The Assembly of Notables and Failed Reform

By 1786, Controller-General Calonne recognized that fiscal crisis required fundamental reform. His plan—a territorial tax on all landowners, provincial assemblies, and economic liberalization—resembled previous proposals but faced the same obstacle: implementation required consent from privileged orders who would suffer. Calonne's solution, convoking an Assembly of Notables (February 1787) to endorse reforms before parliamentary registration, proved catastrophically misconceived.

The 144 Notables—archbishops, nobles, magistrates, and municipal officers—represented precisely those whose privileges were threatened. Rather than endorsing reforms, they demanded accounts justifying necessity, revealing the 112 million livre annual deficit Calonne admitted. They questioned royal authority to impose taxes without consent. Most remarkably, they suggested only the Estates-General, not convoked since 1614, could approve new taxes. This aristocratic constitutionalism, cloaking privilege protection in liberty rhetoric, paralyzed royal government.

The Assembly's resistance demonstrated how Enlightenment language could serve conservative purposes. Notables quoted Montesquieu on intermediate bodies checking despotism. They invoked natural rights requiring consent to taxation. They demanded provincial assemblies with real power, not royal administrative conveniences. This aristocratic revolution preceded and shaped popular revolution, establishing precedents for resistance while weakening royal ability to manage change.

Calonne's dismissal and replacement by Loménie de Brienne, favored by the queen and Notables, only worsened matters. Brienne's attempts to implement similar reforms through traditional channels met parliamentary resistance even fiercer than that faced by his predecessors. The Parlement of Paris's declaration that only the Estates-General could approve new taxes transformed fiscal crisis into constitutional crisis. Royal attempts to override resistance through lit de justice ceremonies provoked parliamentary exile and popular demonstrations supporting magistrates as liberty's defenders.