Reinterpreting the French Revolution: A global-historical perspective (20 page)

and that he, as king, would in fact be a prime beneficiary of that reform;

and Necker, the minister who for the moment attracted most patriotic and

progressive hopes, certainly argued and acted in the same sense. But Louis,

confirmed in his conservative sociopolitical leanings at pivotal moments

during 1789 by reactionaries in the country’s splintering social elite, would

not adequately heed the voices counseling compromise. He thereby helped

unfailingly to radicalize the situation within the realm.

In the late months of1788, some ofFrance’s most thoughtful citizens,

moved by their fidelity to and concern for the royalist cause, spoke out on

the pressing need for the crown to sponsor domestic reform. The retired

chancellor, Maupeou, wrote to Louis XVI that the nation lacked integrative

principles that could focus its latent loyalties. “Hence
. . .
the eternal condemnation [ofthe government]
. . .
which is nearly always absurd
. . .
[and]

the continual tendency towards the fragmentation of desires which if united

would make for the strength and prosperity of the monarchy. The people,

almost everywhere left to itself, sees in the government only the force which

restrains and represses it.”32 Even more to the point was a memorandum

forwarded to the king from another minister in retirement, Malesherbes, as

soon as the Estates General became the object ofserious discussion in the

conclaves ofpower. Malesherbes, in language recapitulated by the barrister

Pierre-Louis Lacretelle, exhorted Louis to convene a new kind ofnational

consultative body. “Seize people’s imagination with an institution that will

surprise them and please them, that the nation will approve and in which it

can more easily prevail.” A sovereign at the close ofthe eighteenth century,

insisted Malesherbes, should be summoning “the proprietors ofa great

nation renewed by its civilization,” not convoking the “three Orders” of

the fourteenth century. A constitution, he went on, should “correspond

to the best ideas produced and tested by discussion.” And the erstwhile

minister enjoined his king: “Create the constitution ofyour century; take

32 Quoted in Behrens,
Society, Government and the Enlightenment
, p. 164.

78

Reinterpreting the French Revolution

your place in it, and do not fear to found it on the rights of the people.”33

Wise counsel, this – and, it seems, very similar to confidential advice that

Mirabeau was at a later point to tender to the king.

And many were the publicists who argued in a like vein for a natural

compatibility ofroyal and popular interests. Proclaimed Lanjuinais:

“The king is the supreme motor, the repository ofexecutive power. He

gives the laws, consented to by the nation, the seal ofpublic authority. He

is the necessary support ofthe people, the foundation stone ofour social

edifice.” Averred Lacretelle: “The august monarchy fits our physical situa-

tion and our moral nature. Our aims and principles do not tend to weaken

it; we wish only to regulate it in order to strengthen it.” And Servan riposted

sarcastically against those
privilégiés
resolved to stand between Louis XVI and the citizenry: “There now exists in France a sedition ofabout 20 million

subjects ofall ages and sexes, who ask only to unite with their king against

two or three hundred magistrates, a few hundred great lords, the sacred

little legion ofbishops, and fellow-plotters who, in the name ofthe 1614

convocation [ofthe Estates General], would reduce the people to an

extremity.”34

Such individuals, eager to see the crown rejuvenated through a consti-

tutional process (a process that “respectable” citizens presumably would

control) pinned most oftheir hopes on the Genevan financier reinstalled

at Versailles in August 1788. And there is every indication that Necker,

whatever his faults and miscalculations, labored honestly to fulfill their

expectations. The resultant tension between a minister striving to renovate

and thus preserve the monarchy and a sovereign passively resisting those

efforts constituted one of the dominant themes in this period of transition

from prerevolution to revolution in France.

From the very start ofhis second ministry, Necker perceived as clearly as

did the Maupeous, Malesherbes, and Mirabeaus the crying need ofFrance

for a new “constitution” – in the broadest sense, for a reintegration of

public purposes and private talents and aspirations. He argued, then, all

the more insistently that the crown, having already tied its legitimacy ex-

plicitly to the convocation ofthe Estates General, must now proceed with

that assemblage and must try to make ofit the “single great enterprise . . .

that would ensure public regeneration.” The kingdom, contended the

director-general offinances, had had its fill of“continual vicissitudes in

the fundamental principles of government.” Without question, it longed

for “a proper and durable balance finally established between incomes

and expenses, cautious use ofcredit, sensible distribution oftaxes, a gen-

eral plan ofpublic charity, an enlightened system oflegislation, and above

33 Cited in Egret,
French Prerevolution
, p. 188.

34 For these citations, see ibid., pp. 196–97 and 210.

The descent into revolution

79

all, a constitutional guarantee ofcivil liberty and political liberty.”35 But

Necker also knew all too well that the selfsame “kingdom” was com-

posed ofa plethora ofpolitical and social interests that would have to

yield ground on some very specific issues were France to attain these ob-

jectives. “Throughout his second ministry,” Robert Harris has plausibly

argued, “Necker’s role was that ofmediator, attempting to find the right

compromise that would be not only acceptable but just to all sides, and

reasonable in the light ofthe circumstances.”36

Thus, after the deliberations in the reconvened Assembly of Notables

in the late autumn of1788 drove a wedge between progressives and con-

servatives over the composition and procedures ofthe approaching Estates

General, the director-general announced in his
Résultat du Conseil
of

27 December several governmental decisions intended to heal the divisions

over this imminent convocation.37 For instance, deputies ofthe Third

Estate were to be as numerous as all clerical and noble representatives taken

together. Such a measure, in addition to pleasing all progressive spectators

in the throng ofpublic opinion, would guarantee the presence in the assem-

bly of men of affairs who could offer the government much valuable advice

on economic and administrative matters. Again, voters would be able to

deputize to the assembly at Versailles Frenchmen hailing from any of the

three orders, and not solely individuals from their own Estates. Necker

hoped that this concession would be particularly efficacious in fostering

a spirit ofnational solidarity among the delegates and their constituents.

It is true that the Genevan in other respects accepted the recommen-

dations from the “second” Assembly of Notables, in the process disap-

pointing many ofhis progressive supporters. Most notoriously, Necker

stated that, in the impending convocation as in its predecessor of1614,

deliberation and voting would be “by order” rather than “by head” unless

the king and the three orders should in unanimity decide otherwise. Yet

Necker manifestly hoped that if the three orders should reach deadlock

on any concrete issue or issues they might agree to meet in common to

resolve their differences. Furthermore, and of far greater significance,

the director-general used the
Résultat du Conseil
to proclaim in so many

words the “abdication ofLouis XVI as an absolute monarch.” According

to the controversial
Résultat
, the king had informed his ministers that

he would never levy another imposition without the Estate General’s

sanction; that he would consult with the upcoming assemblage about

its periodicity in the future; that he would ask for its advice on how to

ensure henceforth a competent management of public finances; and that

35 Cited in ibid., p. 189.

36 Harris,
Necker and the Revolution of 1789
, p. 325.

37 For a recent and detailed analysis ofthe
Résultat du Conseil
, see ibid., pp. 323–33.

80

Reinterpreting the French Revolution

he would invite the Estates to debate such questions as the freedom of the

press, the use of
lettres de cachet
, and the publicizing ofthe government’s

ordinances.

At this point, it seems, Necker deemed financial issues to be the main

obstacle to consensus among the three orders. “It will never enter the minds

ofthe Third Estate,” the director-general confidently prognosticated,

“to seek to diminish the prerogatives, either seignorial or honorific, ofthe

first two orders, or their property, or their persons. There is no Frenchman

who does not recognize that these prerogatives are as respectable a prop-

erty right as any other, that several are intimately linked to the essence ofa

monarchy.”38 Such an assessment, however, was in the end to prove overly

sanguine: conservatives and progressives in the course ofthe following

year would be falling out over a daunting array of social issues. Moreover,

even Robert Harris, a biographer strongly sympathetic toward Necker, has

conceded that the Genevan underestimated the constitutional difficulties

attending the creation ofa durable balance between the executive powers to

be retained by the crown and the legislative role to be acquired by the new

national assembly. Thus Necker, however sincerely he intended through

promulgation ofthe conciliar decree of27 December 1788 to overcome

discord within the emerging body politic ofthe realm, failed to anticipate

the intractability ofboth social and constitutional questions.

The director-general nonetheless pursued his policy ofdomestic concil-

iation in addressing the opening session ofthe Estates General on 5 May

1789. Seemingly with his noble listeners in mind, he urged that “those dis-

tinctions which pit citizens in opposition to one another because ofstatus

or birth” be subordinated, at least for the time being, to the public wel-

fare. “We do not ask you to forget them entirely; they even make up the

social order, they form that chain so necessary for the regulation of soci-

ety. But these rival considerations must be suspended for a time, and their

sharpness mitigated, to be returned to only after a long period has been

spent working in common for the general interest.”39 Necker, it appears,

was looking for accommodations on social and constitutional issues to

be reached in France as he believed they had been achieved on the other

side ofthe Channel. Indeed, Harris has suggested that the king’s princi-

pal minister was angling for the establishment in France of a constitution

somewhat like that ofthe British. Presumably this would have allotted a

significant executive role to the monarch even while providing for a peri-

odically elected and convened legislature oftwo chambers. However, the

upper legislative chamber would have amounted to something more than

the British House ofLords, and would just as obviously have been more

than a citadel ofFrance’s “privileged orders.” The king would have chosen

38 Quoted in ibid., p. 328.

39 Cited in ibid., p. 426.

The descent into revolution

81

its members from a pool of citizens who, whatever their origins in French

society, had served the
patrie
with distinction.40 Yet from what we know

today about the Anglophobia that was never altogether absent from the

Constituent Assembly – Anglophobia that, Necker himselfstates, the king

shared as well in 1789 – a constitutional settlement drawing even to this

limited extent upon British experience was unlikely to find many adherents

in France.41

There is still considerable debate among scholars over the foresight and

forcefulness of Necker’s stewardship of public affairs during these criti-

cal months. Virtually no one today would deny that the director-general

succeeded at least temporarily in reviving the royal finances. Yet some

specialists have faulted him for holding unrealistic expectations of the

Estates General and thus for leaving the nation without adequate direc-

tion on the fundamental problems it had to confront.42 Again, we have

seen even a largely sympathetic biographer like Robert Harris conceding

the Genevan’s oversimplification ofthe issues involved in constitutional

change in France. Finally, there are those who have suspected Necker of

trying to turn the schism between the conservatives and progressives to the

king’s, or to his own, benefit.43

There may be some truth to all these strictures. Necker at least might

have tried to act more decisively than he did at certain points – f or example,

by prescribing the vote by head for the Estates in the
Résultat du Conseil
,