When Spanish "tercios" (military corps) concentrated in Roussillon at the end of the 1630s, because of the Thirty Years' War with France, the local peasants were required to lodge and provision the troops, creating a large tension and discomfort, and reporting events such as religious sacrileges, destruction of personal properties and rape of women by the soldiers. On 7 June 1640 an uprising in Barcelona known as the Corpus de Sang, led by reapers, took the lives of various royal functionaries, not all of them Castilian; Dalmau de Queralt, Count of Santa Coloma and viceroy of Catalonia was assassinated during the events. Mutinies continued; few weeks later Pau Claris, president of the Generalitat of Catalonia, called the politician members from all the Principality in order to form a "Junta de Braços" or "Braços Generals" (States-General), a consultive body similar to the Courts. The calling was a success, and the presence of cities and feudal villages was exceptionally large. This assembly worked with individual voting and began to create and apply various revolutionary measures, such as the establishment of a Council of Defense of the Principality, a special tax for the nobility (the "Batalló") and maintained contacts with the Kingdom of France, while the rupture with the Spanish Monarchy was evident and the military clashes began.