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- He had plenty of enemies in the royal court and by 1780, some writers and cartoonists were ridiculing his smoke-and-mirrors approach to fiscal management. In January 1781, Necker responded to these criticisms by publishing Le Compte Rendu au Roi (‘The Record of Accounts for the King’).
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Unlike the British, where the crown’s finance minister gave an annual report to Parliament, the French royal treasury’s accounts were a closely guarded secret. Yet Louis XVI’s second finance minister, Jacques Necker, a Swiss banker, who claimed to be more attuned to the benefits of public confidence than to palace intrigue at court ...
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- Early Career
- First Ministry: 1777-1781
- Report to The King
- Second Ministry: 1788-89
- Third Ministry: 1789-1790
- Final Retirement
Jacques Necker was born on 30 September 1732 in the Republic of Geneva, modern-day Switzerland. His father, Charles-Frédéric Necker, was a lawyer and a native of Neumark, Prussia, who had become a citizen of Geneva in 1726 after having been elected a professor of law there. Jacques and his elder brother, Louis, were raised Calvinists and afforded a...
Although now a royal minister, Necker's Protestant faith and commoner background still served as a liability. His appointment caused a scandal and was the subject of much gossip amongst aristocratic social circles. Barred from attending royal councils, he was also not allowed to assume the title of Controller-General of finance and was referred to ...
As the war dragged on, these measures were not enough, and to keep the state's finances afloat, Necker was forced to take out foreign loans. As the number of Necker's personal enemies grew, pamphlets began to circulate attacking him for mismanaging finances. In response to this, Necker made public an account of royal finances in 1781, published as ...
The publication of the Compte Rendu had sent Necker to new levels of popularity. Following his resignation, people of all classes flocked to his home at St. Ouen, and Empress Catherine the Great of Russia (1762-1796) even invited him to attend her at St. Petersburg. Necker instead retired to Lake Geneva, where he would spend the next few years defe...
Necker's triumphant return to Paris was treated as a festival day, though it was marred by the brutal street murder of Joseph-François Foullon (1715-1789), who had briefly replaced him in the king's ministry. In his reinstated role, Necker would serve as an effective liaison between the king the and National Assembly. He drafted Louis XVI's disappr...
Upon leaving France, Necker returned to Switzerland. Just as in France, his moderate tendencies came to haunt him, as he was seen by royalist French emigres living abroad as too revolutionary, and was viewed as too royalist by Swiss Jacobins. In 1793, after the Jacobins came to power in France, Necker was put on the list of emigres himself, and all...
Necker warned the king that unless the privileged orders yielded, the States-General would collapse, taxes would not be paid, and the government would be bankrupt. On 17 June 1789, the first act of the new National Assembly declared all existing taxes illegal.
Sep 21, 2019 · In January 1781, Necker responded to these criticisms by publishing Le Compte Rendu au Roi (‘The Record of Accounts for the King’). For the first time in France’s history, the general public was presented with a full and frank account of the nation’s finances.
May 21, 2018 · In 1781 Necker published a response to his critics, his famous Compte rendu au roi, a report on the fiscal condition of France. However, he was dismissed from office on May 19, 1781. Necker retired to his Swiss estate, Coppet, where he wrote Traitéde l'administration des finances de la France in 1784.
Necker was dumped from office three months later, the product of manipulations and intrigues of those who disliked him. But the king would return to Necker after the failures of Calonne and Brienne, reinstating him as finance minister in 1788.
In trying to raise the necessary loans, Necker published in 1781 his celebrated Compte rendu au Roi (“Report to the King”), claiming a surplus of 10,000,000 livres in the hope of concealing an actual deficit of 46,000,000.
