Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of contributors
- 1 Introduction: culture and power during the long eighteenth century
- 2 When culture meets power: the Prussian coronation of 1701
- 3 Military culture in the Reich, c. 1680–1806
- 4 Diplomatic culture in old regime Europe
- 5 Early eighteenth-century Britain as a confessional state
- 6 ‘Ministers of Europe’: British strategic culture, 1714–1760
- 7 Confessional power and the power of confession: concealing and revealing the faith in Alpine Salzburg, 1730–1734
- 8 The transformation of the Aufklärung: from the idea of power to the power of ideas
- 9 Culture and Bürgerlichkeit in eighteenth-century Germany
- 10 The politics of language and the languages of politics: Latin and the vernaculars in eighteenth-century Hungary
- 11 ‘Silence, respect obedience’: political culture in Louis XV's France
- 12 Joseph II, petitions and the public sphere
- 13 The court nobility and the origins of the French Revolution
- 14 The French Revolution and the abolition of nobility
- 15 Foreign policy and political culture in later eighteenth-century France
- 16 Power and patronage in Mozart's La clemenza di Tito and Die Zauberflöte
- 17 Between Louis and Ludwig: from the culture of French power to the power of German culture, c. 1789–1848
- Index
13 - The court nobility and the origins of the French Revolution
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of contributors
- 1 Introduction: culture and power during the long eighteenth century
- 2 When culture meets power: the Prussian coronation of 1701
- 3 Military culture in the Reich, c. 1680–1806
- 4 Diplomatic culture in old regime Europe
- 5 Early eighteenth-century Britain as a confessional state
- 6 ‘Ministers of Europe’: British strategic culture, 1714–1760
- 7 Confessional power and the power of confession: concealing and revealing the faith in Alpine Salzburg, 1730–1734
- 8 The transformation of the Aufklärung: from the idea of power to the power of ideas
- 9 Culture and Bürgerlichkeit in eighteenth-century Germany
- 10 The politics of language and the languages of politics: Latin and the vernaculars in eighteenth-century Hungary
- 11 ‘Silence, respect obedience’: political culture in Louis XV's France
- 12 Joseph II, petitions and the public sphere
- 13 The court nobility and the origins of the French Revolution
- 14 The French Revolution and the abolition of nobility
- 15 Foreign policy and political culture in later eighteenth-century France
- 16 Power and patronage in Mozart's La clemenza di Tito and Die Zauberflöte
- 17 Between Louis and Ludwig: from the culture of French power to the power of German culture, c. 1789–1848
- Index
Summary
On 21 May 1787, the marquis de la Fayette rose and delivered a speech to the bureau presided over by Louis XVI's younger brother, the comte d'Artois, in the assembly of notables at Versailles. In the main this was a technical examination of the new taxes the crown was proposing to tackle the financial crisis facing France. La Fayette's conclusion, however, was startling. Assuming that it would take five years for the reforms under discussion to bear fruit, he proposed that the happy moment of their completion should be crowned by the convocation of a national assembly. This phrase struck his audience like a bolt from the blue. As La Fayette put it in his memoirs:
From the effect produced by these two words pronounced for the first time, one would not have thought that only two years later, they would reappear with an explosive force that would dominate France and the world. ‘What, Monsieur!’ exclaimed the comte d'Artois, ‘you are demanding the convocation of the Estates General?’ ‘Yes, Monseigneur’ [I replied], ‘and even more than that.’
To historians today, familiar with La Fayette's subsequent role in the French Revolution, his voicing of these sentiments in 1787 may not seem so surprising. Yet as Artois's reply makes clear, to his listeners at the time they were both unexpected and shocking.
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- Cultures of Power in Europe during the Long Eighteenth Century , pp. 269 - 288Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007
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