4 - Peter McPhee

‘mismanaging’ crisis implies some responsibility on part of Louis + his ministers

‘bringing them closer to the code of nature’ - impications to Rousseau (page 40)

‘But the monarchy and its fractured noble elite mismanaged the challenge’ (page 41)

1780s described as ‘crisis of legitimacy’ - there were attacks on political order especially on the ‘barabarity’ of feudalism - memoires went from 10k to 20k in Paris from 1770s to 1780s (increase in scale)

Attacks from some nobles (e.g. Mirabeau) → attacks Feudalism and noble privelege (recognise their priveleges are a problem)

Other nobles attack monarchy as they are trying to pass reforms which would take away from the nobles’ privelege

Financial crisis also plots nobles against monarchy

in 1775, 377m livres income and 411 livres spending → going to result in debt + laying foundations for financial crisis (American War of Independence made this so much worse) (page 41)

monarchy had embarked on sweeping reforms to reduce the capacity of venal office holders and their ability to reject reform (especially about taxation) → would make Bourgeoisie angry (page 42)

tension between crown and aristocracy peaked after failed reforms with Calonne and Brienne

Causes of ‘crisis of legitimacy’

  • enlightenment ideas among groups in the bourgeoisie + a new political culture

  • American War of Independence: financial crisis govt. become target in political attacks

page 46 - court spending is scapegoated

fractures over taxation and privelege between the bourgeoisie (3rd estate) + nobility (page 45) “powerful current of reform” of privelege

Disagrees w Marxists

page 56 - “no unification of the bourgeois with the wider Third Estate”

“No self-concious class of bourgeois”

Rural crisis?

  • Dramatic and feeds into attacks on noble privelege as hungry peasants would attack their landowners, who are simultaneously raising rent

Post revisionist argument - “Regimes are in crisis far more often than they are overthrown”