HIS241H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Tennis Court Oath, Food Riot, Charles Alexandre De Calonne
Document Summary
The problem (trigger of revolution) is that the king has no idea what to do with finances. Louis xvi doesn t know what to do, but he must find a way to raise more revenue. He calls together a body of nobles. They re going to convene an assembly and talk about it. There are structural problems with the king raising finances. He needs to implement far-reaching changes in the tax structure. He needs to pass a series of new laws, etc. He can t figure out how to do this and it leads to a series of problems. Jacques necker (finance minister) also has no idea what to do. They don t have a good way of writing down how much money the king is actually getting. Writing down more than is actually coming in. When the king figures out that there isn t as much money as he thinks, the monarchy loses credibility.
