Clashes with Monarchy 65
the Hapsburgs to continuing military expenditure, initiated the dissolution of Po-
land, and helped to end the Freedom Era in Sweden. Simultaneously, and inde-
pendently, the internal struggle broke out anew at Geneva.
The present and the two following chapters trace the story to about the year
- There are two main themes. On the one hand, the constituted bodies got
into trouble with the forces of monarchy, that is, with kings and their ministers.
They complained of royal encroachment, but in general, by 1774, monarchy seemed
to have prevailed. This happened in Sweden, Hungary, the Milanese, France, and
even in a way in England. In France, indeed, in an important sense, the first French
revolution, one in which the people had little part, now occurred. On the other
hand, there also began to be an agitation against existing constituted bodies, on the
part of private persons claiming that such bodies did not adequately represent
them. These are the years in which the movement for parliamentary reform first
appeared in England, where, however, it was to produce no institutional change for
more than fifty years. The earliest effective manifestations of democratic revolution
occurred in the Anglo- American colonies and at the town of Geneva.
In any case, the constituted bodies—parliaments, diets, estates, and councils, to
a large extent hereditary in membership and avowedly aristocratic in political doc-
trine—began to face a war on two fronts, against the Monarch on the one hand
and the Multitude on the other.
THE QUASI- REVOLUTION IN FRANCE, 1763–1774Before we launch into a narrative of what happened in France it is well to make a
few observations to set the story in perspective. It must be remembered that the
reader of history is in a position to understand these events much better than con-
temporaries could. Or rather, contemporary observers were exposed to a one- sided
presentation of the issues. The French parlements after the death of Louis XIV,
and increasingly as the eighteenth century went on, adopted the practice of pub-
lishing their remonstrances, or formal protests, against actions taken by the royal
government. These published remonstrances were of great importance in the for-
mation of a public opinion. For the first time, the interested person could now
obtain some kind of information on matters of current practical politics. He could
see something of the conflict of interests behind decisions not yet made. The gov-
ernment, however, insisted on the maintenance of administrative privacy, or se-
crecy, in its affairs. Often it tried to silence the parlements, either by prohibiting
publication of their remonstrances, or by temporarily “exiling” or rusticating their
members. Such measures were never successfully carried through. The parlements
and their allies always managed to express their views. But no one in authority
within the government ever tried to explain its policies to the public. At most,
certain officials in an indirect way might tolerate the printing of unorthodox opin-
ions, as when Malesherbes in the 1750’s and 1760’s let the royal censorship go al-
most unenforced. Or other officials might engage pamphleteers to respond to
tracts made public by the parlements. But at bottom the government supplied no
information.