The king uttered a few severe words.

After a pompous preamble, the keeper of the seals read out six fresh edicts intended to ruin forever the power of the sovereign courts.
Forty-seven great baillie-courts, as a necessary intermediary between the parliaments and the inferior tribunals, were henceforth charged with all civil cases not involving sums of more than twenty thousand livres, as well as all criminal cases of the third order (estate).

The representations of the provincial assembly of Dauphiny severely criticised the impropriety of this measure.

"The ministers," they said, "have not been afraid to flout the third estate, whose life, honor, and property no longer appear to be objects worthy of the sovereign courts, for which are reserved only the causes of the rich and the crimes of the privileged." The number of members of the Parliament of Paris was reduced to sixty-nine.

The registration of edicts, the only real political power left in the hands of the magistrates, was transferred to a plenary court, an old title without stability and without tradition, composed, under the king's presidency, of the great functionaries of state, assisted by a small number of councillors.