He soon returned, accompanied by an exon of the short robe, named Larchier. “Show me whom I have to arrest,” was the officer’s order. The exon looked all round the room; he knew every one of the magistrates; the accused were sitting right in front of him. “I do not see MM. d’Espremesnil and Montsabert anywhere,” he at last said, tremulously. M. d’Agoult’s threats could not get any other answer out of him.
The officer had gone to ask for fresh orders; the deputation sent to Versailles had returned, without having been received by Louis XVI., of whom an audience had not been requested. The court wanted to send some of the king’s people at once to notify a fresh request; the troops guarded all the doors, nobody could leave the Palace.
“Gentlemen,” said d’Espremesnil at last, “it would be contrary to our honor as well as to the dignity of the Parliament to prolong this scene any further; and, besides, we cannot be the ruin of Larchier; let M. d’Agoult be shown in again.” The officer was recalled, the magistrates were seated and covered. “Sir,” said M. d’Espremesnil, “I am one of those you are in search of. The law forbids me to obey orders irregularly obtained (surpris) of the sovereign, and it is to be faithful to him that I have not mentioned who I am until this moment. I call upon you to state whether, in case I should not go with you voluntarily, you have orders to drag me from this building.” “Certainly, sir.” D’Agoult was already striding towards the door to order in his troops. “Enough,” said M. d’Espremesnil; “I yield to force;” and, turning to his colleagues, “Gentlemen,” he said, “to you I protest against the violence of which I am the object; forget me and think henceforth of nothing but the common weal; I commend to you my family; whatever may be my fate, I shall never cease to glory in professing to the last hour the principles which do honor to this court.” He made a deep obeisance, and followed the major, going out by the secret staircases in order to avoid the crowd whose shouts could be heard even within the palace buildings. Goislard de Montsabert followed his colleague’s example: he was confined at Pierre-Encise; M. d’Espremesnil had been taken to the Isle of St. Marguerite.
Useless and ill-judged violence, which excited the passions of the public without intimidating opponents! The day after the scene of May 6th, at the moment when the whole magistracy of France was growing hot over the thrilling account of the arrest of the two councillors, the Parliament of Paris was sent for to Versailles (May 8, 1788).
The magistrates knew beforehand what fate awaited them. The king uttered a few severe words. After a pompous preamble, the keeper of the seals read out six fresh edicts intended to ruin forever the power of the sovereign courts.
Forty-seven great baillie-courts, as a necessary intermediary between the parliaments and the inferior tribunals, were henceforth charged with all civil cases not involving sums of more than twenty thousand livres, as well as all criminal cases of the third order (estate). The representations of the provincial assembly of Dauphiny severely criticised the impropriety of this measure. “The ministers,” they said, “have not been afraid to flout the third estate, whose life, honor, and property no longer appear to be objects worthy of the sovereign courts, for which are reserved only the causes of the rich and the crimes of the privileged.” The number of members of the Parliament of Paris was reduced to sixty-nine. The registration of edicts, the only real political power left in the hands of the magistrates, was transferred to a plenary court, an old title without stability and without tradition, composed, under the king’s presidency, of the great functionaries of state, assisted by a small number of councillors. The absolute power was thus preparing a rampart against encroachments of authority on the part of the sovereign courts; it had fortified itself beforehand against the pretensions of the States-general, “which cannot pretend to be anything but a more extended council on behalf of the sovereign, the latter still remaining supreme arbiter of their representations and their grievances.”
Certain useful ameliorations in the criminal legislation, amongst others total abolition of torture, completed the sum of edicts. A decree of the council declared all the parliaments prorogued until the formation of the great baillie-courts. The plenary court was to assemble forthwith at Versailles. It only sat once; in presence of the opposition amongst the majority of the men summoned to compose it, the ministers, unforeseeing and fickle even with all their ability and their boldness, found themselves obliged to adjourn the sittings indefinitely. All the members of the Parliament of Paris had bound themselves by a solemn oath not to take a place in any other assembly. “In case of dispersal of the magistracy,” said the resolution entered upon the registers of the court, “the Parliament places the present act as a deposit in the hands of the king, of his august family, of the peers of the realm, of the States-general, and of each of the orders, united or separate, representing the nation.”
At sight of this limitation, less absolute and less cleverly calculated, of the attempts made by Chancellor Maupeou, after seventeen years’ rapid marching towards a state of things so novel and unheard of, the commotion was great in Paris; the disturbance, however, did not reach to the masses, and the disorder in the streets was owing less to the Parisian populace than to mendicants, rascals of sinister mien, flocking in, none knew why, from the four points of the compass. The provinces were more seriously disturbed. All the sovereign courts rose up with one accord; the Parliament of Rouen declared “traitors to the king, to the nation, to the province, perjured and branded with infamy, all officers and judges” who should proceed in virtue of the ordinances of May 8. “The authority of the king is unlimited for doing good to his subjects,” said one of the presidents, “but everybody should put limits to it when it turns towards oppression.” It was the very commandant of the royal troops whom the magistrates thus reproached with their passive obedience.