ke failed. The nobility could see in such
retrenchment and change nothing but ruin for themselves. An assembly
of notables, called in 1781, would not listen to propositions which
seemed suicidal. The King began to alienate the affection of his
natural allies, the people, by yielding to the clamor of the court
party. From the nobility he could wring nothing. The royal treasury
was therefore actually bankrupt, the nobles believed that they were
threatened with bankruptcy, and the people knew that they themselves
were not only bankrupt, but also hungry and oppressed.

At last the King, aware of the nation's extremity, began to undertake
reforms without reference to class prejudice, and on his own
authority. He decreed a stamp-tax, and the equal distribution of the
land-tax. He strove to compel the unwilling parliament of Paris, a
court of justice which, though ancient, he himself had but recently
reconstituted, to register his decrees, and then banished it from the
capital because it would not. That court had been the last remaining
check on absolutism in the country, and, as such, an ally of the
people; so that although the motives and the measures of Louis were
just, the high-handed means to which he resorted in order to carry
them alienated him still further from the affections of the nation.
The parliament, in justifying its opposition, had declared that taxes
in France could be laid only by the Estates-General. The people had
almost forgotten the very name, and were entirely ignorant of what
that body was, vaguely supposing that, like the English Parliament or
the American Congress, it was in some sense a legislative assembly.
They therefore made their voice heard in no uncertain sound, demanding
that the Estates should meet. Louis abandoned his attitude of
independence, and recalled the Paris parliament from Troyes, but only
to exasperate its members still further by insisting on a huge loan,
on the restoration of civil rights to the Protestants, and on
restricting, not only its powers, but those of all similar courts
throughout the realm. The parliament then declared that France was a
limited monarchy with constitutional checks on the power of the crown,
and exasperated men flocked to the city to remonstrate against the
menace to their liberties in the degradation of all the parliaments by
the King's action in regard to that of Paris. Those from Brittany
formed an association, which soon admitted other members, and