Essay Plans Notes

Introduction

• 1777 - Emperor Joseph II wrote to mother ‘Each [minister] is absolute master in his department but fears to be, not controlled, but displaced, by the sovereign . . . The king is absolute only in his power to pass from one slavery to another. He can change his ministers; but unless he is a transcendent genius he can never be the master of the conduct of affairs’

Hierarchical administration - decentralisation and relative independence

King may have ‘negative control’ - dismissal

• Corporate structures and size of kingdom - limitations

• No common legal code or administrative system, many did not speak French and numerous privileges

• Ideological issues over fundamental national laws and divine law - progressive restraint of monarchy

Escalating conflict between royal ministers, Church and parlements

• Uncertain definition of ‘absolutism’ - theory v. practice

Bodin - sovereignty => indivisible + full legislative powers v. also subject to customary law

• Essential instability

Absolutism

• Despotic full control or overall control with limitations

Perceived oscillation - ambiguous and controversial restraints on monarchy

• Louis XIV - seen as archetypal absolute monarch => centralisation of government through intendants, management of factionalism, no first minister and control of parlements

Stable ministerial and conciliar system

Successors failed to maintain centralised control - personal failings and ideology

• Parlements - protection of ‘fundamental laws’ => inalienability of royal domain, Salic law and Catholicism

• ‘Laws’ were expanded by rebellious parlements - Jansenist and Enlightenment ideas

• Laws and intermediary bodies => absolute but not despotic monarchy - further limitation of divine law

• Louis XIV - undermined ecclesiastical independence but also reinforced connection between religion and politics => Gallicanism not subordination to Rome

• Miromesnil - king has to be absolute ‘to keep all the orders of the state in line, but this absolute authority should have as its object to reconcile everything, to conserve everything and never to destroy everything’

Clergy and magistrates use limiting notions to frustrate reform => deposition

Character

• Strong-willed and decisive monarch - not Louis XV and XVI

Timid and lazy with little interest apart from foreign policy and vacillation

• Duke de Choiseul - Louis XV ‘would, like Nero, have been enchanted to watch Paris burn . . . but lacked the courage to give the order’

• Louis XV - debauched court at Versailles, guarded own authority and unwilling to trust ministers => ‘secret’ foreign policy against official diplomacy

• Did not want opposition - abandonment of reforms such as Machault’s taxation proposals of 1749

• Louis XVI - feared opposition => almost immediate recall of Paris Parlement and failed to support Turgot’s reforms

• Louis XVI never took a mistress - no accusations of vice => yet greater of 2 evils in Marie-Antoinette becoming an alternate source of patronage in factional world of politics

• Louis XVI’s indecisiveness and conservatism => seen as epitomising tyranny

Factionalism

• Constantly changing ministers

• Louis XIV had never appointed Court aristocracy to offices of secretary of state - Louis XV regularly appointed them after 1750 => friction with noblesse de la robe who had traditionally dominated these positions

• Louis XIV manipulated court life but XV and XVI were not competent

• Control of secretary of state became a principal goal of Court cabals

• Louis XVI did not look impartial

• Marie-Antoinette gained control over ministerial appointments and patronage

Empire

• Much war in the 18^th century - only the 1720s were entirely peaceful

• Territorial claims - challenged by finance and failures in foreign policy => unpopularity

• Disastrous Seven Years’ War => destruction of French fleet by the British in 1759

• 1759 - Quebec was taken

• Lost territory in North America, nascent empire in India and possessions in West Africa and the Caribbean

• American War of Independence - brought peace and prestige => prohibitive cost

• Louis XV and XVI had absolute control over army until 1788 - yet financially weak

Financial problems

• 3 major challenges - inequalities in taxation, inefficiency and corruption of treasuries and lack of stable system of public credit

Dependence on venality and heavy borrowing => higher interest rates than English and Dutch

• Military debts since 1688 => 68% of revenue on repayments by 1789

• Necker - funding American war almost entirely though loans

War cost 1,066 million livres - 997 million from loans with interest of up to 10%

• Great increases in direct taxation - lack of military success => parlements did not register fiscal edicts

• Failure of campaign to tax clergy - king was not firm enough

More conflict with parlement

• Lack of full income from provinces - tax farms were inefficient and went to local treasuries rather than any centralised one

• Immense lack of governmental stability

1750-74 - 10 different finance ministers

L’Averdy - beginnings of pragmatic financial policy yet disgraced in 1769 with reversal of policies in 4 years

• Aristocracy and parliamentarians disliked reform - against divine order

Venality

• Best example of weakness and constraint of tradition

• Judicial and administrative offices were sold to the highest bidder - public function, revenue and privileges

• 1771 - new tax on offices (the centime dernier)

• Harvouin calculated debt of offices as about 600 million livres

Net annual revenue to king was only about 1%

Value of offices - - of royal borrowing

• Privilege had a measurable value - monopolies, freedom from taxation etc. => if value increased old offices could be revoked and recreated at a higher price

Greater unpopularity of monarchy - privileges

Local officials were often difficult to manage - lack of unbiased local information

• Reform was impossible -...

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