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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 July 2009
On 21 May 1787, the marquis de la Fayette rose and delivered a speech to the bureau presided over by Louis XVI's younger brother, the comte d'Artois, in the assembly of notables at Versailles. In the main this was a technical examination of the new taxes the crown was proposing to tackle the financial crisis facing France. La Fayette's conclusion, however, was startling. Assuming that it would take five years for the reforms under discussion to bear fruit, he proposed that the happy moment of their completion should be crowned by the convocation of a national assembly. This phrase struck his audience like a bolt from the blue. As La Fayette put it in his memoirs:
From the effect produced by these two words pronounced for the first time, one would not have thought that only two years later, they would reappear with an explosive force that would dominate France and the world. ‘What, Monsieur!’ exclaimed the comte d'Artois, ‘you are demanding the convocation of the Estates General?’ ‘Yes, Monseigneur’ [I replied], ‘and even more than that.’
To historians today, familiar with La Fayette's subsequent role in the French Revolution, his voicing of these sentiments in 1787 may not seem so surprising. Yet as Artois's reply makes clear, to his listeners at the time they were both unexpected and shocking.
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