efforts to control what reached the reading public.

But the market was

too strong, and as much effort was soon being devoted to inuencing
what was reported and discussed as to preventing its appearance. Louis
XIV had told his subjects what to do, and what to think. Under Louis XVI,
it was recognized that they had to be persuaded.
The virtues of active cooperation between kings and their subjects had
long been displayed across the Channel. Ever since the 1720s writers like
Montesquieu and Voltaire had extolled the enabling freedoms of British
liberty, toleration, and parliamentary government. British success in
mid-century wars had shown that the system, still suspect to many for
its dangerous volatility, was also formidably efcient. Some of the gloss
was taken from the image of Great Britain when her colonies rebelled,
and Anglomania was partially eclipsed by enthusiasm for all things
American. But liberty and political representation were at the heart of
rebels who had proclaimed no taxation without representation, his
subjects could scarcely help reecting on why this principle was not
deemed appropriate in France. In the handful of provinces with estates,
of course, it was; but that made the situation elsewhere seem even
more anomalous. As scal pressures increased, certain magistrates in
the 1760s began to call for lost estates to be restored. When Maupeou
attacked the parlements in 1771, some went further and called for a
meeting of the nearest French equivalent to the British parliament, the
medieval Estates-General, last convened in 1614. Others, with the
comfortable ambiguities of absolute monarchy now exposed as empty,
began to think of more rationally designed representative institutions
that would visibly involve taxpayers in administration. Nor were
ministers necessarily opposed to a principle which might sideline the
parlements and their inuence. Necker even began a programme of
introducing provincial administrations, nominated assemblies of local
landowners who would share the functions of intendants. Only two
were established before his resignation, but they did not disappear
with him. Slowly, hesitantly, with many misgivings but aware that
33

Why it happened

the Anglo-American quarrel; and when Louis XVI allied with republican