Meeting of the Estates-General, 1789. 45 
te tow i 
i 
Boullé adds that the order was shown to the crowd, but the 
Archbishop of Bordeaux refused to act upon the commission and 
advised his fellow deputy to delay his action for a day or two, 
in order to give an appearance of greater liberty.*® Other ac- 
counts report that he did send his credentials to the committee 
that same evening, but with a statement that he had been forced 
to take this step.*® Whereupon, the committee of verification, 
if we may believe the Journal de Parts, laid the credentials before 
the assembly the next morning, and it decided that a valid 
verification pre-supposed a free and voluntary submission of 
credentials. Consequently, they were returned to the Arch- 
bishop.*® This item called forth a protest and explanation 
from the Archbishop of Bordeaux on June 27, when he wrote to 
the paper, denying that the assembly had ever heard of the 
credentials before the morning of June 26, the day on which the 
Archbishop of Paris joined the assembly. That same evening 
the credentials were presented to the committee of verification 
of which the Archbishop of Bordeaux was president, and reported 
to the assembly on June 27.44 It may have been that the 
Archbishop of Bordeaux did prevent the formal submission of 
the credentials to the committee of verification on June 24, 
and thus made it possible for the Archbishop of Paris to submit 
them himself when he joined the assembly in person. No 
account, other than that of the Journal de Paris, refers to any 
action upon the credentials in the assembly June 25, but it seems 
unlikely that so much rumor could have arisen if the Archbishop 
of Paris had not promised at least to send the credentials and 
so made the public believe that he had despatched them to the 
committee. 
Despite the apparent victory of the crowd over one of the 
prominent leaders of the clergy, there was no reason for hoping 
88 Boullé, Documents inédits, Revue de la révolution, XIII, 75. 
39 Jallet, 103; Eiats-généraux, Extrait du journal de Paris, I, 108; Lettre 
d'un membre de l’assemblée nationale, 43. The latter says that the archbishop 
had it done by his secretary. 
40 Etats-généraux, Extrait du journal de Paris, 1,108. Jallet states (p. 103) 
that the committee of verification returned them and does not mention the 
assembly’s action at all. 
4 Etats-généraux, Extrait du journal de Paris, I, 127-128. 
159 
