THE COMITÉ AND CREDIT POLICY

With the humbling of Ségur and Castries, the comité des finances appeared to have vanquished all opposition. Only four months later, however, it had been swept away in the political and financial crisis of October 1783.

This extraordinary reversal of fortune had its origins in the contrôle-général rather than the court. The fall of the comité was not principally the work of the disaffected ministers and the queen's party, although they contributed to it to some extent and benefited from its collapse. The comité fell because of profound disagreements among its members over credit policy.

At the centre of these disagreements, yet again, stood those pillars of ministerial despotism, the crown's financial officers. Not only did they administer the royal finances, they also doubled as the crown's chief providers of credit. This situation had major disadvantages. As venal office-holders, the receveurs-généraux and similar functionaries regarded themselves as proprietors rather than employees, and were thus less receptive to central control from above. Most important of all, as wealthy individuals in their own right, they became the chief source of loans for a monarchy that was almost constantly in debt.

The extent of the crown's dependence on la finance – and the reason it found it so difficult to reform in this area – was most obvious at the highest level. The greatest part of the crown's day-today debt was relieved by a select group of immensely rich financiers, no more than twelve at any one time, who were known collectively as the faiseurs de service du roi.