Clashes with Monarchy 71
were strongly supported by the Parlement of Rennes. Both vigorously affirmed the
historic autonomy of the province. The Parlement of Rennes, instead of arresting
the governor, like the parlements of Grenoble and Toulouse, declared a suspension
of the courts of justice as a means of bringing pressure on the King. The King
thereupon created a special tribunal to carry on judicial business at Rennes. The
leader of the troublesome Breton parlement was La Chalotais. The King, to disci-
pline La Chalotais and enforce royal authority in the province, arraigned La Cha-
lotais and a few others before another special tribunal, set up for the purpose at
Saint- Malo. The Parlement of Paris and all the other parlements of the country
rushed to the defense of La Chalotais, and of the regular court system against such
special administrative tribunals.
The Brittany affair thus brought to a head a movement that had gathered
strength for several years. The parlements of Paris, Rennes, Grenoble, Rouen,
Dijon, Toulouse, Bordeaux, and others (there were about a dozen with varying
degrees of regional importance) had formed the habit of corresponding, exchang-
ing documents, and supporting one another in altercations with the crown. They
now claimed that they were parts of a general or super- parlement, a parlement of
all France, of which the several actual parlements were simply subdivisions, or
what they called “classes” in the older or Latin sense of the word. This parlement-
in- general, they held, represented the “nation,” by which they meant the people or
the governed, whether of France as a whole or of Brittany and such sub- nations in
particular. No law could be valid, or tax properly authorized, they asserted, without
the consent of the nation as shown by its representative, the parlement.
This position assumed by the parlements was revolutionary in its implications,
not only because the King rejected it, but because the law and constitutional prac-
tice of France gave it no support. Kings in the past had acknowledged the right of
the several parlements to “register” legislation or remonstrate against it; but no
King had ever agreed, nor parlement until recently claimed, that parlements had
an actual share in the process of legislation. Nor was there any lawful ground for
parlementary unity. The several parlements had not arisen by devolution from the
Parlement of Paris or from the King, as they now claimed. They were coordinate
with the Parlement of Paris; that of Brittany, for example, was simply the modern
form of the old high court of the duke of Brittany before the incorporation of
Brittany into France. France had taken form by a gradual coming together of pre-
viously separate parts, not by delegation of authority to branch offices of an origi-
nal central power. The claim of the parlements to be really one parlement was in
line with historic development; it showed the growth of interests, contacts, com-
munication, and joint action on the scale of France as a whole. But constitution-
ally, it was without foundation. The union des classes was as much the assertion of
new and hitherto unknown power as the Continental Congress to which a dozen
British- American provinces sent delegates in 1774.
That the parlements sought to turn themselves into a true national and repre-
sentative body could be abundantly documented, but one quotation from a decree
of the Parlement of Rouen may suffice: “By the fundamental laws of the Monarchy
the Parlement of France, the one and only public, legal and necessary council of
the Sovereign, is essentially ONE, like the Sovereign whose council and organ it