The Aristocratic Resurgence 345
to Versailles in 1789 were to transfer these methods to the national stage, and
contribute to the formation of the famous Jacobin club of Paris.^19
The church also, or its governing hierarchy, who were all nobles, lost no time in
protesting against the May Edicts, the humiliation of the parlements, and the royal
program of taxation. The Assembly of the Clergy met in June 1788. It passed reso-
lutions against the May Edicts. It rejected the principle of taxability of its proper-
ties, which amounted to between five and ten per cent of all the landed property in
the country. As a tax- exempt body, the French Church had long been in the habit
of making a “free gift” to the royal government. The two grants of 1780 and 1782,
intended to help pay for the American war, had amounted to 46,000,000 livres,
and another 18,000,000 had been granted in 1785. The Assembly of 1788 granted
only 1,800,000. It was the lowest free gift in many generations. The prelates in-
tended, like their noble cousins, to use the financial crisis of the monarchy to pre-
serve their own liberties, and for the advantage of the church and the country as
they understood it. The truth is that the church itself was in an incipiently revolu-
tionary condition, with a good many priests and lesser clergy dissatisfied with the
way in which the prelates managed its affairs and handled its wealth. But in 1788
the great bishops and abbots spoke for the church. What they wanted was a con-
stitutional monarchy in the manner of Montesquieu, in which despotism was pre-
vented by the influence of intermediate powers, one of which was the church.^20
“Despotism” again yielded, as so often in the past. The combined outburst of
parlements, provincial estates, and the church, the outcry of the aristocracy for the
most part supported by the bourgeoisie in a massive wave of national indignation,
were too much for the benign Louis XVI to withstand. In September 1788 he
withdrew the May Edicts. As in 1774, he again reinstated the Parlement of Paris
and the provincial parlements with their former powers. By this action he also
convinced the country that he was in earnest in what he had promised in the pre-
ceding July, the summoning of the national Estates General, which was set for the
following May.
Victory in September thus went against the royal absolutism. It lay with a
movement of constitutional resistance that was primarily noble in its inspiration,
or at least represented the interests of those who stood to gain by existing privi-
leges of class and province. The question was whether, with despotism overthrown,
aristocracy would succeed it.
Leaders of opinion, noble and bourgeois, now agreed that France should have
constitutional government, taxation by consent, and payment of taxes by persons
of all classes alike. They agreed that there should be freedom from arbitrary arrest,
and a “legitimate” freedom of press and opinion. They agreed that the country
19 J. Egret, “Les origines de la Révolution en Bretagne,” Revue historique, CCXIII (1955), 189–
215; H. Freville, L’ intendance de Bretagne, 3 vols. (Rennes, 1953).
20 For the amounts of dons gratuits see M. Marion, Dictionnaire des institutions de la France au 17e et
au 18e siècles (Paris, 1923), 105. For its political views see the remonstrances printed without date or
place by the Assembly of the Clergy: Remontrances du clergé presentées au roi le dimanche 15 juin 1788,
upholding the parlements; Remontrances du clergé... sur ses droits, franchises et immunités, on tax ex-
emption of church property. The Assembly also protested against the grant of civil rights to Protes-
tants by the royal government in 1787: Remontrances du clergé de France assemblé en 1788, au roi, sur
l ’ édit... concernant les non- Catholiques (Paris, 1788).