Charles Alexandre de Calonne

Charles Alexandre de Calonne (20 January 1734 – 30 October 1802), titled Count of
Charles Alexandre de
Hannonville in 1759,[1] was a French statesman, best known for being Louis XVI's Controller-
General of Finances (minister of finance) in the years leading up to the French revolution. Calonne
Count of Hannonville
Calonne attempted repeatedly to pass reforms that lowered government spending and implemented
property added value tax among other things, but failed due to popular opposition to his policies
from the Parlement and the Assembly of Notables. Realizing that the Parlement of Paris would never
agree to reform, Calonne handpicked an Assembly of Notables in 1787 to approve new taxes. When
they refused, Calonne's reputation plummeted and he was forced to leave the country.

Origins and rise to prominence

Born in Douai of an upper-class family, he entered the legal profession and became a lawyer to the
general council of Artois, procureur to the parlement of Douai, Master of Requests (France),
intendant of Metz (1768) and of Lille (1774). He seems to have been a man with notable business
abilities and an entrepreneurial spirit, while generally unscrupulous in his political actions. In the
terrible crisis preceding the French Revolution, when successive ministers tried in vain to replenish
the exhausted royal treasury, Calonne was summoned as Controller-General of Finances, an office he Portrait of Calonne by Élisabeth-
assumed on 3 November 1783.[2] Louise Vigée-Le Brun (1784, Royal
Collection)
He owed the position to the Comte de Vergennes, who for over three years continued to support him. Controller-General of Finances
According to the Habsburg ambassador, his public image was extremely poor. Calonne immediately
set about remedying the fiscal crisis, and he found in Louis XVI enough support to create a vast and In office
ambitious plan of revenue-raising and administrative centralization. Calonne focused on maintaining 3 November 1783 – 17 May 1787
public confidence through building projects and spending, which was mainly designed to maintain Monarch Louis XVI
the Crown's capacity to borrow funds.[3] He presented the king with his plan on 20 August 1786. At Preceded by Henri Lefèvre
its heart was a new land value tax that would replace the old vingtième taxes and finally sweep away
d'Ormesson
the fiscal exemptions of the privileged orders. The new tax would be administered by a system of
provincial assemblies elected by the local property owners at parish, district and provincial levels. Succeeded by Michel Bouvard de
This central proposal was accompanied by other reforms meant to further rationalize the French Fourqueux
economy, a package that included free trade in grain and abolition of France's myriad internal Personal details
customs barriers. It was in effect one of the most, if not the most, comprehensive attempts at
enlightened reform during the reign of Louis XVI. Born 20 January 1734
Douai, French
Flanders and
Measures Hainaut, France

After taking office, he discovered the nation had debts of 110 million livres (partly Died 30 October 1802
Under theincurred
Frenchby Ancien
France's involvement in the American Revolution) and no means of paying them. [4] At first he tried (aged 68)
Régime, a parlement was a
to get credit and support the government with loans so as to maintain public confidence
provincial appellatein its
court of Paris, Seine, France
[2]
solvency. In October 1785 he reissued gold coinage and developed the Caisse the Kingdom (dealing
d'Escompte of France.Spouses
In Marie Joséphine
in cash discounts). Knowing the Parlement of Paris would veto a single land tax that all
1789, landowners
France had 13 Marquet
would have to pay, Calonne persuaded Louis XVI to call an assembly of notables to vote ​
parlements, the on his
original and ​(m. 1766; died 1770)
referendum.[5] Calonne's eventual reform package, which was introducedmost to the Assembly
important of
of which was Anne-Rose de
Notables, consisted of five major points: the Parlement of Paris. Nettine
Though both the modern ​
​(m. 1788⁠–⁠1802)​
1. Cut government spending h l d
Children 1 son
2. Revive free trade methods
3. Authorize the sale of Church property Alma mater University of Paris
4. Equalize salt and tobacco taxes Profession Statesman,
5. Establish a universal land value tax[4] parliamentarian
Signature
All these measures failed because of the powerlessness of the crown to impose them.[6]

As a last resort, Calonne proposed that the king abolish internal customs duties and implement a
property tax on nobles and clergy. Anne Robert Jacques Turgot and Jacques Necker had tried and failed to get these reforms adopted.
Calonne attributed their failure to the opposition of the parlements, so he called another Assemblée des notables in February 1787. After
he made a presentation to the assembly on the French deficit and its causes and dangers as he saw them, Calonne proposed the
establishment of a subvention territoriale, which would be levied on all property without distinction.[2]

Conflict with the Assembly of Notables of Versailles

This suppression of privileges was badly received. Calonne's spendthrift and authoritarian reputation was well known to the parlements,
earning him their enmity. Knowing this, he intentionally submitted his reform programme directly to the king and the hand-picked
assembly of notables, not to the sovereign courts or parlements, first. Composed of the old regime's social and political elite, however, the
assembly of notables balked at the deficit presented to them when they met at Versailles in February 1787, and despite Calonne's plan for
reform and his backing from the king, they suspected that the controller-general was in some way responsible for the enormous financial
strains.[7] Protests against Calonne erupted, supported by the middle and lower-middle classes, who burnt effigies of Calonne in support
of the notable assembly's resistance to tax.[8] On September 14, 1788, after Guillaume-Chrétien de
Lamoignon de Malesherbes retired, there were riots in Paris on Rue Mélée and the Rue de Grenelle,
where more figures of Calonne were burned, along with those of Breteuil and the Duchess de
Polignac.[9]

Calonne, angered, printed his reports and so alienated the court. Louis XVI dismissed him on 8 April
1787 and exiled him to Lorraine. The joy was general in Paris, where Calonne, accused of wishing to
raise taxes, was known as Monsieur Déficit.

Dismissal and exile

Calonne soon afterwards left for Great Britain, and during his residence there kept up a polemical
correspondence with Necker.[2] After being dismissed, Calonne stated, "The King, who assured me a Charles Alexandre de Calonne (after
hundred times that he would support me with unshakable firmness, abandoned me, and I Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun)
succumbed”.[10] He was replaced by Loménie de Brienne, who similarly fared poorly in the political
environment.[11]

In 1789, when the Estates-General were about to assemble, he crossed to Flanders in the hope of offering himself for election, but he was
forbidden to enter France. In revenge he joined the émigré group at Coblenz,[12] wrote in their favour, and spent nearly all the fortune
brought him by his wife, a wealthy widow.[2] He was present with the Count of Artois, the reactionary brother of Louis XVI, at Pillnitz in
August 1791 at the time of the issuance of the Declaration of Pillnitz, an attempt to intimidate the revolutionary government of France that
the Count of Artois pressed for.[13] In 1802, having again settled in London, he received permission from Napoleon Bonaparte to return to
France. He died about a month after his arrival in his native country.[2]

Legacy
Calonne's negative reputation and assumed responsibility for France's financial crisis in the years leading to the Revolution of 1789 have
been judged unfair by historians such as Munro Price. During his position as controller-general, he had genuinely tried to make amends
for his previous spendthrift policies. As a contemporary writer, Nicolas Chamfort, remarked, Calonne was "applauded when he lit the fire,
and condemned when he sounded the alarm." However, economic historians such as Eugene White[14] have stressed the negative role
played by Calonne, who continued the restoration of a venal system of financial administration.

His fall had important significance to the fate of the monarchy in France before 1789. The financial strains made apparent through
Calonne's attempts at reform revealed the instability of the monarchy as a whole, which up until then had been managed on the basis of
traditional monarchical absolutism: secretly, hierarchically, without public scrutiny of accounts or consent to taxation. For centuries, the
monarchy had controlled fiscal policy on its own terms, and when knowledge of an unmanageable and growing deficit became more
widely known, the image was of a failed and, in many ways, corrupt institution. Louis XVI, who had backed Calonne's reform programme
wholehearthedly, saw its refusal by the notables and the parliament as a personal failure. Conscientious in his attempts to alleviate the
suffering of the French people, the king, it is clear, genuinely hoped to implement an enlightened policy with the help of Calonne. Crushed
by this opposition to Calonne's project, the king withdrew to long hours of hunting and larger meals. Many historians see the ensuing
months as the beginning of the king's bouts of depression.

Bibliography
1787 - Procès de M. de Calonne, ou Réplique à son libelle (https://books.google.nl/books?id=2lpXAAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover)
1788 Motif de M. de Calonne, pour différer jusqu'à l'assemblée des États-Généraux, la réfutation du nouvel écrit que M. Necker vient
de publiér sur l'objet de leur controverse
1788 - Réponse à l'écrit de M. Necker, publié en avril 1787, contenant l'examen des comptes de la situation des finances rendus en
1774, 1776, 1781, 1783 & 1787, avec des observations sur les résultats de l'Assemblée des notables (https://books.google.nl/books?i
d=jPVbAAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover). Londres: Impr. de T. Spilsbury
1790 - De l'état de la France, présent et a venir (https://books.google.nl/books?id=LV9eAAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover)
1796 - Tableau de l'Europe, jusqu'au commencement de 1796 ; et pensées sur ce qui peut procurer promptement une paix solide.
Suivi d'un appendix sur plusieurs questions importantes (https://books.google.nl/books?id=5gZbAAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover)

Literature
1963 - Robert Lacour-Gayet. Calonne. Financier, réformateur, contre-révolutionnaire, 1734-1802. Paris: Hachette

Notes
1. John Nichols (April 1795). "The superlatively fine collection of
..." (https://books.google.com/books?id=38jPAAAAMAAJ&pg=P
A286) The Gentleman's Magazine. E. Cave.
2. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from
a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed.
(1911). "Calonne, Charles Alexandre de". Encyclopædia
Britannica. Vol. 5 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 60.
3. von Güttner, Darius (2015). The French Revolution (1st ed.).
South Melbourne, Victoria: Nelson Cengage Learning. p. 42.
ISBN 9780170243995.
4. Ford, F: "Europe 1780–1830", page 102. Longman, 2002
5. Haine, Scott (2000). The History of France (https://archive.org/d
etails/historyoffrance00hain/page/72) (1st ed.). Greenwood
Press. pp. 72 (https://archive.org/details/historyoffrance00hain/p
age/72). ISBN 0-313-30328-2.
6. Crook, M. (2002) Revolutionary France, Oxford: Oxford
University Press
7. Doyle, William. (1989) The Oxford History of the French
Revolution. OUP: Oxford. p. 71.
 8. Peter Kropotkin (1909). "Chapter 5". The Great French 10. France 1789, Victory Over History: The French Revolution
Revolution, 1789-1793 (http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=217). (Sydney, 2016), "France 1789 - Victory over History" (https://we
Translated by N. F. Dryhurst. New York: Vanguard Printings. b.archive.org/web/20160623195232/http://victoryoverhistory.co
"The Exchequer Court of Paris (Cour des Aides), supported by m/the-french-revolution/france-1789/). Archived from the original
the popular outburst, as well as by the provincial parlements (http://victoryoverhistory.com/the-french-revolution/france-1789/)
and the Court of Justice, protested against this act of royal on 2016-06-23. Retrieved 2016-05-25.
power, and, as the agitation was growing, the King was 11. Peter Kropotkin (1909). "Chapter 6". The Great French
compelled to recall the exiled parlement. This was done on Revolution, 1789-1793 (http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=218).
September 9, and evoked fresh demonstrations in Paris, during Translated by N. F. Dryhurst. New York: Vanguard Printings.
which the minister Calonne was burnt in effigy."
12. Peter Kropotkin (1909). "Chapter 31". The Great French
9. Peter Kropotkin (1909). "Chapter 5". The Great French Revolution, 1789-1793 (http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=243).
Revolution, 1789-1793 (http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=217). Translated by N. F. Dryhurst. New York: Vanguard Printings.
Translated by N. F. Dryhurst. New York: Vanguard Printings.
13. Calonne's presence in the entourage of the Count of Artois at
"Three weeks later, September 14, 1788, when the retirement of
this time is confirmed in a journal that documents the events
Lamoignon became known, the riotings were renewed. The
surrounding the coronation of Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II
mob rushed to set fire to the houses of the two ministers,
as King of Bohemia in Prague in September 1791: the
Lamoignon and Brienne, as well as to that of Dubois. The
Krönungsjournal für Prag (Prague, 1791), 203.
troops were called out, and in the Rue Mélée and the Rue de
Grenelle there was a horrible slaughter of poor folk who could 14. White, Eugene Nelson, (1989), “Was there a Solution to the
not defend themselves. Dubois fled from Paris. "The people Ancien Régime’s Financial Dilemma”, Journal of Economic
themselves would execute justice," said Les deux amis de la History, 49, 3, pp. 545-568.
liberté. Later still, in October 1788, when the parlement that had
been banished to Troyes was recalled, "the clerks and the
populace" illuminated the Place Dauphine for several evenings
in succession. They demanded money from the passersby to
expend on fireworks, and forced gentlemen to alight from their
carriages to salute the statue of Henri Quatre. Figures
representing Calonne, Breteuil and the Duchess de Polignac
were burned. It was also proposed to burn the Queen in effigy.
These riotous assemblies gradually spread to other quarters,
and troops were sent to disperse them. Blood was shed and
many were killed and wounded in the Place de la Grèe. Those
who were arrested, however, were tried by the parlement
judges, who let them off with light penalties."

External links
Media related to Charles Alexandre de Calonne at Wikimedia Commons

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