Loading summary
Transcript60 lines
- [00:01]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Want to walk the halls of Anne Boleyn's childhood home? Or explore the castles that made up Henry VIII's English stronghold? With a subscription to History hit, you can dive into our Tudor past alongside the world's leading historians and archaeologists. You'll also unlock hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a brand new release every single week covering everything from the ancient world to to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com subscribe.
- [00:35]
Dr. Charles Walton
You're more than just one thing.
- [00:37]
Mazda/Capella University/State Farm Advertiser
Your vehicle should be two. More connectivity when you're the boss. Hey Google, when's my next meeting? And more space when you're the mom. Everyone in the all new Mazda CX5 more to move every side of you. Google is a trademark of Google llc. Sequences shortened and simulated.
- [00:50]
Thumbtack Advertiser
I'm pretty confident talking into a mic. Hey, I'm doing it right now. But home projects? I second guess everything. Is that noise normal? Is that water damage? Who do I even call? That's where thumbtack comes in. Just upload a photo or voice note and it uses AI powered search to match you with the right top rated local pro. So instead of guessing, you get clarity and can hire with confidence. For your next home project, try thumbtack. Hire the right pro today.
- [01:18]
Mazda/Capella University/State Farm Advertiser
You've never been one to settle, stand down or stand still. You're a lifelong learner, energized by excellence. There's a fire inside you you can't ignore. You've got competition to outrun, momentum to build on, and your own high standards to meet. Stop now. Not a chance. At Capella University, we help you catch what you're chasing because you've always had the drive. Now go earn the degree. Capella University. What can't you do? Visit capella.edu to learn more.
- [01:53]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Hello, I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb and welcome to Not Just the Tudors From History Hit, the podcast in which we explore everything from Anne Boleyn to the Aztecs, from Holbein to the Huguenots, from Shakespeare to samurais, relieved by regular doses of murder, espionage and witchcraft. Not, in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors. The year is 1789. The scene is Paris, France. A city of glittering palaces and impoverished streets with powdered wigs and empty bread baskets of a simmering anger that will swell in into a roar. This is a world balancing on a knife's edge. For centuries, France has stood as one of the most powerful kingdoms in Europe, its monarchs and robed in silk and ceremony, its society ordered in rigid ranks. Those who rule those who pray, those who fight and those who toil. But beneath the elegant, orderly surface, something is breaking bread. Prices are soaring, the state is drowning in debt and. And ordinary people are beginning to ask a dangerous question. What if this is not the only way to live? What if the world can be changed? I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb and this month, over four episodes of Not Just the Tudors, we'll be exploring the drama of the French Revolution. Messy, violent, hopeful and terrifying in equal measure. We'll unpack some of the most famous moments in all history. The storming of the Bastille, the descent into the Revolution's darkest chapter, the Reign of Terror. And finally, we'll sidestep away from the political proclamations and iconic events and into the lives of those who lived through it and wrote about it. But first, we begin with the slow burning crisis. How did this once magnificent kingdom unravel? How did frustration turn into revolution? And how did ideas about liberty, equality and rights ignite in the minds of people who had never known them? Because the French Revolution is a story about people who hoped, who doubted, who believed they were building a better world, and in many cases, who paid the ultimate price for it. My guest today is Dr. Charles Walton, a historian of 18th century France at the University of Warwick. He's the author of the prize winning book, Policing Public Opinion in the French Revolution, the Culture of Calumny and the Problem of Free Speech. And he's just completing a new book on the French Revolution for Penguin, so he's well placed to speak to us today about the origins of this epochal turning point in European history. Dr. Walton, Charles, if I may. Welcome to not just the Tudors.
- [04:57]
Dr. Charles Walton
Thank you, Susanna. Happy to be here.
- [05:00]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So let's imagine that we have somehow jumped back to France in the 1780s. What sort of world would we find? What sort of social and political system would we come across?
- [05:14]
Dr. Charles Walton
Right, by the 1780s, I think what we see are three sets of tensions that capture the world of the ancien regime. And each one is worth exploring. The first one is the tension between absolutism and the Enlightenment. The second, it was a society based on hierarchy, privileges and upward wealth redistribution. But it was also a world in which equality was becoming more and more thinkable. And finally, it was a society in which there was increasing wealth while the regime was nevertheless sinking deeper and deeper into debt.
- [05:59]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So you've given us all sorts of wonderful things to consider there. Well, let's start with absolutism then, and the tensions of the Enlightenment. And I suppose Part of that tension also comes from the sort of person that Louis XVI was. How well suited was he to the job of king?
- [06:18]
Dr. Charles Walton
He was certainly intelligent, he was well read, he reflected on matters deeply, and he truly cared about the well being of his subjects. His greatest personal flaw was that he was indecisive. He would overthink situations and he would allow his ministers to bounce him into positions that, you know, weeks or months later, he would reverse. So he did have the appearance of being weak. But how does he stand in relation to absolutism and the Enlightenment? And under absolutism, kings were God's lieutenants on earth. And when they declared an edict that was coming from themselves and as individuals who were channeling the will of God, there was a sense that an absolutist king could not be legitimately checked. There were no checks and balances. In theory, of course, the reality we'll get into later, there were checks, but that was the theory of absolutism and the Enlightenment. Enlightenment governance had a different point of departure. It wasn't God's will, it wasn't the will of the king, it was rationality, reason, utility, right. And so in those final decades, Louis XVI embraced much of the Enlightenment and he especially warmed to the political economy of the Enlightenment, especially the physiocrats. And so on the one hand, he would be telling, he would be forcing the parliaments to register his edicts in the name of being an absolutist king. On the other hand, he would preface those edicts, often with many treatises on the Enlightenment logic behind them, which kind of eroded his absolutist authority. So that's one contradiction, I think, that defines the tensions leading up to the French Revolution.
- [08:27]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So in terms of thinking about that, I suppose the first point is how different things might have been if there was another personality leading the country at the time. And, you know, if Louis XIV had miraculously continued to live for another century, you would have a very different character at the heart of it. So I'm wondering how important, I suppose, Louis XVI's personality is in playing a role in this unfolding crisis.
- [08:55]
Dr. Charles Walton
I think it's important, but I think that if Louis XIV would have survived another century, he still would have been up against an Enlightenment that was thinking about power and society on completely different terms. So he would have been confronted with that anyway. And in fact, one of the most influential texts of the Enlightenment was actually penned under Louis XIV in 1699. It was Fenelon's the Adventures of Telemachus. And in that book, which was republished in 1717 and it was very influential for decades going forward into the 18th century. In that text it heroized kings who put personal glory and interest aside and ruled peacefully and for the best interest of their subjects, especially the peasantry. And so ideals of kingship were already changing even before the Enlightenment or in the early Enlightenment. In the beginning of the 18th century a stronger willed king will appear on scene. But after the French Revolution, the Napoleon. Napoleon will combine the ideals, some of the ideals of the Enlightenment. He surrounded himself with scientists and writers, but at the same time he knew how to fight a war and win it, which Louis XVI was not as successful militarily and imperially expanding France. Louis XVI helped the Americans defeat the British, but that didn't really serve, that didn't expand the empire. And in fact the Americans renewed their ties with Britain immediately after the war. So there was little to be gained from that.
- [10:48]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So let's think then about hierarchy and equality and that tension that you've raised. I mean, one of the stories that we have about the French Revolution is that much of the scandal comes from Marie Antoinette and this idea that she makes it clear that the court is sort of out of touch, you know, lavish, when other people are suffering, that the monarchs legitimacy is sort of eroded by things like the diamond necklace affair and so on. So is that a fair way of summarizing that tension that you mentioned, Marie
- [11:30]
Dr. Charles Walton
Antoinette's character as a sign of that tension between hierarchy and privileges? Perhaps, but in terms of the egalitarian critique of privileges, I would probably point to Beaumarchais, the Marriage of Figaro as a better example of that tension. And I think what the diamond necklace affair showed was the corruption of the court. It wasn't so much privilege per se, it was the corruption. Let's begin with the diamond necklace affair. The reason that had such an impact on the public is that it confirmed all the worst suspicions that the public had about the court, about being a kind of cesspool of greed and corruption. The story is fascinating. It begins with Jeanne de la Motte, a woman who claims to be the descendant of Henry II going back to the 16th century. She arrives at court and she convinces some people, including a cardinal, the Cardinal de Rohan, that she was a confidant of the Queen. And Jean de la Mothe knew that the cardinal wanted to advance at court. His problem in advancing at court was the fact that 10 years earlier he had badmouthed Marie Antoinette to her mother in Vienna when he was on diplomacy there. And Marie Antoinette never forgave him. So Jeanne de la Mothe, knowing this, said, I have an idea. There's this diamond necklace that was confected in the 1770s under Louis XVI. He had it created for his mistress, Madame du Barry. We're not sure whether he died before he could give it to her or whether he looked at the price tag and said, it's too expensive. I can't possibly give her this. But it sat at the jewelers for about 10 years. So Jeanne de la Mothe said, the way that you can find your way into the good graces of the Queen Marie Antoinette is to buy her or help her buy this necklace. You front the money, she'll reimburse, she'll pay for part of it. He says, fine, but I need confirmation of this. So they organize a rendezvous, a midnight rendezvous in the gardens of Versailles, and Jeanne de la Motte and her husband find a doppelanger. They fish a doppelanger out of the brothels and gambling dens of the Palais Royal, who looks like Marie Antoinette, train her to speak with a convincing accent, and then have her meet with the cardinal at midnight or late at night in the gardens of Versailles to say, the deal is on. So then, months later, the cardinals begins to wonder why Marie Antoinette's never wearing the necklace. And then the jewelers. Because the diamond necklace had come into the hands of Jeanne de la Mothe and her husband, they had to show the cardinal that it existed, so they held onto it. And then the jewelers wondered why they were never getting paid. And then when Marie Antoinette received a very polite, circumloquacious, deferential letter from the jewelers, basically saying, where's the money? She exploded. And the Cardinal de Rohan was on his way to celebrate Mass in the chapel at Versailles when Louis XVI had him arrested and thrown into the Bastil. Right. So the story went, the scandal went public, and it had just enough spice, corruption and quirky personalities to keep the public riveted, but also disgusted with the corruption at the court.
- [15:24]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Can you explain for me what the relationship is between sort of this increasing desire for equality and Figaro? Yes.
- [15:34]
Dr. Charles Walton
So whereas the diamond necklace affair alerted the public to something they already believed, which is that the court is corrupt. The marriage of Figaro, a box office smash at the Comedie francaise that ran three years straight in Paris between 1784 and 1787, encouraged them to think about the arbitrariness of social hierarchy. The main character, Figaro, is working as a servant in Spain under a Spanish count. And Figaro wants to Marry another servant in the household, Suzanne. The Count, who's somewhat of a bumbling lech, becomes enamored with Suzanne, and he intends to use what in the play, It's a comedy. What in the play is this? The rite of the first night, this mythical medieval rite that seigneurs had to sleep with the wife of. Of any one of their subjects on the manor before the husband does on the wedding night. Right. So it's a preposterous pretext, but the point is, you know, look how bad privileges are. Look how. With how they lead to abuse. And the play is hilarious. Students every year read it and they all find it hilarious because there are lots of subplots and misunderstandings, and the whole pretext is somewhat ridiculous. However, Figaro's soliloquy towards the end of the play, in a. The only unfunny part of the act, it's very serious. He decries both absolutism, that kind of royal despotism, and noble privilege. And it's a long. It's three or four pages of a soliloquy where he really gets into the injustice of it all. And he sees himself as somebody who's clever, witty, resourceful and productive. He's much smarter than the count is. And that comes through. That's part of the humor. So at the end of the play, the count. Count's plot is foiled because he confides what he wants to do with Suzanne with. With who he thinks is Suzanne, but it's really his wife dressed up as Suzanne. And so the. The plot is foiled. But this play was the biggest hit of the 18th century for the Comedie Francaise. And Mozart, of course, two years later, would make an opera based on the story. But because of its popularity, it really sent the message that privilege, noble privilege, can be abusive, arbitrary.
- [18:06]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So it allowed people to consider the possibility of equality, of reducing privilege.
- [18:15]
Dr. Charles Walton
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And that would be expressed in the Abbe Sieyes's famous track. In January of 1789, even before the estates general met what is the third estate. And he essentially concluded it was everything and that the nobility and people with privileges were parasites on the social order.
- [18:37]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So we were thinking about these different tensions. And of course, one of the great tensions comes from the fact that France is in so much debt at this time. How had it become so much? Why did it spiral and become unimaginable? Give. France, presumably, should be a wealthy country.
- [19:01]
Dr. Charles Walton
Yes. And in fact, a banker in Paris in the 1780s who would become a future finance minister during the revolution even said, how is it that we could be in this much debt, given the fact that France had never been so rich? Essentially because they failed at taxing wealth. They taxed all sorts of other things, such as harvests. They taxed through indirect taxes. They taxed commodities at a time when people were buying, consuming more. But they were not good at taxing land ownership or taxing land or taxing financial wealth. And there was more and more financial wealth being generated. France was highly financialized in the last decades of the old regime. And you know, it's easier to target with your tax collectors, it's easier to target harvest, which you can see with your own eyes, than little slips of paper that pass even a cross borders between countries. And they did try to tax land several times. But the parliaments, the magistrates in the parliaments were landowners themselves and they would refuse to register those tax increases. And this is really the repeated story of the 18th century, is the monarchy finding itself more and more in debt due to war. And it didn't seem to matter in the 18th century whether they won the war or lost it. Costs of war had become so high that they had to maintain, after the war, war levies that were supposed to be imposed just during the war. And this was very unpopular. And the parliaments would push back. So that's the primary reason why they dug themselves into so much debt.
- [20:49]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So the parlement, just to be clear about what they are, because they are courts of justice, of course, but how have they become sort of political bodies in their own right in this way that they could resist reform?
- [21:04]
Dr. Charles Walton
Yes, they were high courts, as you said, nobles would take. If a noble was charged of a crime, it would go straight to the parliament rather than through the lower courts, where commoners usually ended up. But they also registered the edicts of the king. But they would review the edict and consider whether it conformed to jurisprudence and to traditions and to existing privileges. And if it didn't, they could remonstrate, which means that they would return the edict to the minister or the monarchy and ask them to review it and modify it. But if the monarchy did not wish to do that, then the king would show up in the palace of Justice. They would literally set up a bed. It was called a lita justice, this ritual. The king would sit on a bed and pound his staff into the floor and say, because it's my will or it's my pleasure, and force it through. And if the parliaments, the magistrates, still refused to register that edict because it could not be enforced until it was registered as law by the parliaments. Then the king might exile, and he did several times exile the magistrates to their chateau or even more uncomfortable corners of France. And then a negotiation would take place and they would eventually be recalled. So that pattern describes the tensions between the parliaments and the monarchy throughout the 18th century. Now, there was an attempt in 1772. Well, there was the abolition of the parliaments in 1770 by Mopu. And the parliaments were replaced with a different court system that did not involve venal offices, which we can get into later because that's important for explaining the financial problems of the regime. Essentially, venal offices are purchased, so he abolished venality. Magistrates were now on the state payroll, the way they are today, and all sorts of fees the commoners used to have to pay for justice, those were suppressed. So it was a popular measure. But Louis XVI, when he came to power in 1774, decided that it would be endear him to many courtiers in certain sectors of the population to restore the parliaments, so he restored them. And then the problem just resumed. Throughout the 1780s, the parliaments would refuse to register taxes needed to service the debt.
- [23:52]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And there are attempts at reforming taxation early in Louis XVI's reign. People who are coming up with ideas about taxing land, taxing financial wealth, but they're facing this extraordinarily entrenched privilege and so things cannot move. Is that right?
- [24:18]
Dr. Charles Walton
That's right. Nobles by definition benefited from fiscal privileges, so they didn't have to pay the common, the general main royal tax, called the tie. However, over the 18th century, these war levies, they're called decium taxes, which are kind of war levy, that then in the 18th century was perpetuated after the war because of the high costs and the debt. And that was 1/10 of your income and the vantium was 5%, 1/20 of your income. And so these, these taxes were disputed by the parliaments, but also a lot of elites didn't pay them, or they didn't pay them at the rate that they were supposed to pay them. So there was still a lot of tax dodging going on among elites in the latter decades of the regime. Another problem was that the tax collection system was essentially a for profit business. And that's very different than the way we think about taxes today. Today we have an administration with salaried employees that imposes taxes on the population. In the ancien regime, taxes were collected by receivers general and tax farms. And these positions were either purchased or they were bid on in the case of the tax farms. And there was profit making in the tax collection system, right? So those individuals did not like the reformers, such as Tere and Necker and some of these ministers, these finance ministers of the last 20 years of the old regime, who tried to get rid of them or try to bureaucratize tax collection and take out the profiteering that was kind of embedded in the system. So of course the elites who were involved in tax collection didn't like it, but the tax receivers had venal offices. They purchased the right to be able to collect taxes. And what happened was the monarchy couldn't borrow money cheaply because creditors didn't quite trust it. And if there was ever a problem in being repaid, how are you going to confront the King? That was a daunting endeavor. What the King asked the venal office holders to do is to leverage the value of their offices. Because when they purchased these offices, they could sell them, right? They were assets. They were part of elite's portfolios along with stocks and other assets. So the King would then ask the office owners to leverage the value of their offices to borrow money and then give it to the King. Why would they do this? Because the amount they borrowed would be added to the value of their office. And we don't have to get too into the weeds of how venality actually worked, but they would also receive more money every year from the monarchy to run those offices. So that's why they went along with the game. But what it also meant was that if the King was ever going to get rid of venality, or ever get rid of the for profit tax collection system, he would have to reimburse all of that property that was just dissolved right now to move ahead to the French Revolution. This is what French revolutionaries will do. It doesn't often make it into the textbooks, but when they abolish venality of office in 1789, they just simply promised to reimburse all those officeholders the value of their office. Which is astonishing when you consider that the revolution happened because they couldn't afford the ancien regime couldn't afford to pay them to reimbursement them for the value of the offices. So that was the real dilemma. It wasn't just the monarchy that was in debt, it was the whole regime, because the regime's office holders were borrowing for the King and so was the Church. The Church was also borrowing on behalf of the King. So the regime institutions were mired in debt.
- [28:47]
Mazda/Capella University/State Farm Advertiser
Crisp, refreshing and unmistakably tasty. Ice cold Coke, zero sugar. It's the only drink with real Coca Cola taste and zero sugar. Having the right people in your corner for life's biggest milestones makes all the difference. Like a friend who's there. When you're house hunting or checking out a new ride, State Farm is there too, helping you choose the coverage you need. With a State Farm agent, you know someone is there to help you along the way. And with so many coverage options, it's nice knowing you have help choosing a plan that fits your needs so you can continue celebrating all of life's milestones. Head to statefarm.com to get a quote. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.
- [29:27]
Thumbtack Advertiser
You know, recommendations can be great. Maybe someone recommended this podcast and here you are. But home projects are different. If a podcast isn't your thing, you lose a few minutes. If you hire your cousin's neighbor to mount your tv, you might end up with a lopsided screen and wall damage. Maybe I know a guy. Just isn't enough for your home. That's why thumbtack works. It matches you with top rated local pros with photos, reviews and credentials all in one place. For your next home project, try thumbtack. Hire the right pro today.
- [29:57]
Mazda/Capella University/State Farm Advertiser
You've never been one to settle. Stand down or stand still. You're a lifelong learner, energized by excellence. There's a fire inside you you can't ignore. You've got competition to outrun, momentum to build on, and your own high standards to meet. Stop now. Not a chance. At Capella University, we help you catch what you're chasing because you've always had the drive. Now go earn the degree. Capella University. What can't you do? Visit Capella. Edu to learn more.
- [30:40]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
I mean, it does sound like it needs an entire overhaul. A stop. You can see why a revolution felt necessary. What did the sort of average French person know about all of this? About, you know, how politically literate or ordinary people.
- [30:58]
Dr. Charles Walton
I think they understood it in their own way. They. They were aware of what we would call today the rent seeking aspects of the regime. They were well aware that elites were siphoning off their productivity. The church was siphoning it off in ties. The monarchy was siphoning it off in the taille, the main royal tax, but also indirect taxes on commodities. And the seigneur, the lords, were siphoning it off in feudal dues. And Whereas in the 17th century there was a certain understanding that that's how the world works, by the 18th century, there was a Certain degree of impoverishment, partly having to do with a sudden explosion in the population. More peasants had to occupy land that wasn't growing at the rate of the population. So there was a general impoverishment. And they became more sensitive to those forces that were extracting, taking their hard earned harvests and coming by with tax collectors and taking off big chunks of it, large amounts of it. In that sense, they did understand what was going on. Now, most of the population was not literate at the time, but there were ways of being aware of what was going on in politics. So when the parliaments would stand up against the monarchy over taxes, the parliaments, the magistrates, would publish propaganda supporting their cause, it would trickle out into the public. And cities were getting larger and more anonymous, with larger public spaces that had cafes, taverns, public parks. And there were many ways for people who did not necessarily know how to read themselves to pick up information about what was going on. There was even in the Tuileries Gardens, there was a man who would digest the day's news and then repeat it out to crowds and sometimes editorializing and entertaining crowds, crowds as well.
- [33:17]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And what about Enlightenment ideas? Did they circulate among ordinary people beyond the elite salons of philosophes?
- [33:25]
Dr. Charles Walton
Yeah. Yes, they did. But again, ordinary people is a large category, so it's hard to say who falls into. Into that category. They may not have been reading some of the complicated philosophical treatises of the philosophers. They may not have even read Rousseau's Social Contract, which we see as immensely influential on French revolutionaries. But they were reading Rousseau's novels. And the novels carried Enlightenment ideas. And Rousseau's novels were incredibly popular. He became a celebrity. In the 18th century. There was a real, you know, a fan base. People would try to. Would go to Switzerland to try to find him in the woods when he would take his walks, just to have a conversation with them. People would cry over there in reading some of his sentimental novels and write letters to him with teardrops on the page of the letter, you know, saying, this is how you affected me. And Rousseau arrived in his novels, arrived at equality through sentiment, through feelings, empathy for another human being. So that reached a wide population. So did Voltaire. And Voltaire did it through plays. He did it through short, easy to read tracts. You know, he was a poet, a playwright, a polemicist. He knew how to reach the larger public. And there was rising literacy. It almost doubled in the 18th century. More and more people were able to read, but also more and more people were living in these cities where if they didn't know how to read, somebody else did, and they were getting the messages anyway.
- [35:03]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
You also mentioned earlier that this is a period in which people are buying more stuff. It's a consumer revolution, as it were, prefiguring the French Revolution. How did changes in everyday life and consumption shape revolutionary sentiment?
- [35:22]
Dr. Charles Walton
That's probably the newest area of the historiography, what historians are writing about today. To understand how you can tell a story of consumerism and consumption and get to the French Revolution, I think it's worthwhile going back to how the French revolution or the 18th century looked in the mid 20th century, when the Marxist paradigm dominated. The Marxist paradigm held that the 18th century was really a class struggle between a rising bourgeoisie lacking political power and an aristocracy or nobility that had all the privileges and all the power, but not relatively not as much money as the bourgeoisie. And so the revolution happens because these two models or these two social classes, the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie, clash. The bourgeoisie sides with the people, come to its support, and they oust privilege and they oust the nobility. That was the dominant interpretation until about the 1970s and 1980s. And in the 1980s, attention turned to ideology, the content of ideas of the Enlightenment and public opinion, opinion, how it was affecting public opinion. And the origins of the French Revolution lay in ideas and opinion. But by the early 21st century, some historians started wondering why public opinion, as historians were treating it, never had any economy in it, no economic interests, no commerce. What happened? You know, it is clear that food and finances were the two greatest challenges facing both the ancien regime and the French Revolution. Why are historians analyzing public opinion never talking about it? So then there was a kind of neo Marxist interpretation that started to percolate. It began in the late 90s with the work of Colin Jones and more recently by William Sewell of the University of Chicago. And it goes something like this. It's not the bourgeoisie as a class, it's a consumer culture that changes people's minds and makes equality thinkable. Why, in a world of consumption, society is seen as full of producers and consumers. So if you read a political economic tract, they will not break down the economy as working in a certain way for dukes and another for counts. And, you know, social hierarchy is erased in political economy. But it was also becoming less visible in everyday life. So as people engaged in commerce, more and more they came to see the stranger as a potential producer or consumer or somebody they could come into contractual arrangements with. And so a more horizontal view of society started to take place. A concrete example of this is fashion. Take the fashion industry in the 17th century. There were sumptuary laws. How you dressed was a function of your status, and you could not dress outside of your status. For example, courtiers under Louis XIV wore red shoes. You know, if you were an artisan in Paris, you would not wear red shoes. But this began to change in the 18th century because a fashion industry started to take off. And what happened was that as fashions changed quickly, a lot of courtiers out at Versailles who were hard pressed for cash, they were always hard pressed for cash, they would take their recently purchased clothes and sell it in a pawn shop in Paris. And now a commoner could come in and buy that item. And so if you were walking in these anonymous big parks and promenades that were sprouting up around Paris and seeing strangers, and you saw them wearing some designer clothes from Versailles, you were never quite sure what the status of that person was. Was it a duke? Was it a count? Was it a courtier? Was it not? And so the imagination of society starts to be people's imagination, start to conceive of society in horizontal terms. Terms. Equality becomes civic, equality becomes thinkable.
- [39:53]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
That's so interesting. Once you can literally see it, once equality, the possibility of equality is visible, then it becomes conceptually possible as well. A conceivable on the grander scale.
- [40:07]
Dr. Charles Walton
And another example would be advertisement. With the explosion of print in newspapers, newspapers funded themselves the way they did in modern times, by advertisements. Those advertisements are speaking to the general reader. They're not necessarily speaking to, or they could be speaking to men or women. But still the status, nobility and privileges are invisible when you see an advertisement. And so when you see an advertisement directed at you, the reader, you know that you are on par in some way with, you know, the nobleman or noblewoman who is reading that advertisement.
- [40:47]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So do you have a sense of how far ahead were people in the 1780s aware that a crisis was brewing?
- [40:58]
Dr. Charles Walton
They were aware. By the mid-1780s, they were aware. And certainly by 1787, they were aware. After France's support of the Americans and the treaty was signed Among Britain, the US and France in 1783, the Treaty of Paris, the economy slumped, right. And manufacturing started to decline. And part of this had to do with free trade that the French started with England. The actual treaty of the free trade treaty wasn't signed until January of 1786. But the French were trying to whet the appetite of the British and British merchants by de facto letting British cheaper British industrial goods Consumer goods pour into France, and it wiped out the nascent French industries, especially in the north. In the north, by the mid-1780s, there was roughly 50% unemployment and people were taking to the roads. And some left and went up to the Austrian Netherlands. Some went to Britain, actually northern England, around Yorkshire. And some teamed into Paris, making it more of a social powder keg. And the intendants, the kind of the royal intendants who kept an eye on what was going on in different regions of France and managed them, were reporting to Versailles that the social crisis is really getting severe. But it was in 1787, when the monarchy could no longer service the dead. And that's when everyone knew something had to be done. Close your eyes, exhale, feel your body relax. And let go of whatever you're carrying today. Well, I'm letting go of the worry that I wouldn't get my new contacts in time for this class. I got them delivered free from 1-800-contacts. Oh, my gosh, they're so fast. And breathe.
- [43:05]
Mazda/Capella University/State Farm Advertiser
Oh, sorry.
- [43:06]
Dr. Charles Walton
I almost couldn't breathe when I saw
- [43:07]
Mazda/Capella University/State Farm Advertiser
the discount they gave me on my first order.
- [43:10]
Dr. Charles Walton
Oh, sorry. Namaste.
- [43:12]
Mazda/Capella University/State Farm Advertiser
Visit 1-800-contacts.com today to save on your first order.
- [43:16]
Dr. Charles Walton
1-800-contacts.
- [43:18]
Thumbtack Advertiser
You know, recommendations can be great. Maybe someone recommended this podcast. And here you are. But home projects are different. If a podcast isn't your thing, you lose a few minutes. If you hire your cousin's neighbor to mount your tv, you might end up with a lopsided screen and wall damage. Maybe I know a guy. Just isn't enough for your home. That's why thumbtack works. It matches you with top rated local pros with photos, reviews and credentials all in one place. For your next home project, try thumbtack. Hire the right pro today.
- [44:02]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And so what was the response to that in 1787? What happens then?
- [44:06]
Dr. Charles Walton
Yeah, so it's actually, it's a tragic story in a way, because the Comptroller General of finances at that time, Kalon, he was a spendthrift. Early in his tenure as minister in 1784, he was giving the princes of the blood whatever they asked for and, and was a big spender. But by the time 1787 rolled around and they were on the brink of bankruptcy, he actually proposed some enlightened ways of increasing taxes. The problem was the parliaments. How do you get around the parliaments? So what he did is ask Louis to convoke an assembly of hand picked notables, some third estate, some nobles, and basically wine and dine them and convince them that they have to raise taxes. Once the assembly of Notables would agree to raise taxes, then it would be more difficult for the parliament to say no. At that point, that was the bet. But the problem was, is that Kahlon mismanaged the meeting from the beginning. He didn't give the notables the books. The Minister of Foreign affairs, who was really senior and had a lot of heft at court, he died a few weeks before, before the meeting. So the. The meeting kind of degenerated, and certain notables who didn't like Colon or had accounts to settle with him, stirred up public opinion against him. But actually, his proposals would have been effective because he wanted to create provincial assemblies throughout France that would manage taxation, rather than a despotic central government imposing taxes on the entire nation. He said, let's create these provincial assemblies and we'll fill them with third estate people who actually do pay taxes and let them come up with the tax assessments. This is what eventually will happen, but not after he's kicked out and he disgraced. Ministers usually go into exile. He went to exile in London and then he would become one of the main operators of the counter revolution after 1789. So he fails. Then his successor, Labrienne, who had done much to discredit him in order to take his position, finds himself in exactly the same position. And so they go ahead with the provincial Assemblies. The Provincial Assemblies only last one year. And the reason is when they would assess the nobles property, the nobles then would sue and then take it to the parliaments. And what are the parliaments going to do? They're all land owners themselves. They side with the nobles. So it was a failure, although in theory it might have worked.
- [46:59]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And how then do the Estates General get called? What is the promise with convening those? And they've been dormant for so long. What is the hope that they could do something different?
- [47:12]
Dr. Charles Walton
So the Estates General was always in the air as a possibility to resolve the fiscal problem. And paradoxically, it was the parliaments who were often holding this out as a possible solution to getting consensus on increased taxes. Why would the parliaments, who had been been so obstreperous up until now, want or call for an Estates General? Well, in their thinking, the Estates General, which hadn't met since 1614, consisted of three orders. Two of them privileged the Church and the nobility, and the third one without privileges. And so they figured, even if we have an Estates General, it'll be two against one and we'll always get our way anyway, right? But that became complicated because The Provincial Assemblies had already set the precedent that maybe the Third Estate, the commoners, could comprise half of the representation. Right. So what triggers the calling of the Estates General is after the failure of the Provincial Assemblies and in the summer of 1788, the regime is on its knees. Financially, they have to start issuing IOUs and they're doing their best to try to convince creditors to lend more money. But creditors will only lend exorbitantly high interest, interest rates. Labrienne is pushed out and Necker, who was considered a hero because in his first ministry in the late 1770s and early 1780s, he managed through financial innovation, to finance the American War of Independence. He was around, he was in Paris, he was the exception. When he was dismissed in 1781, he didn't leave Paris. He planted himself in Paris and kept a high public profile, so that when La Brienne could no longer resolve the crisis, the financial crisis, people turn to, including Marie Antoinette, turn to Necker, because he is seen as a wizard, a financial wizard, and he will solve the problem. And as soon as he is appointed, the monarchy is able to get some loans and the IOUs start to circulate. Little, a little more confidence. This confidence is short lived at that point when he is summoned to become Finance Minister again. That's the same month that the Monarchy will summon the Estates General. And originally the Estates General was supposed to meet in 1792. So they thought they had several years to still try to work a way around this. But because of a chain of events, it was moved up to the May of 1789. Now this is where the popularity of the Parliaments sinks unexpectedly. Why? Because, well, now that the Estates General was convoked, they had to decide how it would be convoked, what structure would it take. It hadn't met since 1614. So the parliaments weigh in and say, oh, we should meet just as we did in 1614. And the public saw immediately that would have amounted to the privileged Clergy First Estate, the nobility, the Second Estate teaming up against the Third Estate. And they also said that the Estates General should vote by order. So this even complicated the proposal to double the representation of the Third Estate, which is what they would eventually do. The Third Estate would have two times the number of representatives as the clergy and the nobility, so that the privileged orders would constitute 50% and the commoners would constitute 50%. But if voting by order was going to happen, then it doesn't matter. You could quadruple the Third Estate. It wouldn't matter because it would still be two orders against one. And unable to resolve this problem, in December, it was decided by the monarchy to just postpone the decision on how to vote until the Estates General actually met. So you can imagine the tensions and the problems that immediately erupted when the Estates General met in May of 1789.
- [51:35]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
One thing we haven't mentioned along the way, and I wonder if we need to touch on, did religious conflict pay any role in the political unrest before 1789?
- [51:45]
Dr. Charles Walton
Less than you would think. There are some historians who try to show how the tensions over Jansenism earlier in the century continued, or the logics continued into the 1770s and 1780s, even if Jansenism itself as a theology was not really at stake. But the kinds of reasoning that Jansenists developed would had a somewhat democratic, somewhat check on royal authority kind of thrust to them. Yeah, so Jansenism was different than, say, Calvinism or the other Protestant sects in that Jansenists stayed loyal to the Church. They wanted to remain within the Church and change it from within, which is why Louis XIV, going back to the late 17th and early 18th centuries, hated them so much. They were seen as even more dangerous than the Calvinist Huguenots, the outright Protestants who broke with the Church because they were gonna contaminate it and corrupt it from within. But the Parliament sided with the Jansenists throughout the early 18th century, time and again. But I think by the time you get to the 1770s and 1780s, the kind of secularization of politics and consciousness is really powerful. Even the king is starting to justify his acts not in the name of religion and God, but in the name of reason and utility, as was mentioned earlier. So the Enlightenment is changing the rationales for how power should work.
- [53:21]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So we're coming to the head of the crisis. And I guess as we look back, as we sort of bring our discussion to a close, are there moments that were missed opportunities where the monarch, the elites, could have prevented revolution? I suppose one, we've already talked about the possibility of these local assemblies. Is there anything else along the way where things could have been done differently?
- [53:46]
Dr. Charles Walton
So historians who reflect on counterfactuals, what would have happened if something would have been different than it was? They often point to the Mopuku of 1770, which abolished the parliaments because the parliaments would prove to be the real obstacle to reform fiscal reforms in the 1780s? Yeah, I think that would have. That probably is correct. The justice system had been full of salaried employees rather than venal office holders who were also big landowners. Things might have played out differently. But then you would have been left with enlightened despotism. Enlightened, that's what you would have been left with. And at a certain point, I suppose if Louis XVI would have, under those conditions, without a parliament blocking him at every turn, would have been able to implement some of these fiscal changes, maybe people would have been happy enough or content enough and maybe the debt could have been serviced. But I think eventually enlightened despotism was a contradictory formulation and sooner or later a king would have tried to push something through that the public didn't like and cries of despotism would have been raised anyway.
- [55:07]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So it would have delayed rather than prevented, you think?
- [55:11]
Dr. Charles Walton
Yes, yes, yes. And also if the monarch had. This is an uncomfortable conclusion, but if the monarch had been a more successful imperialist and get resources from abroad to then have resources to nourish political, to maintain the patronage and to maintain infrastructure and public spending and hire workers to make roads. And if, if he would have used empire or could have used empire to do something along the lines of what Keynes would call for in the 20th century, then maybe things would have worked out differently. And that is exactly how they would work out under Napoleon. He's an effective redistributive warlord. He gets his plunder from abroad and he uses it to as patronage to nourish the allegiances of elites. So it works until it doesn't. Until empire collapses and then his power collapses as well.
- [56:14]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So basically, if he'd been better at outsourcing the work to people non native to France, that would have brought in the wealth that meant that the French people would not have rebelled.
- [56:25]
Dr. Charles Walton
He would have had to have been able to tax that wealth. I mean they did have a productive colony in Saint Domingue that was producing an enormous amount through slave labor, an enormous amount of commodities, sugar, coffee, indigo. But, but the ability to be able to tax that wealth would have been essential. And that's also something that, not to get ahead of ourselves. But that's also something Napoleon will effectively do. He makes paying your taxes a prerequisite to get patronage. Whereas the privileged under the ancien regime were privileged because they didn't pay taxes or they didn't pay taxes because they were privileged. Napoleon reverses the logic. If you want to stand in line for patronage from Napoleon, you have to prove that you're a notable. And the way you prove you're an otable is how much did you pay on your taxes?
- [57:17]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Not a bad principle. Well, thank you so much Dr. Charles Walton for taking us through this fascinating descent towards crisis, and this sense of inevitability really hangs over it. It's been so interesting to think about all the different ways in which that the situation was compounding over these years. Thank you.
- [57:42]
Dr. Charles Walton
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
- [57:44]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Next time, we'll be exploring what happened on the 14th of July, 1789, when revolutionary insurgents attempted to storm and seize control of the medieval armory, fortress and political prison known as the Bastille. Was it a spontaneous uprising? A symbol seized in desperation? Or something far more complex? And why did a crumbling prison become the spark that lit a revolution? Thank you for listening to this episode of Not Just the Tudors From History Hit. Thank you also to my researcher Max Wintool, my producer Rob Weinberg, and to Amy Haddow, who edited this episode. We are always eager to hear from you, including receiving your brilliant ideas for subjects we can cover. So do drop us a a line at notjusthetors at historyhit. Com, and I look forward to joining you again for another episode. Next time on Not Just the Tutors From History Hit.