19 37): a veritable reformatory ordinance, which enumerated the various royal abuses, administrative, judicial, financial, and military, against which there had been a public clamor, and regulated the manner of redressing them.
After these mutual concessions and promises the states-general broke up, adjourning until the 30th of November following (1356); but two months and a half before this time King John, proud of some success obtained by him in Normandy and of the brilliant army of knights remaining to him after he had dismissed the burgher-forces, rushed, as has been said, with conceited impetuosity to encounter the Prince of Wales, rejected with insolent demands the modest proposals of withdrawal made to him by the commander of the little English army, and, on the 19th of September, lost, contrary to all expectation, the lamentable battle of Poitiers.
We have seen how he was deserted before the close of the action by his eldest son, Prince Charles, with his body of troops, and how he himself remained with his youngest son, Prince Philip, a boy of fourteen years, a prisoner in the hands of his victorious enemies.

"At this news," says Froissart, "the kingdom of France was greatly troubled and excited, and with good cause, for it was a right grievous blow and vexatious for all sorts of folk.

The wise men of the kingdom might well predict that great evils would come of it, for the king, their head, and all the chivalry of the kingdom were slain or taken; the knights and squires who came back home were on that account so hated and blamed by the commoners that they had great difficulty in gaining admittance to the good towns; and the king's three sons who had returned, Charles, Louis, and John, were very young in years and experience, and there was in them such small resource that none of the said lads liked to undertake the government of the said kingdom." The eldest of the three, Prince Charles, aged nineteen, who was called the Dauphin after the cession of Dauphiny to France, nevertheless assumed the office, in spite of his youth and his anything but glorious retreat from Poitiers.

He took the title of lieutenant of the king, and had hardly re-entered Paris, on the 29th of September, when he summoned, for the 15th of October, the states-general of _Langue d'oil,_ who met, in point of fact, on the 17th, in the great chamber of parliament.

"Never was seen," says the report of their meeting, "an assembly so numerous, or composed of wiser folk." The superior clergy were there almost to a man; the nobility had lost too many in front of Poitiers to be abundant at Paris, but there were counted at the assembly four hundred deputies from the good towns, amongst whom special mention is made, in the documents, of those from Amiens, Tournay, Lille, Arras, Troyes, Auxerre, and Sens.
The total number of members at the assembly amounted to more than eight hundred.
The session was opened by a speech from the chancellor, Peter de la Forest, who called upon the estates to aid the dauphin with their counsels under the serious and melancholy circumstances of the kingdom.
The three orders at first attempted to hold their deliberations each in a separate hall; but it was not long before they felt the inconveniences arising from their number and their separation, and they resolved to choose from amongst each order commissioners who should examine the questions together, and afterwards make their report and their proposals to the general meeting of the estates.