Episode 488: The Flood

Known in his youth as Libyan m Though well beloved, Louis would die a monarch largely unloved, his kingdom straining under financial burdens im moral cynicism that set the stage for the French Revolution. Louis the fifteenth was only five years old when his great grandfather, the Mighty Louis the fourteenth, died in September seventeen fifteen. The son king had ruled for seventy two years, leaving behind both grandeur and exhaustion.

Versailles glittered. France remained Europe's cultural beacon, but its treasury was totally depleted, its army and militaries worn down, and its people, weary of endless war and expense into this world, stepped the small fraile child, who was now to be king. Because of his age, of course, a regency was necessary. The task fell to Philippe de Orleman, the late king's nephew. The regency from seventeen fifteen to seventeen twenty three was marked by a loosening of the rigid ceremonial culture of

Louis the fourteenth Court. Philippe moved the government from Versaid back to Paris, restored some powers to the nobility, and allowed more open debate within the royal councils. The financial chaos of the realm was addressed through a bold but disastrous experiment. The Scottish adventurer John Law was granted control of the Bank General and soon promoted his Mississippi Company.

Scheme laws financial system, part bank, part colonial speculation temporarily revived credit and enthusiasm, but collapsed spectacularly in seventeen twenty. Fortunes were ruined, confidence in royal finances shattered, and the whole episode foreshadowed the chronic fiscal mismanagement that would plague Louis the fifteenth reign. In seventeen twenty three, Louis turned

fifteen and was declared of age. The regent died shortly thereafter, and the young king took up full authority, though initially power was exercised through chief ministers. Cardinal Fleury, an austere churchman of remarkable prudence, became the King's tutor and later his principal minister. Fleury's steady hand provided a rare moment of stability. He balanced the budget, he restrained reckless spending, and sought peace abroad. Fleury's foreign policy was all about

avoiding expensive, grandiose foreign wars. He initially kept France out of the War of Polish Succession, which lasted from seventeen thirty three to seventeen thirty eight, but eventually French arms were engaged to press the claims of Stanislaw Leazinski Louis, the fifteenth father in law. The conflict ended with Stanislaw's symbolic kingship in Lorraine, which upon his death would pass permanently to France, a quiet but still significant territorial gain.

Another war, the War of Austrian Succession, embroiled France much more deeply. France allied with Prussia against Austria and Britain, hoping to check Habsburg power and secure influence in the low countries. French armies won dramatic victories, most notably at Fontenois in seventeen forty five, where Louis himself appeared on campaign. A soldier is said to have shouted to him, Sire, do not expose yourself withdraw, to which the king replied

to gentlemen, I am here to see you fight. It was a moment that briefly, briefly revived his popularity, but the war ended with little tangible gain, draining the treasury and spreading disillusionment. It was the first sign that France, though still Europe's most populous and culturally dominant nation, was slipping into military and diplomatic in effectiveness. Louis the fifteenth

himself was a private person. He was ill suited to the relentless ceremonial exposure that his great grandfather had relished. He preferred hunting, scientific experiments, and the company of intimate friends and mistresses to the grand rituals of Versailles. His aloofness, combined with a tendency towards indecision, left government often adrift.

The king's mistresses became powerful figures at court, shaping both patronage and public perception, Madame de Pompadour, who rose to prominence in the seventeen forties, was far more than a royal favorite. Intelligent and politically astute, she became a patron of the arts, champion of enlightenment figures like Voltaire, and

even a quiet player in diplomacy. Critics, though mocked the influence of a bourgeoisie woman over the king, cultural patronage left an enduring mark on French art and architecture, fostering

the Rococo style that defined the age. Later, Madame du Barrier, of even humbler origins, would scandalized the court by her extravagance and seeming frivolity, so the public the succession of Mistress's simply embodied royal decadence, pamphlets and underground satire flourished, eroding the monarchy's dignity in the eyes of many of

its subjects. But, of course, as I talked about in previous episodes, the biggest turning point of Louis the Fifteenth Reign came with the Seven Years War, which lasted from seventeen fifty six to seventeen sixty three. In a diplomatic revolution, France abandoned its traditional hostility to Austria, and allied itself

with Empress Maria Teresa against Prussia and Britain. This grand alliance was meant to isolate Frederick the Great and curb British colonial expansion, but as we know, instead it proved disastrous. French forces suffered repeated defeats at Plas in India, and then there was the capture of Quebec in seventeen fifty nine that ultimately stripped France of its overseas empire. Naval defeats at Lagos and Kuberian Bay shattered French naval power.

By the Treaty of Paris in seventeen sixty three, France seeded Canada to Britain, lost much of India, and surrendered its dominance in North America. The war's humiliation deeply tarnished Louis The fifteenth Reputation a bitter saying ran, this king has lost everything except his honor, but even honor seemed

in doubt. Voltaire captured the public mood with biting irony, writing that France had gone to war quote for the ears of Madame de Pompadour, suggesting that foreign policy was shaped by the king's mistress rather than reasons of state. After the war, the monarchy attempted reforms to recover authority. French ministers sought new taxes, but entrenched privileges blocked any change.

The parliaments sovereign courts dominated by nobles, presented themselves as defenders of liberty against arbitrary monarchy, resisting any new levies. In reality, all they wanted to do was predect their own privileges. They'll lose them soon enough, don't worry. In and albeit much more dramatic faction, Louis the fifteenth tried to reassert royal authority. In the midst of the growing storm. In seventeen seventy one, Chancellor Mapieu dissolved the parliaments, replacing

them with more pliant courts. It was a bold stroke of absolutism that was reminiscent of Louis the fourteenth, but it was way too late. Many Frenchmen saw it not as a reform, but as a move towards tyranny. The monarchy was trapped, too weak to impose central authority, yet too rigid to enact lasking fiscal modernization. Meanwhile, Enlightenment ideas spread like wildfire. Philosophers like Rousseau, Montesquieu and Dita rou

critiqued monarchy, privilege, and clerical power in general. Although Louis the fifteenth tolerated some of this intellectual ferment, the cultural prestige of the crown dimmed as new visions of politics and society captured the public imagination. Louis the fifteenths later years were marked by increasing isolation. Is One's popular image as the well beloved was long gone. He had become to many the symbol of an exhausted monarchy, indecisive, scandalous,

and increasingly irrelevant. In seventeen seventy four, amid and outbreak of smallpox at Versailles, the sixty four year old king fell hill. Crowds once prayed for the boy kot King's health, but now as Louis the fifteenth lay dying, Harris buzzed with a sort of grim sense of relief. He passed away on May tenth, seventeen seventy four, and now his grandson succeeded him as Louis the sixteenth. At his funeral, the entire procession was met not with mourning, but with jeers.

The monarchy was still standing. Sure, but the aura of sacred majesty was over. The French people were entering a new age of skepticism, political restlessness, and one that would soon explode in revolution. Louis the fifteenth reign is often summed up as one of squandered opportunity. He inherited the strongest monarchy in Europe, yet he left his successor of

fragile and discredited crown. His reign oversaw the flowering of Enlightenment culture, the elegance of Rococo Art, and the brilliance of votaire rousseau in Montesquieu, but also the loss of France's overseas empire in a deepening crisis of financial legitimacy. Perhaps most telling is the bitter nickname that was whispered in the final years of Louis the fifteenth Epres moi leges after me the flood. Whether Louis ever uttered it is uncertain, but it captured the sense that he foresaw

catastrophe to come. Indeed, less than two decades after his death, the flood that arrived would sweep away the monarchy itself. When Louis the sixteenth ascended the throne of France in seventeen seventy four, he was only nineteen years old, a shy, awkward young man thrust into the most glittering but fragile

monarchy in all of Europe. His reign up to the crisis of seventeen eighty eight is a tale of what we can only say was just honest intentions, undermined by indecision, the entrenchment of privilege, and sadly, the weight of history. At his side throughout the whole thing would stand his Queen, Marie Antoinette, who's one of those rare figures in history where the queen is probably better known, at least in

the colloquial sense, than the king. She was charming, vivacious, and quite frankly, often misunderstood, but she would come to embody the monarchy's glamour and tragically it's unpopularity. Born Louis August in seventeen fifty four, the second son of the Dauphin, he had absolutely not been destined for the crown, but the early deaths of his elder brother and father placed him in line, and in seventeen seventy, at the age of only fifteen, he was married to a fourteen year

old Austrian arch Duchess Marie Antoinette. Their unimion was political. It was intended to cement the fragile alliance between the Borbon dynasty of France and the Habsburgs of Austria, forged in the diplomatic revolution of seventeen fifty six that also witnessed the rise of Prussia and the reorientation of Britain. Louis was thoughtful, conscientious, and dutiful. It was also very, very hesitant. He preferred the workshop and the hunt to

the politics of Versailles. He was fascinated by locks and locksmithing, often retreating to his private rooms to tinker with iron and gears. His tutors had instilled a sense of morality and duty, but not the political skill to master the factions and intrigues of court. In May seventeen seventy four, when his grandfather Louis the fifteenth succumbed to smallpox, Louis the sixteenth became king. He was crowned at Reims, the capital, in the following year, in a ceremony that recalled the

grandeur of the Capacian monarchy. Crowds hailed him as a young reformer, a fresh beginning after decades of scandal and decline. Now for her part, Marie Antoinette was born in Vienna in seventeen seventy five, the fifteenth child of Empress Maria Teresa of Austria and Emperor Francis the First. Her mother, a formidable ruler, saw her daughter's marriage to the French

heir as a master stroke of diplomacy. Raised in the opulent but disciplined Viennese court, Marie Antoinette arrived in France with little education and a reputation for gaiety at Versailles. She quickly attract attention. She was graceful, loved music and dancing, and was known for her radiant smile. But her position was never easy. The French court, always weary of Austrian influence,

treated her with disdain and suspicion for years. Her marriage with Louis remained unconsummated, an awkward fact whispered about in the salons and pamphlets, undermining her dignity as dauphine and later as queen. By the seventeen eighties, she would become infamous as le Chenet, a cruel play on the words meeting both the Austrian woman and in it sound the

Austrian bitch. Yet early in her reign she was admired for her beauty and youth, a symbol of renewal beside her earnest husband, Louis the sixteenth began his reign determined to repair the monarchy's finances and restore confidence. His predecessor had left France near bankruptcy, its treasury drained by the Seven Years War and its humiliating loss of Canada and India.

Louis turned to his capable ministers as a response. Na Robert Jacques Urgeaux, his first Controller General of Finances, produced sweeping reforms, cutting court expenses, reducing tariffs, abolishing feudal dues, and freeing the grain trade. Turgeaud declared in seventeen seventy six no bankruptcy, no increase of taxes, no new loans, only economy and reform. But his reforms treated noble privilege and threatened it, and opposition in the court and Parlement

eventually forced his dismissal. He was succeeded by Jacques Necker, a Swiss banker of Protestant background. Neckuier introduced loans rather than new taxes to finance the government, and in seventeen eighty one he published the first ever Comte de Rendeus de Las, the first public budget in French history. It painted a misleadingly optimistic picture of royal finances, but it won him immense popularity. Is a little bit of a

wonder child. Neckayre's dismissal that same year further fed the public sense that the vested interest at court were obstructing reform. While Louis labored, often ineffectively, over fiscal reform, Marie Antoinette carved out her own space at Versailles. She retreated from the formalities of the grand courts to her private refuge, the Petit Trian, where she entertained close friends in a

more intimate style. She delighted in the pastoral fantasy of the jimad rein a mock village where she could play it being a shepherdess amid artificial streams and cottages. To her, these escapes offered freedom from suffocating ceremony. To her critics, they symbolized extravagance and frivolity. The Queen's love of fashion, Towering hairstyles, costly gowns, diamonds made her an easy target

in a country where bread was growing scarce. Satirical pamphlets spread rumors of her lovers, of debauchery, of callous indifference. None of those things were true in the extreme, but they shaped a dangerous public perception. The infamous diamond necklace affair of seventeen eighty five, in which a fraudulent scheme implicated her in the supposed purchase of a wildly expensive necklace,

further blackened her reputation. Though she was innocent, the scandal fed the myth of the spendthrift, immoral queen indifferent to her subject suffering now Louis the sixteenth, for his part, he was not entirely timid when it came to the international stage. When the American colonists rose against Britain, he saw an opportunity for revenge against his nation's old enemy. Though cautious at first, he approved of covert aid and

eventually open alliance. By seventeen seventy eight, after the critical American victory at the Battle of Saratoga, France had joined the American War of Independence. Victory was sweet, indeed, New Yorktown in seventeen eighty one, secured with French military, naval support effectively humiliated Britain, Yet the war's costs were immense. By seventeen eighty three, France had spent over a billion livre,

piling debt upon debt. The glory of defeating Britain did not restore France's colonial empire, but it deepened the fiscal crisis back at home. Throughout the seventeen eighties, the monarchy staggered from one financial expedient to another. Ministers proposed new taxes that would fall upon the privileged states, the nobility and clergy. Each time, parlements resisted, presenting themselves as defenders

of traditional liberties against royal despotism. In seventeen eighty seven, Louis Minister Colonne proposed a sweeping plan of tax reform, a land tax for the first time without any exemption for a state. It was presented to an assembly of notables, but the nobles refused. The king dismissed Kelown, but the problem only deepened. His successor, Briann, tried to push reforms

through parlements, which again were resisted. And we're going to go into more detail in that in just a second, because I want to talk about really the missed opportunity here. The reality is is that by the mid seventeen eighties France was staggering under the weight of a financial system that was not designed for a modern nation state. It was designed for a small medieval kingdom of earlier centuries.

These wars, I mean cut them up, the War of Austrian Section, the Seven Years War, and most recently the American War of Independence, they had all drained the treasury. The French crown owed over four billion livre debt service was consuming half of the state's revenues. And for all of this, where did the taxation fall, Not on the wealthiest, not on the nobility or the clergy. It almost exclusively fell through the direct land tax, the taala, all on

the peasants. And so let's dig into this a little bit more deeply. Because the king's financial minister, Charles Alexandre de Cologne, he knew what was going on. He realized that only radical reform could save France from bankruptcy. And so the solution, as they mentioned before, that bold new land tax without exemptions, touching nobles and clergy as well as commoners. It made a lot of sense. And he also proposed that provincial assemblies administer this tax more equitably.

There would be new internal free trade measures and a general reform of the grain market. To Cologne, this was a project of enlightened absolutism. The king, he thought, could impose reform for the good of the nation. Unfortunately, he was not the man to put this forward. Colonne or Cologne, the way you want to say it, was a man of extravagant tastes, with a reputation for reckless spending, and he had almost no allies in all of the court.

The Parliament of Paris, the traditional high court that also registered royal edicts, was totally hostile to any tax innovation imposed without its consent, and therefore Cologne advised Louis the sixteenth to bypass the Parlements entirely and instead to call an Assembly of notables. The Assembly of Notables, which sat from February in May seventeen eighty seven, was one of

the last opportunities to avoid the French Revolution. This body had no constitutional standing it had last been called in sixteen twenty six under then Cardinal Richelieu. But the idea was pretty simple. Gather one hundred and forty four hand picked men, nobles, bishop's, magistrates, and a sprinkling of royal officials so that they could endorse the King's reforms and

give the machine of legitimacy. Louis the sixteenth opened the Assembly in February seventeen eighty seven at Versailles with solemn words quote, we are assembled to deliberate upon the means to secure the prosperity of my kingdom and the relief of my people. The king hoped the nobles would rally to this call, but instead of providing support, the Assembly proved skeptical an obstructionist, many nobles resenting being asked to

sacrifice privileges. Others suspected Cologne's scheme, masking his own mismanagement. The Archbishop of Toulouse at Tiennecharlos des la Main Brienne, emerged as a leading critic, insisting that reforms required deeper justification and more transparency. In April, when Cologne's enemies prevailed, the Minister was dismissed in disgrace, and of course it was Brian then who replaced him as Controller General. Ironically, once he was in office, he could see the books,

and then he immediately adopted all of Cutloane's proposals. Recognizing their necessity. The Assembly by that point, though, was too far gone, and it dissolved without approving any of the reforms, and so the opportunity had been squandered. Instead of broad consensus, Louis the sixteenth now faced open resistance. Brienne, recognizing the extreme danger of the situation, now tried to push the

measure through the Parlement of Paris. In July of seventeen eighty seven, the Parliament declared that only the Estates General, the full representative body of clergy, nobility and commons, which had met since sixteen fourteen, had the authority to sanction new taxes. This was a stunning assertion. It implied that the crown could not legislate financial reform on its own.

Louis the sixteenth reacted with irritation. In August, he summoned the Parliament to Paris and, in a dramatic moment, commanded the registration of the new taxes. Yet such royal bullying only fueled resistance. Parliamentaries cast themselves as the defenders of the nation against arbitrary power. Crowds in Paris hailed them as heroes. The struggle escalated in seventeen eighty eight. The parliaments banished for defiance were recalled amid public uproar, only

to resume their obstruction. Provincial assemblies and noble corporations joined in the protest. The monarchy attempted repression, censoring pamphlets and arresting magistrates. The popular opinion had now turned decisively against Louis Court. In Grenoble, when royal troops tried to dissolve the local parliament, townspeople rioted from the rooftops. They heard tiles down upon the soldiers in what became known as the Day of Tiles, the seventh of June seventeen eighty eight.

It was one of the first violent confrontation of the coming revolution, symbolizing the defense of liberty was no longer confined to courtrooms, but had spilled out onto the streets. At the same time, France was suffering natural calamity. The winter of seventeen eighty eight eighty nine was among the harshest of the century, destroying harvests and sending bread prices soaring. Popular anger mingled with constitutional crisis. By the summer of

seventeen eighty eight, Brienne was bankruptically and fiscally. The government could not raise loans, tax farmers balked at advancing funds, and so in desperation, Louis the sixteenth announced that he would summon the Estates General in May seventeen eighty nine. It was a remarkable concession. The monarchy, once absolute, was

acknowledging the need for national representation. Brienne resigned in August of seventeen eighty eight, and Jacques Neckaire, popular with the public and remembered for his earlier tenure during the American War, returned as Finance minister. Nickare's recall was greeted with jubilation in Paris, but it was way too late to stabilize royal authority. The Assembly of Notables had been intended as

a way to legitimate reform from above. Instead, all it had done was reveal the depth of aristocratic resistance and opened the door for demands for wider representation. The parliaments, though conservative and intent, had popularized the idea that only the nation could consent to new taxation. By seventeen eighty eight,

the monarchy's authority had been fatally weakened. As one contemporary pamphleteer put it, it was not America that ruined France, but the notables and parliaments who would not let her be saved. Thus, from the polished halls of Versailles to the tiled roofs of Grenoble. The year seventeen eighty seven

to seventeen eighty eight marked the prelude to revolution. By summoning the Estates General, Louis the sixteenth set in motion forces he could no longer control, and the Anson regime entered its final act