which divided them, and concert a common course of action. Thus it was that all the Orders in each province engaged gradually in the struggle, but not all at the same time or in the same manner. The nobility were the first and boldest champions in that contest against the absolute powers of the King.[115] It was in the place of the aristocracy that absolute government had taken root: they were the first to be humbled and annoyed by some obscure agent of the central power, who, under the name of an Intendant, was sent perpetually to regulate and transact behind their backs the smallest local affairs: they had produced not a few of the writers who had protested with the greatest energy against despotism; free institutions and the new opinions had almost everywhere found in the nobles their chief supporters. Independently of their own grievances, they were carried away by the common passion which had become universal, as is demonstrated by the nature of their attacks. Their complaint was not that their peculiar privileges had been violated, but that the common law of the realm had been trampled under foot, the provincial Estates abolished, the States-General interrupted, the nation treated like a minor, and the country deprived of the management of its own affairs. At this first period of the Revolution, when hostilities had not yet broken out amongst the ranks of society, the language of the aristocracy was exactly the same as that of the other classes, distinguished only by going greater lengths and taking a higher tone. Their opposition had something republican about it: it was the same feeling animating prouder men and souls more accustomed to live in contact with the world’s greatness. A man who had till then been a violent enemy of the privileged orders, having been present at one of the meetings where the opposition was organised and where the nobles had made a sacrifice of all their rights amidst the applause of the commons, relates this scene in a letter to a friend and exclaims with enthusiasm, ‘Our nobility (how truly a nobility!) has come down to point out our rights, to defend them with us: I have heard it with my own ears; free elections, equality of numbers, equality of taxation--every heart was touched by their disinterestedness and kindled by their patriotism.’[116] When public rejoicings took place at Grenoble upon the news of the dismissal of the Archbishop of Sens, August 29th, 1788, the city was instantly illuminated and covered with transparencies, on one of which the following lines were read:-- ‘Nobles, vous méritez le sort qui vous décore, De l’État chancelant vous êtes les soutiens. La nation, par vous, va briser ses liens; Déjà du plus beau jour on voit briller l’aurore.’