It might have been possible for the Government to contend successfully with the various elements of discontent among the people, intoxicated with those abstract theories of rights which Rousseau had so eloquently defended, if it had possessed a strong head and the sinews of war.  But Louis XVI., a modest, timid, temperate, moral young man of twenty-three, by the death of his father and elder brothers had succeeded to the throne of his dissolute grandfather at just the wrong time.  He was a gentleman, but no ruler.  He had no personal power, and the powers of his kingdom had been dissipated by his reckless predecessors.  Not only was the army demoralized, and inclined to fraternize with the people, but there was no money to pay the troops or provide for the ordinary expenses of the Court.  There was an alarming annual deficit, and the finances were utterly disordered.  Successive ministers had exhausted all ordinary resources and the most ingenious forms of taxation.  They made promises, and resorted to every kind of expediency, which had only a temporary effect.  The primal evils remained.  The national treasury was empty.  Calonne and Necker pursued each a different policy, and with the same results.  The extravagance of the one and the economy of the other were alike fatal.  Nobody would make sacrifices in a great national exigency.  The nobles and the clergy adhered tenaciously to their privileges, and the Court would curtail none of its unnecessary expenses.  Things went on from bad to worse, and the financiers were filled with alarm.  National bankruptcy stared everybody in the face.

If the King had been a Richelieu, he would have dealt summarily with the nobles and rebellious mobs.  He would have called to his aid the talents of the nation, appealed to its patriotism, compelled the Court to make sacrifices, and prevented the printing and circulation of seditious pamphlets.  The Government should have allied itself with the people, granted their requests, and marched to victory under the name of patriotism.  But Louis XVI. was weak, irresolute, vacillating, and uncertain.  He was a worthy sort of man, with good intentions, and without the vices of his predecessors.  But he was surrounded with incompetent ministers and bad advisers, who distrusted the people and had no sympathy with their wrongs.  He would have made concessions, if his ministers had advised him.  He was not ambitious, nor unpatriotic; he simply did not know what to do.

In his perplexity, he called together the principal heads of the nobility,—­some hundred and twenty great seigneurs, called the Notables; but this assembly was dissolved without accomplishing anything.  It was full of jealousies, and evinced no patriotism.  It would not part with its privileges or usurpations.