Reinterpreting the French Revolution: A global-historical perspective by BAILEY STONE Page A
Authors: BAILEY STONE
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XV’s reign was out, however, the Farmers-General were
“usually men not only of wealth but of assured and cultivated manner,”
and their families now “interlaced at every level with the high nobility, the
magistracy, and the clans which supplied the state with its chief adminis-
trators.”92 In other words, the Farmers-General, like other state financiers,
had “arrived” socially. Yet here social evolution was, if anything, producing
more securely entrenched nobles, not newer nobles. And for this the government would pay dearly. As John Bosher and others have repeatedly
pointed out, royal fiscal woes were aggravated in the course of the eigh-
teenth century by the crown’s inability to extract unseemly profits from
socially “well-connected” financiers (as it had in earlier times squeezed
90 Vivian R. Gruder, The Royal Provincial Intendants: A Governing Elite in Eighteenth-Century France (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1968), pp. 205–6.
91 Shelby T. McCloy, Government Assistance in Eighteenth-Century France (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1946).
92 G. T. Matthews, The Royal General Farms in Eighteenth-Century France (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958), pp. 238– 41. On this point, see also Yves Durand, Finance et mécénat: Les Fermiers-Généraux au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Hachette, 1976), passim.
44
Reinterpreting the French Revolution
ill-gotten gains from less well-established “capitalists”) in extrajudicial
proceedings.93
The considerable, but ultimately limited, impact of state service was
evident in the law courts as well. To be sure, the Bourbon kings had never
really wielded a tight control over the personnel in the hierarchy of tri-
bunals. The so-called sovereign courts at the apex of the judicial system –
parlements, chambers of accounts, courts of aides , and so on – had long
been self-recruiting bodies, and the ordinary workings of venality and
heredity in office ensured that a similar situation prevailed also in the
middle- and lower-echelon tribunals. On the one hand, this made for a
degree of ongoing social evolution. Careful examination of the Paris and
provincial parlements has revealed that the highly educated and techni-
cally skilled “robe” nobles, men who were often of fairly recent bourgeois
provenance, achieved the same ascendancy in the higher courts as did their
counterparts in the central and provincial administration. In these hugely
influential courts, as in the king’s Council and the provincial intendancies,
the eighteenth century witnessed not so much an “aristocratic reaction”
as a “professionalization” of elite Frenchmen.94 Nonetheless, as a rule the
parlements and other “sovereign courts” continued to be dominated by
nobility of one stripe or another under Louis XV and his successor, and
several of these institutions – most notoriously the parlement at Rennes –
remained veritable citadels of the old sword. This could only guarantee
heightened social frustrations – all the more in that the recruitment of liter-
ally thousands of ambitious and intelligent bourgeois into the “presidial,”
bailliage , and sénéchaussée courts at the intermediate level and into the provost and seigneurial tribunals at the lowest level of the judiciary served
to diffuse professional and civic values – and, more to the point, expecta-
tions of promotion – among ever greater numbers in middle-class society.95
In judicial as in administrative (and financial) ranks, then, service to the
bellicose state contributed to (but could not, before 1789, complete) the
modernization of elite French society.
But state service doubtless had its most divisive impact in the armed
forces, those most immediate instruments of Bourbon geopolitics. Under
the Sun King and his successor, duty as commissioned officers in the army
imposed a formidable financial burden upon the men seemingly destined
93 Bosher, “
“usually men not only of wealth but of assured and cultivated manner,”
and their families now “interlaced at every level with the high nobility, the
magistracy, and the clans which supplied the state with its chief adminis-
trators.”92 In other words, the Farmers-General, like other state financiers,
had “arrived” socially. Yet here social evolution was, if anything, producing
more securely entrenched nobles, not newer nobles. And for this the government would pay dearly. As John Bosher and others have repeatedly
pointed out, royal fiscal woes were aggravated in the course of the eigh-
teenth century by the crown’s inability to extract unseemly profits from
socially “well-connected” financiers (as it had in earlier times squeezed
90 Vivian R. Gruder, The Royal Provincial Intendants: A Governing Elite in Eighteenth-Century France (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1968), pp. 205–6.
91 Shelby T. McCloy, Government Assistance in Eighteenth-Century France (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1946).
92 G. T. Matthews, The Royal General Farms in Eighteenth-Century France (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958), pp. 238– 41. On this point, see also Yves Durand, Finance et mécénat: Les Fermiers-Généraux au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Hachette, 1976), passim.
44
Reinterpreting the French Revolution
ill-gotten gains from less well-established “capitalists”) in extrajudicial
proceedings.93
The considerable, but ultimately limited, impact of state service was
evident in the law courts as well. To be sure, the Bourbon kings had never
really wielded a tight control over the personnel in the hierarchy of tri-
bunals. The so-called sovereign courts at the apex of the judicial system –
parlements, chambers of accounts, courts of aides , and so on – had long
been self-recruiting bodies, and the ordinary workings of venality and
heredity in office ensured that a similar situation prevailed also in the
middle- and lower-echelon tribunals. On the one hand, this made for a
degree of ongoing social evolution. Careful examination of the Paris and
provincial parlements has revealed that the highly educated and techni-
cally skilled “robe” nobles, men who were often of fairly recent bourgeois
provenance, achieved the same ascendancy in the higher courts as did their
counterparts in the central and provincial administration. In these hugely
influential courts, as in the king’s Council and the provincial intendancies,
the eighteenth century witnessed not so much an “aristocratic reaction”
as a “professionalization” of elite Frenchmen.94 Nonetheless, as a rule the
parlements and other “sovereign courts” continued to be dominated by
nobility of one stripe or another under Louis XV and his successor, and
several of these institutions – most notoriously the parlement at Rennes –
remained veritable citadels of the old sword. This could only guarantee
heightened social frustrations – all the more in that the recruitment of liter-
ally thousands of ambitious and intelligent bourgeois into the “presidial,”
bailliage , and sénéchaussée courts at the intermediate level and into the provost and seigneurial tribunals at the lowest level of the judiciary served
to diffuse professional and civic values – and, more to the point, expecta-
tions of promotion – among ever greater numbers in middle-class society.95
In judicial as in administrative (and financial) ranks, then, service to the
bellicose state contributed to (but could not, before 1789, complete) the
modernization of elite French society.
But state service doubtless had its most divisive impact in the armed
forces, those most immediate instruments of Bourbon geopolitics. Under
the Sun King and his successor, duty as commissioned officers in the army
imposed a formidable financial burden upon the men seemingly destined
93 Bosher, “
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