Process
Status Items Highlights Done See section below Claims None Questions None Output None
Highlights
Time 0:08:44
Calonne’s Assembly of Notables
- Calonne’s financial reform plan, presented to the Assembly of Notables, appeared rushed and improvised.
- This lack of preparation invited scrutiny from the assembly, as it seemed to demand a thorough review before approval.
- Calonne’s imperious tone and refusal to open the royal ledgers further fueled suspicion and resistance to his proposals.
- His claim that the Comte d’Aranda was a fraud was seen as an attempt to shift blame for deficits.
- The reform package included a uniform land tax, applicable to all, and the abolishment of provincial assemblies. Transcript: Speaker 1 And it wasn’t until last minute that the raw materials he and his assistants had been working from were finally cobbled together into something resembling a coherent plan. So though what he handed to the notables was pretty well thought out, it looked like a slap together pile of half baked improvisations that deserved, and, frankly, demanded, a thorough Going over before it could be approved. But cologne was not prepared for this level of scrutiny at all, as can be deduced from the blunt and rather imperious tone of his opening remarks. After dropping the bombshell that the monarchy was more than a hundred million livres in the red, cologne inexplicably refused to open the royal ledgers to scrutiny, telling the notables That he had shown the numbers to the king, the king had approved the numbers, and that should be good enough for them. This naturally raised suspicions that he was cooking the books for his own purp his further claim that the comte randu had been a total fraud was also taken as a self serving ploy to blame Neker for deficits probably run up by cologne himself. So clearly, these were not the actions of someone expecting the assembly’s deliberations to be anything more than a mere formality. I don’t think it even occurred to him that the notables wouldn’t approve the package, let alone that this would all lead to him kicked out of the ministry in disgrace. Ok, so let’s get into the guts of the thing. What cologne presented to the assembly was a reform package divided into four sections. The first dealt with two major initiatives that were the keystone