[Sidenote: Louis XVI, 1774-1792]
His successor was his grandson, Louis XVI (1774-1792), a weak-kneed prince of twenty years, very virtuous and well-meaning, but lacking in intelligence and will-power. He was too awkward and shy to preside with dignity over the ceremonious court; he was too stupid and lazy to dominate the ministry. He liked to shoot deer from out the palace window, or to play at lock-making in his royal carpentry shop. Government he left to his ministers.
[Sidenote: Turgot]
At first, hopes ran high, for Turgot, friend of Voltaire and contributor to the Encyclopedia, was minister of finance (1774- 1776), and reform was in the air. Industry and commerce were to be unshackled; laisser-faire was to be the order of the day; finances were to be reformed, and taxes lowered. The clergy and nobles were no longer to escape taxation; taxes on food were to be abolished; the peasants were to be freed from forced labor on the roads. But Turgot only stirred up opposition. The nobles and clergy were not anxious to be taxed; courtiers resented any reduction of their pensions; tax-farmers feared the reforming minister; owners of industrial monopolies were frightened; the peasants misunderstood his intentions; and riots broke out. Everybody seemed to be relieved when, in 1776, Turgot was dismissed.
[Sidenote: Necker]
Turgot had been a theorist; his successor was a businessman. Jacques Necker was well known in Paris as a hard-headed Swiss banker, and Madame Necker's receptions were attended by the chief personages of the bourgeois society of Paris. During his five years in office (1776-1781) Necker applied business methods to the royal finances. He borrowed 400,000,000 francs from his banker friends, reformed the collection of taxes, reduced expenditures, and carefully audited the accounts. In 1781 he issued a report or "Account Rendered of the Financial Condition." The bankers were delighted; the secrets of the royal treasury were at last common property; [Footnote: The Compte Rendu, as it was called in France, was really not accurate; Necker, in order to secure credit for his financial administration, made matters appear better than they actually were.] and Necker was praised to the skies.
[Sidenote: Marie Antoinette]
While Necker's Parisian friends rejoiced, his enemies at court prepared his downfall. Now the most powerful enemy of Necker's reforms and economies was the queen, Marie Antoinette. She was an Austrian princess, the daughter of Maria Theresa, and in the eyes of the French people she always remained a hated foreigner—"the Austrian," they called her—the living symbol of the ruinous alliance between Habsburgs and Bourbons which had been arranged by a Madame de Pompadour and which had contributed to the disasters and disgrace of the Seven Years' War [Footnote: See above, pp. 358 ff]. While grave ministers of finance were puzzling their heads over the deficit, gay Marie Antoinette was buying new dresses and jewelry, making presents to her friends, giving private theatricals, attending horse-races and masked balls. The light- hearted girl-queen had little serious interest in politics, but when her friends complained of Necker's miserliness, she at once demanded his dismissal.
Her demand was granted, for the kind-hearted, well-intentioned Louis XVI could not bear to deprive his pretty, irresponsible Marie Antoinette and her charming friends,—gallant nobles of France,—of their pleasures. Their pleasures were very costly; and fresh loans could be secured by the obsequious new finance-minister, Calonne, only at high rates of interest.
From the standpoint of France, the greatest folly of Louis XVI's reign was the ruinous intervention in the War of American Independence (1778- 1783). The United States became free; Great Britain was humbled; Frenchmen proved that their valor was equal to their chivalry; but when the impulsive Marquis de Lafayette returned from assisting the Americans to win their liberty, he found a ruined France. The treasury was on the verge of collapse. From the conclusion of the war in 1783 to the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, every possible financial expedient was tried—in vain.