Their pathway was not always smooth, however, but, on the contrary, full of contention and struggle against overbearing lords who sought to usurp authority. Their internal management generally consisted of two assemblies--one a general assembly of citizens, in which they were all well represented, the other an assembly of notables. The former elected the magistrates, and performed all legislative actions; the latter acted as a sort of advisory council to assist the magistrates. Sometimes the cities had but one assembly of citizens, which merely elected magistrates and exercised supervision over them. The magistracy generally consisted of aldermen, presided over by a mayor, and acted as a general executive council for the city. Municipal freedom gradually declined through adverse circumstances. Within the city limits tyranny, aristocracy, or oligarchy sometimes prevailed, wresting from the people the rights which they had purchased or fought for. Without was the pressure of the feudal lord, which gradually passed into the general fight of the king for royal supremacy. The king, it is true, found the towns very strong allies in his struggle against the nobility. They too had commenced a struggle against the feudal lords, and there was a common bond of sympathy between them. But when the feudal lords were once mastered, the king must turn his attention to reducing the liberties of the people, and gradually, through the influence of monarchy and centralization of government, the rights and privileges of the people of the towns of France passed away. {341} _The States-General Was the First Central Organization_.--It ought to be mentioned here that after the monarchy was moderately well established, Philip the Fair (1285-1314) called the representatives of the nation together. He called in the burghers of the towns, the nobility, and the clergy and formed a parliament for the discussion of the affairs of the realm. It appeared that the constitutional development which began so early in England was about to obtain in France. But it was not to be realized, for in the three centuries that followed--namely, the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth--the monarchs of France managed to keep this body barely in existence, without giving it any real power. When the king was secure upon his throne and imperialism had received its full power, the nobility, the clergy, and the commons were no longer needed to support the throne of France, and, consequently, the will of the people was not consulted. It is true that each estate of nobility, clergy, and commons met separately from time to time and made out its own particular grievances to the king, but the representative power of the people passed away and was not revived again until, on the eve of the revolution, Louis XVI, shaken with terror, once more called together the three estates in the last representative body held before the political deluge burst upon the French nation.