The best illustration of this relative French weakness
Citations (1)
- The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers whole source · open book
It was, after all, Calonne’s proposed tax reforms, leading to the Assembly of Notables, the moves against the parlements, the suspension of payments by the treasury, and then (for the first since 1614) the calling of the States General in 1789 which triggered off the final collapse of the ancien régime in France.20 The link between national bankruptcy and revolution was all too clear. In the desperate circumstances which followed, the government issued ever more notes (to the value of 100 million livres in 1789, and 200 million in 1790), a device replaced by the Constituent Assembly’s own expedient of seizing church lands and issuing paper money on their estimated worth. All this led to further inflation, which the 1792 decision for war only exacerbated.
chapter: The “Financial Revolution”