The kingship was no longer competent for its own government and its own perils; but it insisted none the less, in principle, on its own all but unregulated and unlimited power.

The assembly did not claim for the country the right of self-government, but it had a strong leaven of patriotic sentiment, and at the same time was very much discontented with the king's government: it had equally at heart the defence of France against England and against the abuses of the kingly power.

There was no notion of a social struggle and no systematic idea of political revolution; a dangerous crisis and intolerable sufferings constrained king and nation to come together in order to make an attempt at an understanding and at a mutual exchange of the supports and the reliefs of which they were in need.
On the 2d of December, 1355, the three orders, the clergy, the nobility, and the deputies from the towns assembled at Paris in the great hall of the Parliament.

Peter de la Forest, Archbishop of Rouen and Chancellor of France, asked them in the king's name "to consult together about making him a subvention which should suffice for the expenses of the war," and the king offered to "make a sound and durable coinage." The tampering with the coinage was the most pressing of the grievances for which the three orders solicited a remedy.

They declared that "they were ready to live and die with the king, and to put their bodies and what they had at his service;" and they demanded authority to deliberate together--which was granted them.