Jacques Necker (French: [ʒak nɛkɛʁ]; 30 September 1732 – 9 April 1804) was a Genevan banker and statesman who served as finance minister for Louis XVI.

[2] In 1781, he earned widespread recognition for his unprecedented decision to publish the Compte rendu – thus making the country's budget public – "a novelty in an absolute monarchy where the state of finances had always been kept a secret.

After publishing some works, Karl Friedrich was appointed professor of public law at the Academy of Geneva in 1725, and later served in the city's Council of Two Hundred.

In 1773, Necker won the prize of the Académie Française for a defense of state corporatism framed as an eulogy in honor of Louis XIV's minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert.

In 1775, in Essai sur la législation et le commerce des grains, he attacked the physiocrats, like Ferdinando Galiani, and questioned the laissez-faire policies of Turgot, the Controller-General of Finances.

)[17] On 29 June 1777, according to his daughter in her "Vie privée de Mr Necker" he was made director-general of the royal treasury and not Controller-General of Finance which was impossible because of his Protestant faith.

Necker tried through careful reforms (abolition of pensions, mortmain, droit de suite and more fair taxation) to rehabilitate the disorganized state budget.

[21][22] Unlike Turgot – in his Mémoire sur les municipalités – Necker tried to install provincial assemblies and hoped they could serve as an effective means of reforming the Ancien régime.

His greatest financial measures were his use of loans to help fund the French debt and his use of high interest rates rather than raising taxes.

In his most influential work, which brought him instant fame, Necker summarized governmental income and expenditures to provide the first record of royal finances ever made public.

The impending national bankruptcy of France caused Calonne to convene an Assembly of notables under the elimination of parlements in order to enforce tax reforms.

[46] On 7 September 1788, Paris was looking at famine, and Necker suspended the exportation of corn, purchased seventy million livres of wheat, and publicly reposted the decree of the King's Council of 23 April 1789 allowing police to inspect granaries and private inventories of grain, but none of these efforts could solve the problem.

In a letter to Florimond Claude, Comte de Mercy-Argenteau, Marie-Antoinette took personal credit for forcing the king's hand on this matter.

[14] As France had financed its participation almost exclusively by municipal bonds, Necker warned of the consequences for the French national budget as the war continued.

Nicolaas van Staphorst told Necker that the entire French debt might be redeemed without any loss through the Amsterdam capital markets.

[50] Thomas Jefferson, who had succeeded Franklin as American minister to France and John Adams as head of American finance in Europe in 1785, learned about the meeting between the Van Staphorsts’ representatives and the French Minister of Finance only in November 1786, when he received a redacted document describing the Dutch offer from Étienne Clavière, a Genevan banker and pro-America.

His address at the Estates-General on 5 May 1789 about the fundamental problems as financial health, constitutional monarchy, and institutional and political reforms lasted three hours.

[58] Two weeks later, Necker seems to have sought to persuade the king to adopt a constitution similar to that of Great Britain and advised him in the strongest possible terms to make the necessary concessions before it was too late.

[59] According to François Mignet, "he hoped to reduce the number of orders, and bring about the adoption of the English form of government, by uniting the clergy and nobility in one chamber, and the third estate in another.

[68] Necker demanded a pardon for Baron de Besenval, who was imprisoned after given command of the troops concentrated in and around Paris early July.

[78] On 21 December 1789, a first decree was voted through, ordering the issue (in April 1790) of 400 million assignats, certificates of indebtedness of 1,000 livres each, with an interest rate of 5%, secured and repayable based on the auctioning of the "Biens nationaux".

In January 1790, Necker obtained an order of arrest against Jean-Paul Marat, for having "had openly espoused the cause of the people, the poorest classes," according to Peter Kropotkin.

[82] At the same time, Étienne Clavière lobbied for large issues of assignats representing national wealth and operating as legal tender.

Necker endeavored to dissuade the Assembly from the proposed issue; suggesting that other means could be found for accomplishing the result, and he predicted terrible evils.

[107] Necker, suspected of reactionary tendencies, traveled east to Arcis-sur-Aube and Vesoul, where he was arrested, but on 11 September he was allowed to leave the country.

[111] His house in Rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin, his estate in Saint-Ouen sûr Seine, and the two million livres were confiscated by the French government.

Since the birth of Germaine, she was correcting the most morbid clauses of her will and insisted to be embalmed by Samuel-Auguste Tissot, preserved and exhibited in a bedroom for four months.

[citation needed] In 1795 Germaine moved to Paris with Benjamin Constant, but she came back, sometimes involuntary, and founded the Cercle de Coppet.

The Charter of 1814 signed by Louis XVIII at Saint-Ouen sûr Seine contained almost all the articles in support of liberty proposed by Necker before the Revolution of 14 July 1789.

[1] On 11 August 1792, the day after the Storming of the Tuileries, all the busts were removed from the town hall, including the one of Necker by Jean-Antoine Houdon and smashed.