This suppression of privileges is badly received.

Calonne's spendthrift and authoritarian reputation is well-known to the parlements, earning him their enmity.

Knowing this, he had intentionally submitted his reform program directly to the king and the hand-picked assembly of notables, not to the sovereign courts or parlements, first.

Composed of the old regime's social and political elite, however, the assembly of notables had balked at the deficit presented to them when they met at Versailles in February 1787, despite Calonne's plan for reform and his backing from the king.

If Calonne thought he would find more cooperation by changing the assembly, he was mistaken.

He had proposed a "land tax," Subvention Territoriale, to be imposed on all land-holders, rich or poor.

A storm of protest had arisen. Charges of mismanagement had been made.

Calonne, angered, had printed his reports and so alienated the court.

Louis XVI dismisses him on April 8, 1787, and exiles him to Lorraine.

The joy is general in Paris, where Calonne, accused of wishing to raise taxes, is known as Monsieur Déficit.

Calonne will soon afterward leave for Great Britain, and during his residence there will kept up a polemical correspondence with Necker.

After being dismissed, Calonne states, "The King, who assured me a hundred times that he would support me with unshakable firmness, abandoned me, and I succumbed”.