L
ike many other countries, France has faced previous public debt crises. Three major episodes stand out: 1789, 1945 and now 2026. The first lesson from this long history is that there are several ways to overcome such crises, even within a few years and with debts larger than today's. However, resolving them has always required major political upheavals, reflecting the deeply conflicting interests involved.
Let us look back. The first major debt crisis led to the French Revolution. Unable to tax the privileged classes, the Ancien Régime [pre-revolutionary monarchy] amassed enormous debt – about a year's national income, close to today's level, but in a context where the economy was barely monetized and taxes accounted for only a small percentage of annual production. Louis XVI eventually convened the Estates General to break the deadlock. The rest is history: abolition of privileges, implementation of a universal tax system on all property (real estate and inheritance taxes that were unfortunately proportional and not progressive, despite innovative proposals already being put forward at the time) and above all, uncompensated nationalization of church property, auctioned off to refill the state's coffers. Noble and bourgeois classes, who held public debt securities, often became the new owners of church lands. This was a great disappointment for poor peasants, who had hoped the Revolution would allow them to access land and stop working for others.
