Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, Baron de l'Aulne
Turgot was controller-general of France for twenty months and was dismissed for trying to fix the finances. Born in 1727 to a family of Paris administrators, he was educated for the church, gave it up before ordination, and joined the intendancy — the corps of provincial administrators through which the crown actually governed. He spent thirteen years as intendant of Limoges, one of the poorest generalities, where he replaced the corvée on the roads with a money tax, reorganised the assessment of the taille so that it fell more evenly, and ran a famine relief operation in 1770 and 1771 without the usual price controls. He was also a serious economist, associated with the physiocrats, and wrote on the formation and distribution of wealth in terms Adam Smith knew. Louis XVI appointed him in 1774 with a summary of his own programme: no bankruptcy, no increase in taxation, no borrowing. The only way to satisfy all three was to cut expenditure and raise the yield of the existing taxes, which meant attacking privilege. He freed the internal grain trade, which coincided with a bad harvest and produced the Flour War of 1775, and then issued the Six Edicts of 1776 abolishing the corvée, suppressing the guilds, and taxing landowners instead — including the nobility and the clergy. The parlement of Paris refused to register them, the court turned against him, and the queen worked for his dismissal. He was gone by May 1776. Everything he proposed was enacted after 1789. His dismissal is the standard answer to the question of whether the old regime could have reformed itself. It had a competent administrator with the king's support and a workable programme, and the privileged orders defeated him in twenty months without much effort.
- Lived: 1727 CE – 1781 CE
- Nationality: French
- Roles: economist, statesman, physiocrat, administrator
