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and his personal rocker, Madame Rousseau, otherwise known as Rocker to the Children of France, whose sister, Madame Campan, worked in the queen’s household. Valets were appointed, such as Hanet Cléry, a particularly loyal and discreet servant who had been in service to the royal family since 1782. In addition, the Duc de Normandie had two room boys, four ushers, a porter, a silver cleaner, a laundress, a hairdresser, two First Chamber Women, eight Ordinary Women and a periphery of minor staff all vying for importance.
    The nursery on the ground floor of Versailles opened out onto the large terraces and acres of ornamental gardens beyond; rows of orange trees and neatly trimmed box bushes receded into the distance, geometrically arranged
around circular pools with tall fountains cascading onto statues, gilded each year. Any infant tumble from the prince as he took his first steps would bring a kaleidoscope of riches to view; wherever he looked, his soft and silken world was perfect. His mother watched his excellent progress with delight. Louis-Charles was glowing with vitality, “a real peasant boy, big, rosy and plump,” she wrote. This contrasted sharply with his brother, Monsieur le Dauphin who, although more than three years older, was constantly prone to infections.
    Monsieur le Dauphin was eventually moved out of the nursery and established in his own official suite on the ground floor of Versailles, ousting his uncle Provence. His older sister, Madame Royale, also had her own apartment near Marie-Antoinette, under the Hall of Mirrors. Apart from occasional state duties, such as the grand couvert, where they would dine in public—Madame Royale with her hair powdered and wearing a stiff panniered gown, the Duc de Normandie usually sitting on his mother’s lap—their lives were shielded from the public. The Duc de Normandie was taken on carriage trips around the park, visits to the farm at the Trianon or he could play in his little garden on the terrace. Occasionally there would be trips to nearby palaces at Marly, Saint-Cloud or Fontainebleau.
    Nonetheless, the “gilded youth” of Versailles, in the words of one nobleman, the Comte de Ségur, walked “upon a carpet of flowers which covered an abyss.” France’s deepening financial crisis was beginning to dominate public life. In 1787 interest on the national debt alone had risen to almost half of all state expenditure. Louis and his finance minister, Charles Alexandre de Calonne, were fast approaching a point where it was no longer possible to borrow more money except at excessive interest rates. They faced no alternative but to raise taxes.
    Calonne, like his predecessors, urged the king to reform the tax system and abolish the partial exemption from direct taxation enjoyed by the nobility and clergy. The king, always anxious to create a consensus for change rather than appear to act as autocratic leader, wanted to introduce Calonne’s reforms without confrontation. Consequently, rather than present his proposals
to the parlements —which he knew would be hostile—he decided to take a chance and call a special Assembly of Notables, composed of leading figures in society, hand-picked for the occasion.
    However, when the Assembly of Notables gathered in Versailles in February 1787, far from accepting and popularizing the tax reforms as the king had hoped, they were suspicious. The clergy and nobles, who owned most of the land, were largely exempt from the principal land tax, the taille, yet under the new measures they would pay up to five percent of their own income. As news spread of the proposed tax reforms and soaring deficit, Calonne became the focus of the passionate criticism. In Paris his effigy was burned in the streets. By April 1787, the king was forced to dismiss his unpopular minister, and the following month he dissolved the Assembly of Notables.
    His new finance minister, Loménie de Brienne, prepared a revised package of tax reforms and