"We are no rebels," they said: "we claim our contract and fidelity to the oaths of a king whom we love.

The Bearnese is free-born, he will not die a slave.

Let the king have all from us in love and not by force; our blood is his and our country's.

Let none come to take our lives when we are defending our liberty." Legal in Normandy, violent in Brittany, tumultuous in Bearn, the parliamentary protests took a politic and methodical form in Dauphiny.
An insurrection amongst the populace of Grenoble, soon supported by the villagers from the mountains, had at first flown to arms at the sound of the tocsin.

The members of the Parliament, on the point of leaving the city, had been detained by force, and their carriages had been smashed.
The troops offered little resistance; an entry was effected into the house of the governor, the Duke of Clermont-Tonnerre, and, with an axe above his head, the insurgents threatened to hang him to the chandelier in his drawing-room if he did not convoke the Parliament.