circumscribed, the Assembly resolved that, reckoning from that moment, the tax substituted for the Corvée should be borne equally by the three Orders; and they adjourned to the 5th of September at the town of St. Robert near Grenoble.

This adjournment, this continued and general solicitude expressed by Dauphiné for the fate of France, this character of protection displayed by one province in regard to all the others, and which these took delight in acknowledging, again perplexed the Government, who began to consider whether there were no means to repress these excesses of zeal. Meanwhile, the Mareschal de Vaux suddenly experienced a difficulty of which nobody had thought. It was a rule, that the Commission of a Commandant should be registered in the Parliament of the Province. At the time when the Mareschal de Vaux arrived, that of Grenoble was exiled, and the place of their Sittings shut up. On this point his power was disputed. The Court in haste sent a Messenger to meet the Duke de Tonnerre, whom it had recalled. Proceeding gently he was met half way, where he had stopped, and received the order to go back. The Government was only the more weakened by the ridiculousness of all these counter-orders, and the amalgamation of two Com

mandants, one personal and the other official. The Mareschal was seized with a serious illness; and, whatever is thought of those who had then the real power in Dauphiné, it is but justice to say, that the public tranquillity was maintained there only by patriotism. Meanwhile, Languedoc and Rousillon put themselves in motion. The Assembly of Vizille produced that of Toulouse. Flanders and Hainault demanded, with more phlegm indeed, but still they demanded likewise their Provincial States. Three couriers arrived in one day from Béarn. The imagination was at a loss where to stop its fears. Credit declined; the alarm for public and private property encreased hourly. The Keeper of the Seals continued to attend, and always with some success, to the establishment of his part in the new system. He established his tribunals, even in several towns of Dauphiné that were jealous of the ascendancy assumed by the capital of the Province. But the Prime Minister consumed himself in vain efforts and sterile negotiations to open his Plenary Court. In fine, perceiving himself to be very near the last extremity, no longer able to act without a means of regaining confidence and restoring order, reduced to the alternative either of recalling the Parliaments, who might impeach him, or of convoking the States-General, who might

feel grateful to him for their existence, he determined on the latter.

On the 8th of August, 1788, there appeared a decree of the Council, announcing the convocation of the States-General, fixing the opening of them for the 1st of May, 1789, and suspending till then the Plenary Court.

From that day forward, nothing on earth could have prevented the meeting of the States-General, except perhaps a foreign war, and the King at the head of his army.

CHAPTER III.

The Convocation of the States-General continued-Fall of the Archbishop of Sens-Recall of Mr. Necker-Second Assembly of the Notables-Meeting of the States-General-Situation of the Queen at this Period, and five Years before.

Ir was amid this general fermentation; it was after the Government had exerted instances of authority which had only served to show violence followed by weakness; it was when the greatest bodies of the State remained victors in the assaults made upon them by the Ministry, and were still intoxicated with their triumph, that the Archbishop of Sens solemnly promised the convocation. of the States-General. A Courtier asked him, if he were not alarmed at the thought of holding those States? Sully held them, replied the Prelate. Thus to speak of himself, after an administration of one year, in which he had stumbled at every step, as the equal of the greatest Minister perhaps the Kings of France had ever had; thus to confound the Assembly of Notables of 1596, with an Assembly of the States-General in 1789, was an excess of presumption scarcely credible.

But the Archbishop Loménie was not even destined to hold those States he had con