Quotation from: A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times, Volume 3Written by: Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot |
|
This was providing at one and the same time for the wants of the present and the rights of the future. The impost of talliage was, indeed, voted just as it had stood under Charles VII., but it became a temporary aid granted for two years only; at the end of them the estates were to be convoked and the tax augmented or diminished according to the public wants. The great question appeared decided; by means of the vote, necessary and at the same time temporary, in the case of the impost, the states-general entered into real possession of a decisive influence in the government; but the behavior and language of the officers of the crown and of the great lords of the court rendered the situation as difficult as ever. In a long and confused harangue the chancellor, William de Rochefort, did not confine himself to declaring the sum voted, twelve hundred thousand livres, to be insufficient, and demanding three hundred thousand livres more; he passed over in complete silence the limitation to two years of the tax voted and the requirement that at the end of that time the states-general should be convoked. "Whilst the chancellor was thus speaking," says Masselin, "many deputies of a more independent spirit kept groaning, and all the hall resounded with a slight murmuring because it seemed that he was not expressing himself well as to the power and liberty of the people." The deputies asked leave to deliberate in the afternoon, promising a speedy answer. "As you wish to deliberate, do so, but briefly," said the chancellor; "it would be better for you to hold counsel now so as to answer in the afternoon." The deputies took their time; and the discussion was a long and a hot one. "We see quite well how it is," said the princes and the majority of the great lords; "to curtail the king's power, and pare down his nails to the quick, is the object of your efforts; you forbid the subjects to pay their prince as much as the wants of the state require: are they masters, pray, and no longer subjects? You would set up the laws of some fanciful monarchy, and abolish the old ones." "I know the rascals," said one of the great lords [according to one historian, it was the Duke of Bourbon, Anne de Beaujeu's brother-in-law]; "if they are not kept down by over-weighting them, they will soon become insolent; for my part, I consider this tax the surest curb for holding them in." "Strange words," says Masselin, "unworthy of utterance from the mouth of a man so eminent; but in his soul, as in that of all old men, covetousness had increased with age, and he appeared to fear a diminution of his pension."
|
| PREVIOUS GROUP HOME SITE HOME NEXT |
| Part of the RabbitHoleResearch Project Change Tag: ~~ 0 ~~ |