"A veritable thunderbolt for that sovereign court, for by the six months' term," says M.Floquet, "there was no longer any Parliament, properly speaking, but two phantoms of Parliament, making war on each other, whilst the government had the field open to carve and cut without control." "All obedience is now from fear," wrote Grotius to Oxenstiern, chancellor of Sweden; "the idea is to exorcise and annihilate hatred by means of terror." "This year," wrote an inhabitant of Rouen, "there have been no New Year's presents [_etrennes_], no singing of 'the king's drinking-song [_le roi boit_], in any house.

Little children will be able to tell tales of it when they have attained to man's estate; for never, these fifty years past, so far as I can learn, has it been so." [_Journal de l'Abbe de la Rue_.] The heaviest imposts weighed upon the whole province, which thus expiated the crime of an insignificant portion of its inhabitants.

"The king shall not lose the value of this handkerchief that I hold," said the superintendent Bullion, on arriving at Rouen.

And he kept his word: Rouen alone had to pay more than three millions.

The province and its Parliament were henceforth reduced to submission.
It was not only the Parliaments that resisted the efforts of Cardinal Richelieu to concentrate all the power of the government in the hands of the king.