Preserving the Monarchy
The Comte de Vergennes 1774–1787

This 1995 book is a study of Vergennes' domestic policy role on the eve of the French Revolution.

Munro Price (Author)

9780521527064, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 29 January 2004

272 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm, 0.4 kg

"In this excellent book, Munro Price examines Vergennes's role in domestic politics--as distinguished from his career in diplomacy--and explains how experience and growth brought this conservative Burgundian to moderate reform....an impressive command of private and public archival material." American Historical Review

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.

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Recalled to life
king, queen, and first minister: the Guines affair
2. The question of reform: Turgot, Necker, and Vergennes
3. Vergennes as first minister: the comité des finances
4. The fall of the comité des finances: the comité and credit policy
the crisis of the caisse d'escompte
the reform of the general farm
conclusion
5. The politics of judicial reform
6. The politics of retrenchment
7. The ministry, its divisions, and the parlement of Paris, 1785–6
the diamond necklace affair
8. The Dutch imbroglio
9. Death and posterity
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 [HBLL], European history [HBJD]