The Accountant Becomes Louis XVI to Save His Neck

May 5th, 1789, was a gray, cloudy day, the sky over Versailles a bleak color that seemed to reflect the repressed, anxious energy of the kingdom itself. This was the day. One hundred and seventy-five years of quiet was to speak for the nation once more. The grand Salle des Menus-Plaisirs, a tremendous salon that had been used for royal parties, had been transformed into the platform for this hitherto unimaginable work of politics.

Inside, the hall was a beautiful sight of color, formality, and hardly restrained hostility. The twelve hundred delegates sat in accordance with the antique etiquette. On the right of the King, the First Estate, the clergy, a splash of purple and scarlet for the high-ranking cardinals and bishops, and an sea of plain black for the parish priests. On his left, the Second Estate, the nobility, an explosion of embroidered silks, shined medals, and the glint of ceremonial sword hangers at their hip. And directly in front of him, taking up the major portion of the hall, sat the six hundred delegates of the Third Estate, a bleak, monolithic mass of men in plain black coats, their very existence a stark and serious rebuke to the extravagance that sat around them.

Louis sat on his high throne, a golden and velvet canopy above. He felt an odd sense of detachment, as if he was the observer of a play of the outcome of which he had already determined but the production of which even now could go dreadfully wrong. Beside him, Marie Antoinette was the absolute image of imperial calm, but he could see the tension seething out of her. He looked out through the faces massed before him—hopeful, arrogant, fearful, outraged—and felt the crushing weight of the proclamation he was here to make.

The proceedings began with the expected, soul- destroying pomp. There had been speeches in obfuscatory, irrelevant phrases from a string of officials. Then the main event was started before the speech of the King: the budget presentation of Minister Necker.

The Swiss banker, more agitated than ever, rose to his feet. In front of him, he had a speech that was, on the whole, a piece of monetary genius but a catastrophe of political rhetoric. For nearly three hours, he spoke, babbling in a monotone litany the deficits, the loans, the pay-outs of interest. He painstakingly defined the scope of the bankruptcy of the kingdom but, in a desperate attempt not to infuriate anybody, offered no radical cure, nor clear course.

The delegates grew restless. The lords shifted in their seats, bored and indignant at this commoner's speech on a matter they considered of insufficient standing. The Third Estate sat in rising discontent, hoping for a call for reform that never came. The entire hall concurred only in the desire for the speech to end. The only, overarching concern that lingered in their thoughts—how would they vote?—remained unrevealed.

Finally, Necker concluded his marathon oration and sat down, having failed to move anybody and succeeded in offending everyone. A silence fell on the hall. This was the moment. Louis rose out of his throne. A whisper went through the gigantic assembly as twelve hundred men stood up, their minds focused.

He didn't talk for long. He had practiced the speech the previous evening, away from all the king's typical ornamentations. He needed clarity, not poetry. He needed his words to be a hammer, not tapestry.

He began in respect for the gravity of the occasion, the tradition of their meeting. He spoke of the victory in the war, the return of French prestige, and the terrible price that had been paid for that. He praised the patriotism of his people. And then he turned to the content of the problem.

"You have been summoned here from the remotest parts of this great kingdom," declared Louis, his voice strong and distinct, echoing to the utmost rafters of the hall. "You have been summoned not as three competing orders, foredoomed to quarrel about antique prerogatives, but as a people, foredoomed to fashion its own future. The ills that plague us—a crushing burden of debt, the specter of famine, an unfair justice system, not of all for all—these ailments do not distinguish duke from plowman. Our solutions, therefore, cannot distinguish them."

He left the phrases hanging in the air, a bare challenge to the shape of the room itself. He could see the confusion on the faces of the Third Estate, the mounting terror on the faces of the nobles.

"This crisis... we will face it together," he announced, his voice ringing out with an authority he never before possessed. "As a united body, with a unified, national voice."

He paused, then inhaled deep and gave the deadly, life-destroying blow.

"To that end, my royal will is that the proceedings of this Estates-General go par tête. By head. The delegates shall all congregate together in this hall, and the vote of every man here, from the greatest archbishop to the lowest country lawyer, shall be counted as equal."

The words fell in the silent hall like a cannonball. There was for a moment only shocked, dumbfounded silence while the whole, radical import of the King's proclamation sank in.

The hall then exploded.

Out of the black-coated ranks of the Third Estate, a whisper arose, a growl of disbelief that swelled into a sea of raw, uncontrolled joy. Men leapt to their feet, their solemn faces illuminated by ecstatic joy. They cheered, they cried, they embraced their neighbors. They threw their hats into the air. The long, hard years of bitterness, of being thought nothing, were ended. The King, their King, had presented them the kingdom on a silver platter. Mirabeau's rugged face was a mask of awestruck victory. The young lawyer Robespierre was on his feet, applauding with enthusiasm, almost with religious passion. They had been granted all they had been courageous enough to dream of, and they had been granted more.

By stark, frightening contrast, the First and Second Estate benches presented a scene of paralysing shock. The high nobles and clergy were poleaxed, their faces white with rage so strong that they could only remain silent. It was not a reform, but an abolition. With twelve short words, the King had erased a thousand years of their special, privileged status. He had killed the Ancien Régime's politics single-handed.

Vergennes had actually been physically struck, ashen-faced, mouth agape. The Comte d'Artois, the King's brother, face purple with rage, leapt up from his chair to the right of the throne, looked once in icy vituperation at Louis, and exited the hall. A handful of other conservative dukes and archbishops, out of a dream, arose also, their departure a public expression of discontent and manifesto of hostility.

Louis stood motionless on the throne, gazing out upon the uproar that he himself had caused. He had crossed the Rubicon. He had put the whole, gigantic power of the monarchy in the service of the Third Estate. He had made his choice, taking the side of the twenty-five million rather than the two hundred thousand. He had, in short, begun a revolution from the very throne upon which he sat.

The Third Estate thundered in deafening cheers. They were crying out his name. "Vive le Roi! Vive le Roi!" He was their hero, their father, their defender. But when he looked out into the faces of the departing nobles, twisted in rage and hate, he shivered. In the space of a quarter of an hour, he had made the most powerful, the most ruthless, the most well-connected individuals in his kingdom his enemies. The question now was not whether there would be a revolution. The question was whether he would be able to hold back the rapacious, ecstatic, and terrifying forces he had now set loose upon the world.