The Duke of Clermont-Tonnerre had been superseded by old Marshal Vaux, rough and ready. He had at his disposal twenty thousand men. Scarcely had he arrived at Grenoble, when he wrote to Versailles. “It is too late,” he said. The prerogatives of royal authority were maintained, however. The marshal granted a meeting of the states-provincial, but he required permission to be asked of him. He forbade the assembly to be held at Grenoble. It was in the Castle of Vizille, a former residence of the dauphins, that the three orders of Dauphiny met, closely united together in wise and patriotic accord. The Archbishop of Vienne, Lefranc de Pompignan, brother of the poet, lately the inveterate foe of Voltaire, an ardently and sincerely pious man, led his clergy along the most liberal path; the noblesse of the sword, mingled with the noblesse of the robe, voted blindly all the resolutions of the third estate; these were suggested by the real head of the assembly, M. Mounier, judge-royal of Grenoble, a friend of M. Necker’s, an enlightened, loyal, honorable man, destined ere long to make his name known over the whole of France by his courageous resistance to the outbursts of the National Assembly. Unanimously the three orders presented to the king their claims to the olden liberties of the province; they loudly declared, however, that they were prepared for all sacrifices and aspired to nothing but the common rights of all Frenchmen. The double representation of the third in the estates of Dauphiny was voted without contest, as well as equal assessment of the impost intended to replace forced labor. Throughout the whole province the most perfect order had succeeded the first manifestations of popular irritation.
It was now more than a year since Brienne had become chief minister. MM. de Segur and de Castries had retired, refusing to serve under a man whom they did not esteem. Alone, shut up in his closet, the archbishop listened without emotion to the low murmur of legal protests, the noisy tumult of insurrections. “I have foreseen all, even civil war. The king shall be obeyed, the king knows how to make himself obeyed,” he kept repeating in the assured tones of an oracle. Resolved not to share the responsibility of the reverse he foresaw, Baron de Breteuil sent in his resignation.
Meanwhile the treasury was found to be empty; Brienne appealed to the clergy, hoping to obtain from ecclesiastical wealth one of those gratuitous gifts which had often come in aid of the State’s necessities. The Church herself was feeling the influence of the times. Without relaxing in her pretensions to the maintenance of privileges, the ecclesiastical assembly thought itself bound to plead the cause of that magistracy which it had so, often fought. “Our silence,” said the remonstrances, “would be a crime, of which the nation and posterity would never absolve us. Your Majesty has just effected at the bed of justice of May 8, a great movement