Province of the North. Its provincial committee is replaced by the Provincial Assembly of the North.

Governor de Peinier, in forming the coalition of the Pompons Blancs, had organized a force that gave the colonial government a certain solidity. At the same time the enslavers were beginning to lose ground in public opinion: indeed the provincial committee of the North, by its leanings toward independence and its anti-revolutionary system, had roused both the officials and the petits Blancs against it; it was bound to fall if it persisted on the same road. The enslavers renounced in appearance their former scheme of independence and seemed to embrace the cause of the revolution with warmth, so as to attach the patriot party to themselves against the government, which was the chief obstacle to the fulfillment of their plan. It was under the influence of these dispositions that they replaced the provincial committee with a new assembly called the Provincial Assembly of the North. A majority of its members gathered at Le Cap on 1 November 1789, and it opened its sessions at the end of the same month. The richest enslavers of the province of the North, who composed it, resolved to play the part of patriots, as the only one that suited their interests for the moment. The assembly took the oath of fidelity to the nation, the law and the king; declared its members inviolable; took upon itself the direction of the public treasuries; and organized the national guards, but in such a way as to keep them under its authority. Governor de Peinier complained of this usurpation of power in vain.