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CHAPTER XVIII Genteel Conspirators: Breteuil and Malesherbes Set the Stage for Reform, 1784-1787 In October 1783, when he put Louis-Auguste Le Tonnelier, the baron de Breteuil, in charge of 'new Catholic' affairs, Louis XVI inadvertently opened the penultimate chapter in the campaign for Protestant toleration. Although the new minister did not become personally committed to the Calvinist cause until the spring of 1786, he did, shortly after taking office, ask the historian Claude-Carloman de Rulhiere to prepare a study of the Huguenot question with special attention to the complex problems surrounding Calvinist marriages. Rulhiere in turn got in touch with Malesherbes, who had been keeping a watching brief on the Calvinist question since his resignation from office in 1776. The historian and the exminister were subsequently joined by the marquis de Lafayette, whose zeal for philanthropic ventures of various kinds had been stimulated by his experience in America, and by Jean-Paul Rabaut Saint-Etienne, the eldest son of France's most eminent underground pastor. Two other figures—the physicist Jacques Poitevin and the lawyer-turned-publicist Pierre-Louis de Lacretelle, played enthusiastic but less critical roles in what developed into a genteel conspiracy on behalf of the Calvinists. During the middle 1780s, this small band of public-spirited plotters completed the most comprehensive review of the history of France's policy towards the Protestants undertaken since 1685 and drew up a succinct and convincing set of proposals for the remedying of the many problems bequeathed France and her Calvinist population by the Revocation. By the spring of 1786, the way seemed open for a concerted effort to achieve this end. Those presenting the case for Calvinist relief faced a difficult tactical problem, however. They might attempt to introduce the desired changes in the law through the Paris parlement, where such wellknown supporters of the Protestant cause as Bretigneres and Dionis du Sejour (together with a new convert to the cause, the Jansenist Robert de Saint-Vincent) were prepared to press the issue; they might appeal directly to the King's council, where Louis XVI would be obliged to make his views on the matter explicit; or, as of December 1786, they might raise the question before the Assembly of Notables which the King had summoned to deal with the grave financial crisis facing the state. The case for Protestant emancipation was in fact put vigorously before all of these bodies; but sufficient momentum had not yet been built up to carry the battle for toleration to a successful conclusion, especially in the face of a still intransigent Catholic clergy. 265 266 The Huguenots and French Opinion: 1685-1787 The baron de Breteuil was one of a small group of conservative reformers in the pre-revolutionary period who perceived the need to humanize the nation's institutions in order to save the monarchy from functional sclerosis. To inform himself about the Protestants (for whom he felt a vague sympathy but about whom he know next to nothing), he turned soon after his appointment to Claude-Carloman de Rulhiere, whom he had engaged as secretary during a tour of duty as ambassador to Saint Petersburg in the early 1760s.1 Rulhiere began his inquiry by seeking the advice of Breteuil's predecessor in office, Malesherbes, who was in fact preparing his own study of the Protestant question at the time.2 At their first meeting (in May 1784), the two men agreed to exchange all the data which they so far had separately amassed and to make their further work complementary. The two-volume Eclaircissements historiques sur les causes de la revocation de I'edit de Nantes which Rulhiere prepared and which he finished in outline form in the spring of 1785 was to be published early in 1788, just as the legislation giving France's 'non-Catholic' minority was being promulgated.3 In this most comprehensive of the many studies devoted to the question during the eighteenth century, Rulhiere offers the reader a critical analysis of government policy towards the Calvinists since the 1680s and proposes a new approach to the toleration question. As Rulhiere points out, one of the major obstacles to giving the Calvinists a legal status was the reticence of Louis XVI to challenge any of the major policies of the Sun King. The historian's solution to this problem was to persuade the reigning King that the Revocation had been urged on Louis XIV by three members of his entourage whose anti-Calvinism...

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