The Myth of Absolutism

On January 20th, between one and four o'clock in the morning, each member of the Paris parlement or supreme court was awakened by two musketeers beating at his door with the butts of their weapons. He was handed a lettre de cachet offering him the choice of immediate exile or submission to Louis XV's policies. Less than half the magistrates yielded; the rest were deposited at remote distances from Paris and encouraged to pursue their legal careers in the sticks.

This shocking glimpse of dictatorship, replete with jack-booted militarism and contempt for legal norms and human rights, confirms liberal prejudices about absolute monarchy. But the real point is easily missed. The uproar that greeted this display of force majeure was the loudest before 1789. This suggests that the episode is a demonstration of how ancien regime France was supposed not to operate.