PART THREE
CHAPTER 11
Never did Lafayette express kinder words for Louis XVI or greater optimism about France’s future than in the letter he wrote to George Washington on January 13, 1787. The cause of Lafayette’s enthusiasm was a royal decree that, as he put it, promised to influence “the Happiness of 26 millions of People.” To address the problem of a grossly imbalanced budget, the French king had decided to convene “an Assembly of Notables” consisting of 144 men—“ArchBishops, Bishops, Nobles, presidents of the Several parliaments, Mayors of towns,” and other “principal men” selected from every corner of the realm. The dignitaries would gather in February to conduct “an Examination of the finances to Be adjusted, of the Means to alleviate the taxes of the people, and of Many abuses to Be Redressed.” Lafayette blamed the crown for France’s fiscal woes, pointing to “the sums squandered on Courtiers and Superfluities,” yet he believed that Louis XVI was taking honorable steps to make matters right. As Lafayette wrote to Washington, “There Was no Way more patriotic, more Candid, more Noble to Effect those purposes. The King and M. de Calonne His [Finance] Minister deserve Great Credit for that. And I Hope a tribute of Gratitude and Good Will shall Reward this popular Measure.”
As pleased as he was for the nation, Lafayette was also happy for himself. For the first time in his life, he had been accorded a measure of influence over France’s domestic affairs. All members of the assembly had been handpicked by the government—Lafayette was one of thirty-six men chosen from the ranks of the nobility (known as the “Second Estate” in the social order of the day), with the remaining slots filled by members of the clergy (“First Estate”) and the nation’s wealthiest and most influentialcommoners (“Third Estate”). Lafayette saw his selection as more than simply an honor: it was an opportunity to introduce into France some of the liberal social and economic measures he had first encountered in the United States. He had come to consider such reforms both just and necessary if France hoped to keep pace in a rapidly changing world. Itemizing his goals, Lafayette wrote to Washington:
My Earnest Wish, and fond Hope is that our Meeting will produce popular Assemblies in the provinces, the destruction of Many Shackles of the trade, and a change in the fate of the protestants, Events which I will promote By my friends as well as my feeble endeavours with all my Heart.
In retrospect, Lafayette’s envisioned reforms were modest compared with the changes that the larger forces of history would soon bring about in France. But Lafayette, who had never imagined that the foundation of his ancient homeland would soon be shaken to the core, could hardly have known that he was about to participate in a transformation so momentous that it has been termed the “French Prerevolution.”
For a time, it was not at all clear that Lafayette would be invited to the Assembly of Notables; his name appeared on an early list of participants, vanished from a second version, and then reappeared on the final roster. The crown never explained the vacillation, but the task of selecting the notables was certainly a delicate one. It was in the government’s interest to choose men who would be docile enough to sign off on the king’s proposed reforms while appearing sufficiently independent to withstand charges of blind subservience. Clearly, Lafayette’s name had raised flags. But why? Had the royal ministers feared that Lafayette, the celebrated friend of the American republic, might add a dangerously radical voice to the proceedings? Or was Lafayette, who had been working closely with the king’s advisers on American dealings, perceived to be so closely tied to the interests of the monarchy that he would be more puppet than participant? In other words: Was he too safe? Or was he not safe enough?
Both theories were floated by Lafayette’s contemporaries, whose interpretations tended to break down along national lines. Thomas Jefferson, who had replaced Franklin as America’s Minister Plenipotentiary to France in 1785, saw in Lafayette living proof that the Old World could learn important lessons from the New. Jefferson believed that Lafayette’s republican tendencies must have rendered the Americanized marquis persona non grata in a court “whose principles are the most absolute despotism.” As Jefferson explained to his fellow Virginian Edward Carrington, Lafayette’s “education in our school has drawn on him a very jealous eye.” Jefferson did not blame Louis XVI. He insisted that “the king, who is a good man, is favorably disposed towards [Lafayette].” But he implied that the court’s most conservative faction—which was headed by the Comte d’Artois, a former classmate of Lafayette’s from the Académie de Versailles—might fear that Lafayette, an experienced general who was “supported by powerful family connections, and by the public good will,” could wield undue power and use it to push for reforms, if not more.
A very different account of Lafayette’s temporary exclusion from the assembly appeared in the Mémoires secrets, which harbored profound doubts about the entire project. In a summary guide to the notables published the day before the assembly convened, the newsletter assessed each member’s potential to make a genuine contribution. Lafayette did not come off well. The guide dismissed Lafayette with harsh words that were rendered all the more damning by their telegraphic style: “Having a mild and timid character, uneducated; not much is to be expected.” Worse than ineffective, Lafayette was said to be in the pocket of Charles-Alexandre de Calonne, the finance minister, who masterminded the assembly. “Coached by the Noailleses,” the Mémoires secretspredicted, “he will be counseled to be on the side of the court and not to compromise.” According to this logic, neither animosity nor fear led to Lafayette’s omission from the notables. Rather, Lafayette was excluded on the solid grounds that he “was very young”—he was, in fact, younger than all but one of the notables—and “that he had not demonstrated any knowledge of administration, that he held no office that would entitle him to be called to this Assembly.” The author reported that Calonne had, in the end, praised Lafayette’s “commendable character” and agreed to propose his name to the king. In return for the favor, Lafayette was said to have promised “zeal and submission,” not to the American principles endorsed by Jefferson but to whatever plans might be hatched by the royal ministry.
The truth was probably somewhere in between. Lafayette was all but certain to participate with zeal, but accepting the role of a pawn—for the sake of a king or anyone else—was not in his character. Iconoclastic in his views and spirited in the pursuit of his goals, Lafayette was not easily swayed on any topic, and he may simply have been considered too much of a loose cannon for the government to trust him. If the monarch expected quick affirmation of plans already devised, Lafayette could be trouble.
At ten o’clock in the morning on February 22, 1787, Lafayette and the other notables filed into a vast meeting hall erected in the courtyard of the Hôtel des Menus Plaisirs du Roi—the bureau of the “King’s diversions”—in the town of Versailles. Measuring 120 feet long by 100 feet wide, the hangar dwarfed the men who gathered beneath its coffered ceilings. The space had been used as a warehouse for storing the piles of furniture and props constantly churned out for the lavish festivities that punctuated court life, but it had been transformed so thoroughly for the occasion that it was barely recognizable. Now every nook and cranny overflowed with symbols of the monarchy: niches held orbs covered with fleurs-de-lis; walls and seats were cloaked in tapestries produced in royal manufactories; and, at the far end of the room, the king’s throne towered above the scene, surmounted by a richly decorated canopy of purple fabric. These silent signals reminded the notables that they were guests of the king, serving at his pleasure.
In retrospect, a less charged locale might have been a better choice for a meeting intended to address a budget crisis. The Menus Plaisirs had earned a reputation as the epicenter of extravagant spending. In 1781, Louis-Sébastien Mercier had criticized the bureau, writing that “any frugal-minded citizen must deplore the waste of time and good money upon ceremonies and shows.” While the hall was being readied for the arrival of the notables, the Mémoires secrets waxed indignant that the king, unsatisfied with any of the existing spaces within the enormous expanse of Versailles, had seen fit to transform a warehouse into an assembly hall; the government, opined the newsletter, had opened an austerity meeting by “tossing several millions out the window for a vain and ephemeral ceremony.” This was a monarchy famously tone-deaf to matters of public image, and the assembly would be asked to ponder the nation’s fiscal woes in a setting that reeked of profligacy.
Meeting room of the Assembly of Notables constructed at Versailles. 1787. (illustration credit 11.1)
Inside the chamber, clusters of long, backless benches were arranged on two levels, with every notable assigned a seat. Lafayette sat at the periphery of the upper level, where he looked out on a sea of costumed dignitaries: clergymen wore cassocks surmounted by long tunics of white linen; noblemen dressed in suits complemented by lace cravats, velvet capes, and plumed hats; members of the legal profession appeared in black robes and square hats; and others sported garb befitting their respective stations. The king’s bodyguard stood at attention, ceremonial weaponry in hand, and officers of the chancellery, representing the judicial system, silently asserted the king’s power over the law by assuming kneeling poses on the dais. Shortly after eleven o’clock, all stood to witness the arrival of heralds, princes, dukes, captains of the guard, high-ranking members of the royal household, the ever important comptroller of finances, Charles-Alexandre de Calonne, and, of course, the king.
Louis XVI strode across a fleur-de-lis-patterned carpet, climbed two steps to the dais indicating his position of honor, then sat down in a duly appointed throne. “Gentlemen,” he began, “I have chosen you from among the various orders of the state, and have gathered you around me to inform you of my plans.” As Louis described his intentions, they seemed very much in line with those articulated by Lafayette. The king said his aim was to “improve the nation’s revenues” through a series of changes that would place France in the vanguard of free trade. He would institute a more equitable system of taxation, “liberate commerce from the obstacles that have impeded circulation,” and, in the end, “bring relief … to the most indigent of my subjects.” Taking up no more than twenty minutes, the speech was as vague as it was brief. And it was the last the notables heard from the king for some time.
This was to be Calonne’s show. It was he who presented a set of six detailed proposals in the king’s absence on February 23 and then shepherded these proposals through the assembly. No one thought he would encounter much resistance. Not only had each member been carefully vetted, but the proceedings had been structured to maximize royal control. The notables gathered en masse only for a handful of formal presentations, and they would have no opportunity to raise questions or voice opinions while in the large group. All deliberations would be conducted within the confines of seven “bureaus,” each containing about twenty members. Every notable was assigned to a bureau, and every bureau was led by a prince of the blood. It was surely not an accident that Lafayette was placed in the second bureau, where he would work directly under the watchful eye of the Comte d’Artois, one of Calonne’s closest and most powerful allies.
The government appeared to be so firmly in control of the Assembly of Notables that Lafayette and his colleagues were widely disparaged as little more than pawns, and all of Paris enjoyed a good laugh at their expense. Within weeks of the assembly’s convocation, authors of satirical verses and unflattering prints were outdoing each other with witty variations on the theme. In one caricature the members of the assembly were portrayed as a bevy of gullible fowl, lined up like hungry diners waiting to be called to their tables at “The Court’s Buffet,” supervised by chef Calonne. Perched behind a wooden podium, an officious monkey–cum–maître d’ informs the misguided flock, “I have gathered you here to learn with which sauce you want to be eaten.” On a sideboard seen at the left of the print, a roasted bird served up on a platter foreshadows the birds’ collective fate. So widespread was the ridicule that Jefferson opined to Abigail Adams that “the most remarkable effect of this convention as yet is the number of puns and bon mots it has generated. I think were they all collected it would make a more voluminous work than the Encyclopédie.” Jefferson’s observation was apt, but the conclusion he drew was mistaken; underestimating the staying power of the French, Jefferson predicted “that a good punster would disarm the whole nation were they ever so seriously disposed to revolt.”
“The Court’s Buffet.” A 1787 caricature of the Assembly of Notables. (illustration credit 11.2)
Neither the jesting nor the cynicism seemed to trouble Lafayette, who had joined the assembly in a spirit of goodwill. He entered its deliberations prepared to listen, learn, and negotiate, and for a few weeks at least, his trust seemed to be well placed. The politically savvy Calonne had placed a popular proposition—the formation of local assemblies—at the top of the notables’ agenda. His suggestion was that representative bodies, elected by and constituted of local landholders, be established throughout the nation at municipal, district, and provincial levels. Accorded no real legislative powers, these councils would serve as vehicles for expressing collective concerns and, in limited cases, for managing regional affairs. After less than a week of debate, twenty of the second bureau’s twenty-two members supported the idea, as did similar majorities in the other bureaus. Lafayette responded with exuberance, averring that local assemblies would offer “the greatest benefit that could come from the justice and the goodness of the King.”
This is not to say that Lafayette stood with the crown on every particular—he would have preferred provincial bodies that were stronger and more broadly representative than those the crown proposed, and he suggested a number of changes with such goals in mind. Joining with the majority of the second bureau, he argued that the provincial bodies needed greater powers if they were to have any chance of withstanding the “baneful authority” of the provinces’ government-appointed intendants. On the question ofvoter qualifications, Lafayette and four other members of his bureau advocated a lower standard than the government suggested: instead of requiring an annual income of 600 livres, Lafayette’s group called for a minimum income of 100 livres. Lafayette also objected to the notion that larger incomes should translate into more votes.
Of all the amendments Lafayette supported, the most surprising is also the most revealing: Lafayette believed that the provincial assemblies should grant the clergy and the nobility more authority than commoners. He and his like-minded colleagues would have permitted only members of the First and Second Estates to serve as president of any of the provincial bodies; commoners (the Third Estate) would be barred from the office. Furthermore, Lafayette wanted to see a cap that would limit the proportion of commoners—who constituted some 95 percent of the population—to no more than two-thirds of any provincial assembly. In contrast, the royal ministers planned to open membership and offices in the new provincial assemblies to all eligible voters regardless of their social standing.
To the modern eye, Lafayette’s position might seem counterintuitive—America’s staunchest French advocate came out in favor of political distinctions based on social class. But while the government seemed to be proposing an egalitarian system, Lafayette and many of his colleagues interpreted things differently. The majority of the second bureau saw the crown attempting to grab power by wresting control from the traditional leaders of each region. To be sure, the notables, who were drawn disproportionately from the ranks of the first two estates, were motivated in part by a desire to preserve their own power. But more than self-interest was at stake. Lafayette and many of his fellow notables believed that France’s system of estates served as a bulwark against despotism, ensuring the nation’s freedom by limiting the authority of the king.
This was also the logic expounded by the influential political theorist Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, whose 1748 treatise The Spirit of the Laws argued that “the most natural intermediate subordinate power is that of the nobility. It is in a sense the essence of monarchy, whose fundamental maxim is: no monarch, no nobility; no nobility, no monarch; but there is a despot.” Lafayette owned the complete works of Montesquieu and heard much talk of them from Étienne-Charles de Loménie de Brienne, the archbishop of Toulouse, who served as a kind of mentor among the notables. During the assembly, Brienne summed up the vital position of the so-called landed estates—the nobility and clergy: they served at once as “the people’s defense and the monarchy’s support.” Privileging freedom over equality, Brienne insisted that “the distinctions among citizens are necessary for royal dignity, for the proper order of the state, and even for public liberty.”
The matter of provincial assemblies was settled relatively amicably, with the notables assenting to most of the government’s desires, but Calonne’s second proposal led to a veritable insurrection. The crown planned to tame the deficit by imposing a new land tax but offered none of the traditional exemptions. Such a tax would have fallen disproportionately on the First and Second Estates, who were not willing to give in without a fight.
At the heart of the notables’ objections was the fact that no one could calculate the size of the deficit with any certainty. On February 22, in a speech that managed to be simultaneously long, tedious, and unclear, Calonne had pegged the deficit at 80 million livres. Less than two weeks later, he acknowledged that the shortfall was 114 million livres. Confused and mistrusting, the bureaus attempted their own audits, yielding an even wider range of estimates, some of which dwarfed Calonne’s worst scenarios. By mid-March, the bureaus’ frustrations were starting to boil over. How, asked the notables, could they approve new taxes without knowing whether taxes would help to balance the budget?
The government’s dismal financial situation might have raised eyebrows under any circumstances but was especially disturbing at this particular moment because an impressive budget surplus had been reported just six years earlier. In February 1781, whenFrance was expending large sums on the American Revolution, Jacques Necker, the Swiss Protestant banker who was then serving as director-general of finance, had issued a document purporting to offer the first full account of the nation’s finances ever presented to the people of France: the Compte rendu au roi. Designed to shore up a flagging credit market by boosting public confidence, Necker’s account trumpeted the underlying health of the French economy and the government’s new commitment to financial transparency. The Compte rendu was published in large quantity, translated into several languages, and became an unlikely best seller in France and abroad. Limiting his discussion exclusively to ordinary and ongoing expenses, while making no claims about the extraordinary costs of the war, Necker calculated that France’s annual income exceeded its expenses by some 10 million livres. In 1787, however, wartime expenses—including, to Lafayette’s embarrassment, unpaid interest still due on loans to the United Sates—were included in the calculations. Although they were comparing apples and oranges, the notables wondered how a surplus could possibly have turned into a deficit in such a short time.
Calonne’s reputation for loose ethics added fuel to the fire. In the few years that he held his post, he had been accused more than once of enriching himself at the nation’s expense. According to one especially colorful rumor, Calonne was said to have carried on a torrid affair with the fashionable painter Élisabeth Vigée-LeBrun, whose portrait of the comptroller general was exhibited to great fanfare at the Royal Academy’s Salon exhibition of 1785. At a time of economic strain, everything about Calonne’s appearance in the painting seemed to smack of excess: his sumptuous costume of black silk and white lace, his splendid desk laden with gilt mounts and accessories, and the red brocade drapery that matches the upholstery of his gilt wood armchair. Not only was Calonne said to have raided the nation’s coffers to pay an outlandish fee for this flattering portrait, but the tale of his affair with the artist grew increasingly delicious with each telling. The pilfered banknotes, it was whispered, were presented to Vigée-LeBrun in the form of exquisitely expensive wrapping paper, with each bill enveloping an individual piece of candy.
More elaborate and persistent still were the accusations of profligacy and impropriety leveled against the royal family. “Madame Deficit” was one of the kinder nicknames given to the queen, whose infamously extravagant wardrobe, penchant for high-stakes gambling, and purported affairs with men and women alike were constant fodder for rumors spread by myriad political enemies. Her spendthrift ways with other people’s money furnished a premise for the notorious “Diamond Necklace Affair”—a scandal that played out in the courts of law and public opinion in 1785 and 1786. A team of con artists duped the ambitious and wealthy Cardinal de Rohan into purchasing the eponymous jewels as a gift for the queen for the staggering sum of 1.5 million livres. Deploying, among other fanciful gambits, a nocturnal assignation with a woman dressed as Marie Antoinette, the swindlers led Rohan to believe that her royal highness coveted the necklace and would provide an influential post at court to anyone who gave her the magnificent gems. When the plot unraveled, the conspirators were dealt with readily—at least those who stayed in France long enough to get caught. But Rohan’s culpability was a bone of contention that kept all of Paris rapt. Was it reasonable, went the question before theParlement de Paris (as the high court of Paris was known), for Rohan to have believed that the queen might act in such a manner? Or was the cardinal guilty of treason simply for having entertained such a low opinion of Marie Antoinette? Rohan’s acquittal on May 31, 1786, and the celebrations that greeted the verdict gave the royal family an unwelcome answer.
The widespread talk of spending gone wild put the notables in no mood to accept new taxes landing squarely on their own shoulders. The assembly aimed instead, as one member explained, “to make the king work at economies, as one makes the people work for revenues.” The royal household, the notables demanded, must open its books and agree to cut costs in accordance with the assembly’s decrees.
The notables also wondered about the limits of their own authority: having been appointed by the crown, rather than elected by the nation, did they, in fact, have the power to levy a permanent tax? On March 1, Jean-François-André Leblanc de Castillon, prosecutor of the parlement of Aix assigned to the second bureau, argued that they did not. As the Mémoires secrets reported, Castillon had insisted that “neither this Assembly … nor the Parlements, nor individual states, nor even the King: the Estates-General alone have this right.” Castillon stopped just short of calling for the convocation of the Estates-General, an elected body that had been summoned sporadically since the Middle Ages to help the nation through times of crisis. But the mere mention of the idea quickly became “a sensation.”
For his part, Lafayette caused a stir of a different variety: he surprised everyone by demurring on the subject of the new tax. Blindsided by the bitter tenor of the proceedings, he was desperate to do the right thing but had no clear idea of what it might be. As Lafayette confessed to his fellow members of the second bureau on March 3, “The object of the deliberation is so important that my youth requires me to enlighten myself through the discussion of administrators more able than myself.” He was, quite simply, unprepared to grapple with such profound matters of political philosophy.
So tepid did Lafayette appear to his compatriots that he managed to disappoint even the low expectations of the Mémoires secrets, which lambasted him and other veterans of the American Revolution on March 19. While acknowledging that the group had been“so useful to the nation during the last war,” the Mémoires lamented that they had “made a very poor showing in the Assembly of the Notables.” Accustomed to “the passive obedience of the military and the spirit of despotism that commands troops,” the veterans were said to have offered “no vigorous opinions.” Mincing no words, the Mémoires accused the military men of having demonstrated “the most blind and servile submission” on every matter. To Lafayette, who treasured his reputation as an independent thinker and a staunch defender of liberty, the criticism must have stung.
The preeminent Lafayette scholar Louis Gottschalk cited “a siege of illness” as the root of Lafayette’s “uncharacteristic restraint.” Certainly, illness might have been a contributing factor. Although Lafayette missed none of the proceedings, he suffered throughout the run of the assembly from a persistent chest cold that might have dissuaded a less eager man. Plagued by coughing, hoarseness, and exhaustion, Lafayette soldiered through with the aid of an assortment of remedies acquired from the Versailles shop of Jean Maury, the apothecary to the stables of the Comte d’Artois. Starting on February 22 and continuing through the month of May, Lafayette went on a veritable spending spree chez Maury. He made purchases nearly every day, running through bottle after bottle of syrup of erysimum, syrup of violet, syrup of mallow, and purified whey in an effort to ameliorate his symptoms and regain his strength. After mounting an all-out campaign to be included among the notables, he was not about to let a bit of congestion keep him from participating.
Finally, in early April, Lafayette began to assert himself. His apothecary bills testify that he was still not completely well, but his health was improving. And having taken time to assess the situation carefully, he began to feel more comfortable issuing bold demands for reform. Most simply, though, Calonne’s actions might well have pushed Lafayette past the limits of his tolerance. All of these factors combined to resurrect the fiery spirit that had won the heart of America.
Calonne was growing frustrated with his handpicked notables, who were turning out to be far more independent-minded than anyone had anticipated. At a plenary session held on Monday, March 12, Calonne adopted a new tactic. Rather than grapple with the substance of the assembly’s many and varied objections to his plans, he blithely declared the group’s oppositions to be immaterial. Taking a moment to thank the notables for their zealous and faithful service, Calonne reported that His Majesty had read the reports of each bureau and had observed “with satisfaction that in general your sentiments are in accord with his principles.” He added that “you have shown yourselves to be animated by the desire to contribute to and perfect” the implementation of the government’s plans and that “the objections that you have raised, and which relate principally to matters of form, do not contradict the essential points of the goal that His Majesty proposed.” This was arrant nonsense.
By Friday—four days later—each of the seven bureaus had submitted its own refutation of Calonne’s ludicrous statement. Though phrased in tones ranging from polite rectification to righteous indignation, the seven separate réclamations all agreed on one point: the assembly’s differences with the crown’s proposals were substantive, Calonne’s declaration to the contrary notwithstanding. The second bureau’s rebuttal was among the mildest; the group asked simply that “an exact record” of their findings be inserted into the record to prevent any misconstruction.
Instead of backing down, Calonne raised the stakes. With the government and the notables at an impasse, the finance minister turned to a third party: the French people. At Calonne’s behest, his own speech, the full text of the government’s proposals, and an incendiary avertissement by an anonymous hand, published both independently and as an introduction to the proposals, were printed and distributed. The avertissement caused an instant commotion, not least because it was given out, free of charge, on Saturday, March 31, to parish priests, who were asked to read it from their pulpits the next day. By Monday, April 2, “nothing but the Avertissement” was being spoken of in Paris or Versailles, according to Brienne.
The avertissement was an exercise in demagoguery, pure and simple. In an audacious move, the crown was trying to turn the people against the nobility and the clergy. After summarizing the key proposals and extolling their many virtues, the text built to a harangue against the government’s critics, reaching a crescendo with a series of rhetorical questions and answers that must have given that week’s Mass a lively tone:
What could be the pretexts for concern?
We will pay more! … Undoubtedly: but who? Only those who do not pay enough.…
Privileges will be sacrificed! … Yes: justice desires it, necessity demands it. Would it be better to overcharge those without privilege, the people? There will be loud objections! … It’s to be expected. Is it possible to advance the common good without damaging some private interests? Can reform be accomplished without complaint?
The fact that the First and Second Estates were under siege was not lost on the notables. Gathered in the Versailles apartments of the Comte d’Artois on Monday, April 2, the members of the second bureau seethed. Brienne denounced the avertissement. The Duc de Guines declared that it “misled the people” and served as a “dangerous tocsin.” The Duc d’Harcourt maintained that “the government had never addressed the people in this manner.” And when Lafayette boldly asserted that “even in Boston this appeal would be regarded as seditious,” he was reproving Calonne for rabble-rousing. In Lafayette’s view, enraging the public not only risked undermining the nobility and the clergy but jeopardized the very stability of France. Marie Antoinette, too, “highly disapproved” of theavertissement, thinking that Calonne was playing a dangerous game. The king, however, predictably failed to understand what the uproar was all about.
His reserves of goodwill depleted, Lafayette went on the offensive. Seizing on rumors that Calonne had manipulated the sale of government lands for personal gain, Lafayette (quite possibly coached by Brienne) rapidly became his bureau’s sharpest and most outspoken agitator against the finance minister. Calonne’s dabbling in land speculation had already been the subject of a scathing pamphlet that had come to the attention of the second bureau; now Lafayette joined the disparaging chorus by insisting that “we must attack the monster of land speculation, not feed it.” On Tuesday, April 3, Lafayette presented the Comte d’Artois with a signed memo to be passed along to the king requesting a “rigorous examination” of recent real estate transactions. “Why,” asked his memo, had “finance ministers proposed to the King purchases or exchanges that, having no benefit for the King, served only to benefit certain individuals?” Fighting fire with fire, Lafayette donned the mantle of public interest that Calonne had briefly tried on. The squandered funds, he alleged, had been raised through taxes, and taxes could be justified only in the interest of the nation. The millions of livres that had been “abandoned to depredation and greed,” he wrote, “are the fruit of the sweat, the tears and possibly the blood of the people.”
Lafayette’s memo soon supplanted Calonne’s avertissement in the public eye. In an entry dated April 30, 1787, the Mémoires secrets reported that the denunciation “has been spoken about for a long time and … attracted a certain amount of publicity.” It had, in fact, generated more than noise. On April 8—five days after Lafayette submitted the memo—Calonne was dismissed. And on May 1, Brienne was appointed to take Calonne’s place.
The Assembly of Notables marked an important turning point in Lafayette’s life. For the first time, he established himself in his native land as a champion of the downtrodden and a defender of human rights, much as he had already done abroad. Writing to Washington, Lafayette acknowledged that the venture was bound to make him a few enemies. “The King and family and the great men about Court,” he noted, “do not forgive me for the liberties I have taken, and the success it had among the other classes of the people.”
Triumphing over Calonne seemed to energize Lafayette, who found his footing in the month of May by suggesting a host of reforms. In the name of justice, Lafayette wanted to improve conditions in the nation’s prisons, introduce greater leniency in the criminal code, and increase rations for His Majesty’s soldiers. Thinking, perhaps, of his American friends, he also sought to restore civil rights to French Protestants. For much of the seventeenth century, the Edict of Nantes, issued by Henri IV—a convert to Catholicism—had guaranteed members of Reformed churches religious freedom and legal equality. But Louis XIV had revoked the edict in 1685, forcing hundreds of thousands of Protestants into exile and exposing those who remained to discrimination and persecution. During the second half of the eighteenth century, pleas for toleration grew steadily louder, as one philosophe after another adopted religious freedom as a key principle of Enlightenment thought and coalitions of intellectuals, clergymen, and public leaders sought common ground on the matter.
Lafayette had been involved with the struggle for Protestant rights ever since his return from the American war, but prior to the assembly he had worked only through back channels, collaborating with Calvinist leaders, influential salonnières, and sympathetic statesmen in an attempt to persuade the king to soften sanctions. These efforts had come to nothing. But, as Lafayette wrote to Washington in January 1787, he was hopeful that the Assembly of Notables might at last provide some relief on this count. Indeed, Lafayette found a sympathetic audience in the second bureau, where only two members objected. Inspired by Lafayette’s words, the group approved a memo to the king on May 24. “A portion of our fellow countrymen,” it read, “who do not have the good fortune to profess the Catholic faith, find themselves stricken by a kind of civil death.” On behalf of these oppressed individuals, and “in the general interest of the populace, of national industry, and of all moral and political principles,” the bureau asked the monarch to demonstrate “a beneficent” tolerance toward the non-Catholics, who, counting among his people, deserved his protection. No immediate action was taken. But by November, with pressure mounting from both domestic and international fronts, the king issued the Edict of Tolerance, restoring to Calvinists a limited range of civil rights.
The proposal of which Lafayette was proudest was one on which he had initially demurred: the calling of the Estates-General. In March, when Leblanc de Castillon had insisted that the Estates-General was the only body that could legitimately impose new taxes on the French people, Lafayette had remained silent. But on May 21, Lafayette predicted that five years hence, the state of the nation’s finances would be so altered that a new legislative gathering would be required and asked that the gathering take the form of “a truly national assembly.” Artois sought clarification: was Lafayette suggesting a meeting of the Estates-General? Yes, Lafayette confirmed. That was “precisely the object” of his request. Leaving no room for ambiguity, Lafayette asked Artois to “please inscribe his name as putting forth the opinion that the Estates-General of the realm be convened.”
On May 25, after three months of deliberation, the Assembly of Notables adjourned. In terms of tangible change, the group accomplished little. Its most important achievement was the establishment of provincial assemblies, and soon Lafayette would be off to participate in the assembly of the Auvergne. The notables had also made headway toward free trade and, by abolishing internal tariffs and modifying the widely despised gabelle, or salt tax (which hit the poorest hardest), moved toward a more equitable tax structure. There was some cost cutting as well. Lafayette boasted in a May 5 letter to Washington that they had “got the King to make reductions and improvements to the amount of forty millions of livres a year.” Still, by refusing to impose new taxes or authorize new loans, they had all but necessitated that other bodies should undertake additional actions.
The assembly’s intangible achievements, however, were of monumental importance. Proving the prognosticators wrong, the notables had not been eaten for dinner. Instead, they’d fired the chef. Lafayette told Washington that the assembly had been a success, writing that “the walls of Versailles had never heard so many good things; and our meeting, particularly in the alarming situation of affairs, when the Kingdom was driving away, like Phaeton’s car, will have proved very beneficial.” When the Assembly of Notables gathered for its final session in May, the meeting hall looked much as it had at the convocation in February, but looks can deceive: everything had changed.
The months that followed witnessed an epic power struggle between the crown and the highest court of France, with the king repeatedly trying, and repeatedly failing, to persuade the Parlement de Paris to register officially the acts that had emerged from the Assembly of Notables. It was a necessary step; all new laws had to be registered before they could take effect. But as Thomas Jefferson observed, finance minister Brienne, Lafayette’s erstwhile mentor, was “slow” to present his edicts to Parlement, “which gave time for the feelings excited by the proceedings of the Notables to cool off, new claims to be advanced, and a pressure to arise for a fixed constitution, not subject to changes at the will of the King.” Perhaps, thought the members of Parlement, they should hold out for more.
A game of one-upmanship ensued. Finding Parlement unwilling to act on most of the motions at hand, the king resorted to a tradition as ancient as it was risky: he called a “lit de justice”—literally, a “bed of justice,” an extraordinary meeting at which the monarch simply declared the controversial legislation to be registered without further ado. On August 6, 1787, the members of Parlement were summoned to Versailles, where they were forced to look on as the king and his ministers announced the registration of the unwelcome edicts. But Louis managed to undermine his authority even as he exerted it. The historian Simon Schama put it perfectly in Citizens, his sweeping narrative of the French Revolution, in which he observed that the king evidently “took the presence of the ceremonial ‘bed’ too literally by falling asleep early in the proceedings.” So soundly did the monarch slumber that his snores could be heard throughout the chamber. This performance did nothing to shore up royal power. The very next day, Parlement declared the king’s actions null and void on the grounds that new taxes could not be imposed in such a manner. The crown responded by exiling the parlementaires to Troyes. And so it went throughout 1787 and into 1788, in a cycle of objections, punishments, and rapprochements that generated much heat but little progress.
Lafayette was appalled. He later related his sentiments to Washington in a 1788 letter: “Government have employed the force of arms against unarmed magistrates, and expelled them. And the people? you will say. The people, my dear General, have been so dull, that it has made me sick, and physicians have been obliged to cool my inflamed blood.” Having lost faith in his mentor Brienne, Lafayette wrote to Washington saying that he had decided to cease visiting Brienne’s house: “The more I have been connected with him and the Keeper of the Seals [roughly the minister of justice], the greater indignation I have professed against their infernal plan.”
Lafayette’s outrage was widely shared, most notably by the Duc d’Orléans, the liberally inclined cousin of Louis XVI—the same man who, when he bore the title of the Duc de Chartres, had been Lafayette’s rival for the affections of lady-in-waiting Aglaé d’Hunolstein in the 1770s. Orléans let his displeasure be known in dramatic fashion on a day the government hoped would end the conflict between the crown and the Parlement de Paris. On September 20, 1787, after agreeing to a budget compromise to extend existing levies, Parlement was recalled from exile, and on November 19, the magistrates sat in the presence of Louis XVI at a royal session where they were asked to keep the nation afloat by authorizing new loans. After eight hours of discussion, Parlement appeared to be on the verge of approving the borrowing when the king usurped their power and declared the edicts registered. Orléans objected on the spot, announcing to the king and the assembled magistrates that the registration was utterly illegal.
The king banished Orléans from Paris the next day, but his stunning proclamation became the talk of the capital, thanks to a team of writers and printers based at the Palais-Royal—the Paris seat of the Orléans family located across the street from the Louvre. The Duc d’Orléans had inherited the property along with his title in 1785 and had promptly converted its interior courtyard into a bustling commercial emporium whose proceeds helped pay down his extravagant gambling debts. With boutiques, bookstores, and cafés installed throughout the arcade ringing the courtyard (and prostitution flourishing in the garden’s shadowy alleys) the Palais-Royal had quickly become a magnet for the wealthy and the dissolute. By 1787, it was also a hotbed of political ferment, a place where agitation against the king and his ministers was continually stoked by Orléans and those in his employ.
The so-called French Prerevolution demonstrated that public opinion could serve as an effective defense against the crown. It would not be long before Lafayette and Orléans—once and future rivals—would use that fickle force as an offensive weapon against each other.