Similarly, in France, the States General of asked for and obtained the suppression of accounting units (which introduced a third definition of money, a purely arithmetical one, in addition to the definition by weight and that by nominal value: this supplementary relation concealed the sense of monetary operations from those who did not understand it); the edict of September established the gold cu as both a real coin and an accounting unit, decreed the subordination of all other metals to gold in particular, silver, which retained its legality as tender but lost its legal immutability.