72 Chapter IV
is, and like the political constitution of the State, of which it is the custodian and
depository.... The Parlement is in each of its said classes [i.e., actual parlements]
the plenary, universal, capital, metropolitan, and sovereign court of France.”^9 And
in the name of this alleged national institution the various actual parlements per-
sisted in telling the King that he owed his position to law, that he had taken an
“oath to the Nation,” that a true country, or patrie, was one where “Law, Sovereign
and State formed an indissoluble whole,” that the law existed only by consent of
the Nation, that Parlement alone expressed the “cry of the Nation” to the King, and
watched over, for the Nation, the maintenance of its rights, its interests, and its
freedom. In short, the Nation and the Law were set up, not yet expressly in opposi-
tion to the King, but as his coequal.
After ten years of such legal harangues the indolent Louis XV was goaded by
the Brittany affair into a rebuttal. Early in the morning of March 3, 1766, he rode
at full speed with a few companies of soldiers from Versailles to Paris. Held up at
the Pont Neuf, where he knelt in the street as the Holy Sacrament was carried by,
he found himself in such a traffic congestion, it is said, that he simply walked the
remaining steps to the Palais de Justice. While soldiers occupied the building, a
few of the magistrates received him at the steps facing the Sainte- Chapelle. It was
all too sudden to constitute a formal lit de justice. The King had not even brought
his chancellor with him, but only a few gentlemen of his court. He sat in an ordi-
nary armchair, in his ordinary attire; the hastily assembled members of the par-
lement wore their usual black robes. The royal speech was then read. The session is
known in French annals as the séance de la flagellation.^10
“I will not allow, [said Louis XV ] an association to be formed in my kingdom
that would pervert the natural ties of duty and obligation into a confederation of
resistance, nor an imaginary body to be introduced into the Monarchy to disturb
its harmony. The magistracy does not form a body, nor an order separate from the
three orders of the kingdom. The magistrates are my officers, charged with the
truly royal duty of rendering justice to my subjects.. .”
He flatly denied that: “all the parlements form a single body divided into classes;
that this body, necessarily indivisible, is essential to the Monarchy and serves as its
base;... that it is the protector and depository of the Nation’s liberty, interests and
rights... ; that it is responsible for the public good not only to the King, but to the
Nation; that it is the judge between the King and his people; that it maintains the
balance of government... ; that the parlements cooperate with the sovereign
power in the establishment of the laws.. .”
He affirmed: “In my person only does the sovereign power rest, of which the
distinctive character is the spirit of counsel, justice and reason. From me alone do
my courts derive their existence and their authority, but the plenitude of this au-
thority, which they exercise in my name, remains always in me.... To me alone
belongs legislative power without dependence or division.... By my authority
alone do the officers of my courts proceed, not to the formation of law, but to its
9 Bickart, op. cit., 173. Bickart assembles numerous quotations from various parlements, under
the topics of consent to law, national representation, and unity.
10 Flammermont, op. cit., II, 554– 60.