The performance appertained to Richelieu, and he readily dispensed with many ordinances. The Assembly was favorable to his measures; but amongst those that it rejected was the proposal to substitute loss of offices and confiscation for the penalty of death in matters of rebellion and conspiracy. “Better a moderate but certain penalty,” said the cardinal, “than a punishment too severe to be always inflicted.” It was the notables who preserved in the hands of the inflexible minister the terrible weapon of which he availed himself so often. The Assembly separated on the 24th of February, 1627, the last that was convoked before the revolution of 1789. It was in answer to its demands, as well as to those of the states of 1614, that the keeper of the seals, Michael Marillac, drew up, in 1629, the important administrative ordinance which has preserved from its author’s name the title of _Code Michau_. The cardinal had propounded to the Notables a question which he had greatly at heart--the foundation of a navy. Already, when disposing, some weeks previously, of the government of Brittany, which had been taken away from the Duke of Vendome, he had separated from the office that of admiral of Brittany; already he was in a position to purchase from M. de Montmorency his office of grand admiral of France, so as to suppress it and substitute for it that of grand master of navigation, which was personally conferred upon Richelieu by an edict enregistered on the 18th of March, 1627 . “Of the power which it has seemed agreeable to his Majesty that I should hold,” he wrote on the 20th of January, 1627, “I can say with truth, that it is so moderate that it could not be more so to be an appreciable service, seeing that I have desired no wage or salary so as not to be a charge to the state, and I can add without vanity that the proposal to take no wage came from me, and that his Majesty made a difficulty about letting it be so.” The Notables had thanked the king, for the intention he had “of being pleased to give the kingdom the treasures of the sea which nature had so liberally proffered it, for without [keeping] the sea one cannot profit by the sea nor maintain war.” Harbors repaired and fortified, arsenals established at various points on the coast, organization of marine regiments, foundation of pilot-schools, in fact, the creation of a powerful marine which, in 1642, numbered sixty-three vessels and twenty-two galleys, that left the roads of Barcelona after the rejoicings for the capture of Perpignan and arrived the same evening at Toulon--such were the fruits of Richelieu’s administration of naval affairs. “Instead,” said the bailiff of Forbin, “of having a handful of rebels forcing us, as of late, to compose our naval forces of foreigners and implore succor from Spain, England, Malta, and Holland, we are at present in a condition to do as much for them if they continue in alliance with us, or to beat them when they fall off from us.”