were obliged to leave Rouen.  A commission of fifteen councillors of the Parliament of Paris came to replace provisionally the interdicted Parliament of Normandy; and, when the magistrates were empowered at last to resume their sitting, it was only a six months’ term:  that is, the Parliament henceforth found itself divided into two fragments, perfect strangers one to the other, which were to sit alternately for six months.  “A veritable thunderbolt for that sovereign court, for by the six months’ term,” says M. Floquet, “there was no longer any Parliament, properly speaking, but two phantoms of Parliament, making war on each other, whilst the government had the field open to carve and cut without control.”

“All obedience is now from fear,” wrote Grotius to Oxenstiern, chancellor of Sweden; “the idea is to exorcise and annihilate hatred by means of terror.”  “This year,” wrote an inhabitant of Rouen, “there have been no New Year’s presents [etrennes], no singing of ’the king’s drinking-song [le roi boit], in any house.  Little children will be able to tell tales of it when they have attained to man’s estate; for never, these fifty years past, so far as I can learn, has it been so.” [Journal de l’Abbe de la Rue.] The heaviest imposts weighed upon the whole province, which thus expiated the crime of an insignificant portion of its inhabitants.  “The king shall not lose the value of this handkerchief that I hold,” said the superintendent Bullion, on arriving at Rouen.  And he kept his word:  Rouen alone had to pay more than three millions.  The province and its Parliament were henceforth reduced to submission.

It was not only the Parliaments that resisted the efforts of Cardinal Richelieu to concentrate all the power of the government in the hands of the king.  From the time that the sovereigns had given up convoking the states-general, the states-provincial had alone preserved the right of bringing to the foot of the throne the plaints and petitions of subjects.  Unhappily few provinces enjoyed this privilege; Languedoc, Brittany, Burgundy, Provence, Dauphiny, and the countship of Pau alone were states-districts, that is to say, allowed to tax themselves independently and govern themselves to a certain extent.  Normandy, though an elections-district, and, as such, subject to the royal agents in respect of finance, had states which continued to meet even in 1666.  The states-provincial were always convoked by the king, who fixed the place and duration of assembly.

The composition of the states-provincial varied a great deal, according to the districts.  In Brittany all noblemen settled in the province had the right of sitting, whilst the third estate were represented by only forty deputies.  In Languedoc, on the contrary, the nobility had but twenty-three representatives, and the class of the third estate numbered sixty-eight deputies.  Hence, no doubt, the divergences of conduct to be remarked in those two provinces between the Parliament and the states-provincial.  In Languedoc, even during Montmorency’s insurrection, the Parliament remained faithful to the king and submissive to the cardinal, whilst the states declared in favor of the revolt:  in Brittany, the Parliament thwarted Richelieu’s efforts in favor of trade, which had been enthusiastically welcomed by the states.