stablished some sort
of order in the administration of the domains of the crown, and, in fine,
whether in general measures or in respect of persons, displayed
impartiality without paying court, and firmness without using severity.
Here was, in fact, a young and gracious woman who gloried solely in
signing herself simply Anne of France, whilst respectfully following out
the policy of her father, a veteran king, able, mistrustful, and
pitiless.

Anne's discretion was soon put to a great trial. A general cry was
raised for the convocation of the states-general. The ambitious hoped
thus to open a road to power; the public looked forward to it for a
return to legalized government. No doubt Anne would have preferred to
remain more free and less responsible in the exercise of her authority;
for it was still very far from the time when national assemblies could be
considered as a permanent power and a regular means of government. But
Anne and her advisers did not waver; they were too wise and too weak to
oppose a great public wish. The states-general were convoked at Tours
for the 5th of January, 1484. On the 15th they met in the great hall of
the arch-bishop's palace. Around the king's throne sat two hundred and
fifty deputies, whom the successive arrivals of absentees raised to two
hundred and eighty-four. "France in all its entirety," says M. Picot,
"found itself, for the first time, represented; Flanders alone sent no
deputies until the end of the session; but Provence, Roussillon,
Burgundy, and Dauphiny were eager to join their commissioners to the
delegates from the provinces united from the oldest times to the crown."
[_Histoire des Etats Generaux_ from 1355 to 1614, by George Picot,
t. i. p. 360.]

We have the journal of these states-general drawn up with precision and
detail by one of the chief actors, John Masselin, canon of and deputy for
Rouen, "an eminent speaker," says a contemporary Norman chronicle, "who
delivered on behalf of the common weal, in the presence of kings and
princes, speeches full of elegance." We may agree that, compared with
the pompous pedantry of most speakers of his day, the oratorical style of
John Masselin is not without a certain elegance, but that is not his
great and his original distinction; what marks him out and gives him so
high a place in the history of the fifteenth century, is the judicious
and firm political spirit displayed in his conduct as deputy and in his
narrative