"the country was very much astounded at it, for they had not learnt to pay any such thing. The count d'Harcourt told the folks of Rouen, where he was puissant, that they would be very serfs and very wicked if they agreed to this tax, and that, by God's help, it should never be current in his country." The king of Navarre used much the same language in his countship of Evreux. At other spots the mischief was still more serious. Close to Paris itself, at Mélun, payment was peremptorily refused; and at Arras, on the 5th of March, 1356, "the commonalty of the town," says Froissart, "rose upon the rich burghers and slew fourteen of the most substantial, which was a pity and loss; and so it is when wicked folk have the upper hand of valiant men. However the people of Arras paid for it afterwards, for the king sent thither his cousin, my lord James of Bourbon, who gave orders to take all them by whom the sedition had been caused and, on the spot, had their heads cut off."

The states-general at their re-assembly on the 1st of March, 1356, admitted the feebleness of their authority and the insufficiency of their preceding votes for the purpose of aiding the king in the war. They abolished the salt-tax and the sales-duty which had met with such opposition; but, staunch in their patriotism and loyalty, they substituted therefor an income-tax, imposed on every sort of folk, nobles or burghers, ecclesiastical or lay, which was to be levied "not by the high justiciers of the king, but by the folks of the three estates themselves." The king's ordinance, dated the 12th of March, 1356, which regulates the execution of these different measures, is (article 10) to this import: "there shall be, in each city, three deputies, one for each estate. These deputies shall appoint, in each parish, collectors who shall go into the houses to receive the declaration which the persons who dwell there shall make touching their property, their estate, and their servants. When a declaration shall appear in conformity with truth, they shall be content therewith; else they shall have him who has made it sent before the deputies of the city in the district whereof he dwells, and the deputies shall cause him to take, on this subject, such oaths as they shall think proper. . . . The collectors in the villages shall cause to be taken therein, in the presence of

the pastor, suitable oaths on the subject of the declarations. If, in the towns or villages, any one refuse to take the oaths demanded, the collectors shall assess his property according to general opinion and on the deposition of his neighbours" (Ordonnances des Rois de France, t. iv. pp. 171–175).

In return for so loyal and persevering a co-operation on the part of the states-general, notwithstanding the obstacles encountered by their votes and their agents, King John confirmed expressly, by an ordinance of May 26th, 1356 [art. 9: Ordonnances des Rois de France, t. iii. p. 55], all the promises he had made them and all the engagements he had entered into with them by his ordinance of December 28th, 1355, given immediately after their first session (Ibidem, t. iii. pp. 19-37): a veritable reformatory ordinance which enumerated the various royal abuses, administrative, judicial, financial, and military, against which there had been a public clamour, and regulated the manner of redressing them.

After these mutual concessions and promises the states-general broke up, adjourning until the 30th of November following (1356); but two months and a half before this time King John, proud of some success obtained by him in Normandy and of the brilliant army of knights remaining to him after he had dismissed the burgher-forces, rushed, as has been said, with conceited impetuosity to encounter the prince of Wales, rejected with insolent demands the modest proposals of withdrawal made to him by the commander of the little English army and, on the 19th of September, lost, contrary to all expectation, the lamentable battle of Poitiers. We have seen how he was deserted before the close of the action by his eldest son, Prince Charles, with his body of troops, and how he himself remained with his youngest son, Prince Philip, a boy of fourteen years, a prisoner in the hands of his victorious enemies. "At this news," says Froissart, "the kingdom of France was greatly troubled and excited, and with good cause, for it was a right grievous blow and vexatious for all sorts of folk. The wise men of the kingdom might well predict that great evils would come of it, for the king, their head, and all the chivalry of the kingdom were slain or taken; the knights and squires who came back home were on that account so hated and blamed by the commoners

that they had great difficulty in gaining admittance to the good towns; and the king's three sons who had returned, Charles, Louis, and John, were very young in years and experience, and there was in them such small resource that none of the said lads liked to undertake the government of the said kingdom."

The eldest of the three, Prince Charles, aged nineteen, who was called the Dauphin after the cession of Dauphiny to France, nevertheless assumed the office, in spite of his youth and his any thing but glorious retreat from Poitiers. He took the title of lieutenant of the king, and had hardly re-entered Paris, on the 29th of September, when he summoned, for the 15th of October, the states-general of Langue d'oil, who met, in point of fact, on the 17th, in the great chamber of parliament. "Never was seen," says the report of their meeting, "an assembly so numerous, or composed of wiser folk." The superior clergy were there almost to a man; the nobility had lost too many in front of Poitiers to be abundant at Paris, but there were counted at the assembly four hundred deputies from the good towns, amongst whom special mention is made, in the documents, of those from Amiens, Tournay, Lille, Arras, Troyes, Auxerre, and Sens. The total number of members at the assembly amounted to more than eight hundred.

The session was opened by a speech from the chancellor, Peter de la Forest, who called upon the estates to aid the dauphin with their councils under the serious and melancholy circumstances of the kingdom. The three orders at first attempted to hold their deliberations each in a separate hall; but it was not long before they felt the inconveniences arising from their number and their separation, and they resolved to choose from amongst each order commissioners who should examine the questions together and afterwards make their report and their proposals to the general meeting of the estates. Eighty commissioners were accordingly elected and set themselves to work. The dauphin appointed some of his officers to be present at their meetings, and to furnish them with such information as they might require. As early as the second day "these officers were given to understand that the deputies would not work whilst any body belonging to the king's council. was with them." So the officers withdrew; and a few days after