Engraving by Claude Niquet after the Illustration by Very and Giradet, Assembly of Notables, Held at Versailles, February 22, 1787 (1787): As the French government’s financial position worsened, it became increasingly desperate and resorted to a variety of expedients to push reform through. One such expedient was the Assembly of Notables that was convened in 1787. In an attempt to bypass the Parlement of Paris which was responsible for registering crown decrees, Charles Alexandre de Calonne, the Controller-General of Finances, convened an Assembly of Notables in the hope of obtaining support among the great and good for his reform proposals. For a wide variety of reasons, the assembly refused to back Calonne’s plan: some sought to cut the finance minister down to size (and contain the king’s authority), others opposed the bypassing of the Paris parlement, and still others sought to protect the privileges of the aristocracy. Clearly, while the king was absolute in theory, he was not in fact. The failure of the Assembly eventually led to the calling of the Estates General—a process that would be much harder to control as it sparked (to quote the textbook) “an unprecedented level of political mobilization” (p. 19).
Reading
For today, please read Hunt and Censer, pp. 24-34.
What We are Doing Today
In class, up until this point, we have surveyed the important long-term developments and forces that contributed to the crisis that culminated in the French Revolution: socioeconomic tensions, the circulation of new ideas associated with the Enlightenment, and the ongoing financial problems of the French state.
Today, we begin to investigate short-term triggers—the specific events, one leading to the next, that turned a crisis into a revolution. In today’s discussion, we will trace the course of events from the failure of the Assembly of Notables to address the French government’s financial problems to the elections for the Estates General.
Potential Quiz Questions
1) What were the specific steps that led from a debt crisis to the election of an Estates General? (You can list these as bullet points, but please be clear as possible.)
2) What were the most important debates surrounding the Estates General’s composition and its voting procedures?
3) In what ways did the elections to the Estates General not turn out as many people had anticipated?
History 114: The French Revolution and Napoleon 