or condemn them. At the
same time, the estates bound themselves to raise thirty thousand men-at-
arms, whom they themselves would pay and keep; and as the produce of the
impost voted for this purpose was very uncertain, they demanded their
adjournment to the fortnight of Easter, and two sessions certain, for
which they should be free to fix the time, before the 15th of February in
the following year. This was simply to decree the permanence of their
power. To all these demands the dauphin offered no resistance. In the
month of March following, a grand ordinance, drawn up in sixty-one
articles, enumerated all the grievances which had been complained of, and
prescribed the redress for them. A second ordinance, regulating all that
appertained to the suspension of the royal officers, was likewise, as it
appears, drawn up at the same time, but has not come down to us. At last
a grand commission was appointed, composed of thirty-six members, twelve
elected by each of the three orders. "These thirty-six persons," says
Froissart, "were bound to often meet together at Paris, for to order the
affairs of the kingdom, and all kinds of matters were to be disposed of
by these three estates, and all prelates, all lords, and all commonalties
of the cities and good towns were bound to be obedient to what these
three estates should order." Having their power thus secured in their
absence, the estates adjourned to the 25th of April.

The rumor of these events reached Bordeaux, where, since the defeat at
Poitiers, King John had been living as the guest of the Prince of Wales,
rather than as a prisoner of the English. Amidst the galas and pleasures
to which he abandoned himself, he was indignant to learn that at Paris
the royal authority was ignored, and he sent three of his comrades in
captivity to notify to the Parisians that he rejected all the claims of
the estates, that he would not have payment made of the subsidy voted by
them, and that he forbade their meeting on the 25th of April following.
This strange manifesto on the part of imprisoned royalty excited in Paris
such irritation amongst the people, that the dauphin hastily sent out of
the city the king's three envoys, whose lives might have been threatened,
and declared to the thirty-six commissioners of the estates that the
subsidy should be raised, and that the general assembly should be
perfectly free to meet at the time it had appointed.

And it did meet towards the en