Jean-François Joly de Fleury (1718-1802) was a minor figure serving in the French government as finance minister within a decade of the French Revolution. He was a member of the influential Joly de Fleury family.

Family

He was the son of , of the Parlement of Paris and of

Marie Francoise Le Maistre Marie may refer to: People Name * Marie (given name) * Marie (Japanese given name) * Marie (murder victim), girl who was killed in Florida after being pushed in front of a moving vehicle in 1973 * Marie (died 1759), an enslaved Cree person in Tro ...

. His brothers were Guillaume-François-Louis Joly de Fleury (1710-1787) who succeeded their father in his post as Procurator General, and

Joseph Omer Joly de Fleury Joseph Omer Joly de Fleury (1715-1810) was a member of the distinguished Joly de Fleury family, originally from Burgundy, from which came a number of leading French magistrates and officials under the Ancien Régime, ancien regime. He is notable f ...

who may best be known for his unjust prosecution of Lally Tollendal on charges of treason.

Finance Minister

Joly de Fleury's predecessor was Jacques Necker, the Swiss wunderkind who was brought into the French ministry at a time of great debt in 1777. By the time Necker left in 1781, two things had occurred that exacerbated the crisis growing in the coffers of

King Louis XVI of France Louis XVI (''Louis-Auguste''; ; 23 August 175421 January 1793) was the last King of France before the fall of the monarchy during the French Revolution. He was referred to as ''Citizen Louis Capet'' during the four months just before he was ...

. First, Necker had published the

Compte rendu au roi The ''Compte rendu'' (full name ''Compte rendu au roi'', translated as "''report to the king''") was a document published in February 1781 by Jacques Necker, finance minister to the King, in which he presented the state of France's finances. ...

, a "full" accounting of the King's finances—which showed that the King's budget was strong given the "ordinary" expenses. What this document failed to show were the "extraordinary" expenses—including massive debts to pay for the American Revolutionary War. This type of publication was previously unheard of in an absolute monarchy and was extremely popular with the people. The second problem was that Necker had seen the addition of massive debts on behalf of the British colonies to pay for their revolutionary war. These debts were so deep that Necker was having trouble paying the interest on them in addition to all the other expenses for which he had to account. So when Joly de Fleury took over in 1781, he saw the full and complete version of the books and made several decisions that were unpopular. To correct the problems, he took three steps to stop the financial bleeding: * he reestablished the practice of selling

venal office In the context of the French Ancien Régime, a venal office refers to an office sold by the state to raise money. These offices, which were mostly in areas of the judicial system, were retained in exchange for an annual tax of one-sixtieth of the ...

to raise emergency funds, a procedure that was eliminated in the previous decade to improve the long-term financial stability of the Monarchy * he worked with his friends and personal connections in multiple French

Parlement A ''parlement'' (), under the French Ancien Régime, was a provincial appellate court of the Kingdom of France. In 1789, France had 13 parlements, the oldest and most important of which was the Parlement of Paris. While both the modern Fre ...

to push through an emergency tax on the nobility * he drastically cut the "gifts" the king was giving to his courtiers, which made him unpopular at court Because his predecessor had published a book that was an incomplete version of the King's finances, Joly de Fleury had a difficult time making his case because members of government would simply point to their copy of the Compte rendu and decry him a liar. Given the unpopularity of his taxes among the wealthy of France and his angering of the King's personal courtiers, eventually Joly de Fleury was forced to resign his position in 1783. He was replaced by

Charles Alexandre de Calonne Charles Alexandre de Calonne (20 January 173430 October 1802), titled Count of Hannonville in 1759, was a French statesman, best known for his involvement in the French Revolution. Realizing that the Parlement de Paris would never agree to reform ...

Legacy

Though a minor figure, Joly de Fleury was one in a series of ministers who acted as a stepping stone toward the French Revolution. His taxes and curtailing of gifts were both rescinded immediately after his departure, but the selling of venal offices continued—trading short-term bandages for long-term solutions to the Monarchy's debt crises. {{DEFAULTSORT:Joly De Fleury, Jean-Francois 1718 births 1802 deaths French Ministers of Finance