Person1732 – 1804

Jacques Necker

Also called: Necker

Genevan banker and finance minister to Louis XVI whose dismissal in July 1789 set off the storming of the Bastille

Born in Geneva in 1732, he made a fortune as a banker in Paris. As a Protestant he became director-general of finances in 1777 without the title of minister, funding the American war with loans rather than taxes, and won popularity by publishing the royal accounts in 1781 before being forced out. Recalled in 1788, he prepared the Estates-General and agreed to double the Third Estate’s representation. News of his dismissal on 11 July 1789 set off the storming of the Bastille; he was soon reinstated but lost influence and retired to Coppet in Switzerland in 1790. His daughter was the writer Germaine de Staël. He died at Coppet in 1804.

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1 related event

1
1789Estates-General of 1789participant
At the first Estates-General in 175 years the orders split over how to vote, and the Third Estate proclaimed itself the National Assembly.

People who appear alongside

Louis XVI1754 – 1793
King of France, executed during the Revolution
Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès1748 – 1836
Cleric and political theorist whose pamphlet What Is the Third Estate? opened the Revolution and who plotted the coup of Brumaire with Napoleon in 1799
Comte de Mirabeau1749 – 1791
Nobleman elected for the Third Estate whose oratory led the early National Assembly towards a constitutional monarchy

Themes this person appears in

The French Revolution1787 – 1799
From the Assembly of Notables and the Estates-General to the coup of 18 Brumaire — twelve years that toppled the absolute monarchy, founded a republic, passed through Terror and reaction, and ended with Napoleon