Episode 487: The Old Regime

alongside Spain and England. So the turmoil and complete sea change of government that it's going to experience are going to have reverberations that are going to go all throughout Europe and beyond. Many historians argue it is the beginning of modernity, and I think there's good arguments to say that, particularly as we look today at what France was before the Old Regime is often referred to as the Assion

or an ancient regime in French. But what I really want to make sure that I do throughout this series is to talk not only about how these events impacted France, but how the reverberations echoed out throughout Europe and well beyond. This is a story that we're going to start here in the old regime, and we're going to continue all the way through the final defeat of Napoleon and the Treaty of Vienna, which is going to essentially put the

book end on the Napoleonic Wars. So I'm going to go further than some historians and other podcasts have gone to talk about the French Revolution. One of the advantages I have is always I'm not a historian, so I'm not sort of stuck into a box. I can just sort of call balls and strikes as I see them. And I want to go all the way to Vienna, and so we're going to go to Vienna because I want to talk about, of course, Napoleon, and I want to talk about the wars and the battles and all

the fun stuff that are tied in with that. But we want to begin today by looking at the old regime before we start to extrapolate out what's going to happen. If we want to consider the Ension regime, we have to think about the orders that were sent forth. And orders is a specific and very medieval term, and what you're going to notice in this episode is there's a lot that's medieval about France all the way through the

middle of the eighteenth century. At the heart of the ancient regime lay a rigid social structure, divided into these famous three estates. The first estate, the clergy, numbered maybe one hundred and thirty thousand in a kingdom of over twenty five million. They were guardians of religion, education, and morality, but there were also major landowners. Despite their small numbers, they controlled around ten percent of the land in all of France. Remember this is still a time period when

land equals wealth. They enjoyed privileges exemptions from most direct taxation, the right to levy the tithe on peasants, and influence in royal councils. The second estate, the nobility, was bigger, but not by much. It comprised about three hundred thousand individuals, less than two percent of the population, Yet they held vast estates, lucrative offices and commanding positions in the army

and in the church. Their legal privileges were extensive exemption from the tale, the direct land tax, the right to collect feudal dues from peasants, and the prestige of birth. Yet by the eighteenth century, the nobility itself was divided between the old sword and whose families could trace their lineage backed century, and those of the rogue nobility, who purchased offices in royal administration and courts. This division bred resentment within the elite, for many rogue nobles were wealthier

than their sword counterparts. Now there was, of course, the third estate, which was everyone else urban workers, lawyers, merchants, artisans, and most importantly, the peasant class, who made up about eighty percent of the population. Burdened with rents, dues, tithes, taxes, they bore the brunt of supporting the kingdom while enjoying absolutely noneovich privileges. As Abbi Sis would famously put it in seventeen eighty nine, what is the third estate? Everything?

What has it been uptel now in the political order? Nothing? Though France was a monarchy, the king's power was not as absolute as the image of Louis the fourteenth and his leta semis eight is mine or I am the state might suggest. The king reigned at Versailles, of course, supported by an elaborate bureaucracy, but his decisions were constrained by custom, tradition, and a patchwork of laws across the

Kingdom France was not at all uniform. You have to understand that some regions, like Brittany and Burgundy still had their own estates and their own parliaments or parliaments. Local customs varied from province to province, and taxation was unevenly distributed, riddled with exemptions and privileges. The parliaments royal courts, dominated by nobles of the rogue, acted as both law courts and political bodies. They had the power to register royal

edicts before they became law. In theory, they were meant to ensure legality. In practice, they were often used to block or delay reforms, defending aristocratic privilege under the guy is of protecting the quote unquote fundamental laws of the realm. By the late eighteenth century, most of the territory that today we would call France was under what we call domain, royal lands that had been gradually brought under the direct control of the crown, really since the days of Charlemagne

in eight hundred CE. This domain had expanded over the centuries, beginning with the capacis tiny holdings around the Ea de France and stretching outward through conquest, marriage, and dynastic chance. By seventeen eighty nine, the king's writ ran over the great heartland of provinces Norman, dy Champagne or the uns Language doctor Gien and Burgundy. These provinces sent troops and taxes, and their governors, though usually nobles of influence, served at

the King's pleasure. But even here uniformity remained a fiction. Each province had its own customs, laws, and institutions. The costume may is local customary laws varied widely, especially between the north and the south. Towns and provinces alike clong to charters guaranteeing special exemptions from priviges, many dating back to the Middle Ages. One of the clearest markers of

this distinction is taxation. In the Pays de la Oxion, the bulk of the kingdom, the king's appointed intendants assessed and levied taxes directly, but the Pays de estates regions like Brittany, Burgundy, Languidoc, and promense local representatives and assemblies. The estates of the province negotiated their tax rates continuously

with the crown. What that meant was that in Brittany or Languidoc, the king could not simply decree a new tax, he had to constantly bargain with local estates who jealously guarded their autonomy. Thus, while so France had one king, it did not have one tax system. A traveler moving through the kingdom might come across invisible boundaries where entirely different fiscal rules applied. Now, of course, a great many territories had joined France only recently, and their integration remained

very incomplete. Alsace, annext in the seventeenth century, retained German law in many places, and the city of Strasburg had special privileges. Lorraine, incorporated in seventeen sixty six after the death of its duke, still maintained its own parliament and legal traditions. Corsica had been purchased by France from Genoa only in seventeen sixty eight, and though technically a French province, by seventeen eighty nine, it was a land with its

own fiercely independent traditions. The southern border told a similar story. Roussoon and part of Candan had come into France from Spain only by the Treaty of the Pyrenees in sixteen fifty nine, and though the French speaking officials had been installed. Catalan customs and privileges lingered in the north. Artois and Flanders, acquired through wars with Spain in the seventeenth century, were still quite Flemish in language and practice. Even stranger were

the enclaves and the outliers that dotted the kingdom. The Papacy still held on to Avignon and the nearby comtant Nissin, both enclaves within French territory. Though long surrounded by French royal lands, these were still ruled by papal legates and had no political connection to Versailles whatsoever. The Principality of Orange, though a next earlier in the century, still bore the

mark of its old independence. In the Pyrenees, tinye sovereignties and odd arrangements like the co sovereignty of Andorra shared between the French crown and the Spanish Bishop of Yugel, spoke to medieval compromises that no one, even for some reason, bought to sweep away. Then, of course, there were the Paillius concreis, the conquered lands, such as the French committe annex from Spain in sixteen seventy eight, though under royal control.

Regions like this too, retained their own legal and administrative distinctness. Look the effect of all this was that France in seventeen eighty nine was less a centralized state than a mosaic of provinces, each with its own contract with the monarchy. As I mentioned before, Louis the fourteenth liked to project this image of a unified France, in which he commanded every animal, every bug to move. But that wasn't true.

Majuris jen Bautiste Colbert had once sought to impose uniformity, but even a century after Barbank absolutism, diversity continued to prevail. In the south, Roman law lingered in legal codes. In the north, customary law prevailed. Weights and measures could vary from town to town. In fact, throughout France in seventeen eighty nine, over two hundred different measures of capacity were

in use. A peasant selling grain in one province might find that his unit of bushels wasn't recognized in the next. Thus it was on the eve of the revolution. France was a kingdom of contradictions. The king could command armies, negotiate treaties, and maintain his splendor at Versaign But he ruled a territory riddled with exemptions, privileges, and fragment and sovereignties. Royal control was broad, but it wasn't deep. A noble in Brittany or a magistrate in Languidoc did not see

himself as merely a French subject. He was a Breton, he was a Languidocian, and he defended the rights of his province against the centralizing hand of Versailles. The Revolution will sweep most of this away. The National Assembly is going to abolish provincial estates, feudal dues, and the bewildering patchwork of laws, replacing them with the vision of a unified nation. As I said, there's a reason that the

French Revolution is seen as the beginning of modernity. But in seventeen eighty nine, the reality was that France was less a single, homogeneous kingdom than a loose federation of territories bound by allegiance to a common monarch. Now we must turn our attention to the economic machinery of the state, because it's not any better than the legal situation. The Seven Years War ended in humiliation for France, defeated by Britain.

She lost nearly all her North American empire, Canada, the Ohio Valley, the Mississippi Lands, though she retained lucrative sugar islands like Martinique Guadalupe. The war had been ruinously expensive, as of course it had been for the British military expenditures soared to one point three billion livre and France's debt swelled. The Crown emerged not only diplomatically weakened, but fiscally and feebled. The peace restored neither credit nor confidence.

The loss of Canada was less disastrous economically than contemporaries feared Voltaire's sneering phrase. A few acres of snow captured its limited fiscal value compared, of course, to Caribbean sugar. But the war had exposed major structural weaknesses. Britain's global trading system, powered by its navy, eclipsed France's, and French ministers began to fear that without reform, the kingdom would never again regain its stature. The reality was is that

France's economy was still overwhelmingly agricultural. Around eighty percent of the population lived on the land, and grain was life. Bread made up as much as three quarters of a laborer's diet. The productivity of French agriculture had improved since the early eighteenth century. New techniques, crop rotations, and selective breeding were spreading, but progress was uneven and significantly slowed by tradition. Feudal dews, ties and signiorial rights still weighed

heavily on the peasants. They paid rents to their lords, a tithe to the church, and taxes to the crown, leaving them vulnerable to fluctuations and harvest. When crops failed, as they did in seventeen seventy five and then again disastrously in the late seventeen eighties, bread prices soared and riots erupted. The Flower War of seventeen seventy five, sparked by liberalization of the grain trade under Louis the sixteenth Minister Turgo, revealed how fragile the balance between subsistence and

revolt could be. Arthur Young, the English traveler, recorded in the seventeen eighties the desperate condition of peasants in places like Bordona's quote, the poor people seem poor, indeed the children terribly ragged. If I saw a man who looks tolerably well dressed, his hat was old and his coat cut out at the elbows. The women and children were

nothing or rags end quote. This was not a reflection on the image of a prosperous kingdom, but of a countryside where wealth was completely concentrated in the top while the majority lived in chronic insecurity. And if you're trying to get an image of gosh, what kind of powder keg do you need for revolution? Well you're getting your answer. If agric cultural stagnated industry to an extent, expanded French textile production, especially in linen, silk and cotton grew rapidly.

Cities like Lyons arrived on silk weaving. Rowan was a hub for cotton printing. Lilas and Imans turned out wolves. Metallurgy developed in eastern France, particularly in Lorraine, while coal mining in the north hinted at a potential industrial future. Yet French industry continued to lag behind Britain, and the reasons were structural fragmented internal markets, lack of uniform weights and measures, and barriers like local tolls and guild restrictions.

The guild system this is a holdover, of course, from the Middle Ages. Regulated entry into trades often stifling innovation. A decree in seventeen seventy six finally abolished many of these guilds under the aforementioned Turgo, but they were restored under pressure from vested interests. Still, it is worth noting that urban centers were growing in the eighteenth century. Paris swelled to around six hundred thousand inhabitants by the seventeen eighties,

making it one of Europe's largest cities. Bordeaux prospered as a port for Atlantic trade, particularly the lucrative triangular trade in slaves, sugar and coffee. Na and Marseille and the have also thrived on overseas commerce. France's colonial trade boomed after seventeen sixty three, even as France more in the loss of Canada. The Caribbean colonies San Dominique which is modern Haiti, Martinique and Guadaloupe became the jewels of the

French economy. Sendomique in particular, was the richest colony in the world, producing sugar, coffee and indigo on the backs of a half a million enslaved Africans. By the seventeen eighties, colonial commerce accounted for nearly a third of France's foreign trade. Merchants in Bordeaux Nonsen Marseille grew immensely wealthy from this traffic. Bordeaux's prosperity, in fact, was a direct result of Sendemiche's

sugar and coffee exports. But of course, as I mentioned before, this wealth was unevenly distributed, concentrated in a few port cities, and tied to a brutal slave system that's going to collapse with the Haitian Revolution itself a product of the French Revolution. In the seventeen nineties, overseas, France began to expand its trade with the Levant and Asia. The French East India Company, re established in seventeen eighty five, sought

to compete with Britain, though never with much success. At the center of all this stood, of course, the monarchy's finances, which grew ever more desperate the war debts of seventeen sixty three would never be paid down. The system of taxation remained irrational and unjust considered the following the tale, which was the only direct land tax in France, fell almost exclusively on peasants. The gable the salt tax was despised by basically every single person in France and frankly

varied wildly by province. The viteme, a kind of income tax introduced in the mid eighteenth century. In theory touched all estates, but in practice the nobility could buy exemptions, and it was riddled with holes. The clergy negotiated lump sums called don gretuit instead of paying taxes. Nobles claimed exemptions. The wealthy bourgeoisie often bought offices that carried financial privileges.

The real burden fell on the commoners, and the inefficiency of collection meant that the crown often saw far less revenue then was expected on paper. Tax farming companies skimmed off enormous profits. Attempts to reform ran aground again and again.

But it's worth considering the four men who attempted at least tried to write the ship and Robert Jacques Tergaux, the philosopher Minister, entered Louis the sixteenth government in seventeen seventy four with a reputation for intelligence and enlightenment reform. A disciple of physiocrats, he believed that agriculture was the true foundation of wealth, that free markets would generate prosperity, and that state, regulation and privilege were strangling the economy.

Almost at once. To go tackled three major reforms. First, he tried to liberalize the grain trade. He ended the restrictions that had been existing ungrave movement within the kingdom, convinced that if a peasant or a lord could sell their grain from province to province, it could stabilize prices and stimulate production. Instead, a poor harvest in seventeen seventy four, which was not his fault, sent bread prices soaring. Riots broke out in what became known as the Flower War

of seventeen seventy five. Critics blamed Turgeau's liberalization. In truth, it was bad weather, but politically the damage had been done. He had also attempted to abolish the corvee, the forced peasant labor on roads, with a monetary tax that could be applied universally. In fact, so universal was this so novel was it in its concept that gasp even nobles and clergy, would have to contribute. This principle of shared responsibility was radical, and it enraged the privileged orders, who

almost immediately refused to pay. And of course, he also did his best to cut expenditures he counseled Louis the sixteenth to resist wars abroad and extravagance at court. His famous warning was stark quote no bankruptcy, no new taxes, no loans. Reform is the only resource end quote. Sergae's reforms directly threatened the privileges of nobles, clergy, and the financiers. When Marie Antoinette pressed the King to grant favors to her proteges to go refused, his enemies multiplied, and in

seventeen seventy six he was dismissed from service. And so the monarchy spurned its best chance at radical and rational reform. And that brings us to Jacques Nicare Nicaire, a Swiss Protestant anchor, was appointed Director of Finances in seventeen seventy seven. He was not permitted the title of Controller General because as a Protestant he actually wasn't allowed to hold a

Catholic office, but his influence was still immense. Neckair's approach was to restore confidence in the French economy and the royal finances through transparency. In seventeen eighty one, he published the Compete rendu a rah, a public account of royal finances. It was the first time ever that ordinary Frenchmen could see the monarchy's balance sheet. Neckcair claimed that the Crown

had a surplus of ten million nevre. In reality, unfortunately, he had concealed the costs of war by classifying them as ordinary expenses, so he was transparent but still a liar. The illusion of solvency was brought at the price of later shock. For all that, though Neckcare was absolutely beloved by the public, he had raised funds for the American War seemingly without introducing new taxes, largely by appealing to

his banker contacts and by using the creative accounting. He also reformed the hospital system, tried to limit the venality of office, and curtailed the abuse of tax farming, but he often clashed with the more privileged orders. His exclusion from the Royal Council stung, and when he saw greater authority, court factions maneuvered against him. In seventeen eighty one, he resigned, but his popularity endured to many. In the third Estate, Nicare became the symbol of honest reform sacrificed by a

corrupt court. The next up to the plate was Charles Alexandre des klan if Nicare was the banker, and Turgo the philosopher. Calon was the court finincierre. He was charming, extravagant, but undeniably shrewd. Appointed Controller General in seventeen eighty three, he faced a deficit that had balloon to over one hundred million livre. Colonn's strategy was bold, spend lavishly to

restore confidence and then launch sweeping reforms. He borrowed heavily to maintain the appearance of solvency, but by seventeen eighty six he admitted that the kingdom was headed for bankruptcy unless radical measures were taken. His proposals were, in essence, the reform that France desperately needed. It was a universal land tax paid by everyone, even the nobility, without exception. The abolition of internal tariffs to create finally a single

national market. The conversion of the corvet or labor tax into a money tax. The establishment of provincial assemblies giving localities some say in the administration. It was a program of fiscal equality and administrative modernization, but Quielan knew the parliaments would resist, so he turned instead to an assassembly of notables, a gathering of one hundred and forty four aristocrats, clergy and magistrates, hoping that their prestige alone would be

enough to push the reforms through, but he backfired. The notables, dominated by the nobility, refused to sacrifice their privileges. They turned against Cologne, accusing him of financial mismanagement. By seventeen eighty seven, he was dismissed, his reforms abandoned, and the monarchy's credibility further eroded, which brings us to our last player, Etienne Charles de l'met Brian. Brian, the Archbishop of Toulouse and an ally of the Queen, succeeded Cologne in seventeen

eighty seven. Unlike his predecessor, he had no special financial expertise at all. He attempted to revive Cologne's program, but now the parliaments became the main obstacle. The Parliament of Paris refused to register the new taxes, insisting that only the Estates General, which hadn't met by the way since sixteen fourteen. More on that next time, had the authority

to consent. The government exiled magistrates, sparking uproar. In seventeen eighty eight, desperate for cash, Brian announced a moratorium on payments, effectively declaring bankruptcy for the crown. By August, Briann conceded defeat. He resigned, recommending that Nickahre be recalled. But the monarchy's

authority was effectively shattered by this point. Its finances lay in ruin, its credit completely destroyed, and its political legitimacy dependence on taking that final step summoning the Estates General. These ministers to go. Nickaier Columbrienne form a tragic sequence. Each one was able to quickly diagnose the kingdom's fiscal problems, each proposed reform in each was undone by entrenched privilege and political cowardice Urgeau sought to reform without borrowing. He

was dismissed. Nickair borrowed to avoid reform. He was dismissed. Cologne sought to reform after borrowing. He was dismissed. Brienne tried to govern without reform or credibility, and he collapsed.

As the historian Alexey Destaukville later observed, the French found it intolerable to bear those old burdens once they had caught a glimpse of a better existence, the monarchy had proven incapable of adapting, and its paralysis it drove its subjorks toward revolution, and then there were several foreign crises. France's intervention in the American Revolution was a gamble. It restored some sense of national pride after the humiliation of the Seven Year War in seventeen sixty three, but it

deepened the fiscal abyss. The war added over one billion livred to the debt. By seventeen eighty eight, interest payments alone consumed more than half of all royal revenue. And yet the war also carried ideological consequences. French officers like the Marquis de Lafayette returned from America inspired by Republican ideals, and the financial crisis caused by the war set the stage for the convocation of the Estates General in seventeen

eighty nine. By the late seventeen eighties, all the weaknesses of France's economy converged. Harvest failures in seventeen eighty seven eighty nine led to famine parts of the country and soaring bread prices in Paris. Real wages stagnated as food costs rose, Unemployment surged in the cities especially among the artisans and textile workers. The crown, unable to raise new loans, suspended payments in seventeen eighty eight, a declaration of bankruptcy,

and all but name. The fiscal breakdown became a political crisis with no other option. Louis the sixteenth is going to summon the Estates General in May of seventeen eighty nine, the first time since sixteen fourteen the Kingdom's three orders would meet. The economic machine of the Ossien regime had

finally collapsed under its contradictions. Between the Seven Years War and the Revolution, France's economy was truly one of contrasts, rich colonies and starving peasants, bustling ports and bankrupt coffers, innovation and industry shackled by guilds, an expanding population facing diminishing resources. Above all, the monarchy's failure to reform its fiscal system because privilege invested interest resisted every change, turned

economic strain into political crises. As Turgeau once warned Louis the sixteenth, Sir, remember that it was weakness which brought down the monarchy of your ancestors. By seventeen eighty nine, that prophecy was ready to be fulfilled. The reality was the Enseon regime was held together by custom, privilege, and the mystique of the monarchy, but it was incredibly fragile. Its limitations were obvious privilege, bread resentment. The nobility clung

to exemptions and signiorial dues. At precisely the moment when the rising bourgeoisie sought equality of opportunity and the peasants desperately cried out for relief, there was an unjust physical system. The most able to pay, the nobles and the clergy, were the least taxed, while those least able, the peasants, paid the most. There was administrative chaos. France lacked a uniform legal code, a centralized tax structure, or a consistent

system of weights and measures. A merchant moving across the kingdom with his goods might face dozens of tariffs and dozens of tolls. There was huge resistance to reform, as we've seen. When ministers link Turgo and Neckcare proposed financial reforms, they found themselves blocked by parliaments, nobles, or sometimes even the court, as the Urgo once lamented. The first thing one discovers in beginning to govern is that one cannot

do what one pleases. Nothing could have been further than Louis the fourteenths declaration, I am the State, And of course, as it outlined, a lot now there was massive economic strain. Population growth strained the land. Harvest failures in the seventeen eighties sent bread prices soaring. For the Parisian poor, bread was life, and when his price rose, discontent turned swiftly to unrest. By the eve of the revolution. For Grants was a paradox, a powerful state with a glorious culture,

yet politically brittle and financially unsustainable. Enlightenment thinkers Voltaire Rousseau Montesquieu had long criticized its injustices. Foreign observers, too, marveled at the contradictions. Arthur Young, an English traveler, wrote in seventeen eighty seven, the abuses of seigniorial rights, the feudal services, the game laws, the corvets, the exemptions, the oppressions of the nobility are all things that will sooner or later

plunge this kingdom into convulsions. The Enseon regime was a system designed for an earlier age, preserved by privilege and inertia, unable to adapt to the pressures of a modern, literate and restless society. Its problems fiscal, political, and social would converge in crisis, and when that crisis came, the revolution would not simply reform the old order, it would sweep

it away. Next week, we're going to dig into the transition of the political machine from Louis the fifteenth to Louis the sixteenth and introduced a couple of personalities that are going to play a key role in the events to come as the kingdom barrels towards the inevitable calling of the Estates General