ABSTRACT
Jacques Turgot’s programme did include radical fiscal, constitutional and social reform. The late eighteenth century recorded remarkable political and constitutional change in many European countries, as well as across the Atlantic. In any case, the court, bolstered by increasing internal discontent and external prompting from absolutist European regimes, refused to accept the idea of a constitutional monarchy. The decree of 10 October 1790 stated that Louis Cullen was ‘King of the French’, theoretically ‘by the grace of God’, but, in practice, he ruled ‘by the constitutional law of the state’. Louis also links the harvest failures of these years with a psychological reaction that ‘created in people’s minds an overwhelming and hypnotic sense of foreboding which acquired a momentum of its own as an apparent physical parallel to the all too palpable political crisis’. The Cordelier Club, more popular in composition, would build more bridges with the poor, as well as with female activists.
