NOVEL WEB Chapter 41: The Assembly of Notables
The stand-off with the Parlement of Paris solidified quickly into war of attrition that enraged all concerned. The judges, assured of legal predominance and backed by the nobles' collective muscle, refused to yield. Each of Louis's successive attempts to intimidate them were met by a fresh remonstrance, by definition a more complex one that cast him as aspiring tyrant and the Parlement as unbending guardians of French liberty. A brilliant, infuriating ploy, and one which Louis could not possibly hope to win at political war at this elite level while he could at street level win the propaganda war.
He could, possibly, fall back upon his final royal prerogative. He could summon the Parlement to a special meeting of a lit de justice and, by his very presence, compel them to enrol the edict against their wishes. But he knew that would be a pyrrhic victory. The "nuclear weapon" of absolute monarchy, that weapon of bare despotism, to do that would be to give substance to his enemies' every accusation. He would win the legal technicality but forfeit all moral authority, to be made that very tyrant he stood accused of being. He needed a different lever, a political lever by which to make the appearance of consent and to force the Parlement to act.
Frustrated, Louis returned to the royal archives, a place he had grown to adore most of all within the palace walls. He commanded his most learned archivists to do just one thing, one urgent task: to dig through French history to discover a precedent, an overlooked tool of kings that might somehow keep him around those recalcitrant judges. They searched dusty, centuries-yellowed papers for days. And then, at one end of one of those days, there it was. It was an old, nearly forgotten, and quite obscure institution: the Assembly of Notables.
It wasn't a legislature, nor a parliament. It had no technical powers to enact law. It was a grand advisory commission, a council of the "great and good" of the kingdom, all of whom were hand-selected and summoned by the very Monarch himself, to bring before him their reflections upon matters of grave public concern. It had not been summoned in well over one hundred and fifty years, a reminder of a time when monarchy had not been quite so absolute. But just the tool that Louis needed.
His plan was to play for one great political risk. He would summon an Assembly of Notables and make his case to them. If he could persuade this assembly—a gathering of representatives of the most significant nobles, bishops, and officials within the realm—to ratify his proposal to tax, he would give himself enormous political and moral leeway. He could then return to the Parlement and tell them, "You slap me with charges of transgression of this kingdom's laws? But behold, most notable, most honored men of France have declared it to be a necessity!" It would give the judges nowhere to go.
When news spread that the King was summoning an Assembly of Notables, there were shockwaves at court. The move was one that no one could have anticipated. The Old Guard immediately assumed that this was a political expedient. Vergennes and his faction set to work frenetically behind the scenes, fighting to have their most militant, conservative supporters included in the attendee list.
Louis, however, was playing a less explicit game. He played a nervous and subtle game of chess with Necker when he came to appointing the one hundred and forty-four members. He could not simply fill the Assembly with his own men; that would make the whole proceeding a parody. He had to create a body that could be seen to be real and representative of the élite of the kingdom.
He made sure to include eminent princes of the blood and great arch-bishops—their absence would have been too prominent. But for every hard-liner supported by Vergennes, he offset with someone who was a moderate, a man more renowned for his patriotism or intellectual reason than for his stubborn adherence to privilege. He selected various American War military heroes who were men devoted to the crown and whose status as hero rendered them unpopular to oppose. He selected venerable jurists, influential scholars, and above all, most noteworthy, in a surprising new trend to traditionalists, he included a variety of non-noble but powerful men: mayors of Paris, Lyon, and Marseille, and leaders of most important merchant guilds. He was planting representatives in this Assembly of the productive, tax-paying element of his kingdom.
And, as ever, he included the Marquis de Lafayette among his appointees, whose fiery oratory and fabled bravery were to prove a precious asset within later debates.
The Assembly of Notables gathered in the grand Salle des Menus-Plaisirs at Versailles. The room was a sea of scarlet cloaks, decorations, and powder'd hair. It was a miniaturized world of the Ancien Régime's authority and wealth, that very stratum which Louis desired to tax. The air echoed with tension and sense of historical moment.
Louis himself had begun the first session. He introduced himself to them not in that full, majestic garb of the unabridged monarch, but in a serious, formal suit. He spoke not with that tone of command, but of grave conference.
"Princes, Dukes, Marshals, and Ministers of God," he began, his voice calm and clear. "I did not summon you to this great assembly to command you, but to consult you. Not to dictate, but to dispute with you as patriots and as Frenchmen."
He laid out the crisis starkly, simply. "Before you today, I present a war-winning kingdom whose honour is restored, whose arch-nemesis is beaten. But before you, I also present a kingdom that is teetering at the very brim of bankruptcy. A kingdom that is, by definition, insolvent."
He indicated Necker, who got up to speak. For almost an hour, the Swiss banker, with enormous charts and treasury accounts, imposed upon them a relentless, indisputable lesson in French finance. He laid bare the enormous debt, the devastating charges of interest, the habitual reluctance of the kingdom's greatest riches to pay to the state. It was a cold, unmerciful bath of reality, and for the first time, the Notables were confronted with bare figures.
When Necker finished, he rose to his feet again. "You have seen the reality. The Third Estate can contribute no further. To demand from them still more would be to demand blood from stone. Therefore, I present to you the only viable solution: one, equitable tax upon the land, from which none shall be exempt." He looked out at their stern, hostile faces. "I present to you a choice: a modest, collective sacrifice by all, or a ruinous default that will destroy one and all, noble and serf together. Behold these figures, and then ask me, as men of honor, as men of sense, as men of France... what alternative exists?"
The subsequent debate was brutal. The Assembly was a battlefield of the kingdom's conscience. The Old Guard under the turbulent Archbishop of Loménie de Brienne stormed with feeling and indignation. They appealed to venerable privileges, sin in taxing God's own properties, sacred compact of blood and privilege.
Then Louis's plan began to gain traction. The moderates, men who hated the very idea of a new tax on their own properties, were unable to refute Necker's intimidating statistics. The generals spoke of the strong state required to defend the kingdom. And Lafayette, with an extraordinary speech that roused the assembly, defiantly faced his own colleagues, the aristocrats.
"Gentlemen, we are ever speaking of the honor of our names, of the blood shed by our fathers to give us our prerogatives!" he declared, his voice trembling with conviction. "But, is there a nobler way to honor that blood than to make a meagre sacrifice now to save the kingdom that they built for us? Is our honor so frail that it will not endure the brushing of a tax collector? Or is our patriotism so fearful that we shall rather see the nation perish than relinquish a trifle of our treasure? The French people are looking to us. Let us show them that, not only by its ancient prerogatives, but by its present duty is the noblesse to be known!"
The Assembly had been starkly, fundamentally divided. The decision balanced by a hair's breadth. Louis had been able to open up discussion, to force upon the privileged orders the reality of the crisis. But could he will them? The chance still balanced terrifyingly in the scales. He had risked hope that reason, that patriotism would overcome a thousand years of selfishness. With arguments blazing still further, he began to feel that he had made a ghastly mistake of judgment.