In my previous lecture, I pointed out the ways in which the great imperial crises of the 18th century, the imperial battles, had two particular dimensions for France. The first, is that the French and Indian War, after 1754 had resulted in the loss of vast areas of the North American mainland. France effectively being expelled altogether from North America, and being reduced to it's key colonies in the Caribbean. But secondly, the involvement of France in the American war of Independence in 1776 was to have fundamentally important repercussions as well. France enters the war in 1779 and its actions in 1781 are crucial in the victory of the American colonists because the French Navy effectively blockades Chesapeake Bay where major British forces are and force their surrender. But it is a sweet victory for France, revenge at last over its British rivals, that has enormous costs. It's estimated that the cost of French involvement in the American War of Independence, of military involvement, has been about twice the annual revenue that the French treasury would take in taxes. It creates a major financial crisis for the French monarchy, which is also struggling with an imbalance between court expenditures and the cost of administration, and what it's already receiving in taxation. Louis XVI's ministry decides to take the necessary dramatic action to rectify that problem. In 1787, they call an assembly of notables, of prominent people from across the country, in an attempt to get them to agree to the privileged orders Foregoing many of their taxation exemptions, paying a tax in particular on property. They fail. In 1787, the Parlement of Paris, remember that the Parlement is the Aristocratic high court, refuses to register royal reforms that might have resulted in tax reform and the removal of some of those privileges. When Louie the Sixteenth's ministry exiles members of the aristocratic high court, the Parlement, there are massive protests across the country. Again in 1788, Minister Lamoignon attempts to reduce the power of those aristocratic high courts to register, to vet To veto royal decrees. What the nobility are very successful in doing through the actions of the Parlement is to claim that the real crisis here is a crisis of ministerial despotism. That the problem is that Louis XVI's ministers are attempting to undermine ancient privileges. Ancient exemptions, ancient rights and that everybody will end up suffering as a consequence. It's not surprising, given the importance of those local regional centers that I spoke about last week, that a lot of the protest is centered in those regional cities. For example, in June 1788, when royal troops arrived to expel Members of the high court, the parlement. There is a furious demonstration called the Journee des Tuiles, the day of the roofing tiles, in Grenoble. Where royal troops, that you can see here, marching to the city are piltered with roof tiles thrown by working people from the roofs above. It results in the end In Louis the 16th's ministry deciding that that particular attempt at reform, by forcing the high courts, the noble courts to register reforms, that is not going to work. And a much more dramatic and consequential decision is taken. And that is, to call a meeting of the Estates General. The Estates General, a body which hasn't met for 175 years is a meeting of representatives of the 3 orders of the realm; clergy, nobility, and commons. An advisory body But the calling of the Estates-General for 1789 is a move which electrifies public opinion. In 1788, the English agronomist, or agricultural scientist we would call him today, Arthur Young, Is traveling through western France and is in that great Atlantic seaport of Nantes, one of the boom ports of the 18th century. And this is what he notes in the diary that he keeps. Nantes is as enflammee, inflamed, in the cause of liberty as any town in France can be. The conversations I witnessed here prove how great a change is effected in the minds of the French. Nor do I believe it will be possible for the present government to last half a century longer, unless the clearest and most decided talents be at the helm. And what Young meant by the most decided talents were people rather like himself. The great merchants, the professional middle classes of Nantes. A few months later, Louis XVI, through his ministry, decides on a more specific Measure, in terms of the way that the Estates general will be chosen. What's crucial to the king and his ministers of course, is that sufficient pressure is put on the privileged daughters for them to voluntarily renounce a number of their taxation privileges. With a view to helping the Royal Exchequer with it's problem of fiscal crisis. In December of 1788 it's decided that the third estate will have double the number of representatives as the other two estates. It's crucial, because it focuses public debate on this central question. When people convene at the Estates-General in 1789, will they gather in one common assembly, remembering that the Third Estate will have twice the representatives and therefore will have the numbers to vote for change? Or will they meet as they had traditionally, in three separate, Chambers, and in which it may well have been the case that the two privileged orders would constantly outvote the meeting of the third Estate. Of whether there is to be one common assembly when the Estates General meet at Versailles electrifies opinion. As a Swiss journalist Puts it early in 1789. The public debate has totally changed in emphasis. Now, the King, despotism, and the Constitution are only very secondary questions. And it has become a war between the third estate and the other two orders. In other words, what he's saying is, it's now no longer a question of whether what the King's trying to do represents despotism Ministerial despotism, now the issue is very much a debate between the third estate and the privileged orders. This is a public debate about political power, which ultimately involves everybody in France. I spoke last week about the nature of rural cultures in a world which is oral, rather than written. And where during the long winter evenings in particular, families would commonly get together, saved the costs of fuel, but to spend the evening talking or hearing someone read a story aloud, or whatever. As you can see in this lovely drawing of a peasant veillee or evening gathering. The women in particular are continuing to work. What changes early in 1789 and is to electrify the whole kingdom is the King makes it plain that as well as the third estate electing its representatives to go to their side, to offer him advice. Every community in the kingdom is to draw up a list of grievances, a cahiers de doleances, that their elected representatives will take with them to Versailles to inform the king. For the first time in people's lives, they're not only being allowed to talk about the way the world might be. The reforms that might be useful and necessary. They're actually being required to do so by none other than the king himself. Let me give you an example of the sort of effect this has, by taking you to a small rural community about 150 kilometers south of Paris. It's a desperately poor place, the village of Es Ville. Dominated, in terms of land ownership. By a member of the Paris Parliament. By a very senior aristocrat, who owns most of the land of the community, and either rents it out or employs laborers from the village to work on his large estate. The people of that community, or at least the male heads of household gather in a meeting place near the village church. To write down or to have a literate man write down the list of their grievances. It is astonishing, in a place which is characterized by such discrepancy in power and wealth between the senior or the lord of this place and the village community, just how bold these people are. These are some of the demands they make, that they want the king to hear. The city inhabitants observe that they alone have been charged with the mass of the taxes. While their seigneur, their lord, who funds much of the land in the parish, enjoys total exemption. They ask that without any distinction of title or rank, the said seigneur be taxed like them. The person who's actually writing this down by the way, is the seigneur's steward, but these people will not be intimidated. They asked that the tithe for the church, and the which is the main harvest Jew be abolished. And, that in the future no tax can be established without the consent of the whole nation assembled in a states general. They are well aware of the political issue as well. They want the Estates General to become a permanent feature of public life in France. The involvement of the mass of the French people electrifies debate, it raises expectations. In March and April of 1789 elections to the Estates General take place and these gatherings to elect representatives of each of the three estates are themselves tumultuous affairs. One of Louie's administrators in Western France, administrating a district or bailliage at Saumur on the Loire River Writes this in a tone of despair in March 1789 after having attended one of the election meetings to choose representatives to the Estates-General. What is really tiresome, he reported, is that these assemblies that have been summoned have generally believed themselves to be invested with some sovereign authority, and that when they came to an end, the peasants went home with the idea that henceforward they were free from tithes, hunting prohibitions, and the payment of seigneurial dues. It's almost as if the very fact that the King had asked his people for a statement of their grievances was enough to convince many peasants, That the king was therefore going to act on them. In my next lecture, I want to explore another type of explosion in public debate.
