“We, members of the noblesse of Brittany, do declare infamous those who may accept any place, whether in the new administration of justice or in the administration of the states, which is not recognized by the laws and constitutions of the province.”  A dozen of them set off for Versailles to go and denounce the ministers to Louis XVI.  Being put in the Bastille, eighteen of their friends went to demand then back; they were followed by fifty others.  The officers of the Bassigny regiment had taken sides with the opposition, and discussed the orders sent to them.  Among the great lords of the province, attached to the king’s own person, MM. de La Tremoille, de Rieux, and de Guichen left the court to join their protests to those of their friends; the superintendent, Bertrand de Molleville, was hanged-in effigy and had to fly.

In Bearn, the peasantry had descended from the mountains; hereditary proprietors of their little holdings, they joined the noblesse to march out and meet the Duke of Guiche, sent by the king to restore order.  Already the commandant of the province had been obliged to authorize the meeting of the Parliament.  The Bearnese bore in front of their ranks the cradle of Henry IV., carefully preserved in the Castle of Pau.  “We are no rebels,” they said:  “we claim our contract and fidelity to the oaths of a king whom we love.  The Bearnese is free-born, he will not die a slave.  Let the king have all from us in love and not by force; our blood is his and our country’s.  Let none come to take our lives when we are defending our liberty.”

Legal in Normandy, violent in Brittany, tumultuous in Bearn, the parliamentary protests took a politic and methodical form in Dauphiny.  An insurrection amongst the populace of Grenoble, soon supported by the villagers from the mountains, had at first flown to arms at the sound of the tocsin.  The members of the Parliament, on the point of leaving the city, had been detained by force, and their carriages had been smashed.  The troops offered little resistance; an entry was effected into the house of the governor, the Duke of Clermont-Tonnerre, and, with an axe above his head, the insurgents threatened to hang him to the chandelier in his drawing-room if he did not convoke the Parliament.  Ragged ruffians ran to the magistrates, and compelled them to meet in the sessions-hall.  The members of Parliament succeeded with great difficulty in pacifying the mob.  As soon as they found themselves free, they hastened away into exile.  Other hands had taken up their quarrel.  A certain number of members of the three orders met at the town hall, and, on their private authority, convoked for the 21st of July the special states of Dauphiny, suppressed a while before by Cardinal Richelieu.