How Far Were The Parlements Responsible For Bringing About An End To The Ancien Regime - Assignment Example

How Far Were The Parlements Responsible For Bringing About An End To The Ancien Regime The end of the Ancien Regime in France has long been associated with the activities of the various parlements and their influence within the revolutionary movements that shook France from 1787 onwards. These movements reached their zenith with what is commonly called the "Revolution of 1789". Before considering the influence of the parlements in the end of the ancien regime it will be necessary to consider what the parlements were and how they developed over time. No one force or institution led to the demise of the ancien regime in France, as if often the case with complex historical events a number of different forces came together to bring about the end of a system that had dominated France for several centuries. Parlements were political institutions that developed of the previous "Kings Councils, the Conseil du Roi or Curia Regis. Originally there was just one Parlement, that in Paris, but by mid Fifteenth Century there was one in Toulouse, which extended its authority over much of Southern France. From 1443 until the explosion of the French Revolution there were fourteen other parlements created, in cities such as Arras, Grenoble and Perpignan. Importantly, all these cities had always been administrative capitals of their regions (often stemming from Roman rule) and had strong traditions of independence from central control. Officially parlements were not legislative bodies, but rather courts of appeal. However, they did have the responsibility to record all edicts and laws, and could refuse to apply such laws when they went against "fundamental law", or the local coutumes. Increasingly, and this was particularly the case with the Parlement of Paris, the parlements began to "challenge royal edicts" (Doyle, 2001, p.1) . These challenges often took the form of deliberate delaying tactics until the king held a lit de justice or sent a letter de cachet that would essentially force them to act. The parlements developed the power to pass arrets de reglement, which were laws that essentially applied within their jurisdiction. So the Parlements were in fact part of the bedrock foundation of the Ancien Regime, and it was their wish to preserve that regime, with bourgeois, noble and royal privilege that may have led to its demise, at least in part. The parlements often prevented central authority (ie. the King) from carrying out miscellaneous reforms, such as changes to fairer forms of taxation. The ironic part of their attitude is that the parlements' refusal to allow these reforms actually challenged the very absolute power of monarchs that was at the basis of the ancien regime. During the eighteenth century the parlements started to increasingly challenge the authority of King, ironically because he sought to change France. Thus they "frequently protested royal initiatives that they believed to threaten the traditional rights and liberties of the people . . . in widely distributed publications, they up the image of a historically free France and denounced the absolute rule of the crown that in their view threatened traditional liberties by imposing religious orthodoxy and new taxes" (Encarta, 2006) (my emphasis). The Parlements, while essentially conservative institutions in their wish not to change the precepts of the ancien regime, actually provided part of the energy that would lead to its downfall. The Parlements did not act in isolation however. Thus their protests regarding Royal actions were joined by rich, but often progressive intellectuals called the philosophes. The philosophes did not advocate violent revolution any more than the Parlements did, but they helped the parlementaires in creating a system of thought and associated vocabulary that could be used to discuss and eventually plan the overthrow of an absolute ruler. The defined or redefined terms such as "despotism", "liberty", "rights" and "nation". As Carlyle (2002, p.1.) puts it, in many ways the beginning of the end of the ancien regime occurred when "Louis XV dies, at Versailles, Mat 10, 1774, of smallpox, after a short illness". The King that replaced him was, to be polite, hardly the most competent or intelligent human being to have occupied the throne. He famously stated "l'etat, c'est moi", an attitude that encapsulated the view that the royal family in some way owned France through the supposedly divine rights of kings. The parlements played an important role, not only in providing the general atmosphere and foundation for the demise of the ancien regime, as has already been discussed, but also for the specific events that would lead to the French Revolution. In many ways, their involvement within what eventually turned into a bloody revolution shows how those with perhaps peaceful intentions can become embroiled in movements that would lead to very violent events. Perhaps the embodiment of the conservative influence of the Parlements, and their ability not to see that France had in fact changed was there insistence that the Estates General meet in different chambers for every class, as they had done in 1614. The Estates-General had been called by Louis XVI because various attempts to introduce reform, especially in the taxation and economic system which was in a chaotic state, had been resisted by the nobility within the Parlements. The Parlements resisted these changes, and ended up resisting to the point where catastrophic change was about to come to France. When the Third Estate (the peasants and working class) asked for the Estates to meet, both literally and metaphorically, as "one". They also argued that they have one vote per person rather than one vote per class. The King refused to allow this, encouraged by the Parlements who, for once agreed with him. But the forces of change had been set in place, and the belated support of the Parlements for the king was too late. The Third Estate now declared themselves a National Assembly, which was to be the true representative of the people within France. The Parlements supported the King as he ordered the army to Versailles to disperse this Assembly. The Assembly regarded this as a clear provocation and immediately stormed the Bastille. The only prisoners they liberated were four forgers, two insane men and one that all agreed was a dangerous sexual predator, but it was the symbolic nature of this act that made it the start of the French Revolution. The Third Estate itself was not homogenous in either form of opinion. As Christopher Hibbert puts it "there were equally pronounced differences among the members of the Third Estate, some of whom believed that their ends should be obtained by agreement with the King and with the other two orders, and others of whom insisted that there must be no compromise even at the risk of violence"(p.50). The tendency of history is groups as simple rather than complex, as homogenous rather than heterogeneous and this occurs with studies of the French Revolution. The same might be said of the Parlements: the Paris Parlement had very different powers, and ambitions than, for example that of Perpignan. Yet in general they did agree on the need to try and preserve the privileges they enjoyed under the Ancien Regime. They were similarly short-sighted in not understanding that at least some compromise was needed in order to preserve at least some of the aspects of the regime that most benefited them. No compromise would lead to the complete destruction of the regime but the Parlements were either not capable of realizing this or, if they did realize it, they were incapable of changing their centuries old practice of intransigence. So while the Parlements were indeed at least partially responsible for the end of the Ancien Regime, a number of other forces came to play without which it might have survived, at least for a time. One influence upon the end of the regime was the war with England that had caused France to support the revolutionaries in America. Many French soldier's returned to France with revolutionary thoughts firmly in place. They had been fighting for one change of an unfair regime,; they now looked towards their own country and thought of change. The extent to which the soldiers actually effected the course of the revolution is uncertain. True, they were used initially by the monarchy to suppress some of the more active members of the Third Estate, and the numbers of them that eventually turned on that monarch would be something of a turning point within the revolution. But it was as individuals who had experienced, both personally and as a group, the struggle against tyranny in the American struggle against the British monarchy that they were most important. Thus not all the revolutionaries were working merely from theory; some of them had already experienced revolutionary principles as a reality. There were several different ideas that had taken root among the army. These included: The right of the people to take up arms against tyranny. No taxation without representation All men should have freedom A Republic is superior to a Monarchy The second point regarding taxation was effected by the Parlements, as it was these institutions that supported the fact that the nobility in France were hardly taxed at all while the Third Estate (the poor) were taxed heavily. The nobility had absolute representation without any taxes, while the Third Estate had no representation and all the burden of taxation. This was a contradiction that had created pressure within France, pressure that would be pushed into action by some of the new ideas revolving around the country. It was in 1787 that the Parlements may have sealed the fate of the ancien regime that they so wanted to maintain. In February of that year Calonne, head of the French treasury, summoned an Assembly of Notables in the hope that they would, even at this late stage, realize that change was inevitable. But as they had done in 1776, the parlementaires refused to accept change, blaming the problems that the French economy was facing exclusively on monarchical mismanagement in general and Calonne/Necker's incompetence in particular. The parlements now stated that Calonne should be replaced, which was done, only to find that his successor, Lomenie de Brienne, soon came to exactly the same conclusion as Calonne had: further borrowing was not possible and that genuine economic reform - in other words new taxes on the wealthy - was needed. Once again the Notables, dominated by the parlements, refused to agree to change, and Louis XVI dismissed them, actually going the further step of exiling the Paris Parlement to Troye. But damage had been done. The fact that the parlements and Notables had refused to reform, together with the inability of the Crown to persuade them to reform, had sounded the death knell for the ancien regime. For the next two years Louis XVI essentially floundered form one crisis to another, attempting to perform the impossible. The parlements refused to reform, the Notables refused to budge, there was increasing popular hostility to the whole idea of despotic rule and France was becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the preservation of royal absolutism. The exile of the Parlement in 1787 was not upheld, as Louis recalled them in September 1787, only to dismiss them again in May 1788. By this time there was the beginning of the breakdown of law and order and an increasing inability to collect what taxes actually were due. On the return of the parlementaires to Paris there was great rejoicing among the increasingly vocal revolutionaries. This might seem somewhat paradoxical and even contradictory as they were at opposite ends of the political spectrum. But the rejoicing at the return of reactionary parlements can be explained by the fact that they appeared to share a dislike and even contempt for the Crown. The Parlements acted as one half of a pair of pincers that would irreversibly crush and then destroy the ancien regime. It is ironic that the parlementaires did not realize that their intransigence was in fact assuring the end of the ancien regime, but it must be remembered that hindsight often gives the false impression that what did happen was always inevitably going to happen. The France of 1787-1789 was not necessarily doomed to Revolution; it could have gone a number of ways or struggled from one chaotic crisis to another without any firm revolution. The idea that the monarchy would actually be abolished and the King and Queen sent to the guillotine would have seemed absurd in 1787, yet it did occur. When the parlementaires were welcomed back to Paris in 1788, they were seen as resisters to the despotic rule of the monarchy, but within days they had blundered into a position of seeming to be what in fact they had always been: reactionaries who would resist change at all costs. This transformation was accomplished by the simple fact of refusing to meet as single Estates General rather than as three separate groups. The Paris Parlement showed that it still placed itself far above the other classes, and thus was still an essential ally to the whole Royal idea and the prerogative of the aristocracy. The Parlements and their resistance to change were compared unfavorably with the new political theories, ideas and general climate of opinion that existed in France. Voltaire and Rousseau had introduced many ideas regarding liberal freedom and the need for free commerce. Essentially the Parlements, and the Ancien Regime that they supported, was highly inefficient in both a political and economic sense. The beginning of the Industrial Revolution called for new economic ideas, and the Enlightenment had inculcated a more secular, challenging atmosphere among intellectuals. In this sense the Parlements acted as a ossified institutions against which the new hopes of new systems of thought could be judged favorably. So it can be seen that both in a practical way - through a stubborn resistance to any change suggested by the King, and through its symbolic status as an embodiment of the unfairly privileged nature of some classes, the Parlements were largely responsible for the death of the ancien regime. They were, of course, part of a much broader series of events and groups that led to the French Revolution. Without Crown incompetence in dealing with the French economy, they would not have been put in the position of refusing reform. Without the spread of revolutionary ideas through the world of intellectuals and the working classes alike, they would not have been faced with the challenge of the Estates General and the demise of the monarchy. But given the fact that they did face these situations, the parlements were grossly uncomprehending and blind to the real dangers they and their ancien regime were facing. ____________________________________________ Works Cited Carlyle, Thomas. The French Revolution: A History. Modern Library, New York: 2002. Doyle, William. The Ancien Regime. Palgrave Macmillan, New York: 2001. --------------. The Oxford History of the French Revolution. Oxford University Press, New York: 2003. Hibbert, Christopher. The Days of the French Revolution. Harper Perennial, New York: 1999. http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761557826/French_Revolution. html. Accessed December 4, 2006. Read More