Meeting of the Estates-General, 17809. 143 
XV 
The result was an almost instantaneous change in the govern- 
ment’s policy, for which Necker claims the credit. While the 
Artois-Barentin faction was planning the coercion of the third 
estate, apparently Necker was striving to induce the king to 
bring pressure to bear upon the upper orders. The method he 
suggested was a letter of invitation to the orders. Necker had 
first broached this idea in a secret letter written to Louis XVI 
on June 20, when the opposition within the king’s council 
threatened to subvert his plan for a royal session. The letter 
stated: “‘I have been led to see some inconveniences connected 
with a royal session which I had not noted before, and it is 
believed that a simple letter of invitation would be better.’’! 
Apparently, his intention was to secure the substitution of that 
scheme for his previous project of a royal session. In that 
way, he would have cut the ground from under his opponents’ 
feet. 
Their opposition, however, had been powerful enough, not 
only to hold the king to Necker’s original idea of a royal session, 
but to materially modify Necker’s plan.2 Necker was not 
dismissed June 23, apparently because of popular opinion and 
fear of the disastrous effect upon the financial situation. Of his 
own course after June 23, Necker says: ‘I was not slow, conse- - 
quently, in profiting from the momentary renewal of my credit 
to ask His Majesty to write to the nobility and to the clergy, 
the letter which led to the reunion of the three orders.’ 
Necker thus assumes the responsibility for the union of the 
orders and Barentin, his most bitter opponent in the ministry, 
gives him full credit for the same. The latter charges that, 
at bottom, Necker’s aim was to establish vote by head, which 
would abolish distinction of orders. He had been thwarted in 
this aim through the revision of his scheme for a royal session, 
but neither he nor his supporters outside the council had been 
1 Quoted by Loménie, ‘‘ Les préliminaires de la séance royale,”’ in Annales 
de l’école libre des sciences politiques, V. 120. 
2 Becker, Die Verfassungspolit:k der franzésischen Regierung, 195-209. 
8 Necker, Sur l’administration, 115. 
; 257 
