The King's Ministers
The king's ministers, named by him and excluded from the Assembly, were mostly persons of little mark. Montmorin gave up the portfolio of foreign affairs on 31 October 1791 and was succeeded by De Lessart, the previous minister of finance. Bon-Claude Cahier de Gerville was minister of the interior; Louis Hardouin Tarbé, minister of finance; and Bertrand de Molleville, minister of marine. But the only minister who influenced the course of affairs was the comte de Narbonne, minister of war.
Overtly, the king (despite his earlier attempt to escape Paris during the flight to Varennes) had embraced the newly codified constitution. It seems unlikely that he could actually have liked losing his previous absolute power, but he may well have been sincerely trying to make the best of what, from his point of view, was a bad situation. Marie Antoinette surely wished to shake off the impotence and humiliation of the Crown, and for this end she still clung to the hope of foreign succour and corresponded with Vienna.
Read more about this topic: The Legislative Assembly And The Fall Of The French Monarchy
Famous quotes containing the words king and/or ministers:
“The king said, -Divide the living boy in two; then give half to the one, and half to the other. But the woman whose son was alive said to the king -because compassion for her son burned within her - -Please, my lord, give her the living boy; certainly do not kill him! The other said, -It shall be neither mine nor yours; divide it. Then the king responded: -Give the first woman the living boy; do not kill him. She is his mother.”
—Bible: Hebrew, 1 Kings. 3:25-37.
Solomon resolves a dispute between two women over a child. Solomon’s wisdom was proven by this story.
“This was the Eastham famous of late years for its camp- meetings, held in a grove near by, to which thousands flock from all parts of the Bay. We conjectured that the reason for the perhaps unusual, if not unhealthful development of the religious sentiment here, was the fact that a large portion of the population are women whose husbands and sons are either abroad on the sea, or else drowned, and there is nobody but they and the ministers left behind.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)