Clashes with Monarchy 69
that no one suppose “that the king is king by force, for such are the signs of robbers
and pirates.” The parlement took care to publish all this against the royal will.^5
In the provinces matters went even further. The governors having received or-
ders to force through the tax edicts, the Parlement of Toulouse put the governor of
Languedoc, the duc de Fitz- James, under arrest, and the Parlement of Grenoble
ordered the arrest of the lieutenant- general of Dauphiny, Dumesnil. Dumesnil,
who managed to remain at large under the protection of his troops, was ostracized
socially by the combined parliamentary and territorial nobility of the province;
Mme. la marquise de Virieu, who was related to him, joined in the refusal to enter
his house, announcing that she was “a citizen before a kinsman.”^6 Regicide scrawl-
ings appeared on the walls of buildings.
The Parlement of Paris enflamed the general agitation, and set up a three- way
dispute between itself, the King, and the Parlement of Toulouse, by asserting juris-
diction in the case of Fitz- James, on the ground that as a peer he could be tried
only by the peers, and that the peers sat only in the Parlement of Paris, not in any
parlement of the provinces. The Fitz- James case led the Paris bench to further
sweeping constitutional affirmations: that if Fitz- James had pensé en citoyen he
would realize that he had “contracted engagements with the Nation and the laws”
(that is, was not responsible to the King alone); that the essence of government
was to assure the “liberty, honor and rights” of its subjects; and that the parlement
was “responsible for bringing these important truths before the sacred person of
the king.” The parlement drew a distinction between the royal sovereignty in exter-
nal and internal affairs. (The reader may be reminded of attempts sometimes made
by Americans, at this time, to distinguish between parliamentary sovereignty in
the internal and external affairs of the colonies.) In foreign affairs, according to
this remonstrance of January 1764, the King’s authority is “without limits,” and
“blind obedience is a duty.” “But civil government, while its fulness resides entirely
in the hands of the sovereign, is regulated by entirely different principles. Its object
being to maintain the citizens in the enjoyment of rights which the laws assure
them, with respect either to the sovereign or to one another, it is the law that com-
mands, or, more precisely, the sovereign commands by the law.” The history of
France was reviewed to support this proposition; and, it was added, anyone telling
the King the contrary offended against “the sovereign, the law and the Nation.”^7
No King of France had ever admitted to being a despot, and before this barrage
of argument, collective hostility, and outright arrest of his agents, the “despot”
yielded. The controller- general, Bertin, and the three provincial administrators
most offensive to the parlements, Fitz- James, Dumesnil, and Harcourt in Nor-
mandy, were all replaced. The project for a tax on offices was given up. The plan for
reassessment remained, but came to nothing. The year 1764 saw a striking parlia-
mentary victory.
Matters were soon complicated again. The Assembly of the Clergy, the quin-
quennial convocation of the French church, met in 1765. It denounced the rising
5 Flammermont, Remontrances, II, 342, June 24, 1763.
6 Quoted by Egret, op. cit., I, 102.
7 Flammermont, op. cit., II, 424–38, Jan. 18, 1764.