[History] How responsible was Louis XVI for the crisis of 1789?

[Astaroth]

Author: The Sundance Kid
Original Thread: How responsible was Louis XVI for the crisis of 1789?

How responsible was Louis XVI for the crisis of 1789?

At eleven o’clock on the morning of January 21st, at just thirty-eight years old, Louis-Auguste de France was led through the streets of Paris to his fate at the Place de Révolution. At his trial, purely for show, none had been in doubt of the sentence. Nine months before his wife, Marie Antoinette, would be taken to her death upon the guillotine, Louis was making his last journey.

As the blade fell upon his neck, the revolution hit a peak it had been building to for over one hundred years. Yet were the heads that rolled the culprits? The revolution may have culminated by Louis XVI’s ineffective hand, but the Ancien Régime had been slowly but surely alienating the lower and middle classes for centuries. In reality, the Revolution could have fallen at any time, yet needed only a catalyst to set it off. This study will attempt to divine whether Louis XVI brought about his own downfall, while Louis XIV and Louis XV trod a careful line, or whether his fate was inescapable, and his predecessors had doomed the king from the start.

His accession to the throne in 1774 was certainly met with a different reaction from the public of France. After his father had died of tuberculosis in 1765, Louis became the new Dauphin, though he had been third in line and lacked the proper training and had been largely neglected by the king. However, by the time of the end of his reign, Louis XV was almost universally detested, “…the good news spreading with telegraphic celerity among the long-suffering courtiers. Shouting in an ecstasy of relief, they stormed into the apartments of the Dauphin, crying hysterically, “Le roi est mort! Vive le roi!”[1] Indeed, few historians disagree that Louis-Auguste’s succession to the throne was greeted with wild rejoicing throughout France, for after a king so despised, many believed it to be a new beginning for the country. In this respect, Louis XVI started his reign in the best possible way to avoid the events of 1789 – he had thunderous public approval and succeeded a problem-wracked reign, making all of his achievements seem momentous. This situation rapidly deteriorated, however.

As with the previous kings of France, Louis’ government demanded him to be a central figure; an all-encompassing personality that held together the ‘absolute’ monarchy. Without this hub of authority, the governmental system fell apart. Louis XV, despite neglecting his duties and tasks as a governmental instrument, delegated these tasks to Cardinal Fleury, who assumed de facto control of the government while Louis himself remained as the de jure king of France. The potential candidate during Louis-Auguste’s reign was the former Minister of the Maison du Roi, yet Cobban states that “if Louis thought he had found his Fleur he was sadly mistaken. Maurepas’ only aim was to enjoy his new elevation as long as he could and not overburden his aged frame, with work or his flippant mind with serious thoughts.”[2] According to Cobban’s book we can infer that many of the governmental and political errors of Louis XVI’s reign were caused by the poor leadership of Maurepas, who seemed intent on bettering his own lot rather than adhering to the duties that would keep France running; if not smoothly. Nevertheless, this view is challenged by that of John Hardman, who indicates that Maurepas was very much involved in governmental affairs, just seemingly giving the wrong or poor advice, as he was unsuited to such a position of power. However, Maurepas never officially received the position, though he utilised the power of it for many years until his death in 1781. One thing he recommended was the recalling of the Parlements, which Hardman states was “unpalatable advice” to the king and “against the principles of [his] education.”[3]

The recalling of the Parlement is often heralded as a major error on the part of Louis XVI on the road to revolution. Louis XV had noted its power and opposition to the king and his rule, and several years before his death had exiled it and appointed his own ministers to the “Parlement Maupeou”. Unfortunately, the public now clamoured for reform, “stoning and reviling the incumbent magistrates until the ‘usurper’ Maupeou and his magistrates resigned in disgust.”[4] This was Louis-Auguste’s first test as king and an absolute monarch, and the majority of ministers, clergymen and noblemen were on the side of the king, who “abhors the Parlements. He is even more opposed to them than his grandfather.”[5] Nevertheless, the recall of the Parlement was supported by “two who counted for most, Marie Antoinette and Maurepas.”[6] By taking their advice, Louis restored to power the greatest threat to his monarchy, and gave all the people of France a voice, and destroyed the fundamental principles of Absolutism. Though it could be argued that he was influenced and pressured into doing so by scheming and political ministers, Louis’ decision was his own, and in his attempt to appease his subjects, the “decision was popular but placed obstacles in the way of any major reforms.”[7]

Louis’ interests in the domestic political theatre were not his only political curiosities, however. In 1775, just a year into his reign, the American War of Independence began in earnest with the formation of the Second Continental Congress. In spite of few direct wars with other countries during his reign, Louis inherited a keen dislike and wariness of the British, who were becoming, if not were already, the dominant colonial power at that time. Indeed, Louis’ predecessor had already lost Canada and many of the French West Indies to Britain, leaving them with an almost unanimous presence on the continent. As a consequence, when the Thirteen Colonies revolted against British rule, Louis saw an opportunity to gain revenge upon the British by supporting the Patriot troops with funds and troops. This proved to be one of the most disastrous decisions of Louis’ reign – financially and socially.

With the continental contributions to the American forces, especially naval, the balance of power was evened up – but at a huge cost to France, for no real gain other than a snide jab at Britain. Louis poured funds into the campaign, heaping taxes upon the peasants, who saw nothing for their toils, bankrupting the French coffers and what little respect that remained for Louis XVI. Furthermore, many of the French men who enlisted went to fight in a country that was gaining freedom from a tyrannical rule, and creating their own, fairer democracy. The French fought and died for this cause, and then returned home to their previous lives of drudgery and oppression, and knew that this didn’t add up. By supporting the American cause, Louis had inadvertently sown the seeds of Revolution within his country, showing the under classes that freedom could be won at a sword’s edge.
However, Saul K. Padover sheds light on the issue which goes against the usual grain of thinking – that Louis took France to war and paid dearly for it. According to Dr. Padover, “Louis was one of two or three important persons in France who remained unaffected by war fever…however strong his political dislike for Britain, Louis had no antipathy for George III, who was a fellow-king and in trouble.” However, Louis once again trusting his ministers to shape his policy, a scheme was devised by Vergennes to harm the British without full French involvement. By subsiding a large commercial company, they supplied the Patriots with weapons and ammunition on the basis of a private commercial exchange. “Louis approved the scheme of invisible intervention,” Dr. Padover states, “without realising that precisely the path he had chosen led to armed conflict.”[8]

The silk-tongued and shrewd-minded Benjamin Franklin proved to be the one who dragged France, willing or not, into the Revolution. After subtly spreading the notion that both the Americans and English were seeking peace, leaving England free to gain revenge on France (whose plan had been discovered by Ambassador Stormont’s spies but helpless to alter), Franklin convinced Louis XVI to sign an offensive-defensive alliance, committing military aid. By the peace with England in 1783, of which Louis commented he was “most keen”, France had lost over a billion livres in the abyss of the American Revolution, and gained nothing but a poverty-stricken Third Estate and a despised monarch. On the day the Bastille was destroyed, Marie Antoinette stated, “To-day we pay dearly for our infatuation and enthusiasm for the American war.”[9]

With these contrasting views, we can evaluate that Louis’ entry into the American Revolution was not entirely a fault of his own. Due to the scheming of both internal and foreign diplomats, he was drawn into a war he did not want, financial debt that trembled his stability as a monarch, and came out of it with no gains except the loss of another country’s colonies overseas. However, by letting himself be taken in by Franklin and Vergennes (a known Anglophobe), Louis indirectly demonstrated to the French people how he himself could be toppled. Off the back of the American Revolution sailed the French, and few can argue that Louis’ entry into the American war, if not deliberate, ensured his own end.

As we can see from the examples currently set forth, Louis was not an incapable monarch, yet he was indecisive and easily manipulated by his ministers and courtiers. Despite strong personal convictions on many subjects, his mind could be eventually swayed by a clever word, which led to the downfall of his country. Nonetheless, ignorance cannot be pleaded on his part, as many of the causes of the crisis of 1789 were due to his inability to embody the “all-encompassing-monarch” typeset which absolutism as a practice required. One particular area in which the French economy was very nearly salvaged was in his appointment of Comptroller-Generals, yet he managed to destroy all their work by pandering to political intrigues with their respective dismissals.

Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Baron de Laune, was the first minister to ascend to the position in 1774. His policy of “No bankruptcy, no increase of taxation, no borrowing”[10] managed to severely reduce the colossal national debt that France was experiencing – Cobban states that “Maurepas obtained, indeed, rather more of a reformer than he had bargained for: in Turgot a disciple of the Physiocrats came into office.”[11] Here it is interesting to note that Cobban states that Maurepas, rather than Louis, was the one inconvenienced by Turgot’s reformist nature, implying where the real power in government lay.

Louis’ decision to reinstate the Parlements proved to be Turgot’s downfall. “Exhibiting a naïve optimism”[12] that they would adhere to the restrictions imposed on them, Turgot spent a year putting the reforms into motion which his predecessors had not, while the Parlement was subdued – however, Cobban argues that Turgot’s reforms were nothing but “hesitating steps”, and any avoidance of “customary financial difficulties [are] to be attributed to the ruthless policy of Terray”, his grandfather’s former Comptroller-General. Nonetheless, Turgot’s reforms were generally improving the financial state of France and attempting to balance the distribution of taxation within the country.

Had Louis not bowed to outside influence and political pressure, as he often did, France may have seen the economic upturn it so desperately needed in these vital years – it was not to be. With enemies of Turgot gathering all around, mainly the wealthy owners of monopolies feeling their riches being snatched from them, and figures such as Maurepas and Marie-Antoinette also, Louis dismissed Turgot and his reforms before many could do the good they were intended to. Cobban’s view that the king was swayed to this conclusion is challenged, however, by Hardman, who records the king remarking, “M. Turgot wants to be me”.[13] This statement proves that the king acted many times of his own volition, and the dismissal of Turgot was entirely within his own confidence. In this respect, Louis discharged an able reformer and minister who could have steered France from the economic doom which was to play a vital factor in the crisis that was to come – with little to no outside persuasion on the matter.

Jacques Necker, a Protestant banker from Geneva and Turgot’s successor, proved to be less of an aid to the French finances. Denied the position of Comptroller-General due his Protestant faith but with all the powers of one, Necker set about undoing “all the work of Terray and imposed on the royal finances a great new burden of debt at excessive rates of interest.”[14] Necker was adept at borrowing money, and took several considerable loans for France which, while easing the short term problems of the American War and the food shortages of this time period, crippled the economy in the long term as funds barely managed to pay off the interest, let alone the loans themselves. Necker did, however, have one thing going for him – he was popular with the people due to his short-term achievements, which slightly improved their lot and eliminated the needs for excessive taxation. According to Cobban, his greatest damage to France was the publication of the Compte-rendu au Roi, a report to the king of the finances of the nation. This document “exhibited a happy financial situation, attributable to the wise management of Necker himself.”[15] However, Colin Jones argues otherwise – that the Compte-rendu was a “great political stroke”, aiming to boost confidence not only in his financial management but to erase “the mystery which surrounded the state’s financial affairs [which could] act as a deterrent to lenders.”[16] Necker’s policies depended on a public assurance in the system which would thus gain the loans to stimulate the country’s economy, yet once more Maurepas became envious of another popular minister, and sought his removal. He retired in the early 1780s, but due to the ineptness of his successor, Calonne, he was reluctantly recalled to his post in 1788, mainly to rectify the mistakes of his own ministerial role years before.

By the time the crisis came about in 1789, Louis realised that he needed to rid himself of Necker and his self-destructive processes, who had “adopted an uncharacteristic “wait-and-see” attitude on his return to power.”[17] However, he found himself between a rock and a hard place – dismiss him and appoint a new Comptroller-General, or retain him and keep the goodwill of the populace, who were becoming more antagonistic by the day. Louis’ lack of judgement for the future caused him to dismiss Necker, trusting in his absolute power over the populace. This single act raised a multitude of anger against him from the Third Estate, to whom Necker was the people’s champion, and many historians, including both Cobban and Jones, indicate was the turning point in the crisis, where the Third Estate began to become more confrontational with the monarchy.

Louis-Auguste’s contribution towards the crisis of 1789 may be measured on a wholly personal level with regards to dismissing his financial ministers. Turgot, an able and innovative Comptroller-General, was dismissed due to a personal fear by Louis and through the influences of his wife and ministers, and not through any disability to handle the French economic situation at the time. Necker, regardless of contrasting views given on his proficiency at taking France out of its financial rut, was dismissed at a time when a more able monarch and politician would have seen the Third Estate were at the very verge of revolution, and a more sensible course of action would have been to keep him on but limit his powers until he could be safely removed from office. These decisions clearly illustrate Louis’ poor sense of political shrewdness and guile, and his inability to read the intentions or emotions of the Parisian mob. In effect, his incapacity as a statesman led to the crisis of 1789 and only inflamed the anger of the soon-to-be revolutionaries of the Third Estate.

Louis’ faults were significant, but they were not comprehensive either. There were many events and natural proceedings that he could not prevent, namely, the great famines of the 1770s, and 1789 itself. Due to a series of failed harvests and grain shortages, the price of bread skyrocketed. As the staple diet of the people of France (who had failed to adopt the potato, imported from Peru, as a staple food), starvation spread like wildfire around southern and western provinces, the ‘little ice age’ contributing further as the potato crops withstood the cold, yet the grain rotted.[18] As urbanisation grew, more and more farming peasants moved to the city for labour, leaving the fields open and unmanned, and the cities overcrowded and hungry. The First and Second Estates, rich enough to source foreign foods or buy the now-more-expensive bread costs, survived with a little hardship monetarily, yet the peasantry were reduced to almost the rags they lived in. This in itself whipped up resentment for the higher classes, who lived on while, ironically, the people who worked the land that grew the food starved.

This is an example, though, of an event which Louis could perhaps not have prevented but could have clearly acted upon afterwards – something he failed to do. In fact, at Versailles, the famines were largely ignored, despite there being rumours in Louis XIV’s time of cannibalism due to famine in the very forests surrounding the palace. Louis was abandoning the peasants in their time of need, with all his available funds going into debt payment and wars rather than sourcing provisions for the starving population. The Third Estate were crippled by the famines, and the bourgeoisie even fell on hard times, as the prices of food skyrocketed and only the nobility managed to maintain their previous standards of living, (with minor cutbacks). With their monarch ignoring them and their families dying, the paysans of France knew that if anything were to change for the better of the Third Estate, then the absolutist monarchy would have to be reformed or removed. Moreover, Necker’s financial-confidence policies, riding on the back of a good harvest, collapsed in on themselves, sending France’s national credit plummeting.

Louis was further inconvenienced by the perpetual set of political scales he was balancing – between the Second and Third Estates. This in itself is a point to be made in Louis XVI’s defence, if not in his favour – however he acted, he would face revolution from one of the Estates. If reforms had passed, and the nobility had been taxed akin to the peasants, then they would have revolted, amassing armies through their vast wealth and influence abroad. Louis, fearing this outcome, opted to go too far in the other direction, thus angering the Third Estate and causing them to revolt in the nobles’ stead – which for Louis, at least, proved deadly. Necker, ever the popular champion of the people, proved this conclusively with the huge outcry when he was dismissed in 1790. The king was stuck in a dilemma; he needed to adhere to the obvious wishes of the population, or keep his noblemen and other countries happy, of which he predictably opted for the latter. This illustrates how the upper classes would always come first to Louis - and that is mainly why he never saw the revolution coming from below.

So how responsible was Louis for the Revolution that claimed his throne and his life? Many of the examples I have looked at show that Louis brought about his own downfall as a lazy man of no small intelligence, who was taken in by ministers and abandoned his government. In these respects Louis did indeed fail his country, yet in a way, ignorance may be pleaded. Louis, as a hereditary monarch, came to the throne through no choice of his own or political or intellectual merit. In the event of Revolution, many of the nobles he had supported abandoned him, and the weight of a century of absolutist rule came crashing down upon his neck.
Nonetheless, Louis himself was responsible for many of the reasons that built up to the crisis in 1789 on a personal level. As king of France he had an amount of power too great for even the cunning Maurepas to fully control, and as such his decisions must be assessed as his own unless a majority of evidence states otherwise. Louis’ forefathers had by no means given him an easy situation to deal with as king, but he himself lacked the dominating character that was necessary for an absolutist monarchy to function properly. Without the head of the snake, and no prime minister appointed, the government coughed and spluttered ineffectually as it attempted to function. Coupled with the reintroduction of the Parlement, who did nothing but make legislative reform more difficult for the struggling ministers, this proved to be a flaw that condemned the French economy to ruin. However, Louis’ most fatal mistake was to aid both militarily and fiscally in the American War – by giving his subjects a clear view of how they could fight for their freedom, he secured his own demise.

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[1] Padover, S K – The Life and Death of Louis XVI – Pg. 44

[2] Cobban, A – A History of Modern France: Volume One 1715 – 1799 – Pg. 100

[3] Hardman, J – Louis XVI – Pgs. 29-30

[4] Padover, S K – The Life and Death of Louis XVI – Pg. 71

[5] Jean-Frédéric Phélypeaux, Comte de Maurepas – Speaking in 1774

[6] Padover, S K – The Life and Death of Louis XVI – Pg. 72

[7] Louis XVI, Encyclopaedia Britannica - http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/...9122/Louis-XVI

[8] Padover, S K – The Life and Death of Louis XVI – Pg. 108

[9] Padover, S K – The Life and Death of Louis XVI – Pg. 116

[10] Comptroller-General Jacques Turgot – speaking in 1774

[11] Cobban, A – A History of Modern France: 1715 – 1799 – Pg. 103

[12] Cobban, A – A History of Modern France: 1715 – 1799 – Pg. 104

[13] Hardman, J – Louis XVI – Pg. 53

[14] Cobban, A – A History of Modern France: 1715 – 1799 – Pg. 125

[15] Cobban, A – A History of Modern France: 1715 – 1799 – Pg. 124

[16] Jones, C – The Great Nation – Pg. 312-313.

[17] Jones, C – The Great Nation – Pg. 387

[18] The Little Ice Age in Europe – http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/...e_ice_age.html


Thanks for reading.