Necker, at the time his model was made by Curtius and Madame Tussaud, was the French Minister of Finance. In 1775 he had claimed for the State the right of fixing the price of grain and, if necessary, of prohibiting exportation; a year later he was made Director of the Treasury, and in 1777 he became Director-General of Finance.
His retrenchments were bitterly opposed by Queen Marie Antoinette; and his famous Compte Rendu, in 1781, occasioned his dismissal at that time. Some of his measures, such as his adjustment of taxes and his establishment of State-guaranteed annuities and State pawnshops, were a boon to suffering France. He retired to Geneva, but in 1787 returned to Paris, and, when M. de Calonne cast doubt on the Compte Rendu, he published a justification which drew upon him his banishment from Paris.
Recalled to office in September, 1788, he quickly made himself a popular hero by recommending the summoning of the States-General, to which reference has already been made.
On the 11th of July, 1789, he received the royal command to leave France at once; but the fall of the Bastille, three days later, frightened the King into recalling him, amid the wildest popular enthusiasm.
MODEL OF THE BASTILLE
The Duke of Orléans, the famous Égalité, was another hero of the people at this time. He was looked upon coldly at Court owing to his dissolute habits.
London was frequently visited by him, and he became an intimate friend of the Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV. He infected young France with Anglomania in the form of horse-racing and hard drinking, and made himself popular among the lower classes by profuse charity.
In 1787 he showed his liberalism boldly against the King, and as the States-General drew near he lavished his wealth in flooding France with seditious books and papers. In the following year he promulgated his Délibérations, written by Laclos, to the effect that the Third Estate was the nation; and in June, 1789—the month that preceded the fall of the Bastille—he led the forty-seven nobles who seceded from their own order to join that Estate.
The Duke presumed to become constitutional King of France, or at least Regent; but he was only a comparatively small fragment that drifted into the vortex of the Revolution itself. In 1792, when all hereditary titles were swept away, this “citizen” adopted the name of Philippe Égalité.