e governor, the Duke of Clermont-Tonnerre, and, with an axe
above his head, the insurgents threatened to hang him to the chandelier
in his drawing-room if he did not convoke the Parliament. Ragged
ruffians ran to the magistrates, and compelled them to meet in the
sessions-hall. The members of Parliament succeeded with great difficulty
in pacifying the mob. As soon as they found themselves free, they
hastened away into exile. Other hands had taken up their quarrel. A
certain number of members of the three orders met at the town hall, and,
on their private authority, convoked for the 21st of July the special
states of Dauphiny, suppressed a while before by Cardinal Richelieu.

The Duke of Clermont-Tonnerre had been superseded by old Marshal Vaux,
rough and ready. He had at his disposal twenty thousand men. Scarcely
had he arrived at Grenoble, when he wrote to Versailles. "It is too
late," he said. The prerogatives of royal authority were maintained,
however. The marshal granted a meeting of the states-provincial, but he
required permission to be asked of him. He forbade the assembly to be
held at Grenoble. It was in the Castle of Vizille, a former residence
of the dauphins, that the three orders of Dauphiny met, closely united
together in wise and patriotic accord. The Archbishop of Vienne, Lefranc
de Pompignan, brother of the poet, lately the inveterate foe of Voltaire,
an ardently and sincerely pious man, led his clergy along the most
liberal path; the noblesse of the sword, mingled with the noblesse of the
robe, voted blindly all the resolutions of the third estate; these were
suggested by the real head of the assembly, M. Mounier, judge-royal of
Grenoble, a friend of M. Necker's, an enlightened, loyal, honorable man,
destined ere long to make his name known over the whole of France by his
courageous resistance to the outbursts of the National Assembly.
Unanimously the three orders presented to the king their claims to the
olden liberties of the province; they loudly declared, however, that they
were prepared for all sacrifices and aspired to nothing but the common
rights of all Frenchmen. The double representation of the third in the
estates of Dauphiny was voted without contest, as well as equal
assessment of the impost intended to replace forced labor. Throughout
the whole province the most perfect order had succeeded the first
manifestations of popular irritation.

It was now more than a year since B