Liberty, Equality, Fraternity…
Republic… or Dictatorship of the [Masonic] Bourgeoisie?
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The King, the Debt and the Revolution
Conference given by French Historian Marion Sigaut in December 2017, near Avignon, France
transcribed (below), translated and recorded by Guenady
A thousand thanks! A thousand thanks for the honor you do me! A thousand thanks for being so numerous here, today! You are really wonderful! A very big thank you to those who have organized this day… Monseigneur, my respects…
I have come to speak to you about the France of the Revolution, and History, which is for me the story of a discovery, the story of a real conversion… What I believed I knew about the French Revolution, until very recently, was that the French Revolution was the uprising of the people against the unjust privileges of the nobility and the clergy. The French Revolution made France a model for the World. The year of the Bicentenial, I saw a poster fixed to a wall in an office which said that the French Revolution, 1789, was the turning point for History. This was a German exposition which said « das Lesezeichen der Geschichte », that there was a Before The French Revolution, and an After The French Revolution. Such is the greatness of France… the France of the Revolution…
The Revolution occurred because the King favored the privileged classes, and the King betrayed the people. The fall of the Bastille marked the beginning of the process which saw the rise of the people. Believe me, if you will… Do me the favor of believing that until very recently I was persuaded that this was the truth, because from an early age, and I attended the Communale, I was taught these lies as though they were truths. Later, I went back over the History of France, I went back over the History of the Eighteenth Century, and thus I was also led to go back over the History of the Revolution. And thus I discovered a little known aspect… So now, I suggest to you… shall we, before speaking about the Revolution, shall we speak about the Debt? How does that sound to you? The Debt… Well then, it is about this that I will speak…
In 1720, five years after the death of Louis XIV, and despite the ruinous expense of installing his water system at Versailles, as well as his costly wars (wars for which he was not responsible, although he was responsible for their outcome), the debt had nonetheless been reduced from from 80 to 48 million pounds (the currency then in use).
At the time, loans with interest did not exist, since this practice was forbidden by the Church (as indeed all great civilizations forbid usury). How then did the Kingdom become indebted? A substantial part of the debt consisted of annuities that the King paid in exchange for capital given to him by private individuals. When the King no longer had the means to pay these annuities, he went on increasing taxes as long as possible, so as to make his payments. France’s healthy, rigorously managed economy remained in balance, and debt-free, until war came along to upset the equilibrium, causing ever increasing debt. The history of the 18th Century is the story of this debt.
The Paris City Hall [Hôtel de Ville] was the place where annuities were paid out. One gave one’s money to the King (one did not loan it). In return, he gave you reimbursement in the form of annuity payments, which were paid out at the Paris City Hall. Annuities were ‘nominal’; you gave your money to the King and he paid installments back to you, in a contract in your name, overseen by a notary. In 1749, the first annuities au porteur (paid to the bearer) appeared. From then on, one could negociate annuities and sell them. You gave your money to the King, he paid you an annuity, and you could say to someone, ‘I have a good annuity, does that interest you?’ In this way, speculation on the Kingdom’s ‘securities’ began.
In 1754, during the time when the abominable Marquise de Pompadour had the King [Louis XV] under her influence (for various reasons, none of them good), the Controller of Finances, Moreau de Séchelles, borrowed 22 million francs, which he transformed into 2.5 million in annual life annuities. Thus, every year, the King was required to reimburse 2.5 million in annuities, against a capital of 22 million. In order to attract more capital, better conditions had to be offered, in particular, life annuities, whereby the creditor was paid until his death. You gave your money to the King, he paid you an annuity in return, and when you died, your annuity came to an end. As long as the owner of the annuity was alive, the King had to pay.
Madame de Pompadour, to keep a long story short, was a product of the banking and finance milieu, and was practically conceived and groomed by that milieu to become the King’s mistress. The intention was to enrich those families, at the expense of the Kingdom and the King [Louis XV].
Year after year, the loans continued and debt increased, with the King paying annuities, the amount of which increased steadily, although his revenues did not. The debt increased, while revenues stagnated.
I fix the fatal date for the Royalty as 1763. What happened that year? France had just lost the crutial Seven Years War. France lost Canada, France lost her colonies… The loser in war has to cover the cost. The winner obliges the loser to pay, while Louis XV’s debt was already considerable. Thus, the outcome of the Seven Years War was to throw the Royal Treasury into disarray, forcing the King to take out even more new loans. But, in order to attract more creditors, meaning to convince people with money to give it to the King, good conditions had to be proposed. If you have money and the King wants it, you can say, ‘I would like to give it to you, but you’ll have to make me promises…’
Already, to bring in money, in 1758, the King had proposed a new loan instrument based on sequential life annuities. The King promised the annuity not for the creditor’s lifetime, but for the lifetime of (for example) the creditor’s son, or grandson, thus increasing the weight of the debt. In other words, if you have money and if you give the King money on your ‘head’, and you are between fifty and sixty, you have a maximum life expectancy of twenty years. But if, in order to get money, the King accepts an annuity based on the head of your son, or your grandson, the weight of the debt is going to be radically increased. So, when the debts were based not on one ‘head’, but on several, the Kingdom’s debt was set on a mad course that led to the Royal Treasury’s ruin.
In 1759, going back a few years, to the middle of the Seven Years War, the Financial Controller, de Silhouette (from whose fugitive loan we get the word ‘silhouette’), calculated that the Royal Treasury had to pay out 100 million pounds annually to cover the Kingdom’s debt. In 1720, the debt had been 48 million. In 1759, it was 100 million annually, while revenue was at 286 million, meaning that the King had to pay more than a third of his budget to reimburse his creditors. The only solutions were : reduce expenditures, or increase revenues. There was no third choice.
In 1763, the pivotal year, the Seven Years War came to an end, with England dominating the seas and France losing Canada. In March, Voltaire, always ferociously opposed to religion, succeeded in imposing on public opinion his interpretation of the current cause celebre, the Calas Affair, in which he disclosed information that was, in fact, a series of lies invented to lead people to believe that the King’s justice system had unfairly convicted a protestant for no other reason than that he was a protestant. Calas had been convicted of having killed his son. I looked into this case, which I researched from top to bottom, before concluding that Calas really did kill his son… I don’t believe he did it deliberately, but he effectively killed his son, before being rehabilitated by a series of lies invented by Voltaire, who was an agent of the protestant banking establishment. I cannot speak to you today about Voltaire, it would take hours to do so, but he publicly blamed French Catholics for their supposedly monstrous persecution of innocent protestants, propagating these lies all around the country, and all around protestant Europe, in a post-war climate that was hostile to defeated France. So, the Catholics were barbarians, the protestants were nice people… Voltaire was a swindler in the pay of France’s enemies.
The year 1763 was also crutial because it saw the end of the ‘war’ between the Jesuits and the fervently anti-Catholic Jansenists [many of whom were magistrates], with the triumph of the latter. The result was that the Jesuits were driven out of France. The Jansenists, despite what they said, were objectively the allies of Enlightenment thinking, which was rigorously anti-Catholic. The Jesuits had been the King’s counselors, and were opposed to the economic liberalism supported by Voltaire, the Jansenists, and other Enlightenment intellectuals. Thus, Louis XVI, who would come to the throne in 1774, eleven years later, would be the first King of France deprived of the counsel of the Jesuits, who were, at that time, extraordinary intellectuals and solid Christians. When, in 1763, the Jesuits were expelled from France, Voltaire declared, ‘The path has been cleared.’ And indeed it had been. What path? The path of economic liberalism, against which the Kings of France, each one, had always stood in opposition.
What is Liberalism? This was a new word at the time, referred to as Physiocracy, invented by du Pont de Nemours. Liberalism was the Encyclopedia movement. Liberalism was a theory enunciated by François Quesnay, a charlatan who passed himself off as a doctor, and who was part of the entourage of ‘la Pompadour’, and thus close to the King [Louis XV]. This bunch pretended to point out the obvious (how stupid is it, to want to point out the obvious, for either the obvious points itself out, or it isn’t obvious), and the Physiocrats insisted it was obvious that for everyone to get rich, society had to ‘laisser faire’, in other words, let things happen, meaning to break down the defenses that protected the common people and the small producers, defenses which the Kings of France, from the beginning of their existence, had put in place and supported, each one of them, against economic barbarity… Excuse me, that’s a misinterpretation. Economy is a word invented in that period. Economist and Physiocrat are the same.
Thus was brought to pass the first experiment with liberalism. These [liberal] thinkers explained to the King, we can’t increase taxes, we can’t pay the debt… so, we have to increase income. And in order to increase income, we have to ‘laisser faire’, let things happen…
The first phase was with the free circulation of subsistance goods. The people’s bread, which had always been absolutely sacred for the Kings, became a merchandise like any other. Instead of the people’s bread being sold to the people first, and merchants [or, speculators] after, and sold in public markets, under the surveillance of the King’s Grain Police [to prevent speculation], now the people’s bread, the people’s sustenance, could be bought by any merchant, directly from the producer, and resold at whatever price the merchant cared to set, whatever price he could get, and wherever he wanted to sell it… The result was a series of riots that broke out all over France. Could the King have intended such a thing to happen? Alas… Alas!
Whether the King intended it or not, he had signed for it. The name of the Minister in charge of this senseless reform was L’Averdy, who followed a certain Bertin, who had put things in place for the reform, then L’Averdy enacted it, and on 25 May 1763, grains began their free circulation around the country, at the same time as the King’s Grain Police were abolished. What do you suppose happened? The price of grains, hence the people’s bread, soared. There were riots everywhere in France. The people said, The King could not have intended this, it is not possible… Alas!
In 1768, five years later, there was a General Assembly of the Police at the Parliament in Paris. A certain Lepelletier (one of whose successors would distinguish himself particularly badly in History, but that is again another story) told the Assembly, ‘A crowd of writers (referring to the Encyclopedists : Diderot, Voltaire, d’Alembert and others of these berserk thinkers), who have neither the mission nor the power to proclaim the will of the people, pretend to be its voice, while exalting the most incongruous system in regard to its sustenance’. And the Chancellor Séguier declared, ‘We must feed the people, rather than enrich a few merchants…’ These opponents of Liberalism were labeled ‘the privileged’.
At the end of 1769, while the Debt continued to climb, the King appointed the Abby Terray to be General Financial Controllor. The Abby reestablished the Grain Police and forbid all exportation of wheat, but at the same time he drastically reduced the rights of annuity holders. Those who had given their money to the King and who were counting on their annuity payments, were no longer paid. Some people were ruined, and many committed suicide… I recommend Françoise Chandernagor’s excellent novel, l’Enfant des Lumières. In it, you will find an illustration of these terrible despoliations, which affected not only corrupt speculators, but also honest people who had given their money to the King, whom the King no longer wanted to repay, or rather, whom the Abby Terray had decided would no longer be reimbursed. The King’s credit was at an all time low. If the King would no longer reimburse his annuities, the people would no longer lend him money when he wanted it. It was absolutely unthinkable that the King’s credit should be reduced to zero, so it had to be restored. Terray launched more new loans, but these failed. The King kept on borrowing, but no money was coming in. The situation was desperate.
In 1774, Terray’s administration ended with the death of Louis XV. The young Louis XVI came to the throne, the first King never to have been counselled by Jesuits. Instead, he would be manipulated by the band of pseudo philosophers behind which, hidden from view, were the merchants and the financiers. Louis XVI was pressured to put their choice, Turgot, in charge of finances. One of the liberals and an Encyclopedist, Turgot had an alluring program. He said to the King, No more bankruptcies, we’ll pay… No more loans, we won’t increase the debt… No more higher taxes… » Really? So, what will we do? A miracle? « Instead, we will increase revenue by once again applying the policies of economic liberalism. And thus Turgot set off the ‘Flour War’, with riots everywhere, even at Versailles, outside the King’s windows. It was said that troublemakers were exciting the people ; it was never reported that the rioters were simply hungry people. Bread had been at 10, it was now at 30, how could people feed themselves? The theory enacted had been that of the Endyclopedists, the Enlightenment thinkers, the anti Christians… And it was in this way that the events occurred…
Charity workshops were created that were humiliating for the poor… You have no money to buy bread? Don’t worry, you can go to a charity workshop. There, people had to do idiotic jobs, even though they were capable of much better. And to be accepted into a charity workshop, you had to submit to pernickety investigations, like those of social workers; handouts were not easy to obtain; so, poverty spread. Thus, the Flour War was a popular uprising that broke out everywhere at once. And there was a big case, that I studied, at Dijon, but also the whole Parisien Basin, and absolutely everywhere, the people could not understand how the price of bread could have soared as it did.
On the other hand, Turgot considered, and succeeded in convincing the King, that opposition to liberalism, or his policies, was a conspiracy against Reason. And his argument is still repeated today, since the Flour War is said to have been caused by people too stupid to understand what a good thing it was for the price of bread to increase to where people could no longer afford to buy it.
Voltaire was cackling. He invented the extraordinary ‘Report of the Absent Reporter’ (called The Diatribe). Although he had not set foot outside Ferney (which is near Switzerland), Voltaire reported what had happened during the Flour War in the Paris region. Listen to what this liar had to say, writing as if he had been there, even though he had never left home… « When we approached Pontoise, we were surprised to see ten or fifteen thousand peasants who were running around like madmen screaming, ‘Wheat! The Markets!’ and ‘The Markets! Wheat!’ » So– people, who just wanted to eat, are madmen who scream ‘The Markets! Wheat! ’. « … They stopped at every mill, demolishing each in the blink of an eye, and throwing the wheat, flour and bran into the river. A priest was loudly encouraging them, ‘Plunder, my friends! It’s God’s will! »
And this… this is what anti-clericalism is. It’s pretending that corrupt priests stirred the people up at a time when the people, in all their simplicity, were asking only that the King remain the King and reject the policies of the merchants; this was the reason for the Flour War, no more, no less.
The banker from Geneva named Jacques Necker had published a text against liberalism, and thus passed himself off as an opponent of liberalism, even though he wasn’t. His theory was to outlaw the export of wheat. His text was against the policies of Turgot, and Turgot, furious, blamed the rioting on Necker. And so, a whole fringe of the intellectual left (although today historical research has advanced) then insisted that Necker had fomented the Flour War.
Turgot was absolutely convinced by his own policies. At the same time that he abolished the Grain Police, he also abolished the Corporations. The Corporations were trade organizations, which set the trade norms, workers’ wages, and everything else which was later re-invented (as if they had re-invented hot water) as social security. But the Corporations were much more efficient than the social security system, and actually protected the workers. They were suppressed by Turgot, who delivered the workers over to the merchants’ greed. And that was the essence of Liberalism.
And I have seen, with my own eyes, a text which ought to be better known, which shows that some people came to Turgot to ask why he had abolished the Corporations, in other words the guaranteed level of wages. And you raised the price of bread, how are the people to manage? And Turgot answered that every worker, even if he was poorly paid, could pay for his own bread. What he couldn’t pay for was his wife’s bread, and his children’s bread. So, he should put them to work. And that was when child labor was decided. Everything that would plunge France into poverty in the Nineteenth Century was decided in 1775 by Turgot.
Other things were also happening during this period. The New World was beginning to make an impact. In December 1776, during Turgot’s administration, Benjamin Franklin, an American freemason, arrived at Quiberon to plead the Americans’ case against England.
In 1777, Turgot was ousted, and replaced in charge of finances by Necker. This was an unheard of break with tradition. Necker was not French, he was from Geneva. He was a banker. That was unprecedented. He was protestant. Certainly, paving the way for this, all thanks should go to Voltaire, as a consequence of the Calas Affair.
Necker was thus put in charge of sorting out the King’s finances– we shall see what he did.
The Debt was already enormous, absolutely enormous. Franklin had convinced the French to help the Americans, he had convinced the King. So, it was decided to go to war for them. But war is an abyss, a bottomless pit. If you make war and you win, the enemy must reimburse you. But if you make war to please the Americans, who is going to pay for it? It’s throwing money away.
Yet, Necker was a god; he went to war without raising taxes. Mirabeau ironized, ‘He makes war without increased taxes. He is a god!’ So, what was Necker’s miracle? He lent money to the King. ‘Your Magesty, you need money? I can lend it to you. I’m a banker.’ Necker was a genius with money. Finding money was his profession. And he found the necessary money. And the Debt became an abysm.
To obtain money, as already explained, promises had to be made. If the King wanted people to lend him money, he had to make promises in exchange. And thus was inaugurated life annuities paid on multiple heads and raffled off by batches– a good deal. Annuities on multiple heads, the youngest heads possible, from Geneva, if possible (the air is pure in Geneva!), with solid longevity, and pre-adolescent. The King would pay annuities to people who contracted debts on the heads of thirty young girls. If one died, only one thirtieth of the debt was extinguished. With the original life annuity, when the creditor died, the debt was extinguished. Now, if one head died, twenty-nine remained. And these were debts forever exempt from taxation. The public rushed to contract the new annuities, and the King was on his way to ruin. The former life annuities lasted around twenty years; the new annuities would reach up to sixty years, sixty years of debt to pay every year.
Necker created these annuities by the series… To read the chronicle of the years under Necker, the people scrambled and fought to get his annuities. In less than five years, Necker borrowed 530 million pounds, to which must be added the precedent deficit.
That was the price of the war in America. The cost had to be paid– for whose benefit? Who benefited from America’s liberty? France would continue to pay this debt until 1885. A hundred years and four revolutions later, France would still be indebted due to the war in America.
Necker was the man of private interests against the Treasury. Necker made his loans for the benefit of his clients, not for the the benefit of the King of France. He had an overrated reputation for being a humanist. People said that Necker was a humanist because he was against the exportation of grains. But he had never been against the free circulation of grains, which was the ruin of the people. He would be considered popular. But popular with whom? What, in fact, was popularity in the Old Regime? What was the popularity of Robespierre? That was the popularity of the tribune. And the popularity of Necker was popularity with annuity holders. They appreciated Necker, he had made them promises and assured them the King would pay. And he was popular with the gullible who believed the propaganda of his wife, the beautiful Suzanne, and his daughter, the future Madame de Staël, who spent their days exalting their hero, who ruined France. If the King got rid of Necker, the annuity holders would be shaken. Would the annuities be paid? Necker was the guarantor.
In 1783, France signed a peace treaty with England which ended the war in America. And this peace treaty provided for a trade agreement, for which du Pont de Nemours was in charge. He was a physiocrat, he had invented the word ‘physiocrat’. He adored Turgot. He was crazy for Turgot… Turgot was his god… Turgot was his idol…
Du Pont de Nemours was protestant. He claimed to be cosmopolitan, which means that he was indifferent to the interests of France. He was for Progress, with a capial ‘P’. He declared, « It is a dangerous mistake to want to manufacture at home everything that is manufactured elsewhere. Because commerce thrives on trading, and trading is impossible when a nation wants to put out everything, and receive nothing. »
Do you see what they were preparing ? A free exchange agreement between France and England. We make war with England for America, and we sign a peace treaty with England that includes a free-exchange trade agreement. This trade agreement was signed in September 1786, what is called the Eden Reyneval Treaty, which was set out in 1783 and went into effect in 1786—in three more years, the Revolution. Just look at how things are progressing!
Du Pont de Nemours is the instigator and the inspiration for this treaty. In the face of the indignation over the influx of cheap English products, which led to unemployment for French producers, he replied by citing the gospel (what nerve !), ‘Remove his bindings and let him go.’
What are the bindings referred to in the gospel? These are the bindings of the leper, Lazarus, whom Jesus resuscitated. Whereas, here using ‘Remove his bindings and let him go’, referred to commerce, to take off the bindings on commerce. So, he makes an allegory with commerce personifying the friend of Jesus. That was the bright idea. Commerce was the friend of Jesus, and Jesus had resuscitated commerce. That was the swindle!
Du Pont de Nemours said, Let in the products of those who know how to produce better than we do. As if the English knew how to produce better than the French ! No, the English did not know how to produce better than the French, but they did know how to produce less expensively, because the English used child labor, whereas in France, we did not yet oblige children to work.
Thus, the English would invade France by means of their products. They would submerge France in less-expensive products made by children, child slaves… Thunder breaks over France. Thousands of workers are unemployed, and wander from city to city looking for work. And the King doesn’t even have the means to aid the cities that are crying for help. It’s winter, and there is no work. Are we going to die of starvation in the most powerful kingdom in Europe, France?
There are workers by the thousands who are begging, half-clothed, in the cities and from village to village, looking for a piece of bread. Where poverty had not yet been seen, in Paris, it will come with the beginning of winter 1788.
Winter 1788– in six months, the catastrophe…
France is unemployed, due to the Eden Reyneval Treaty. Charity workshops were set up everywhere, humiliating, to make roads or tear down useless, old ramparts. You’re a worker, you belong to a corporation, you have a trade, you have expertise, and you are paid a pittance to tear down old ramparts and break up stones.
These hordes of unfortunate people are the mobs of the French Revolution.
To settle the problem of the debt, there is something else that will be tried. Community leaders and prominent citizens [‘notables’] are convoked and asked for advice. The King is still the King, and he will make a decision, once their advice has been given. On 22 February 1787, the first session opens and what propositions do the notables consider? –To raise taxes ; but on this there is no agreement. –To increase revenue; on that, there is agreement. So, revenue will be increased by taxing landowners, to include as well the clergy and the aristocracy. Everyone knows that the latter two are good-for-nothing and don’t pay taxes. Except that the aristocracy pays a blood tax, because it wages wars, and the Church pays for all the services it renders without charge to the population: aid to the poor, the sacraments, education and other services which are in the hands of the Church. So, these segments are not really un-taxed. They pay in services rendered.
So, the notables refuse to increase taxes, but decide that in order to increase revenue, subsistence products should be ‘liberalized’, again. This would be the third experiment with liberalization of subsistence products. And we come back to the free circulation of goods. On 17 June 1787, free trade becomes the rule in the Kingdom. And I read the text, signed by Louis XVI, who thinks it’s the right thing to do, and that the peasants are asking for it.
The King was told that the landowners are peasants (that landowners like Voltaire were peasants ! Voltaire himself had been dead for ten years by then) ; the King was assured that the peasants are in agreement, so once again, liberalism became the law of the Kingdom.
The King believed that Turgot’s failure was due to resistance from the privileged classes, and that he is doing the right thing. In November, he returned civil status to the protestants. The debt was, by then, a chasm. Nothing seemed to solve the problem. They were obliged to convoke the Estates General [the ‘Etats Généraux’].
At the end of August, Necker returned to his position at the Ministry. He enacted mesures on subsistence products, but changed nothing basic. The winter of 1788/1789 was horrendous. With no work, and with bread at a prohibitive price, the people are grumbling. They want ‘la taxation’. ‘La taxation’ was the negotiation of a fixed price for bread, a price that the poorest were able to afford, which had always been guaranteed by the Kings of France before the fateful year 1763.
The people ask for ‘la taxation’ ; it is refused. Riots caused by hunger are put down everywhere, ineffectually repressed by authorities who do not want to fire on the people. The King’s police refuse to fire on the hungry people.
So what happens? Anarchy follows. Everything is permissible. If the rioting is not put down, what comes after the rioters? The robbers and the looters. France sinks into chaos. The Estates General meet on 5 May 1789, and on 17 June, it proclaims itself ‘The National Assembly’.
This is what is called a coup d’état.
At Paris, ten thousand unemployed are in charity workshops. Wheat is unaffordable. Unaffordable wheat, plus unemployment, the mixture was explosive.
Parisian workers did not vote in the Estates General. The City Hall managed without them. The vote was given to the merchants. The agitation was orchestrated by a master hand from the Palais Royal, the Duke of Orleans, Grand Master of the Grand Orient of France, the King’s cousin.
On 9 July, he gathered a hundred friendly deputies at his home, who swore to do everything possible to bring the Duke d’Orleans, ‘the immortal prince’, to the summit of State. All the elements were ready. The aim was to overthrow the King. All the guests pledged their loyalty as requested by the Abby Sieyès. A riot was set for 13 [July], which finally happened on 14 [July].
The King found out that Necker was part of this conspiracy and immediately got rid of him. But without Necker, who would assure the annuities? There could be no bankruptcy; the King had to pay. This was the signal for the insurrection, which would happen on 14 July.
Listen to what the [contemporary] journalist Antoine Rivarol had to say : « Sixty thousand capitalists and a nest of speculators decided the revolution… They wanted Monsieur Necker to reign so that he would pay them; that a revolution be tried so as to pay them; that everything be overturned in the hope that they would be paid. They could not conceive that the National Assembly was anything other than a finance committee… »
Mirabeau would later celebrate « the blessed deficit » and this « public debt that was the source of our liberty. » And, permit me to add, the source of our misfortune.
The taking of the Bastille was a rebellion of annuity holders who recruited the unemployed with empty stomachs to do their dirty work.
On 15 August 1793, when the Vendéen extermination of civilians was being decided, Cambon would say to the Convention, where he presented his report on the Public Debt: « It is perhaps to the existence of these loans that we owe the beginning of the Revolution; the Government, unable to pay the commitments it had contracted, convoked the Estates General for an appeal. The portefolios were stuffed full of royal notes; the owners of these notes, fearing to lose their capital, put on the revolutionary mask and joined the friends of the Republic; from that time on, the Palais Royal was the patriots’ assembly point. From this center, the sacred fire (sacred, no less !) set out which would enflame the souls of July 14… »
So they said.
The life annuities, and with this I will close, the life annuities had been constituted on the heads of the King, the Queen and the Duke of Orleans, heads believed to be above the risk of premature death, like the heads of the young girls from Geneva. When these three heads fell, the new power extinguished, in three strokes, successively, 400,000, 200,000, and 250,000 pounds of annual annuities.
A savings of almost a million pounds a year. That’s no small benefit.
Thank you.