All that we know of the acts of the Provincial Assemblies of 1787,[82] and even their own reports, show that as soon as they were created they engaged in covert hostilities and often in open war with the Intendants, who made use of their superior experience only to embarrass the movements of their successors. Here an Assembly complained that it was only with difficulty that it could extract the most necessary documents from the hands of the Intendant. There an Intendant accused the members of the Assembly of endeavouring to usurp functions, which, as he said, the edicts had still left to himself. He appealed to the Minister, who often returned no answer, or merely expressed doubts, for the subject was as new and as obscure to him as to every one else. Sometimes the Assembly resolved that the Intendant had administered badly, that the roads which he had caused to be made were ill planned or ill kept up, and that the corporate bodies under his trust have gone to ruin. Frequently these assemblies hesitated in the obscurity of laws so imperfectly known; they sent great distances to consult one another, and constantly sent each other advice. The Intendant of Auch asserted that he had the right to oppose the will of the Provincial Assembly which had authorised a parish to tax itself; the Assembly maintained that this was a subject on which the Intendant could no longer give orders, but only advice, and it asks the Assembly of the Ile de France for its opinion. Amidst all these recriminations and consultations the course of administration was impeded and often altogether stopped; the vital functions of the country seemed almost suspended. ‘The stagnation of affairs is complete,’ says the Provincial Assembly of Lorraine, which in this was only the echo of several others, ‘and all good citizens are grieved at it.’ On other occasions these new governing bodies erred on the side of over-activity and excessive self-confidence; they were filled with a restless and uneasy zeal, which led them to seek to change all the old methods suddenly, and hastily to reform all the most ancient abuses. Under the pretext that henceforth they were to be the guardians of the towns, they assumed the control of municipal affairs; in a word, they put the finishing stroke to the general confusion by aiming at universal improvement.