third Estate insisted on seeing him and forced their way in, the King muttered, ‘Is there not a father among them?’

Unfortunately, in his broken mood Louis was easily swayed by Artois, who begged him not to abandon the aristocracy. Unlike Louis XIV, nearly everyone whom Louis XVI knew belonged to the nobility or to the higher clergy; even his servants—at any rate, those with whom he came into contact—were gentlemen. The King was not sufficiently ruthless to throw his entire circle of friends and acquaintances to the wolves. Certainly he wanted the nobility to pay taxes, but he had no wish to ruin them. It never entered his head that the monarchy’s only hope was an alliance with the bourgeoisie.

While Louis was away from Versailles the Third Estate seized the initiative. They proclaimed themselves a national Constituent Assembly and persuaded the clergy to join them. When the
Salle des Menus Plaisirs
was barred to them on 20 June, they met in a tennis court where they took the famous oath not to disperse until France had a new constitution. The King ordered them to end their Assembly and debate separately. They refused. M de Mirabeau, a dissolute idealist who had the makings of a French Charles James Fox, shouted at the youthful official who brought Louis’s order, ‘Monsieur, go and tell your master that we are here by the will of the people and will only leave at the point of the bayonet!’ Some days later the Assembly was joined by a large group of liberal noblemen led by Orléans, who by now had hopes of succeeding his cousin on the throne. Although advised to break it up with troops, the King muttered weakly, ‘
Foutre!
If they don’t want to go, leave them alone.’ Necker said that he could see nothing against a national Assembly replacing the States General. However, bewildered and undecided, Louis then ordered up 30,000 troops from the provinces to Paris—mainly regiments of foreign mercenaries. On 11 July he dismissed Necker.

Uproar broke out, culminating three days later in the storming of the Bastille, the French Tower of London. (Ironically, Louis had already approved plans for its demolition.) The triumphant mob rampaged through the streets, joined by mutinous troops. The British ambassador, the cricketer Duke of Dorset, reported to his Secretary of State in London, ‘Thus, my Lord, was accomplished the greatest revolution recorded in history, and, relatively speaking, considering the importance of the results, one which has been achieved with very little bloodshed.’ Henceforward, one can only summarize the progress of the French Revolution, concentrating on the unfortunate Louis whenever his head can be seen in the maelstrom.

On 16 July 1789 Artois, the acknowledged leader of the privileged orders, left France, and many great nobles followed him. Necker was hastily recalled from Brussels. Before the month was over the American ambassador, Gouverneur Morris, was reporting to President Washington that the King had lost all authority. A National Guard was formed to protect the Assembly and placed under the command of that popular idol, the Marquis de Lafayette; they adopted a red, white and blue uniform and cockade—red and blue being the colours of Paris, white the colour of the monarchy. Orléans had himself painted in the new tricolour uniform. On 4 August liberal nobles voted enthusiastically for the abolition of their privileges; fuedalism vanished overnight—in theory at any rate. By 26 August the Constituent Assembly had published its Declaration of the Rights of Man (based on the American Declaration), which a historian has called ‘the death certificate of the
Ancien Régime
’.

Meanwhile there was uproar in the countryside. Unemployment, the soaring price of bread, and general misery had all contributed to ‘The Great Fear of 1789’, triggered off by rumours that the nobility were about to seize Paris and then subdue the rest of the kingdom with an army of mercenaries; the brigands who already roamed France were regarded as their agents. In July and August mobs of panic-stricken peasants took up scythes and muskets to attack manor houses and abbeys; what they were really after were title deeds to their lands, and everywhere archives went up in flames; often the lord of the manor was forced to sign a document renouncing his dues. The Englishman Arthur Young heard in Besançon at the end of July that, ‘Many châteaux have been burnt, others plundered, the
seigneurs
hunted down like wild beasts, their wives and daughters ravished …’

Many of the Assembly now considered that the revolution had gone quite far enough. A conservative party of
monarchiens
emerged, who hoped to give back to the King much of his power and to create a limited monarchy with an upper and lower house on the English model. Unfortunately, this only served to bewilder Louis still more. Marie Antoinette persuaded him to summon the reliable Flanders Regiment to Paris, despite Mirabeau’s warnings. The Parisians, already suspicious that a counter-revolutionary plot was brewing, learnt on 2 October that the day before the King’s Bodyguard had given a dinner party for the officers of the Flanders Regiment, drinking loyal toast after loyal toast and singing emotionally Grétry’s poignant aria,
O Richard, O mon Roy, l’univers t’abandonne
; the King and Queen had paid a brief visit to the party, where they had been cheered wildly. This news was embellished by tales that the health of the French nobility had been drunk and the tricolour cockade trampled underfoot.