Finance
It had been established during the Middle Ages that the Church should contribute not only to the expenses of the Crusades, but also towards the defence of the kingdom, a tradition continued to modern times. The religious wars of the sixteenth century, later the siege of La Rochelle (1628) under Richelieu, and to a still greater extent the political wars waged by Henry IV, Louis XIII, Louis XIV, Louis XV and Louis XVI occasioned the levying of enormous subsidies on the Clergy. The following example may serve as an illustration: the Clergy who had voted sixteen million livres in 1779, gave thirty millions more in 1780 for the expenses of the French Government in the war of the American Revolution, to which they added in 1782 sixteen millions and in 1786 eighteen millions.
The French kings more than once expressed their gratitude to this body for the services it had rendered both monarchy and fatherland in the prompt and generous payment of large subsidies at critical moments. It has been calculated from official documents that during three-quarters of a century (1715-89) the Clergy paid in, either for the rentes of the Hotel de Ville or as "free gifts" over 380 million livres.
In 1789, when accepting, with all the cahiers or propositions emanating from the Clergy, the law imposing on the Church of France an equal share of the public expense, the Archbishop of Paris, Monseigneur de Juign', was able to say that the Church already contributed as much as the other orders (nobility, bourgeoisie, and people); its burdens would not be increased by the new law that imposed unpon all an equal share in contributing to the expenses of the State.
Read more about this topic: Assembly Of The French Clergy
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