The Accountant Becomes Louis XVI to Save His Neck

The Assembly of Notables, called by Louis with such high hopes, concluded not with a bang, but a whimper. Following weeks of rancorous debate, backdoor politick-ing, and grand rhetoric, that gathering could not muster up courage to take decisive action. They were all too divided, all too absorbed by selfish concern, all too fearful of what establishing a universal land tax would precipitate.

The final report was a product of political timidity. It was a long, meandering treatise replete with grand praises of the King's cleverness and solemn affirmations of the fiscal decline. But as for the central issue, this very land tax, it paused. It did not unconditionally approve, but rather proposed creating new provincial assemblies to "study further" the issue and to be sure that whatever new tax there would be would be "conformable to the ancient customs and rights of every province."

It was political death by a thousand committees. It was a definitive, though graciously worded, no.

It was a humiliating public defeat for Louis. The Parlement of Paris was justified in its own minds, its position reinforced. The Old Guard toasted to their success at being able to defend privilege back at the Palace of Versailles salons by bluffing the king and discovering that he had folded.

Louis carried his final report to his library and read it with silent, cold rage. He had made one last attempt to play at their game, to throw their own institutions back at them, to appeal to their sense of reason and patriotism. He had come up short. They were, he could see now, completely irredeemable. They'd rather watch the entire kingdom burn to ashes than give a single livre of their ill-obtained wealth.

He was at his worst since the depths of Marie Antoinette's illness. He was flooded with bitter despair. Everything he had ever accomplished—the trial, the war, the peace—all of that did not seem worthwhile if he could not manage this one simple problem.

He was staring out of the window at those perfect, stomach-curlingly luxurious gardens when Marie Antoinette came into the room. She had been following events at the Assembly, and she could see that defeat was etched all over her husband's face.

"It is finished," he said, his voice monotone. "They have been so selfish and short-sighted that they abandoned their nation to save their purses. The system will never change from within. They have beaten me."

"Have they?" she asked softly, getting up to stand beside him. She looked out at the same panorama but saw something other than that. "You have lost one hundred and forty-four votes of men rich enough to have seats in that room. You have not lost the hearts of twenty-five million citizens who were not in that room."

He stared at her, surprised by the steeliness in her voice.

"You have invested years demonstrating to the common folk of France that you are their king, their protector," she continued, her gaze firm and clear-sighted. "You presented them with justice at trial. You presented them with victory at war. You presented them with bread when bread was short. They do not trust the nobles; they do not trust the prelates. But they trust you. Perhaps it is time that you trusted them too."

His words struck him like a bolt of lightning, igniting a new, painfully radical idea in his brain. An idea that had been lurking at the most insurgent back of his 21st-century mind. He had sought to work within established authority—the courts, the ruling assemblies. He had sought to reform the system from above. But that system were too tainted, too obstructive. What if he went around them? What if he went above them? What if he addressed ultimate authority, to the nation as a whole?

He began to pace up and down the room, his despair being superseded by frantic, aggressive vitality. The Assemble of Notables had disappointed him. The Parlements insulted him. He would create a new institution, a genuine institution, one which had powers to override all others. He would do something that no French king had ever done within one hundred and seventy-five years.

His decision, once made, was final. His direction in life was now clear.

A week later, he had convoked the Parlement of Paris to a solemn, serious meeting under the name of a lit de justice. The ceremony dated back to ancient days. The King would seat himself upon a throne mounted upon a dais, surrounded by grand nobles of the kingdom, and by attending he would convert his will into a law. He had employed this tool he had refused to force his tax edict. He was not here today to force an ancient law; he was here to proclaim a new one.

The grand chamber was packed to full capacity. The Parlement's judges, with d'Eprémesnil leading, were elated, feeling that the King had come to formally ratify their office, to submit. D'Eprémesnil rose and delivered a long, celebratory speech, praising the Parlement's caution to defend the "fundamental liberties of the French people" against "wrongful and destructive innovations."

When he finished, there was smug silence in the room. Everybody gazed at the throne. Louis rose to his feet. He looked down at those assembled nobles and magistrates with a face as stiff and unyielding as stone. He did not argue with them. He did not reply to legal technicalities that they advanced. He simply delivered their verdict.

"You, gentlemen of the Parlement, speak of representing the nation," he declared, his words ringing around the room, each sentence a blow to convention. "The Notables I assembled purported to advise the nation. But I have been quite clear with myself. None of you are the nation."

There was a shocked whisper throughout the room.

"You speak of your ancient prerogatives and your sacred customs," he continued, his voice rising. "But the French people have a prerogative older and holier than yours: that of living. You have been asked to contribute to keeping this kingdom from bankruptcy, and you have refused to do so. The privileged orders have been found not to wish to save the state."

He paused, letting the weight of his rebuke to settle. "So, I will ask the state to save itself."

He unrolled a scroll and proclaimed his new decree, his words a clarion call that would echo down the ages.

"By the royal authority as King of France and by divine will, I hereby issue this decree that representatives of all three estates within our kingdom—the First Estate of the Clergy, the Second Estate of the Nobles, and the Third Estate of common people—should be elected by those within their own estate and be summoned to the Palace of Versailles one year from this day. They will form an Estates-General, the true and venerable French national counsel, to bring this grand crisis to an end once and for all."

There was stunned, dazed silence for a moment. Then, chaos prevailed. The judges were rising, objecting loudly. The nobles were aghast, outraged. He wasn't just bypassing them; he was potentially dismantling their political power. The Third Estate, common people, would have as many representatives as did those of the other two orders combined. He was potentially granting political muscle to the common individual. He had just tossed a match and thrown it into the very foundations of the Ancien Régime.

The HUD, which had been tracking his flagging popularity with the elites with growing concern, flashed with a system-wide alert, its message spelling one end to a game and the beginning of quite another, much riskier one.

HISTORICAL EVENT INITIATED: The Estates-General of 1789.

All previous political models and factional alignments are now obsolete.

REVOLUTION RISK: 100%.

The nature of the revolution is now in your hands.