istration, and maintained the struggle of the kingly power
against the governors, the sovereign courts, and the states-provincial.

At the time when the overseers of provinces were instituted, the battle
of pure monarchy was gained; Richelieu had no further need of allies, he
wanted mere subjects; but at the beginning of his ministry he had felt
the need of throwing himself sometimes for support on the nation, and
this great foe of the states-general had twice convoked the Assembly of
Notables. The first took place at Fontainebleau, in 1625-6. The
cardinal was at that time at loggerheads with the court of Rome: "If the
Most Christian King," said he, "is bound to watch over the interests of
the Catholic church, he has first of all to maintain his own reputation
in the world. What use would it be for a state to have power, riches,
and popular government, if it had not character enough to bring other
people to form alliance with it?" These few words summed up the great
minister's foreign policy, to protect the Catholic church whilst keeping
up Protestant alliances. The Notables understood the wisdom of this
conduct, and Richelieu received their adhesion. It was just the same the
following year, the day after the conspiracy of Chalais; the cardinal
convoked the Assembly of Notables. "We do protest before the living
God," said the letters of convocation, "that we have no other aim and
intention but His honor and the welfare of our subjects; that is why we
do conjure in His name those whom we convoke, and do most expressly
command them, without fear or desire of displeasing or pleasing any, to
give us, in all frankness and sincerity, the counsels they shall judge on
their consciences to be the most salutary and convenient for the welfare
of the commonwealth." The assembly so solemnly convoked opened its
sittings at the palace of the Tuileries on the 2d of December, 1626. The
state of the finances was what chiefly occupied those present; and the
cardinal himself pointed out the general principles of the reform he
calculated upon establishing. "It is impossible," he said, "to meddle
with the expenses necessary for the preservation of the state; it were a
crime to think of such a thing. The retrenchment, therefore, must be in
the case of useless expenses. The most stringent rules are and appear to
be, even to the most ill-regulated minds, comparatively mild, when they
have, in deed as well as in appearance, no object bu