The Notables and the Nation: The Political Schooling of the French, 1787-1788 (review)

This book offers a thorough account and a compelling analysis of the final two years of the old regime in France. Gruder opens the book with the Assembly of Notables, a meeting of 144 of the wealthiest and most powerful nobles—the king's brothers, archbishops, presidents of the high tribunals (Parlements), mayors of the principal towns, etc.—convoked to approve a set of reforms and help extricate the crown from its financial difficulties. But rather than do the crown's bidding, the assembly sought to transform the political system. The notables called for a national representative body and elected assemblies in the provinces to administer taxes and expenditures.

Gruder argues that the notables' opposition to the crown did not amount to an aristocratic reaction, or a defense of privilege, but rather a principled stand against arbitrary government. The notables' calls for royal ministers to legitimize their power before the governed emerged out of an intellectual and cultural context, a period of relative peace and security, in which royal subjects shared a conviction about the right of citizens to assemble and take control of their political destiny.

Gruder makes clear that the notables' calls for representative institutions should not be confused with sympathy for democracy. The notables believed in hierarchy and frowned upon the multitude and majority rule. They came from families with long histories of royal service and believed that commoners traditionally subject to their leadership should not gain the power of numbers. The notables saw the townspeople as potentially alternative sources of leadership and particularly dangerous rivals.

These conclusions emerge from a careful reading of the arguments advanced in the Assembly of Notables. Indeed, the merit of the book is its comprehensive presentation of the precise points expressed in all of the mediums of communication—foreign and national newspapers, publicly sold news diaries and compilations of articles, pamphlets, artwork, festivals, and the deliberations of tribunals and municipalities—which proliferated in 1788 following the Assembly of Notables. Gruder's close reading of thousands of instances of public communication yields the fullest description ever written of the political context of 1787–1788. The description demonstrates that nobles, townspeople, and even peasants advanced their views in response to concrete matters such as royal policies, loans, taxes and expenditures, and the powers of the provincial assemblies and the sovereign courts. Their reasoned assessment of these matters led them to support or condemn ministers, form or break alliances with one another, and eventually question the king's right to rule.

Gruder's presentation of the political writings of the period undermines the belief commonly held by historians that the ruling of the Parlement of Paris of September 1788 stirred the third estate to action and turned it against the privileged orders. The ruling stipulated that the Estates General meet according to the forms of 1614, the last time the Estates General met, and that the clergy, nobility, and townspeople gather in three separate chambers with one vote each. Rather than react to this ruling, the townspeople began to attend assemblies after July 1788 in response to the crown's invitation to royal subjects to opine on the constitution of the Estates General. The townspeople expressed opposition to the privileged orders after the decision of the Assembly of Notables in October 1788 to endorse the ruling of the Parlement of Paris on the meeting of the Estates General in the forms of 1614. They grew bitter in December 1788 upon reading the memorandum of the king's brothers and its threat of revolt if the third estate persisted in demanding greater representation.

Gruder's findings also undermine the widely held belief that the Abbey Siéyès' pamphlet, What is the Third Estate?, played a decisive role in focusing the public debate at the beginning of 1789 on the issue of representation in the Estates General. In the last months of 1788, before...