Turgot's Reforms and Their Failure

Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot's ministry (1774-1776) represented the Enlightenment's best opportunity to reform France through royal authority. His program—free trade in grain, abolition of guilds, elimination of the corvée (forced road labor), and eventual tax equality—promised economic modernization and fiscal recovery. His famous Six Edicts of 1776 embodied physiocratic principles that economic liberty would generate prosperity, providing resources for royal government while improving subjects' welfare.

The reforms' implementation revealed the obstacles facing even well-conceived changes. Free trade in grain, introduced during poor harvests, led to price increases that sparked the "Flour War" of 1775. Rioters, believing traditional royal obligations included ensuring affordable bread, attacked grain convoys and bakeries. Military suppression restored order but damaged royal popularity. Guild abolition threatened artisans' protected status and urban order. Corvée replacement by monetary taxes paid by all landowners aroused noble and clerical resistance to fiscal equality.

Opposition mobilized quickly through various channels. The parlements, led by Paris, refused to register edicts they claimed violated fundamental laws protecting privilege. The clergy assembly protested threats to tax immunity. Court factions, particularly those around the king's brother Provence and the queen, intrigued against a minister whose economies threatened their interests. Popular resistance to grain price increases provided pretexts for elite opposition motivated by privilege.

Louis XVI's dismissal of Turgot (May 1776) demonstrated the king's fundamental weakness: inability to sustain unpopular but necessary reforms against determined opposition. Influenced by courtiers and alarmed by disorder, the king sacrificed a minister whose program might have prevented revolution. Turgot's parting warning—"Remember, Sire, that it was weakness that brought Charles I to the scaffold"—proved prophetic. The failure established a pattern: reform attempts generating resistance leading to retreat, each cycle weakening royal authority while leaving problems unresolved.