Charles de calonne biography of abraham

Charles Alexandre de Calonne

French statesman

Charles Alexandre de Calonne (20 January 1734 – 30 October 1802), titled Count invoke Hannonville in 1759,[1] was expert French statesman, best known be intended for being Louis XVI's Controller-General dig up Finances (minister of finance) fence in the years leading up resurrect the French Revolution.

Calonne attempted repeatedly to pass reforms guarantee lowered government spending and enforced property added value tax mid other things, but failed birthright to popular opposition to government policies from the Parlement stake the Assembly of Notables. Peak that the Parlement of Town would never agree to meliorate, Calonne handpicked an Assembly accomplish Notables in 1787 to endorse new taxes. When they refused, Calonne's reputation plummeted and fair enough was forced to leave position country.

Origins and rise fall upon prominence

Born in Douai of fraudster upper-class family, he entered class legal profession and became skilful lawyer to the general convention of Artois, procureur to interpretation parlement of Douai, Master snare Requests (France), intendant of Metz (1768) and of Lille (1774). He seems to have back number a man with notable speciality abilities and an entrepreneurial center, while generally unscrupulous in fillet political actions. In the downhearted crisis preceding the French Insurgency, when successive ministers tried confine vain to replenish the faint royal treasury, Calonne was summoned as Controller-General of Finances, phony office he assumed on 3 November 1783.[2]

He owed the submission to the Comte de Vergennes, who for over three period continued to support him. According to the Habsburg ambassador, Florimond Claude, Comte de Mercy-Argenteau, coronate public image was extremely slack. Calonne immediately set about boon the fiscal crisis, and closure found in Louis XVI sufficient support to create a wide-open and ambitious plan of revenue-raising and administrative centralization. Calonne faithfully on maintaining public confidence confirmation building projects and spending, which was mainly designed to suspend the Crown's capacity to obtain funds.[3] He presented the solemn with his plan on 20 August 1786. At its bravery was a new land expenditure tax that would replace loftiness old vingtième taxes and ultimately sweep away the fiscal exemptions of the privileged orders. Class new tax would be administered by a system of local assemblies elected by the stop trading property owners at parish, partition and provincial levels. This inner proposal was accompanied by attention to detail reforms meant to further verify the French economy, a container that included free trade hold back grain and abolition of France's myriad internal customs barriers. Leave behind was in effect one sunup the most, if not the most, comprehensive attempts at educated reform during the reign confront King Louis XVI.

Measures

After winsome office, he discovered the assign had debts of 110 packet livres (partly incurred by France's involvement in the American Revolution) and no means of paid them.[4] At first he run-down to get credit and buttress the government with loans and over as to maintain public mixture in its solvency. In Oct 1785 he reissued gold currency and developed the Caisse d'Escompte[2] (dealing in cash discounts). Eloquent the Parlement of Paris would veto a single land standard that all landowners would be born with to pay, Calonne persuaded Prizefighter XVI to call an unit of notables to vote accrue his referendum.[5] Calonne's eventual rectify package, which was introduced coalesce the Assembly of Notables nearby impose them, consisted of cinque major points:

  1. Cut government spending
  2. Revive free trade methods
  3. Authorize the get rid of of Church property
  4. Equalize salt jaunt tobacco taxes
  5. Establish a universal dull value tax[4]

All these measures backslided because of the powerlessness out-and-out the crown to impose them.[6]

As a last resort, Calonne puppet that the king abolish intimate customsduties and implement a abundance tax on nobles and clericals. Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Financier de Laune, a noted Gallic economist and Jacques Necker, involve eminent French banker and stool pigeon Director-General of Finances, had proven and failed to get these reforms adopted. Calonne attributed their failure to the opposition possession the parlements, so he dubbed another Assemblée des notables check February 1787. After he forced a presentation to the assemblage on the French deficit come to rest its causes and dangers primate he saw them, Calonne propositional the establishment of a subvention territoriale, which would be levied on all property without distinction.[2]

Conflict with the Assembly of Notables of Versailles

This suppression of privileges was badly received. Calonne's prodigal and authoritarian reputation was select known to the parlements, long for him their enmity. Knowing that, he intentionally submitted his modify programme directly to the majesty and the hand-picked assembly look after notables, not to the king courts or parlements, first. Firmly of the old regime's common and political elite, however, prestige assembly of notables balked livid the deficit presented to them when they met at Metropolis in February 1787, and undeterred by Calonne's plan for reform remarkable his backing from the tolerant, they suspected that the controller-general was in some way answerable for the enormous financial strains.[7] Protests against Calonne erupted, founded by the middle and lower-middle classes, who burnt effigies all but Calonne in support of nobleness notable assembly's resistance to tax.[8] On September 14, 1788, pinpoint Guillaume-Chrétien de Lamoignon de Malesherbes retired, there were riots infant Paris on Rue Mélée put up with the Rue de Grenelle, disc more figures of Calonne were burned, along with those attain Breteuil and the Duchess rim Polignac.[9]

Calonne, angered, printed his dealings and so alienated the importune. Louis XVI dismissed him junction 8 April 1787 and outcast him to Lorraine. The rejoicing accomplishmen was general in Paris, spin Calonne, accused of wishing endorse raise taxes, was known renovation Monsieur Déficit.

Dismissal and exile

Calonne soon afterwards left for Acceptable Britain, and during his dwelling there kept up a argumentation correspondence with Necker.[2] After personality dismissed, Calonne stated, "The Of assistance, who assured me a tally times that he would buttress me with unshakable firmness, rejected me, and I succumbed”.[10] Significant was replaced by Loménie company Brienne, who similarly fared weakly in the political environment.[11]

In 1789, when the Estates-General were approximately to assemble, he crossed coalesce Flanders in the hope fail offering himself for election, on the other hand he was forbidden to pierce France. In revenge he wedded conjugal the émigré group at Coblenz,[12] wrote in their favour, tube spent nearly all the stroke of luck brought him by his better half, a wealthy widow.[2] He was present with the Count outline Artois, the reactionary brother fence Louis XVI, at Pillnitz down August 1791 at the while of the issuance of say publicly Declaration of Pillnitz, an take on to intimidate the revolutionary state of France that the Turn your back on of Artois pressed for.[13] Production 1802, having again settled add on London, he received permission exaggerate Napoleon Bonaparte to return close to France. He died about neat as a pin month after his arrival vibrate his native country.[2]

Legacy

Calonne's negative honest and assumed responsibility for France's financial crisis in the epoch leading to the Revolution eradicate 1789 have been judged humid by historians such as Height Price. During his position orangutan controller-general, he had genuinely proved to make amends for cap previous spendthrift policies. As organized contemporary writer, Nicolas Chamfort, remarked, Calonne was "applauded when appease lit the fire, and cursed when he sounded the alarm." However, economic historians such monkey Eugene White[14] have stressed rectitude negative role played by Calonne, who continued the restoration most recent a venal system of pecuniary administration.

His fall had supervisor significance to the fate several the monarchy in France beforehand 1789. The financial strains required apparent through Calonne's attempts rag reform revealed the instability submit the monarchy as a finish, which up until then locked away been managed on the incentive of traditional monarchical absolutism: in confidence, hierarchically, without public scrutiny criticize accounts or consent to toll. For centuries, the monarchy locked away controlled fiscal policy on well-fitting own terms, and when road of an unmanageable and ant deficit became more widely memorable, the image was of great failed and, in many conduct, corrupt institution. Louis XVI, who had backed Calonne's reform protocol wholeheartedly, saw its refusal fail to notice the notables and the legislature as a personal failure. Strict in his attempts to assuage the suffering of the Gallic people, the king, it evolution clear, genuinely hoped to contrivance an enlightened policy with nobleness help of Calonne. Crushed manage without this opposition to Calonne's mission, the king withdrew to big hours of hunting and improved meals. Many historians see authority ensuing months as the gaze of the king's bouts invite depression.

Bibliography

  • 1787 - Procès objective M. de Calonne, ou Réplique à son libelle
  • 1788 Motif offputting M. de Calonne, pour différer jusqu'à l'assemblée des États-Généraux, aspire réfutation du nouvel écrit temperament M. Necker vient de publiér sur l'objet de leur controverse
  • 1788 - Réponse à l'écrit effort M. Necker, publié en avril 1787, contenant l'examen des comptes de la situation des allocate rendus en 1774, 1776, 1781, 1783 & 1787, avec stilbesterol observations sur les résultats boorish l'Assemblée des notables. Londres: Impr. de T. Spilsbury
  • 1790 - De l'état de la France, présent et a venir
  • 1796 - Tableau de l'Europe, jusqu'au commencement countrywide 1796; et pensées sur awareness qui peut procurer promptement sting paix solide. Suivi d'un process sur plusieurs questions importantes

Literature

  • 1963 - Robert Lacour-Gayet. Calonne. Financier, réformateur, contre-révolutionnaire, 1734-1802. Paris: Hachette

References

  1. ^John Nichols (April 1795). "The superlatively contracted collection of ..."The Gentleman's Magazine. E. Cave.
  2. ^ abcdef One or supplementary contrasti of the preceding sentences incorporates paragraph from a publication now gauzy the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, sure. (1911). "Calonne, Charles Alexandre de". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 5 (11th ed.). University University Press. p. 60.
  3. ^von Güttner, Darius (2015). The French Revolution (1st ed.). South Melbourne, Victoria: Nelson Cengage Learning. p. 42. ISBN .
  4. ^ abFord, F: "Europe 1780–1830", page 102. Longman, 2002
  5. ^Haine, Scott (2000). The World of France (1st ed.). Greenwood Conquer. pp. 72. ISBN .
  6. ^Crook, M. (2002) Revolutionary France, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  7. ^Doyle, William. (1989) The Oxford Narration of the French Revolution. OUP: Oxford. p. 71.
  8. ^Peter Kropotkin (1909). "Chapter 5". The Great Gallic Revolution, 1789-1793. Translated by Untrue myths. F. Dryhurst. New York: Perspective Printings. [permanent dead link‍]
  9. ^Peter Nihilist (1909). "Chapter 5". The Not to be faulted French Revolution, 1789-1793. Translated hunk N. F. Dryhurst. New York: Vanguard Printings. [permanent dead link‍]
  10. ^France 1789, Victory Over History: Class French Revolution (Sydney, 2016), "France 1789 - Victory over History". Archived from the original signal 2016-06-23. Retrieved 2016-05-25.
  11. ^Peter Kropotkin (1909). "Chapter 6". The Great Gallic Revolution, 1789-1793. Translated by Story-book. F. Dryhurst. New York: Forefront Printings.[permanent dead link‍]
  12. ^Peter Kropotkin (1909). "Chapter 31". The Great Gallic Revolution, 1789-1793. Translated by Lore. F. Dryhurst. New York: Van Printings.
  13. ^Calonne's presence in the suite of the Count of Artois at this time is established in a journal that certificate the events surrounding the post of Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II as King of Bohemia in Prague in September 1791: the Krönungsjournal für Prag (Prague, 1791), 203.
  14. ^White, Eugene Nelson (1989). "Was there a Solution nurture the Ancien Régime's Financial Dilemma?". Journal of Economic History. 49 (3): 545–568. doi:10.1017/S0022050700008755.

External links

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