Challenges to Established Authority 421Parlement of Paris won judicial authority over many ecclesiastical matters.
But the self-proclaimed role of magistrates as representatives of public opin
ion and protectors of the sovereign political will of the nation against
abuses of power was a legacy of the Jansenist crisis.
The layers of economic privilege in France had proliferated with the
extension of state power, as each monarch sought revenues with increased
desperation. Despite increasing calls for reform, even critics who vocifer
ously challenged monopolies (for example, those maintained by guilds) did
not intend to end privileges per se. Rather, many of them wanted a share of
the privileges and wanted to eliminate “unjust” monopolies that seemed to
benefit others unfairly. Wealthy commoners, enriched by the economic
changes, sought the kind of privileges nobles enjoyed—above all, exemption
from many kinds of taxation. Thus, the issue of taxation would mobilize
some of the parlements against the monarchy because it raised questions
about the layers of privilege within the French state and about the limits of
absolute authority.
In 1771, Chancellor Rene-Nicolas de Maupeou (1714-1792) provoked
the parlements by attempting to make the vingtieme tax permanent. Many
nobles feared that general tax increases might lead to peasant uprisings, in
which nobles stood to lose the most. Facing mounting resistance, Louis XV
abolished the parlements. He then created new, more docile law courts
that would not resist royal authority, staffed by magistrates who did not
own their offices.
Both sides in the conflict between the parlements and Chancellor Mau
peou appealed to public opinion. A declaration of high-ranking nobles stated
that the king had abused “the constitution of the government and the rights
of the people” by trying to establish “a despotism without bounds, without
limits, and consequently without rights.” The nobility asserted its “right of
assembly,” recalling that “the nation, in its assemblies, had charged the par
lements with defending its rights.” Influenced by the ideas of the Enlighten
ment, lawyers called for judicial reform, religious toleration, and the end to
the abuse of privilege. When the monarchy tried to silence the lawyers, the
latter turned courtrooms into forums for political opposition. Lawyers
explored notions of national sovereignty while putting forward the case of
the parlements against the crown.
As the idea of the nation gradually entered political discourse, the possi
bility emerged that when the interests of the monarchy and the nation
clashed, popular allegiance could ultimately pass exclusively to the nation.
Some degree of popular identification with parlements as defenders of the
nation against despotism would not be effaced. The Maupeou “coup” lasted
only three and a half years, but it had far-reaching effects on the nature of
the opposition to the monarchy. It demonstrated that the parlements were
not powerful enough to protect “the nation” against royal despotism, sug
gesting to some that only a body such as the Estates-General, which had
not been convoked since 1614, could do so.