European University Institute Library

Preserving the monarchy, the comte de Vergennes, 1774-1787, Munro Price

eng

index present

non fiction

Preserving the monarchy

electronic resource

dictionaries

48137939

Munro Price

Cambridge Social Sciences eBooks

the comte de Vergennes, 1774-1787

The comte de Vergennes is best known as one of the great foreign ministers of modern French history, but for much of the 1780s he was also first minister in all but name. This 1995 book was the first to deal in depth with the critical part he played in French domestic policies on the eve of the Revolution. It studies Vergennes' role in the context of the debate on the nature and future of the French monarchy in the two decades before the Revolution. His financial reforms, fully examined here, were the last attempt to restructure the monarchy in accordance with its traditional principles. The failure of this undertaking accelerated the final collapse of the royal government. Preserving the Monarchy is based on archival research, as well as reinterpretations of the established sources. The result is a significant study, not merely of Vergennes but of the end of the ancien régime.--, Provided by publisher

1. Recalled to life -- 2. The question of reform: Turgot, Necker, and Vergennes -- 3. Vergennes as first minister: the comite des finances -- 4. The fall of the comite des finances -- 5. The politics of judicial reform -- 6. The politics of retrenchment, 1783-1785 -- 7. The ministry, its divisions, and the parlement of Paris, 1785-1786 -- 8. The Dutch imbroglio -- 9. Death and posterity