User:Keithsea/Assembly of Notables

1787 assembly
The final appearance of the Assembly of Notables began in February 1787 during Louis XVI's reign, during which France’s finances were in a desperate situation and the finance ministers of the day (Turgot, Necker, Calonne) all believed that tax reform was necessary if France was going to pay off its debt and bring government expenditure back into line with government income. However, before any new tax laws could be passed, they first had to be registered with the French parlements (which were high courts, not legislatures, but that possessed a limited veto power on new laws).

Repeated attempts to implement tax reform failed due to lack of parlement support, as parlement judges felt that any increase in tax would have a direct negative effect on their own income. In response to this opposition, the finance minister at the time, Calonne, suggested that Louis XVI call an Assembly of Notables. While the Assembly of Notables had no legislative power in its own right, Calonne hoped that if the Assembly of Notables could be made to support the proposed reforms then this would apply pressure on parlement to register them.

Calonne proposed four major reforms:
 * 1) a single land-value tax
 * 2) the conversion of the corvée into a money tax
 * 3) the abolition of internal tariffs
 * 4) the creation of elected provincial assemblies

In the traditional view, the plan failed because the 144 assemblymen, who included princes of the blood, archbishops, noblemen and other people from the traditional elite, did not wish to bear the burden of increased taxation.

However, Simon Schama has argued that the notables in fact were quite open to radical political changes; for example, some proposed the elimination of all the tax exemptions conferred by noble status; others proposed lowering the income qualifications for voting for members of the proposed provincial assemblies. Schama wrote: "Yet what was truly astonishing about the debates of the Assembly is that they were marked by a conspicuous acceptance of principles like fiscal equality that even a few years before would have been unthinkable....Where disagreement occurred, it was not because Calonne had shocked the Notables with his announcement of a new fiscal and political world; it was either because he had not gone far enough or because they disliked the operational methods built into the program."

With the Assembly being uncooperative Calonne decided to instead appeal straight to the people and put pressure on the Notables with his essay The Avertissement or "The Warning." Where he depicted the members of the Assembly as simply trying to defend their privileges at the expense of the people. However this did not rally the people or bring the Notables in line. Instead this angered the Notables as now they saw Calonne trying to subvert their power. In response to this perceived over reach by Calonne multiple members of the Assembly formed a plot to see Calonne removed from his position. To do this though they needed to convince Louis XVI himself to get rid of Calonne. With one of the members to play a crucial role in this plot being Marie Antoinette, who with other members would sow distrust of Calonne to the King until on 8 April 1787 Calonne would be dismissed from his role by the King.

Following the removal of Calonne two more people would lead the Assembly until its end. Those being Bouvard de Fourqueux who lead the assembly from 9 April to 1 May 1787, then Loménie de Brienne who would lead from 1 May to 25 May. During this period of the Assembly the Notables would seek to impose greater checks upon the Kings power, and would see many claim the Assembly did not have the authority to implement reform and that only the Estates-General had such power. While the king sought to take power and privileges from the Notables. This would create a stalemate within the body that bred discontent and a desire to see the Assembly end from both sides. So with the desire to continue the Assembly waning it would be dissolved on 25 May.

In addition to tax reform, the Assembly also discussed other issues. The result was that the Assembly assisted the Parliament in creating provincial assemblies, reestablished free trade in grain, converted the corvée (a feudal duty in the form of forced labour) into a cash payment, and generated short-term loans.