When the disastrous war with England broke out, under Jean le Bon, this monarch assembled at Paris the three orders of the kingdom, the clergy, the nobility, and the bourgeoisie, the latter having for their leader the _prévôt_ of the merchants of Paris, Étienne Marcel. The equipment of an army of thirty thousand men was authorized, and a levy of five millions of livres parisis for their maintenance during a year, this money to be raised by means of the _gabelle_, the tax on salt, and an impost of eight deniers per pound upon everything sold, to be levied impartially upon all three orders, even the royal family not to be exempt, but--warned by past experience--the _États Généraux_ demanded that the funds should remain in the hands of receivers appointed by them, and responsible to them only, and appointed a commission of nine of their members to supervise this measure. "This was nothing less than a revolution, for to vote and to collect the tax, to regulate it, and to supervise its distribution, this was to exercise one of the important functions of sovereignty. The deputies of 1355 began by going further than has been gone in our days under the constitutional monarchies, even under the republics." Ten days after the battle of Poitiers, the dauphin Charles returned to Paris and convoked the _États Généraux_, who opened their second session on the 17th of October, 1356. This time, their demands were so increased that the dauphin, in dismay, adjourned their sittings, but the royal treasury was empty, and he was obliged to assemble them again on the 5th of the following February. The Bishop of Laon, Robert le Coq, made himself the mouthpiece of their just grievances, and was so well sustained by the _prévôt_, Étienne Marcel, and by Jean de Picquigny, in the name of the nobles, that resistance was impossible, and the _grande ordonnance_ of 1357, in sixty-one articles, provided for sweeping reforms in the administration, in the finances, in the army, in the courts of law, and in the arbitrary exercise of their prerogatives by the officers of the crown. But on this occasion Paris was in advance of the rest of the nation, and the period was, moreover, most inopportune. [Illustration: ANCIENT HOTEL OF THE PRÉVOT OF PARIS, PASSAGE CHARLEMAGNE, IN THE RUE SAINT-ANTOINE. In 1559, the Comte de Montgommery was imprisoned in the octagonal tower, after accidentally mortally wounding Henri II.]