ments by fine; the two _chambres des requetes_ judged
personal suits between officers of the royal household and others who,
by their rank, were entitled to be judged by the Parlement. The second
_chambre des requetes_ was instituted in 1580; they were both suppressed
at the establishment of the Parlement Maupeou, in 1771. When Louis XIV
recalled the Parlement, he established only a single _chambre
d'enquete_. In 1546, the members of the Parlement enjoyed the privilege
of hereditary nobility. They had the precedence over all other
constituted authorities.

When the disastrous war with England broke out, under Jean le Bon, this
monarch assembled at Paris the three orders of the kingdom, the clergy,
the nobility, and the bourgeoisie, the latter having for their leader
the _prevot_ of the merchants of Paris, Etienne Marcel. The equipment of
an army of thirty thousand men was authorized, and a levy of five
millions of livres parisis for their maintenance during a year, this
money to be raised by means of the _gabelle_, the tax on salt, and an
impost of eight deniers per pound upon everything sold, to be levied
impartially upon all three orders, even the royal family not to be
exempt, but--warned by past experience--the _Etats Generaux_ demanded
that the funds should remain in the hands of receivers appointed by
them, and responsible to them only, and appointed a commission of nine
of their members to supervise this measure. "This was nothing less than
a revolution, for to vote and to collect the tax, to regulate it, and to
supervise its distribution, this was to exercise one of the important
functions of sovereignty. The deputies of 1355 began by going further
than has been gone in our days under the constitutional monarchies, even
under the republics."

Ten days after the battle of Poitiers, the dauphin Charles returned to
Paris and convoked the _Etats Generaux_, who opened their second session
on the 17th of October, 1356. This time, their demands were so increased
that the dauphin, in dismay, adjourned their sittings, but the royal
treasury was empty, and he was obliged to assemble them again on the 5th
of the following February. The Bishop of Laon, Robert le Coq, made
himself the mouthpiece of their just grievances, and was so well
sustained by the _prevot_, Etienne Marcel, and by Jean de Picquigny,
in the name of the nobles, that resistance was impossible, and the
_grande ordonnance_ of 1357, in sixty-one articles, pr