Charles Alexandre de Calonne, born in Douai of an upper-class family, hed entered the legal profession and become a lawyer to the general council of Artois, procureur to the parlement of Douai, maître des requêtes, intendant of Metz (1768) and of Lille (1774).

He seems to be a man with notable business abilities and an entrepreneurial spirit, while generally unscrupulous in his political actions.

In the terrible crisis preceding the French Revolution, when successive ministers have tried in vain to replenish the exhausted royal treasury, Calonne had been summoned as Controller-General of Finances, an office he had assumed on November 3, 1783.

He owes the position to the Comte de Vergennes, who for the past three years has continued to support him.

According to the Habsburg ambassador, his public image is extremely poor.

Calonne had immediately set about remedying the fiscal crisis, and he has found in Louis XVI enough support to create a vast and ambitious plan of revenue-raising and administrative centralization.

Calonne has ocused on maintaining public confidence through building projects and spending, which is mainly designed to maintain the Crown's capacity to borrow funds.

He presents the king with his plan on August 20, 1786.

At its heart is a new land value tax, which will replace the old vingtieme taxes and finally sweep away the fiscal exemptions of the privileged orders.

The new tax will be administered by a system of provincial assemblies elected by the local property owners at parish, district and provincial level.

This central proposal is accompanied by a further package of rationalizing reform, including free trade in grain and abolition of France's myriad internal customs barriers.

It is in effect one of, if not the most, comprehensive attempts at enlightened reform during the reign of Louis XVI.