Lafayette by Harlow Giles Unger

Author:Harlow Giles Unger [Unger, Harlow Giles]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780470243565
Publisher: Turner Publishing Co.
Published: 2007-08-03T04:00:00+00:00

14

“I Reign in Paris”

On May 25, 1787, the Constitutional Convention convened in Philadelphia to create a new nation; on the same day in Versailles, the Assemblée des Notables dissolved in indecision and propelled an old nation toward destruction. Ironically, the king, whose inertia, uncertainty, and disinterest had encouraged assembly inaction, thanked the Assembly for doing nothing, and the Assembly president, Archbishop de Brienne, predicted, “The present crisis will become the starting point of a new splendor.” As both would soon realize in prison cells, the crisis was the starting point of a new stygian darkness.

Ever-jubilant for small victories in a great war, Lafayette predicted “good effects of this Assembly. . . . On the last day of our session,” he boasted to John Jay, “I had the joy of making two motions that received unanimous approval: one in favor of our Protestant citizens, the other to revise the criminal code.”1 Although the king vetoed Lafayette’s proposal to revise the criminal code, he approved some of Lafayette’s proposals for Protestant rights by legalizing Protestant marriages, legitimizing Protestant children, and granting Protestants the right to own property. Although he limited Protestant worship to the privacy of their homes, he allowed them to establish Protestant cemeteries. Jefferson assailed the king’s concessions as too restrictive, but Lafayette was elated and invited Protestant pastors from Nîmes to his home in Paris to celebrate. “The spirit of liberty is gaining ground in this country,” he exulted in a letter to Washington. “Liberal ideas are growing from one end of the country to the other.”2

The king also yielded on the issue of provincial assemblies, but insisted on appointing half the members of each assembly himself. They, in turn, would “elect” the other members to ensure indirect royal control of the entire assembly.

The failure of the Assembly of Notables to raise taxes sent the French economy into free fall, and, by midsummer, the treasury was empty. The king ordered the new provincial assemblies to convene and do what the Assembly of Notables had failed to do: tax themselves to pay for his family’s lavish spending. Appointed a representative of the noble order at the Auvergne assembly, Lafayette went to the provincial capital, Clermont-Ferrand, in August, where, as in every other province, the assembly rejected all new taxes—without commensurate reforms in royal spending. “No reforms, no taxes,” became their rallying cry. The Dauphiné, the inherited province of the crown prince, followed suit, and Brittany’s assembly not only rejected new taxes, it sent twelve noblemen to Versailles to demand spending reforms at the palace. The king promptly imprisoned them in the Bastille. When Lafayette protested, the queen told him that as an Auvergnat he had no business involving himself in the affairs of Brittany. “But I am a Breton, madame,” he snapped, reminding the queen of his mother’s birthright—“just as your majesty is a Hapsburg.”3 The quick-tempered queen demanded that her husband strip the insolent Lafayette of his rank of maréchal de camp—and the king complied.

“They honor me more than I deserve,” Lafayette scoffed, and retired from the active military to devote himself to politics.

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