opening of States General of i/8p 53 



On the following day, the decrees of May 6 and ii, as well as 

 the one of May 12, by which the nobles had agreed to appoint the 

 commissioners, were taken to the other two orders."^ If we had 

 no contemporary accounts of the effect of this action on the third 

 estate, it would not be dififiicult to imagine how they must have 

 felt. They had been inactive during the week that had elapsed 

 since the estates met, attempting to convince the other orders of 

 the necessity of the common verification of credentials. The 

 clergy had adopted the role of peacemaker and was seeking to 

 find some means of reconciling the orders. The third estate, still 

 taking no action, waited to see what the nobles proposed to do. 

 Would they accept the plan of the clergy and show their willing- 

 ness to make some concessions? The answer came with the 

 decrees. The nobles accepted the plan of the clergy, but at the 

 same time they showed plainly that they had no thought of yield- 

 ing to the demand of the third estate, for by communicating their 

 decisions regarding the verification of credentials and the legal 

 status of their order, the nobles virtually said that they had no 

 intention of consenting to a common verification of credentials. 

 If they considered their credentials sufficiently verified by their 

 own order and their chamber legally constituted by deputies 

 whose credentials had been thus verified, then verification in 

 common was useless. The deputies of the third estate were not 

 slow in putting their interpretation on the action of the nobles; 

 the accounts of contemporary writers show clearly the indigna- 

 tion of the commons.^** The Rccit states that after the Due de 

 Praslin had read the decrees and the deputation had departed, a 

 deputy of the commons called attention to the fact that the duke 

 had begun his speech by saying that the third estate would find 

 in the decrees proofs of the desire of the nobles to bring about 

 the " fraternal union " of the orders which was " a precious 

 source of happiness for the nation," and yet the acts of the 



i--i3 Pfoces-verbal de la noblesse, 34; Rccit des seances des deputes des 

 communes, 16; Journal des etats-gcncraux, 1, 20; Duquesnoy, I, I7» Boulle, 

 Revue de la revolution, XI, Documents inedits, 11, 12; Biauzat, II, 56. 



144 Duquesnoy, I, 17, 18; Lettres du Comte de Mirabeau, No. 3, 4, 5; 

 Recit des seances des deputes des communes, 17. 



255 



