The French Revolution, Volume 3 The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4
by
Hippolyte A. Taine

Part 7 out of 12



francs collected, there were only fifty thousand deposited; at la
Réole, out of at least five hundred thousand francs collected, there
were but twenty-two thousand six hundred and fifty deposited. "The
rest," says the collector at Villefranche, "were wasted by the
Committee of Surveillance." "The tax-collectors," writes the national-
agent at Orleans, "after having employed terror gave themselves up to
orgies and are now building palaces."[112] - As to the expenses which
they claim, they almost always consist of "indemnities to members of
revolutionary committees, to patriots, and to defray the cost of
patriotic missions," to maintaining and repairing the meeting-rooms of
the popular clubs, to military expeditions, and to succoring the poor,
so that three or four hundred millions in gold or silver, extorted
before the end of 1793, hundreds of millions of assignats extorted in
1793 and 1794, in short, almost the entire product of the total
extraordinary taxation[113] was consumed on the spot and by the sans-
culottes. Seated at the public banqueting table they help themselves
first, and help themselves copiously.

A second windfall, equally gross. Enjoying the right to dispose
arbitrarily of fortunes, liberties and lives, they can traffic in
these, while no traffic can be more advantageous, both for buyers and
sellers. Any man who is rich or well-off, in other words, every man
who is likely to be taxed, imprisoned or guillotined, gladly consents
"to compound," to redeem himself and those who belong to him. If he
is prudent, he pays, before the tax, so as not to be over-taxed; he
pays, after the tax, to obtain a diminution or delays; he pays to be
admitted into the popular club. When danger draws near he pays to
obtain or renew his certificate of civism, not to be declared
"suspect," not to be denounced as a conspirator. After being
denounced, he pays to be allowed imprisonment at home rather than in
the jail, to be allowed imprisonment in the jail rather than in the
general prison, to be well treated if he gets into this, to have time
to get together his proofs in evidence, to have his record (dossier)
placed and kept at the bottom of the file among the clerk's registers,
to avoid being inscribed on the next batch of cases in the
revolutionary Tribunal. There is not one of these favors that is not
precious; consequently, ransoms without number are tendered, while the
rascals[114] who swarm on the revolutionary committees, need but open
their hands to fill their pockets. They run very little risk, for
they are held in check only by their own kind, or are not checked at
all. In any large town, two of them suffice for the issue of a
warrant of arrest save a reference to the Committee within twenty-four
hours, with the certainty that their colleagues will kindly return the
favor.[115] Moreover, the clever ones know how to protect themselves
beforehand. For example, at Bordeaux, where one of these clandestine
markets had been set up, M. Jean Davilliers, one of the partners in a
large commercial house, is under arrest in his own house, guarded by
four sans-culottes; on the 8th of Brumaire, he is taken aside and told
"that he is in danger if he does not come forward and meet the
indispensable requirements of the Revolution in its secret
expenditures." An important figure, Lemoal, member of the
revolutionary committee and administrator of the district, had spoken
of these requirements and thought that M. Davilliers should
contribute the sum of one hundred and fifty thousand livres. Upon
this, a knock at the door is heard; Lemoal enters and all present slip
out of the room, and Lemoal pronounces these words only: "Do you
consent?" - "But I cannot thus dispose of my partners' property." -
"Then you will go to prison." At this threat the poor man yields and
gives his note to Lemoal at twenty days, payable to bearer, for one
hundred and fifty thousand livres, and, at the end of a fortnight, by
dint of pushing his claims, obtains his freedom. Thereupon, Lemoal
thinks the matter over, and deems it prudent to cover up his private
extortion by a public one. Accordingly, he sends for M. Davilliers :
"It is now essential for you to openly contribute one hundred and
fifty thousand livres more for the necessities of the Republic. I
will introduce you to the representatives to whom you should make the
offer." The chicken being officially plucked in this way, nobody would
suppose that it had been first privately plucked, and, moreover, the
inquisitive, if there were any, would be thrown off the scent by the
confusion arising from two sums of equal amount. M. Davilliers begs
to be allowed to consult his partners, and, as they are not in prison,
they refuse. Lemoal, on his side, is anxious to receive the money for
his note, while poor Davilliers, "struck with terror by nocturnal
arrests," and seeing that Lemoal is always on the top of the ladder,
concludes to pay; at first, he gives him thirty thousand livres, and
next, the charges, amounting in all to forty-one thousand livres,
when, being at the end of his resources, he begs and entreats to have
his note returned to him. Lemoal, on this, considering the chicken as
entirely stripped, becomes mollified, and tears off in presence of his
debtor "the signature in full of the note," and, along with this, his
own receipts for partial payments underneath. But he carefully
preserves the note itself, for, thus mutilated, it will show, if
necessary, that he had not received anything, and that, through
patriotism, he had undoubtedly wished to force a contribution from a
merchant, but, finding him insolvent, had humanely canceled the
written obligation.[116] - Such are the precautions taken in this
business. Others, less shrewd, rob more openly, among others the
mayor, the seven members of the military commission surnamed "the
seven mortal sins," and especially their president, Lacombe, who, by
promising releases, extracts from eight or nine captives three hundred
and fifty-nine thousand six hundred livres.[117] "Through such
schemes," writes a rigid Jacobin,[118] "many of those who had been
declared outlaws returned to Bordeaux by paying; of the number who
thus redeemed their lives, some did not deserve to lose it, but,
nevertheless, they were threatened with execution if they did not
consent to everything. But material proofs of this are hard to
obtain. These men now keep silent, for fear, through open
denunciation, of sharing in the penalty of the traffickers in justice,
and being unwilling to expose (anew) the life they have preserved." In
short, the plucked pigeon is mute, so as not to attract attention, as
well as to avoid the knife; and all the more, because those who pluck
him hold on to the knife and might, should he cry out, dispatch him
with the more celerity. Even if he makes no noise, they sometimes
dispatch him so as to stifle in advance any possible outcry, which
happened to the Duc du Chatelet and others. There is but one mode of
self-preservation[119] and that is, "to settle with such masters by
installments, to pay them monthly, like wet nurses, on a scale
proportionate to the activity of the guillotine." - In any event, the
pirates are not disturbed, for the trade in lives and liberties leaves
no trace behind it, and is carried on with impunity for two years,
from one end of France to the other, according to a tacit
understanding between sellers and buyers.

There is a third windfall, not less large, but carried on in more open
sunshine and therefore still more enticing. - Once the "suspect is
incarcerated, whatever he brings to prison along with him, whatever he
leaves behind him at home, becomes plunder; for, with the
incompleteness, haste and irregularity of papers,[120] with the lack
of surveillance and known connivance, the vultures, great and small,
could freely use their beaks and talons. - At Toulouse, as in Paris
and elsewhere, commissioners take from prisoners every object of value
and, accordingly, in many cases, all gold, silver, assignats, and
jewelry, which, confiscated for the Treasury, stop half-way in the
hands of those who make the seizure.[121] At Poitiers, the seven
scoundrels who form the ruling oligarchy, admit, after Thermidor, that
they stole the effects of arrested parties.[122] At Orange, "Citoyenne
Riot," wife of the public prosecutor, and "citoyennes Fernex and
Ragot," wives of two judges, come in person to the record-office to
make selections from the spoils of the accused, taking for their
wardrobe silver shoe-buckles, laces and fine linen.[123] - But all
that the accused, the imprisoned and fugitives can take with them,
amounts to but little in comparison with what they leave at home, that
is to say, under sequestration. All the religious or seignorial
chateaux and mansions in France are in this plight, along with their
furniture, and likewise most of the fine bourgeois mansions, together
with a large number of minor residences, well-furnished and supplied
through provincial economy; besides these, nearly every warehouse and
store belonging to large manufacturers and leading commercial houses;
all this forms colossal spoil, such as was never seen before,
consisting of objects one likes to possess, gathered in vast lots,
which lots are distributed by hundreds of thousands over the twenty-
six thousand square miles of territory. There are no owners for this
property but the nation, an indeterminate, invisible personage; no
barrier other than so many seals exists between the spoils and the
despoilers, that is to say, so many strips of paper held fast by two
ill-applied and indistinct stamps. Bear in mind, too, that the
guardians of the spoil are the sans-culottes who have made a conquest
of it; that they are poor; that such a profusion of useful or precious
objects makes them feel the bareness of their homes all the more; that
their wives would like to lay in a stock of furniture; moreover, has
it not held out to them from the beginning of the Revolution, that
"forty-thousand mansions, palaces and chateaux, two-thirds of the
property of France, would be the reward of their valor?"[124] At this
very moment, does not the representative on mission authorize their
greed? Are not Albitte and Collot d'Herbois at Lyons, Fouché at
Nevers, Javogues at Montbrison, proclaiming that the possessions of
anti-revolutionaries and a surplus of riches form "the patrimony of
the sans-culottes?"[125] Do they not read in the proclamations of
Monestier,[126] that the peasants "before leaving home may survey and
measure off the immense estates of their seigneurs, choose, for
example, on their return, whatever they want to add to their farm . .
. . tacking on a bit of field or rabbit-warren belonging to the
former count or marquis?" Why not take a portion of his furniture, any
of his beds or clothes-presses - - It is not surprising that, after
this, the slip of paper which protects sequestrated furniture and
confiscated merchandise should be ripped off by gross and greedy
hands! When, after Thermidor, the master returns to his own roof it is
generally to an empty house; in this or that habitation in the
Morvan,[127] the removal of the furniture is so complete that a bin
turned upside down serves for a table and chairs, when the family sit
down to their first meal.

In the towns the embezzlements are often more brazenly carried out
than in the country. At Valenciennes, the Jacobin chiefs of the
municipality are known under the title of "seal-breakers and patriotic
robbers."[128] At Lyons, the Maratists, who dub themselves "the
friends of Chalier," are, according to the Jacobins' own admission,
"brigands, thieves and rascals."[129] They compose, to the number of
three or four hundred, the thirty-two revolutionary committees; one
hundred and fifty of leaders, "all of them administrators," form the
popular club; in this town of one hundred and twenty thousand souls
they number, as they themselves state, three thousand, and they firmly
rely on "sharing with each other the wealth of Lyons. This huge cake
belongs to them; they do not allow that strangers, Parisians, should
have a slice,[130] and they intend to eat the whole of it, at
discretion, without control, even to the last crumb. As to their mode
of operations, it consists in "selling justice, in trading on
denunciations, in holding under sequestration at least four thousand
households," in putting seals everywhere on dwellings and warehouses,
in not summoning interested parties who might watch their proceedings,
in expelling women, children and servants who might testify to their
robberies, in not drawing up inventories, in installing themselves as
"guardians at five francs a day," themselves or their boon companions,
and in "general squandering, in league with the administrators." It is
impossible to stay their hands or repress them, even for the
representatives. Take them in the act,[131] and you must shut your
eyes or they will all shout at the oppression of patriots; they do
this systematically so that nobody may be followed up.

We passed an order forbidding any authority to remove seals without
our consent, and, in spite of the prohibition, they broke into a
storehouse under sequestration, . . . . forced the locks and
pillaged, under our own eyes, the very house we occupy. And who are
these devastators? Two commissioners of the Committee who emptied the
storehouse without our warrant, and even without having any power from
the Committee." - It is a sack in due form, and day after day; it
began on the 10th of October, 1793; it continued after, without
interruption, and we have just seen that, on Floréal 28, year II.,
that is to say, April 26, 1794, after one hundred and twenty-three
days, it is still maintained.

The last mad scramble and the most extensive of all. - In spite of
the subterfuges of its agents, the Republic, having stolen immensely,
and although robbed in its turn, could still hold on to a great deal;
and first, to articles of furniture which could not be easily
abstracted, to large lots of merchandise, also to the vast spoil of
the palaces, chateaux and churches; next, and above all, to real
estate, fixtures and buildings. To meet its expenses it put all that
up for sale, and whoever wants anything has only to come forward as a
buyer, the last bidder becoming the legal owner and at a cheap rate.
The wood cut down in one year very often pays for a whole forest.[132]
Sometimes a chateau can be paid for by a sale of the iron-railings of
the park, or the lead on the roof. - Here are found chances for a
good many bargains, and especially with objects of art. "The titles
alone of the articles carried off, destroyed or injured, would fill
volumes."[133] On the one hand, the commissioners on inventories and
adjudications, "having to turn a penny on the proceeds of sales,"
throw on the market all they can, "avoiding reserving" objects of
public utility and sending collections and libraries to auction with a
view to get their percentages. On the other hand, nearly all these
commissioners are brokers or second-hand dealers who alone know the
value of rarities, and openly depreciate them in order to buy them in
themselves, "and thus ensure for themselves exorbitant profits." In
certain cases the official guardians and purchasers who are on the
look-out take the precaution to disfigure " precious articles " so as
to have them bought by their substitutes and accomplices: "for
instance, they convert sets of books into odd volumes, and take
machines to pieces; the tube and object-glass of a telescope are
separated, which pieces the rogues who have bought them cheap know how
to put together again." Often, in spite of the seals, they take in
advance antiques, pieces of jewelry, medals, enamels and engraved
stones;" nothing is easier, for "even in Paris in Thermidor, year II.,
agents of the municipality use anything with which to make a stamp,
buttons, and even large pennies, so that whoever has a sou can remove
and re-stamp the seals as he pleases;" having been successful, "they
screen their thefts by substituting cut pebbles and counterfeit stones
for real ones." Finally, at the auction sales, "fearing the honesty or
competition of intelligent judges, they offer money (to these) to stay
away from the sales; one case is cited where they have knocked a
prospective bidder down." In the meantime, at the club, they shout
with all their might; this, with the protection of a member of the
municipality or of the Revolutionary Committee, shelters them from all
suspicion. As for the protector, he gets his share without coming out
into the light. Accuse, if you dare, a republican functionary who
secretly, or even openly, profits by these larcenies; he will show
clean hands. - Such is the incorruptible patriot, the only one of his
species, whom the representatives discover at Strasbourg, and whom
they appoint mayor at once. On the 10th of Vendémiaire, year
III.,[134] there is found "in his apartments" a superb and complete
assortment of ecclesiastical objects, "forty-nine copes and chasubles,
silk or satin, covered with gold or silver; fifty-four palles of the
same description;" a quantity of "reliquaries, vases and spoons,
censers, laces, silver and gold fringe, thirty-two pieces of silk,"
etc. None of these fine things belong to him; they are the property
of citizen Mouet, his father. This prudent parent, taking his word
for it, "deposited them for safe keeping in his son's house during the
month of June, 1792 (old style);" - could a good son refuse his father
such a slight favor? It is very certain that, in '93 and '94, during
the young man's municipal dictatorship, the elder did not pay the
Strasbourg Jew brokers too much, and that they did business in an
off-hand way. By what right could a son and magistrate prevent his
father, a free individual, from looking after "his own affairs"
and buying according to trade principles, as cheap as he could?

If such are the profits on the sale of personal property, what must
they be on the sale of real estate? - It is on this traffic that the
fortunes of the clever terrorists are founded. It accounts for the
"colossal wealth peaceably enjoyed," after Thermidor, of the well-
known "thieves" who, before Thermidor, were so many "little
Robespierres," each in his own canton, "the patriots " who, around
Orleans, "built palaces," who, "exclusives" at Valenciennes, "having
wasted both public and private funds, possess the houses and property
of emigrants, knocked down to them at a hundred times less than their
value."[135] On this side, their outstretched fingers shamelessly
clutch all they can get hold of; for the obligation of each arrested
party to declare his name, quality and fortune, as it now is and was
before the Revolution, gives local cupidity a known, sure, direct and
palpable object. - At Toulouse, says a prisoner,[136] "the details
and value of an object were taken down as if for a succession," while
the commissioners who drew up the statement, "our assassins,
proceeded, beforehand and almost under our eyes, to take their share,
disputing with each other on the choice and suitableness of each
object, comparing the cost of adjudication with the means of lessening
it, discussing the certain profits of selling again and of the
transfer, and consuming in advance the pickings arising from sales and
leases." - In Provence, where things are more advanced and corruption
is greater than elsewhere, where the purport and aims of the
Revolution were comprehended at the start, it is still worse. Nowhere
did Jacobin rulers display their real character more openly, and
nowhere, from 1789 to 1799, was this character so well maintained. At
Toulon, the demagogues in the year V., as in the year II., are[137]
"former workmen and clerks in the Arsenal who had become 'bosses' by
acting as informers and through terrorism, getting property for
nothing, or at an insignificant price, and plotting sales of national
possessions, petty traders from all quarters with stocks of goods
acquired in all sorts of ways, through robberies, through purchases of
stolen goods from servants and employees in the civil, war and navy
departments, and through abandoned or bought-up claims; in a word, men
who, having run away from other communes, pass their days in coffee-
houses and their nights in houses of ill-fame." - At Draguignan,
Brignolles, Vidauban, Fréjus, at Marseilles, after Thermidor, the
intermittent returns to Terrorism always restore the same quarries of
the justiciary and the police to office.[138] "Artisans, once useful,
but now tired of working, and whom the profession of paid clubbists,
idle guardians," and paid laborers "has totally demoralized,"
scoundrels in league with each other and making money out of whatever
they can lay their hands on, like thieves at a fair, habitually living
at the expense of the public, "bestowing the favors of the nation on
those who share their principles, harboring and aiding many who are
under the ban of the law and calling themselves model patriots,[139]
that is, in the pay of gambling hells and houses of prostitution." -
In the rural districts, the old bands "consisting of hordes of
homeless brigands" who worked so well during the anarchy of the
Constituent and Legislative assemblies, form anew during the anarchy
of the Directory; they make their appearance in the vicinity of Apt
"commencing with petty robberies and then, strong in the impunity and
title of sans-culottes, break into farm-houses, rob and massacre the
inmates, strip travelers, put to ransom all who happen to cross their
path, force open and pillage houses in the commune of Gorges, stop
women in the streets, tear off their rings and crosses," and attack
the hospital, sacking it from top to bottom, while the town and
military officers, just like them, allow them to go on.[140] - Judge
by this of their performances in the time of Robespierre, when the
vendors and administrators of the national possessions exercised
undisputed control. Everywhere, at that time, in the departments of
Var, Bouches-du-Rhône, and Vaucluse, "a club of would-be patriots" had
long prepared the way for their exactions. It had "paid appraisers
for depreciating whatever was put up for sale, and false names for
concealing real purchasers; "a person not of their clique, was
excluded from the auction-room; if he persisted in coming in they
would, at one time, put him under contribution for the privilege of
bidding," and, at another time, make him promise not to bid above the
price fixed by the league, while, to acquire the domain, they paid him
a bonus. Consequently, "national property" was given away "for almost
nothing," the swindlers who acquired it never being without a
satisfactory warrant for this in their own eyes. Into whose hands
could the property of anti-revolutionists better fall than into those
of patriots? According to Marat, the martyr apostle and canonised
saint of the Revolution, what is the object of the Revolution but to
give to the lowly the fortunes of the great?[141] In all national
sales everywhere, in guarding sequestrations, in all revolutionary
ransoms, taxes, loans and seizures, the same excellent argument
prevails; nowhere, in printed documents or in manuscripts, do I find
any revolutionary committee which is at once terrorist and honest.
Only, it is rare to find specific and individual details regarding all
the members of the same committee. - Here, however, is one case,
where, owing to the lucky accident of an examination given in detail,
one can observe in one nest, every variety of the species and of its
appetites, the dozen or fifteen types of the Jacobin hornet, each
abstracting what suits him from whatever he lights on, each indulging
in his favorite sort of rapine. - At Nantes, "Pinard, the great
purveyor of the Committee,[142] orders everything that each member
needs for his daily use to be carried to his house." - "Gallou takes
oil and brandy," and especially "several barrels from citizen
Bissonneau's house." - "Durassier makes domiciliary visits and exacts
contributions;" among others "he compels citizen Lemoine to pay
twenty-five hundred livres, to save him from imprisonment." - "Naud
affixes and removes seals in the houses of the incarcerated, makes
nocturnal visits to the dwellings of the accused and takes what suits
him." - "Grandmaison appropriates plate under sequestration, and
Bachelier plate given as a present." - "Joly superintends executions
and takes all he can find, plate, jewelry, precious objects." -
"Bolognié forces the return of a bond of twenty thousand livres
already paid to him." - Perrochaux demands of citoyenne Ollemard-Dudan
"fifty thousand livres, to prevent her imprisonment," and confiscates
for his own benefit sixty thousand livres worth of tobacco, in the
house of the widow Daigneau-Mallet, who, claiming it back, is led off
by him to prison under the pretext of interceding for her. - Chaux
frightens off by terrorism his competitors at auction sales, has all
the small farms on the Baroissière domain knocked down to him, and
exclaims concerning a place which suits him: "I know how to get it!
I'll have the owner arrested. He'll be very glad to let me have his
ground to get out of prison.' " - The collection is complete, and
gathered on a table, it offers specimens which can be found scattered
all over France.

VII. The Armed Forces.

The Armed Force, the National Guard and the Gendarmerie. - Its
purgation and composition. - The Revolutionary Armies in Paris and
in the departments. - Quality of the recruits. - Their employment.
- Their expeditions into the countryside and the towns. - Their
exploits in the vicinity of Paris and Lyons. - The company of
Maratists, the American Hussars and the German Legion at Nantes. -
General character of the Revolutionary government and of the
administrative staff of the Reign of Terror.

The last manipulators of the system remain, the hands which seize, the
armed force which takes bodily hold of men and things. - The first
who are employed for this purpose are the National Guard and the
ordinary gendarmerie. Since 1790, these bodies are of course
constantly weeded out until only fanatics and robots are left;[143]
nevertheless, the weeding-out continues as the system develops itself.
At Strasbourg,[144] on Brumaire 14, the representatives have
dismissed, arrested and sent to Dijon the entire staff of the National
Guard to serve as hostages until peace is secured; three days
afterwards, considering that the cavalry of the town had been mounted
and equipped at its own expense, they deem it aristocratic, bourgeois,
and "suspect," and seize the horses and put the officers in arrest. -
At Troyes, Rousselin, "National civil commissioner," dismisses, for
the same reason, and with not less dispatch, all of the gendarmes at
one stroke, except four, and "puts under requisition their horses,
fully equipped, also their arms, so as to at once mount well known and
tried sans-culottes." On principle, the poor sans-culottes, who are
true at heart and in dress, alone have the right to bear arms, and
should a bourgeois be on duty he must have only a pike, care being
taken to take it away from him the moment he finishes his rounds.[145]

But, alongside of the usual armed force, there is still another, much
better selected and more effective, the reserve gendarmerie, a
special, and, at the same time, movable and resident body, that is to
say, the "revolutionary army," which, after September 5, 1793, the
government had raised in Paris and in most of the large towns. - That
of Paris, comprising six thousand men, with twelve hundred cannoneers,
sends detachments into the provinces - two thousand men to Lyons, and
two hundred to Troyes;[146] Ysabeau and Tallien have at Bordeaux a
corps of three thousand men ; Salicetti, Albitte and Gasparin, one of
two thousand men at Marseilles; Ysoré and Duquesnoy, one of one
thousand men at Lille; Javogues, one of twelve hundred at Montbrison.
Others, less numerous, ranging from six hundred down to two hundred
men, hold Moulins, Grenoble, Besançon, Belfort, Bourg, Dijon,
Strasbourg, Toulouse, Auch and Nantes.3147When, on March 27, 1794, the
Committee of Public Safety, threatened by Hébert, has them disbanded
for being Hébertists, in any of them are to remain at least as a
nucleus, under various forms and names, either as kept by the local
administration under the title of "paid guards,"[148] or as disbanded
soldiers, loitering about and doing nothing, getting themselves
assigned posts of rank in the National Guard of their town on account
of their exploits; in this way they keep themselves in service, which
is indispensable, for it is through these that the régime is
established and lasts. "The revolutionary army,[149] say the orders
and decrees promulgated, "is intended to repress anti-revolutionaries,
to execute, whenever it is found necessary, revolutionary laws and
measures for public safety," that is to say, "to guard those who are
shut up, arrest 'suspects,' demolish chateaux, pull down belfries,
ransack vestries for gold and silver objects, seize fine horses and
carriages," and especially " to seek for private stores and
monopolies," in short, to exercise manual constraint and strike every
one on the spot with physical terror. - We readily see what sort of
soldiers the revolutionary army is composed of.

Naturally, as it is recruited by voluntary enlistment, and all
candidates have passed the purifying scrutiny of the clubs, it
comprises none but ultra-Jacobins. Naturally, the pay being forty
sous a day, it comprises none but the very lowest class. Naturally,
as the work is as loathsome as it is atrocious, it comprises but few
others[150] than those out of employment and reduced to an enlistment
to get a living, "hairdressers without customers, lackeys without
places, vagabonds, wretches unable to earn a living by honest labor,"
"thick and hard hitters" who have acquired the habit of bullying,
knocking down and keeping honest folks under their pikes, a gang of
confirmed scoundrels making public brigandage a cloak for private
brigandage, inhabitants of the slums glad to bring down their former
superiors into the mud, and themselves take precedence and strut about
in order to prove by their arrogance and self-display that they, in
their turn, are princes. - "Take a horse, the nation pays for
it!"[151] said the sans-culottes of Bordeaux to their comrades in the
street, who, "in a splendid procession," of three carriages, each
drawn by six horses, escorted by a body on horseback, behind, in
front, and each side, conducting Riouffe and two other "suspects" to
the Réole prison. The commander of the squad who guards prisoners on
the way to Paris, and who "starves them along the road to speculate on
them," is an ex-cook of Agen, having become a gendarme; he makes them
travel forty leagues extra, "purposely to glorify himself," and "let
all Agen see that he has government money to spend, and that he can
put citizens in irons." Accordingly, in Agen, "he keeps constantly and
needlessly inspecting the vehicle," winking at the spectators, "more
triumphant than if he had made a dozen Austrians prisoners and brought
them along himself." At last, to show the crowd in the street the
importance of his capture, he summons two blacksmiths to come out and
rivet, on the legs of each prisoner, a cross-bar cannon-ball weighing
eighty pounds.[152] The more display these henchmen make of their
brutality, the greater they think themselves. At Belfort, a patriot
of the club dies, and a civic interment takes place; a detachment of
the revolutionary army joins the procession; the men are armed with
axes; on reaching the cemetery, the better to celebrate the funeral,
"they cut down all the crosses (over the graves) and make a bonfire of
them, while the carmagnole ends this ever memorable day."[153] -
Sometimes the scene, theatrical and played by the light of flambeaux,
makes the actors think that they have performed an extraordinary and
meritorious action, "that they have saved the country." "This very
night," writes the agent at Bordeaux,[154] nearly three thousand men
have been engaged in an important undertaking, with the members of the
Revolutionary Committee and of the municipality at the head of it.
They visited every wholesale dealer's store in town and in the
Faubourg des Chartrons, taking possession of their letter-books,
sealing up their desks, arresting the merchants and putting them in
the Seminiare. . . . Woe to the guilty ! " - If the prompt
confinement of an entire class of individuals is a fine thing for a
town, the seizure of a whole town itself is still more imposing.
Leaving Marseilles with a small army,[155] commanded by two sans-
culottes, they surround Martigne and enter it as if it were a mill.
The catch is superb; in this town of five thousand souls there are
only seventeen patriots; the rest are Federalists or Moderates. Hence
a general disarmament and domiciliary visits. The conquerors depart,
carrying off every able-bodied boy, "five hundred lads subject to the
conscription, and leave in the town a company of sans-culottes to
enforce obedience." It is certain that obedience will be maintained
and that the garrison, joined to the seventeen patriots, will do as
they like with their conquest.

In effect, all, both bodies and goods, are at their disposal, and they
consequently begin with the surrounding countryside, entering private
houses to get at their stores, also the farmhouses to have the grain
threshed, in order to verify the declarations of their owners and see
if these are correct: if the grain is not threshed out at once it will
be done summarily and confiscated, while the owner will be sentenced
to twelve months in irons; if the declaration is not correct, he is
condemned as a monopolist and punished with death. Armed with this
order,[156] each band takes the field and gathers together not only
grain, but supplies of every description. "That of Grenoble, the
agent writes,[157] does wonderfully; in one little commune alone, four
hundred measures of wheat, twelve hundred eggs, and six hundred pounds
of butter had been found. All this was quickly on the way to
Grenoble." In the vicinity of Paris, the forerunners of the throng,
provided "with pitchforks and bayonets, rush to the farms, take oxen
out of their stalls, grab sheep and chickens, burn the barns, and sell
their booty to speculators."[158] "Bacon, eggs, butter and chickens -
the peasants surrender whatever is demanded of them, and thenceforth
have nothing that they can take to market. They curse the Republic
which has brought war and famine on them, and nevertheless they do
what they are told: on being addressed, 'Citizen peasant, I require of
you on peril of your head,' . . . it is not possible to
refuse."[159] - Accordingly, they are only too glad to be let off so
cheaply. On Brumaire 19, about seven o'clock in the evening, at
Tigery, near Corbeil, twenty-five men "with sabers and pistols in
their belts, most of them in the uniform of the National Guards and
calling themselves the revolutionary army," enter the house of Gibbon,
an old ploughman, seventy-one years of age, while fifty others guard
all egress from it, so that the expedition may not be interfered with.
Turlot, captain, and aid-de-camp to General Henriot, wants to know
where the master of the house is. - "In his bed," is the reply. -
"Wake him up." - The old man rises. - Give up your arms." - His wife
hands over a fowling-piece, the only arm on the premises. The band
immediately falls on the poor man, "strikes him down, ties his hands,
and puts a sack over his head," and the same thing is done to his wife
and to eight male and two female servants. "Now, give us the keys of
your closets;" they want to be sure that there are no fleur-de-lys or
other illegal articles. They search the old man's pockets, take his
keys, and, to dispatch business, break into the chests and seize or
carry off all the plate, "twenty-six table-dishes, three soup-ladles,
three goblets, two snuff-boxes, forty counters, two watches, another
gold watch and a gold cross." "We will draw up a procès-verbal of all
this at our leisure in Meaux. Now, where's your silver? If you don't
say where it is, the guillotine is outside and I will be your
executioner." The old man yields and merely requests to be untied.
But it is better to keep him bound, "so as to make him 'sing.' " They
carry him into the kitchen and "put his feet into a heated brazier."
He shouts with pain, and indicates another chest which they break open
and then carry off what they find there, "seventy-two francs in coin
and five or six thousand livres in assignats, which Gibbon had just
received for the requisitions made on him for corn." Next, they break
open the cellar doors, set a cask of vinegar running, carry wine
upstairs, eat the family meal, get drunk and, at last, clear out,
leaving Gibbon with his feet burnt, and garroted, as well as the other
eleven members of his household, quite certain that there will be no
pursuit.[160] - In the towns, especially in federalist districts,
however, these robberies are complicated with other assaults. At
Lyons, whilst the regular troops are lodged in barracks, the
revolutionary army is billeted on the householders, two thousand vile,
sanguinary blackguards from Paris, and whom their general, Ronsin
himself, calls "scoundrels and brigands," alleging, in excuse for
this, that "honest folks cannot be found for such business." How they
treat their host, his wife and his daughters may be imagined;
contemporaries glide over these occurrences and, through decency or
disgust, avoid giving details.[161] Some simply use brutal force;
others get rid of a troublesome husband by the guillotine; in the most
exceptional cases they bring their wenches along with them, while the
housekeeper has to arouse herself at one o'clock at night and light a
fire for the officer who comes in with the jolly company. - And yet,
there are others still worse, for the worst attract each other. We
have seen the revolutionary committee at Nantes, also the
representative on mission in the same city; nowhere did the
revolutionary Sabbat rage so furiously, and nowhere was there such a
traffic in human lives. With such band-leaders as Carrier and his
tools on the Committee, one may be sure that the instrumentalists will
be worthy.

Accordingly, several members of the Committee themselves oversee
executions and lend a hand in the massacres. - One of these, Goullin,
a creole from St. Domingo, sensual and nervous, accustomed to
treating a Negro as an animal and a Frenchman as a white Negro, a
Septembriseur on principle, chief instigator and director of the
"drownings," goes in person to empty the prison of Bouffay, and,
verifying that death, the hospital or releases, had removed the
imprisoned for him, adds, of his own authority, fifteen names, taken
haphazard, to reach his figures. - Joly, a commissioner on the
Committee, very expert in the art of garroting, ties the hands of
prisoners together two and two and conducts them to the river.[162] -
Grand-maison, another member of the Committee, a former dancing-
master, convicted of two murders and pardoned before the Revolution,
strikes down with his saber the imploring hands stretched out to him
over the planks of the lighter.[163] - Pinard, another Committee-
commissioner, ransoms, steals off into the country and himself kills,
through preference, women and children.[164] Naturally, the three
bands which operate along with them, or under their orders, comprise
only men of their species. In the first one, called the Marat
company, each of the sixty members swears, on joining it, to adopt
Marat's principles and carry out Marat's doctrine. Goullin,[165] one
of the founders, demands in relation to each member, "Isn't there some
one still more rascally? For we must have that sort to bring the
aristocrats to reason!"[166] After Frimaire 5 "the Maratists" boast
of their arms being "tired out" with striking prisoners with the flat
of their sabers to make them march to the Loire,[167] and we see that,
notwithstanding this fatigue, the business suited them, as their
officers tried to influence Carrier to be detailed on the "drowning"
service and because it was lucrative. The men and women sentenced to
death, were first stripped of their clothes down to the shirt, and
even the shift; it would be a pity to let valuable objects go to the
bottom with their owners, and therefore the drowners divide these
amongst themselves; a wardrobe in the house of the adjutant Richard is
found full of jewelry and watches.[168] This company of sixty must
have made handsome profits out of the four or five thousand drowned.-
The second band, called "the American Hussars," and who operated in
the outskirts, was composed of blacks and mulattos, numerous enough in
this town of privateers. It is their business to shoot women, whom
they first violate; "they are our slaves," they say; "we have won them
by the sweat of our brows." "Those who have the misfortune to be
spared, become in their hands mad in a couple of days; in any event
they are re-arrested shortly afterwards and shot. - The last band,
which is styled "The German Legion," is formed out of German deserters
and mercenaries speaking little or no French. They are employed by
the Military Commission to dispatch the Vendeans picked up along the
highways, and who are usually shot in groups of twenty five. "I
came," says an eye-witness,[169] "to a sort of gorge where there was a
semi-circular quarry; there, I noticed the corpses of seventy-five
women naked and lying on their backs." The victims of that day
consisted of girls from sixteen to eighteen years of age. One of them
says to her conductor, "I am sure you are taking us to die," and the
German replies in his broken jargon, probably with a coarse laugh,"
No, it is for a change of air. They are placed in a row in front of
the bodies of the previous day and shot. Those who do not fall, see
the guns reloaded; these are again shot and the wounded dispatched
with the butt ends of the muskets. Some of the Germans then rifle the
bodies, while others strip them and "place them on their backs." - To
find workmen for this task, it is necessary to descend, not only to
the lowest wretches in France but, again, to the brutes of a foreign
race and tongue, and yet lower still, to an inferior race degraded by
slavery and perverted by license.

Such, from the top to the bottom of the ladder, at every stage of
authority and obedience, is the ruling staff of the revolutionary
government.[170] Through its recruits and its work, through its morals
and modes of proceeding, it evokes the almost forgotten image of its
predecessors, for there is an image of it in the period from the
fourteenth to the seventeenth century. At that time also, society was
frequently overcome and ravaged by barbarians; dangerous nomads,
malevolent outcasts, bandits turned into soldiers suddenly pounced
down on an industrious and peaceful population. Such was the case in
France with the "Routiers" and the "Tard-venus," at Rome with the army
of the Constable of Bourbon, in Flanders with the bands of the Duke of
Alba and the Duke of Parma, in Westphalia and in Alsace, with
Wallenstein's veterans, and those of Bernard of Saxe-Weimar. They
lived upon a town or province for six months, fifteen months, two
years, until the town or province was exhausted. They alone were
armed, master of the inhabitants, using and abusing things and persons
according to their caprices. But they were declared bandits, calling
themselves scorchers, (ecorcheurs) riders and adventurers, and not
pretending to be humanitarian philosophers. Moreover, beyond an
immediate and personal enjoyment, they demanded nothing; they employed
brutal force only to satiate their greed, their cruelty, their lust.
- The latter add to private appetites a far greater devastation, the
systematic and gratuitous ravages enforced upon them by the
superficial theory with which they are imbued.

________________________________________________________________________

Notes:

[1] "The Revolution," II., pp. 298-304, and p. 351.

[2] "The Revolution," II., pp.298-304, and p. 351. Should the
foregoing testimony be deemed insufficient, the following, by those
foreigners who had good opportunities for judging, may be added:
(Gouverneur Morris, letter of December 3, 1794.) "The French are
plunged into an abyss of poverty and slavery, a slavery all the more
degrading because the men who have plunged them into it merit the
utmost contempt."- Meissner, "Voyage à Paris," (at the end of 1795,)
p. 160. "The (revolutionary) army and the revolutionary committees
were really associations organized by crime for committing every
species of injustice, murder, rapine, and brigandage with impunity.
The government had deprived all men of any talent or integrity of
their places and given these to its creatures, that is to say, to the
dregs of humanity." - Baron Brinckmann, Chargé d'Affaires from Sweden.
(Letter of July 11, 1799.) "I do not believe that the different
classes of society in France are more corrupt than elsewhere; but I
trust that no people may ever be ruled by as imbecile and cruel
scoundrels as those that have ruled France since the advent of its new
state of freedom. . . The dregs of the people, stimulated from
above by sudden and violent excitement, have everywhere brought to the
surface the scum of immorality."

[3] Fleury, "Babeuf," 139, 150. - Granier de Cassagnac, "Histoire du
Directoire," II., 24-170. - (Trial of Babeuf, passim.) The above
quotations are from documents seized in Babeuf's house, also from
affidavits made by witnesses, and especially by captain Grizel.

[4] Moniteur, session of September 5, 1793. "Since our virtue, our
moderation, our philosophic ideas, are of no use to us, let us be
brigands for the good of the people; let us be brigands!"

[5] Babeuf, "Le Tribun du Peuple," No.40. Apologia for the men of
September, "who have only been the priests, the sacrificers of a just
immolation for public security. If anything is to be regretted it is
that a larger and more general Second of September did not sweep away
all starvers and all despoilers."

[6] Granier de Cassagnac, II., 90. (Deposition of Grisel.) Rossignol
said, "That snuff-box is all I have left, here it is so that I may
exist." - "Massard owned a pair of boots which he could not collect
because he had no money with which to pay the shoemaker."

[7] Archives Nationales, Cf. 31167. (Report of Robin, Nivôse 9.):
"The women always had a deliberative voice in the popular assemblies
of the Pantheon section," and in all the other clubs they attended the
meetings.

[8] Moniteur, XIX., 103. (Meeting of the Jacobin club, Dec. 28,
1793.) Dubois-Crancé introduces the following question to each member
who is subjected to the weeding-out vote: "What have you done that
would get you hung in case of a counter revolution?"

[9] Ibid., XVII., 410. (Speech by Maribon-Montaut, Jacobin club,
Brumaire 21, year II.)

[10] Dauban, "Paris in 1794," 142. (Police report of Ventôse 13, year
II.)

[11] Morellet, " Mémoires," II. 449.

[12] Dauban, ib.,, 35. (Note drawn up in January, 1794, probably by
the physician Quêvremont de Lamotte.) - Ibid., 82. - Cf. Morellet,
II., 434-470. (Details on the issue of certificates of civism, in
September, 1793.)

[13] Archives Nationales, F.7, 31167. (Report by Latour-Lamontagne,
Ventôse 1, year II.): " It is giving these associations too much
influence; it is destroying the jurisdiction of the general assemblies
(of the section.) We find accordingly, that these are being deserted
and that the plotters and intriguers succeed in making popular clubs
the centers of public business in order to control affairs more
easily."

[14] Dauban, ibid., 203. (Report by Bacon-Tacon, Ventose 19.) "In the
general assembly of the Maison Commune section all citizens of any
rank in the companies have been weeded out. The slightest stain of
incivism, the slightest negligence in the service, caused their
rejection. Out of twenty-five who passed censorship-nineteen at least
were rejected. . . .Most of them due to their trade such as eating-
house keeper, shoe-maker, cook, carpenter, tailor etc."

[15] Ibid., 141. (Report by Charmont, Ventôse 12.) - Ibid, 140.
"There is only one way, it is said at the Café des Grands Hommes, on
the boulevard, to keep from being arrested, and that is to scheme for
admission into the civil and revolutionary committees when there
happens to be a vacancy. Before salaries were attached to these
places nobody wanted them; since that, there are disputes as to who
shall be appointed."

[16] Ibid., 307. (Report of Germinal 7.)

[17] Wallon, " Histoire du Tribunal Revolutionaire," IV., 129.

[18] Archives Nationales, AF., II., 46. (Act of the Committee of
Public Safety, Prairial 15.): "Citizens Pillon, Gouste and Né, members
of the Revolutionary committee of the Marat section, are removed.
Their duties will be performed by citizens Martin, Majon and Mirel.
Mauvielle, rue de la Liberté, No. 32, is appointed on the said
Revolutionary Committee to complete it, as it was only composed of
eleven members." - And other similar acts.

[19] Duverger, decree of Frimaire 14, year II. "The application of
revolutionary laws and measures of general security and public safety
is confided to the municipalities and revolutionary committees." See,
in chapter II., the extent of the domain thus defined. It embraces
nearly everything. It suffices to run through the registers of a few
of the revolutionary committees, to verify this enormous power and see
how they interfere in every detail of individual life

[20] Archives Nationales, F.7, 31167. (Report, Nivôse 1, year II., by
Leharival.)

[21] Dauban, "Paris en 1794," 307. (Report of March 29, 1794.) It
here relates to the "Piques" Section, Place Vendome.

[22] Dauban, ib., 308. (Note found among Danton's papers and probably
written by the physician, Quevremont de Lamotte.)

[23] Dauban, ib., 125. (Report of Bérard, Ventôse 10.) In the words
of a woman belonging to the Bonne-Novelle section: "My husband has
been in prison four months. And what for? He was one of the first at
the Bastille; he has always refused places so that the good sans-
culottes might have them, and, if he has made enemies, it was because
he was unwilling to see these filled by ignoramuses or new-comers,
who, vociferating and apparently thirsting for blood, have created a
barrier of partisans around them."

[24] Dauban, ibid., 307. (Report of March 29, 1794.)

[25] Ibid., 150. (Report of Ventôse 14.) - Archives Nationales, F.7,
31167. (Reports of Nivôse 9 and 25.): "A great many citizens are
found in the sections who are called out after the meeting, to get
forty sous. I notice that most of them are masons, and even a few
coach drivers belonging to the nation, who can do without the nation's
indemnity, which merely serves them for drink to make them very
noisy." - " The people complain, because the persons to whom the forty
sous are given, to attend the section assemblies do nothing all day,
being able to work at different trades.... and they relay upon these
forty sous."

[26] Dauban, ibid., 312. (Note by Quevremont.) - Moniteur, XVIII.,
568, (Meeting of the commune, Frimaire 11, year II.): "The Beaurepaire
section advertises that wishing to put a stop to the cupidity of the
wine-dealers of the arrondissement, it has put seals on all their
cellars."

[27] Dauban, ibid., 345. (Order of the day by Henriot, Floreal 9.)

[28] Mallet-Dupan, II., 56. (March, 1794.)

[29] Buchez et Roux, XXVII., 10. (Speech by Barbaroux, May 14, 1793.)
- Report on the papers found in Robespierre's apartment by Courtois,
285. (Letter by Collot d'Herbois Frimaire 3, year II., demanding that
Paris Jacobins be sent to him at Lyons.) " If I could have asked for
our old ones I should have done. . . but they are necessary at
Paris, almost all of them having been made mayors."

[30] Meissner, "Voyage à Paris," (at the end of 1795,) 160. "Persons
who can neither read nor write obtain the places of accountants of
more or less importance."? Archives des Affaires étrangères, vol.
324. (Denunciations of Pio to the club, against his colleagues.) -
Dauban, ibid., 35. (Note by Quevremont, Jan., 1794.): "The honest man
who knows how to work cannot get into the ministerial bureaux,
especially those of the War and Navy departments, as well as those of
the Commune and of the Departments, without having a lump in his
throat. - Offices are mostly filled by creatures of the Commune who
very often have neither talent nor integrity. Again, the
denunciations, always welcomed, however frivolous and baseless they
may be, turn everything upside down.

[31] Moniteur, XXIV., 397 (Speech of Dubois-Crancé in the Convention
Floréal 16, year III.) - Archives Nationales, F.7, 31167. (Report by
Rolin, Nivôse 7, year II.) "The same complaints are heard against the
civil Commissioners of the section, most of whom are unintelligent,
not even knowing how to read."

[32] Archives des Affaires étrangères, vol. 1411. (August, 1793.)
"Plan adopted" for the organization of the Police, "excepting
executive modifications." In fact, some months later, the number of
claqueurs, male and female, is much greater, and finally reaches a
thousand. (Beaulieu, "Essais," V., l10.) - The same plan comprehends
fifteen agents at two thousand four hundred francs, "selected from the
frequenters of the clubs," to revise the daily morning lists; thirty
at one thousand francs, for watching popular clubs, and ninety to
twelve hundred francs for watching the section assemblies.

[33] Archives Nationales, F.7, 4436. (Letter of Bouchotte, Minister
of war, Prairial 5, year II.) "The appointment of Ronsin, as well as
of all his staff, again excited public opinion. The Committee, to
assure itself, sent the list to the Jacobin club, where they were
accepted." - Ibid., AF.,II., 58. " Paris, Brumaire II, year II., club
of the Friends of Liberty and Equality, in session at the former
Jacobin club, rue St. Honoré. List of the citizens who are to set
out for Lyons and act as national commissioners. (Here follow their
names.) All the citizens designated have undergone the inspection of
the said club, at its meeting this day." (Here follow the signatures
of the President and three secretaries.) - "Journal des Débats et
Correspondence de la Société des Jacobins, No.543, 5th day of the 3rd
month of the year II. - In relation to the formation of a new Central
club, "Terrasson is of opinion that this club may become liberticide,
and demands a committee to examine into it and secure its extinction.
The committee demanded by Terrasson is appointed." - It is evident
that they hold on energetically to this monopoly. - Cf. Moniteur,
XIX., 637. (Ventôse 13.) Motion adopted in the Jacobin club, obliging
the ministers to turn out of office any individual excluded from the
club.

[34] Dauban, ibid., 307. (Report of Germinal 9.)

[35] Moniteur, XXII. 353. (Session of Brumaire 20, year III.
Reclamation made by M. Bélanger at the bar of the Convention.)

[36] Archives Nationales, AF., II., 40. (Acts passed by the Committee
of Public Safety at the dates indicated.) Beaulieu, "Essais," v., 200.
(Ibid.) The registers of the Committee of Public Safety contain a
number of similar gratuities paid to provincial clubs and patriots,
for instance, AF., II. 58, (Brumaire 8), fifty thousand francs to
Laplanche, and, (Brumaire 9), fifty thousand francs to Couthon, "to
maintain public spirit in Calvados, to revive public spirit in Lyons,
to aid, as required, the less successful patriots who zealously devote
their time to the service of their country."

[37] Dauban, ibid., 171, (report of Ventôse 17), and 243, (report of
Ventôse 25), on the civil-committees and revolutionary committees, who
order meat served to them before serving it to the sick, and who
likewise serve the good friends of their wives.? Ibid., 146. (Report
of Ventôse 10.). . . Archives Nationales F.7, 2475. (Register of
the deliberations of the revolutionary committee of the Piques
sections, Brumaire 27, year II.) "The Committee orders that the two-
horse cab belonging to Lemarche be henceforth at the service of the
section and of the Committee when measures of security are concerned."
In this register, and others of the same series, we clearly see the
inside of a committee and its vast despotism. Style and orthography,
with almost all, are of the same low order.

[38] Archives des Affaires étrangères, vol. 1411. (Report of Aug.21
and 22, 1793.) "General Henriot sent me several . . . . who made
use of the authority of the Committee of Public Safety and General
Security, as well as of that which he delegated to me, to make
domiciliary visits at the houses of individuals who were not assured
patriots; but that did not warrant their receiving money and even
abstracting it."

[39] Dauban, ibid., 36 and 48. (Case of the Notary, Brichard.)

[40] Cf. "The Revolution," II., 302, 303. - Mercier, "Paris pendant
la Revolution," I., 151. - Moniteur, XVIII., 660. (Session of
Frimaire 24, speech by Lecomtre in the Convention.) - On robberies and
the bribes paid, see, among other documents, "Mémoires sur les
Prisons," I., 290. (Eighty thousand francs of bribes given to the
head of the police force by Perisial, keeper of an eating-house, for
the privilege of feeding prisoners in St. Lazare.)

[41] Buchez et Roux, XXXV., 77. (Trial of Fouquier-Tinville.)
Testimony of Robillard: "Another day, in the general assembly, he
struck a citizen with his saber."

[42] Buchez et Roux, XXXV., 407. (Lists in Robespierre's
handwriting.)

[43] Miot de Melito, " Mémoires," I., 46-51.-Buchot is not the only
one of his species in the ministry of Foreign Affairs. In the
archives of this ministry, vol. 324, may be found the sayings and
doings of a certain Pio, an Italian refugee who slipped into the
place, simulating poverty, and displaying patriotism, and who
denounces his chief and colleagues.-The ex-notary Pigeot, condemned to
twenty years in irons and put in the pillory, Frimaire 9, year III.,
will come to the surface; he is encountered under the Directory as
introducer of ambassadors.-Concerning one of the envoys of the
Directory to Switzerland, here is a note b~ Mallet-Dupan. ("Anecdotes
manuscrites," October, 1797.) " The Directonal ambassador, who has
come to exact from the Swiss the expulsion of the body-guard, is named
Mingot, of Belfort, a relation of Reubell's, former body-guard to M.
le Comte d'Artois.-He came to Zurich with a prostitute, a seamstress
of Zurich, established in Berne. He was living with her at the
expense of the Zurich government. Having invited the family of this
creature, that is to say a common horse-driver with his wife and some
other persons, to dinner, they drank and committed such excesses that
the driver's wife, who was big with child, gave birth to it in the
midst of the banquet. This creature gave Mingot a disease which has
laid him up at Basle."

[44] "The Revolution," II., 338, 348, 354.

[45] Martel, "Types Révolutionnaires," 136-144.- The Minister of War
appoints Henriot brigadier-general, July 3, 1793, and major-general on
the 19th of September, and says in a postscript, "Please communicate
your service record to me," unknown in the ministry because they were
of no account. - On the orgies at Choisy-sur-Seine, V. (Archives,
W2, 500-501), see investigation of Thermidor 18 and 19, year II., made
at Boisy-sur-Seine by Blache, agent of the committee of General
Security. Boulanger, brigadier-general, and Henriot's first
lieutenant, was an ex-companion jeweller.

[46] Archives des Affaires étrangères, vol. 1411. Orders of the day
by Henriot, September 16, Vendémiaire 29, year II., and Brumaire 19,
year II. Many of these orders of the day are published in Dauban,
("Paris en 1794"), p. 33. "Let our enemies pile up their property,
build houses and palaces, let them have them, what do we care, we
republicans, we do not want them! All we need to shelter us is a
cabin, and as for wealth, simply the habits, the virtues and the love
of our country. Headquarters, etc." - P. 43: "Yesterday evening a
fire broke out in the Grand Augustins. . . . Everybody worked at
it and it was put out in a very short time. Under the ancient regime
the fire would have lasted for days. Under the system of freemen the
fire lasted only an hour. What a difference! . . Headquarters, etc

[47] Wallon, "Histoire du Tribunal Révolutionnaire de Paris," V.252,
420. (Names and qualifications of the members of the Commune of
Paris, guillotined Thermidor 10 and 11.) The professions and
qualifications of some of its members are given in Lymery's
Biographical Dictionary, in Morellet's Memoirs and in Arnault's
Souvenirs. ??Moniteur?? XVI., 719. (Verdicts of the Revolutionary
Tribunal, Fructidor 15, year II.) Forty-three members of the civil or
revolutionary committees, sectional commissioners, officers of the
National Guard and of the cannoneers, signed the list of the council-
general of the commune as present on the 9th of Thermidor and are put
on trial as Robespierre's adherents. But they promptly withdrew their
signatures, all being acquitted except one. They are leaders in the
Jacobin quarter and are of the same sort arid condition as their
brethren of the Hôtel-de-ville. One only, an ex-collector of rentes,
may have had an education; the rest are carpenters, floor-tilers,
shoemakers, tailors, wine-dealers, eating-house keepers, cartmen,
bakers, hair-dressers, and joiners. Among them we find one ex-stone-
cutter, one ex-office runner, one ex-domestic and two sons of Samson
the executioner.

[48] Morellet, "Mémoires," I., 436-472.

[49] On the ascendancy of the talkers of this class see Dauban ("Paris
en 1794," pp. 118-143). Details on an all-powerful clothes-dealer in
the Lombards Section. If we may believe the female citizens of the
Assembly "he said everywhere that whoever was disagreeable to him
should be turned out of the popular club." (Ventôse 13, year II.)

[50] Arnault, "Souvenirs d'un Sexagénaire," III., 111. Details on
another member of the commune, Bergot, ex-employee at the Halle-aux-
Cuirs and police administrator, may be found in "Mémoires des
Prisons," I., 232, 239, 246, 289, 290. Nobody treated the prisoners
more brutally, who protested against the foul food served out to them,
than he. "It is too good for bastards who are going to be
guillotined.". . . . "He got drunk with the turnkeys and with the
commissioners themselves. One day he staggered in walking, and spoke
only in hiccoughs: he would go in that condition. The house-guard
refused to recognize him; he was arrested" and the concierge had to
repeat her declarations to make the officer of the post "give up the
hog."

[51] "Mémoires sur les Prisons," I., 211. (" Tableau Historique de
St. Lazare.") The narrator is put into prison in the rue de Sèvres in
October, 1793. - II., 186. ("An historical account of the jail in
the rue de Sèvres.") The narrator was confined there during the last
months of the Reign of Terror.

[52] A game of chance.

[53] "Un Séjour en France de 1792 à 1795," 281. "We had an
appointment in the afternoon with a person employed by the committee
on National Domains; he was to help my friend with her claims. This
man was originally a valet to the Marquise's brother; on the outbreak
of the Revolution he set up a shop, failed and became a rabid Jacobin,
and, at last, member of a revolutionary committee. As such, he found
a way . . . . to intimidate his creditors and obtain two
discharges of his indebtedness without taking the least trouble to pay
his debts." . . . . "I know an old lady who was kept in prison
three months for having demanded from one of these patriots three
hundred livres which he owed her." (June 3, 1795.) "I have generally
noticed that the republicans are either of the kind I have just
indicated, coffee-house waiters, jockeys, gamblers, bankrupts, and low
scribblers, or manual laborers more earnest in their principles, more
ignorant and more brutal, all spending what they have earned in vulgar
indulgence."

[54] Schmidt, "Tableaux Historiques de la Revolution Française," II.,
248, 249. (Agent's reports, Frimaire 8, year 111.) "The prosecution
of Carrier is approved by the public, likewise the condemnation of the
former revolutionary committee called the "BonnetRouge." Ten of its
members are condemned to twenty years in irons. The public is
overjoyed." - Ibid., (Frimaire 9), "The people rushed in crowds to the
square of the old commune building to see the members of the former
revolutionary committee of the Bonnet-Rouge sections, who remained
seated on the bench until six o'clock, in the light of flambeaux.
They had to put up with many reproaches and much humiliation." - "Un
Sejour en France," 286, (June 6, 1795). "I have just been interrupted
by a loud noise and cries under my window; I heard the names Scipio
and Solon distinctly pronounced in a jeering and insulting tone of
voice. I sent Angelique to see what was the matter and she tells me
that it is a crowd of children following a shoemaker of the
neighborhood who was member of a revolutionary committee. . . and
had called himself Scipio Solon. As he had been caught in several
efforts at stealing he could no longer leave his shop without being
reviled for his robberies and hooted at under his Greek and Roman
names."

[55] Barère, "Mémoires," II., 324.

[56] Montieur, XXII., 742. (Report by Cambon, Frimaire 6, year II.)
??Ibid., 22. - Report by Lindet, September 20, 1794): " The land and
navy forces, war and other services, deprive agricultural pursuits and
other professions of more than one million five hundred thousand
citizens. It would cost the Republic less to support six million men
in all the communes." - "Le Departement des Affaires étrangères," by
Fr. Masson, 382. (According to "Paris à la fin du dix-huitieme
siecle," by Pujoulx, year IX.): "At Paris alone there are more than
thirty thousand (government) clerks; six thousand at the most do the
necessary writing; the rest cut away quills, consume ink and blacken
paper. In old times, there were too many clerks in the bureaux
relatively to the work; now, there are three times as many, and there
are some who think that there are not enough."

[57] "Souvenirs de M. Hua," a parliamentary advocate, p.96. (A very
accurate picture of the small town Coucy-le-Chateau, in Aisne, from
1792 to 1794.) - "Archives des Affaires étrangères," vol.334. (Letter
of the agents, Thionville, Ventôse 24, year II.) The district of
Thionville is very patriotic, submits to the maximum and requisitions,
but not to the laws prohibiting outside worship and religious
assemblies. "The apostles of Reason preached in vain to the people,
telling them that, up to this time, they had been deceived and that
now was the time to throw off the yoke of prejudice: 'we are willing
to believe that, thus far, we have been deceived, but who will
guarantee us that you will not deceive us in your turn?'"

[58] Lagros: " La Révolution telle qu'elle est." (Unpublished
correspondence of the committee of Public Safety, I., 366. Letter of
Prieur de la Marne.) " In general, the towns are patriotic; but the
rural districts are a hundred leagues removed from the Revolution. .
. . Great efforts will be necessary to bring them up to the level of
the Revolution."

[59] According to the statistics of 1866 (published in 1869) a
district of one thousand square kilometres contains on an average,
thirty-three communes above five hundred souls, twenty-three from five
hundred to one thousand, seventeen bourgs and small towns from one
thousand to five thousand, and one average town, or very large one,
about five thousand. Taking into account the changes that have taken
place in seventy years, one may judge from these figures of the
distribution of the population in 1793. This distribution explains
why, instead of forty-five thousand revolutionary committees, there
were only twenty-one thousand five hundred.

[60] "Souvenirs des M. Hua," 179. "This country (Coucy-le-Chateau)
protected by its bad roads and still more by its nullity, belonged to
that small number in which the revolutionary turmoil was least felt."

[61] Among other documents of use in composing this picture I must
cite, as first in importance, the five files containing all the
documents referring to the mission of the representative Albert, in
Aisne and Marne. (Ventôse and Germinal, year III.) Nowhere do we find
more precise details of the sentiments of the peasant, of the common
laborer and of the lower bourgeois from 1792 to 1795. (Archives
Nationales, D. §§ 2 to 5.)

[62] Daubari, "La Demagogie en 1793," XII. (The expression of an old
peasant, near Saint-Émilion, to M. Vatel engaged in collecting
information on the last days of Petion, Guadet and Buzot.)

[63] Archives Nationales, D. § I., 5. (Petition of Claude Defert,
miller, and national agent of Turgy.) Numbers of mayors, municipal
officers, national agents, administrators and notables of districts
and departments solicit successors, and Albert compels many of them to
remain in office. - (Joint letter of the entire municipality of
Landreville; letter of Charles, stone-cutter, mayor of Trannes; Claude
Defert, miller, national agent of Turgy; of Elegny, meat-dealer; of a
wine-grower; municipal official at Merrex, etc.) The latter writes:
"The Republic is great and generous; it does not desire that its
children should ruin themselves in attending to its affairs; on the
contrary, its object is to give salaried (emolumentaires) places to
those who have nothing to live on. - Another, Mageure, appointed
mayor of Bar-sur-Seine writes, Pluviôse 29, year III.: "I learned
yesterday that some persons of this community would like to procure
for me the insidious gift of the mayoralty," and he begs Albert to
turn aside this cup.

[64] "Souvenirs de M. Hua," 178-205. "M. P... , mayor of Crépy-au-
Mont, knew how to restrain some low fellows who would have been only
too glad to revolutionize his village. . . . And yet he was a
republican. . . . One day, speaking of the revolutionary system,
he said: 'They always say that it will not hold on; meanwhile, it
sticks like lice.' " - "A general assembly of the inhabitants of Coucy
and its outskirts was held, in which everybody was obliged to undergo
an examination, stating his name, residence, birth-place, present
occupation, and what he had done during the Revolution." Hua avoids
telling that he had been a representative in the Legislative Assembly,
a recognized fact in the neighborhood: "Not a voice was raised to
compromise me." - Ibid., 183. (Reply of the Coucy Revolutionary
Committee to that of Meaux.)

[65] "Frochot," by Louis Passy, 175. (Letter of Pajot, member of the
Revolutionary committee of Troyes, Vendémiaire, year III.) - Archives
Nationales, F.7, 4421. (Register of the Revolutionary committee of
Troyes.) Brumaire 27, year II. Incarceration of various suspects,
among others of "Lerouge, former lawyer, under suspicion of having
constantly and obstinately refused revolutionary offices." Also, a
person named Corps, for "having refused the presidency of the district
tribunal at the time of its organization, under the pretext of
consulting the Chambre des Comptes; also for being the friend of
suspects, and for having accepted office only after the Revolution had
assumed an imposing character."

[66] Marcelin Boudet, "Les conventionnels d'Auvergne," 161.
(Justification of Etienne Bonarmé, the last months of 1794.)

[67] Pans, "Histoire de Joseph Lebon," II., 92. (Declaration by
Guérard, lawyer, appointed judge at Cambrai, by the Cambrai
Revolutionary committee.) - Ibid., 54. (Declaration by Lemerre,
appointed juryman without his knowledge, in the Cambrai court.) "What
was my surprise, I, who never was on a jury in my life! The summons
was brought to me at a quarter to eleven (à onze heur moin un car -
specimen of the orthography) and I had to go at eleven without having
time to say good-by to my family."

[68] Report by Courtois on the papers found in Robespierre's domicile,
370. (Letter of Maignet to Payan, administrator of the department of
Drôme, Germinal 20, year II.) "You know the dearth of subjects here .
. . Give me the names of a dozen outspoken republicans . . .
. If you cannot find them in this department (Vaucluse) hunt for them
either in the Drôme or the Isère, or in any other. I should like
those adapted to a revolutionary tribunal. I should even like, in
case of necessity, to have some that are qualified to act as national
agents."

[69] Archives des Affaires étrangères, vols. 322 to 334, and 1409 to
1411. - These agents reside in Nîmes, Marseilles, Toulouse, Tarbes,
Bordeaux, Auch, Rochefort, Brest, Bergues, Givet, Metz, Thionville,
Strasbourg, Colmar, Belfort and Grenoble, and often betake themselves
to towns in the vicinity. - The fullest reports are those of Chepy,
at Grenoble, whose correspondence is worthy of publication; although
an ultra Jacobin, he was brought before the revolutionary Tribunal as
a moderate, in Ventôse, year II. Having survived (the Revolution) he
became under the Empire a general commissary of Police at Brest.
Almost all of them are veritable Jacobins, absolutist at bottom, and
they became excellent despotic tools.

[70] Buchez et Roux, XXX., 425. - Twenty-four commissioners, drawn by
lot from the Jacobins of Paris, are associated with Collot d'Herbois.
One of them, Marino, becomes president of the temporary Committee of
Surveillance, at Lyons. Another, Parrien, is made president of the
Revolutionary Committee. - Archives Nationales, AF., II., 59.
(Deliberations in the Paris Jacobin club, appointing three of their
number to go to Tonnerre and request the Committee of Public Safety
"to give them the necessary power, to use it as circumstances may
require, for the best good of the Republic." Frimaire 6, year II.) -
Order of the Committee of Public Safety, allowing two thousand francs
to the said parties for their traveling expenses." - Archives des
Affaires Étrangères, vol. 333. The agents sent to Marseilles affix
their signatures, "sans-culottes, of Paris," and one of them, Brutus,
becomes president of the Marseilles revolutionary tribunal.

[71] Archives Nationales, AF., II., 49. Papers relating to the
revolutionary tax of Belfort, giving all the amounts and names.
(Brumaire 30, year II.) Here is the formula: "citizen X. . . (male
or female) will pay in one hour the sum of - - , under penalty of
being considered suspect and treated as such." - "Recueil des Pièces
Authentiques concernant la Révolution à Strasbourg," I., 128, 187.
(Expressions of the representative Baudot in a letter dated Brumaire
29, year II.)

[72] Archives Nationales: the acts and letters of the representatives
on mission are classed by departments. - On the delegates of the
representatives on mission, I will cite but one text. (Archives des
Affaires étrangères, vol. 333, letter of Garrigues, Auch, Pluviôse
24, year II.): "A delegate of Dartigoyte goes to l'Isle and, in the
popular club, wants the curé of the place to get rid of his priestly
attributes. The man answers, so they tell me, that he would
cheerfully abstain from his duties, but that, if, in addition to this,
they used force he would appeal to the convention, which had no idea
of interfering with freedom of opinion. 'Very well,' replied
Dartigoyte emissary, 'I appeal to a gendarme,' and he at once ordered
his arrest."

[73] Lallier, "Une commission D'énquete et de Propagande," p.7. (It
is composed of twelve members, selected by the club of Nantes, who
overrun the district of Ancenis, six thousand francs of fees being
allowed it.) - Babeau, II., 280. (Dispatch of sixty commissioners,
each at six francs a day by the Troyes administration, to ascertain
the state of the supplies on hand, Prairial, year II.)

[74] For example, at Bordeaux and at Troyes. - Archives Nationales
F7, 4421. Register of the Revolutionary committee of Troyes, fol.
164. Two members of the committee travel to the commune of Lusigny,
dismiss the mayor and justice, and appoint in the place of the latter
"the former curé of the country, who, some time ago, abjured
sacerdotal fanaticism." - Archives des Affaires étrangères, vol.332.
(Letter of Desgranges, Bordeaux, Brumaire 15, year II.) The
representatives have just instituted "a revolutionary committee of
surveillance composed of twelve members, selected with the greatest
circumspection. All the committees established in the department are
obliged to correspond with it, and fulfill its requisitions."

[75] Archives Nationales, AF., II, 58. (Letter of Javogues to Collot
d'Herbois, Brumaire 28, year II.)

[76] "Recueil des Pièces Authentiques," etc., I., 195. (Acts passed
Jan.21, 1793.)

[77] Archives des Affaires étrangères, vol. 326. (Letters from
Brutus, September 24; from Topino-Lebrun, jr., September 25 and
October 6, 1793. - Vol. 330. Letters from Brutus, Nivôse 6, year
II.) The character of the agent is often indicated orthographically.
For example, vol.334, letter from Galon-Boyer, Brumaire 18, year II.
"The public spirit is generally bad. Those who claim to be patriots
know no restraint . The rest are lethargic and federalism appears
innate."

[78] Archives des Affaires étrangères, vol.1411. (Letter of Haupt,
Brumaire 26, year II.) - Vol. 333. (Letter of Blessman and Haüser,
Pluviôse 4, year II.)

[79] Archives des Affaires étrangères, vol. 333. (Letter of Chartres
and of Caillard, Cornmune Aifranchie, Nivôse 21.) - Vol. 331.
(Letters of Desgranges, at Bordeaux, Brumaire 8 and Frimaire 3.) "The
offerings in plate and coin multiply indefinitely; all goes right.
The court-martial has condemned Dudon to death, son of the ex-
procureur-général in the former parliament at Bordeaux, Roullat,
procureur-syndic of the department, Sallenave, merchant. These
executions excite sympathy, but nobody murmurs."

[80] Ibid., vol. 333. (Letter of Cuny, sr., Nivôse 20.) Vols. 331,
332. (Letters of Chepy, passim, and especially those dated Frimaire
II.) - Vol. 329. (Letter of Chépy, August 24, 1793.) "At Annecy, the
women have cut down the liberty-pole and burnt the archives of the
club and of the commune. At Chambéry, the people wanted to do the
same thing." - Ibid. (September 18, 1793.) "The inhabitants around
Mont Blanc show neither spirit nor courage; the truth is, an anti-
revolutionary spirit animates all minds." - Ibid. (Letter of August
8, 1793.) "Not only have the citizens of Grenoble, who were drawn by
lot, not set out on the expedition to Lyons, but, even of those who
have obeyed the laws, several have returned with their arms and
baggage. No commune between St. Laurent and Lyons would march. The
rural municipalities, badly tainted with the federal malady, ventured
to give the troops very bad quarters, especially those who had been
drafted."

[81] Ibid. (Letter of Cuny, jr., Brest, Brumaire 6.) " There are, in
general, very few patriots at Brest; the inhabitants are nearly all
moderates." - (Letter of Gadolle, Dunkirk, July 26, 1793.) - (Letter
of Simon, Metz, Nivôse, year II.) "Yesterday, on the news of the
capture of Toulon being announced in the theatre, . . . I noticed
that only about one-third of the spectators gave way to patriotic
enthusiasm; the other two-thirds remained cold, or put on a long
face."

[82] Ibid. (Letter of Haupt, Belfort, September 1, 1793.)

[83] Report by Courtois on the papers found in Robespierre's domicile,
p. 274. (Letter of Darthé, Ventôse 29, year II.)

[84] "Tableau des Prisons de Toulouse," by citizen Pescayre (published
in year III.), p.101.

[85] Archives Nationales, F.7, 4421. (Register of the Revolutionary
Committee, established at Troyes, Brumaire II, year II.) - Albert
Babeau, vol. II., passim. - Archives des Affaires étrangères, vol.
332, Chépy (letter, Brumaire 6, Grenoble). "The sections had
appointed seven committees of surveillance. Although weeded out by
the club, they nevertheless alarmed the sans-culottes.. . .
Representative Petit-Jean has issued an order, directing that there
shall be but one committee at Grenoble composed of twenty-one members.
This measure is excellent and ensures the triumph of sans-culotteism."
- Archives Nationales, F.7, 4434. (Letter of Pérrieu to Brissot,
Bordeaux, March 9, 1793.) Before June 2, the national club "of
Bordeaux, composed of Maratists, did not comprise more than eight or
ten individuals at most." - Moniteur, XXII., 133. (Speech by
Thibeaudeau on the popular club of Poitiers, Vendémiaire II, year
III.) - Ibid. (Session of Brumaire 5, year III., letter of Calès, and
session of Brumaire 17, year III., report by Calès.) "The popular club
of Dijon made all neighboring administrative bodies, citizens and
districts tremble. All were subject to its laws, and three or four
men in it made them. This club and the municipality were one body."
"The Terror party does not exist here, or, if it does exist, it does
not amount to much: out of twenty thousand inhabitants there are not
six who can legitimately be suspected of belonging to it."

[86] Baroly, "Les Jacobins Demasqués," (IV. 8vo., of 8pp., year II).
"The Jacobin club, with its four hundred active members at Paris, and
the four thousand others in the provinces, not less devoted, represent
the living force of the Revolution."

[87] Archives Nationales, D. § I., 10. (Orders of representatives
Delacroix, Louchet, and Legendre, Nivôse 12, year II.) "On the
petition of the Committee of Surveillance of Evreux, which sets forth
that all its members are without means, and that it will be impossible
for them to continue their duties since they are without resources for
supporting their families," the representatives allow three of them
two hundred and seventy francs each, and a fourth one hundred and
eighty francs, as a gratuity (outside of the three francs a day.)

[88] Ibid. AF., II., 111. (Order of Albitte and La Porte, Prairial
18, year II.)

[89] Albert Babeau, II., 154-157. - Moniteur, XXII. 425. (Session
of Brumaire 13, year III. Speech by Cambon.) "A government was
organized in which surveillance alone cost 591 millions per annum.
Every man who tilled the ground or worked in a shop, at once abandoned
his pursuit for a place on the Revolutionary Committees . . . where
he got five francs a day."

[90] "Tableau des Prisons de Toulouse," by citizen Pescare, 162, 166,
435.

[91] Berryat Saint-Prix, "La Justice Révolutionaire," (second edition)
p. XIX. - Ibid., XIV. At Rochefort there is on the revolutionary
tribunal a mason, a shoemaker, a caulker, and a cook; at Bordeaux, on
the military commission, an actor, a wine-clerk, a druggist, a baker,
a journeyman-gilder, and later, a cooper and a leather-dresser.

[92] I heard these expressions during my conversations with old
peasants. - Archives Nationales, AF.,II., 111. (Order of the
Representative Ichon, Messidor 18, year II.) "The popular club of
Chinon will be immediately regenerated. Citizens (I omit their
names), the following showing their occupations: shoemaker, policeman.
sabot-maker, cooper, carter, shoemaker, joiner, butcher carpenter and
mason, will form the committee which is to do the weeding-out and
choose successors among those that offer to become members of the
club."? Ibid., D., §I, 10. (Orders of the Representatives Delacroix,
Louchet and Legendre, on mission in the department of Seine-Inférieure
for the purpose of removing, at Conchez, the entire administration,
and for forming there a new revolutionary committee, with full powers,
Frimaire 9, year II.) The members of the committee, the nature of
which is indicated, are two coopers, one gardener, two carpenters, one
merchant, a coach-driver and a tailor. (One finds in the archives, in
the correspondence of the representatives, plenty of orders appointing
authorities of the same sort.)

[93] Albert Babeau, II., 296.

[94] The French text reads: "Sa profession est fame de Paillot-
Montabert; son revenu est vivre de ses revenus; ces relation son d'une
fame nous ny portons point d'atantion; ces opignons nous les présumons
semblable à ceux de son mary."

[95] Archives Nationales, F7, 4421. Order of the Committee of
Surveillance of the third section of Troyes, refusing civic
certificates to seventy-two persons, or sending them before the
central committee as "marchands d'argant, aristocrate, douteux,
modére, intrigant, egoiste fanatique. Fait et areté par nous, membre
du Comité. - Ib., Mémoire des Commissaires de la 5e seiscion dite de
la liberté nommé par le citoyen de Baris (Paris) pour faire les visite
de l'argenteri ché les citoyens de la liste fait par les citoyens Diot
et Bailly et Jaquin savoir depence du 13 et 14 et 15 Frimaire pour
leur nouriture du troyes jour monte à 24 fr.

[96] Albert Babeau, II., 154.

[97] Archives Nationales, D., §I, 5. (Mission of Representative
Albert, in Aube and in Marne.) - These notes are made on the spot,
with a thorough knowledge of the situation, by zealous republicans who
are not without common-sense and of average honesty, (chiefly in
Pluviôse and Ventôse, year III). - Letter of Albert to the
directories of the two departments, Prairial 3, year II. "I am
satisfied, during the course of my mission, of the necessity of
reorganizing the municipalities throughout both departments."

[98] Ibid. Orders of Albert, Ventôse 5, and Pluviôse 29, year III.,
reorganizing the courts and administrations in the districts of Ervy,
Arcis and Nogent-sur-Seine, with a tabular statement of the names of
those removed and the reasons for so doing.

[99] Petition of Jean Nicolas Antoine, former member of the Directory
of the district of Troyes for twenty-eight months. (Ventose 9, year
II I.) Shut up in Troyes, he asks permission to go to Paris, "I have a
small lot of goods which it is necessary for me to sell in Paris. It
is my native town and I know more people there than anywhere else."-
Ibid. Information furnished on Antoine by the Conseil-general of the
Commune of Troyes.

[100] Archives Nationales, AF., II., 59. (Memorials dated Messidor
28, year II., by an emissary of the Committee of Public Safety, sent
to Troyes, Prairial 29, to report on the situation of things and on
the troubles in Troyes.) - Albert Babeau, II., 203, 205 and 112, 122.
- Cf. 179. "Gachez, intoxicated, about eleven o'clock at night, with
several women as drunk as himself, compelled the keeper of the Temple
of Reason to open the doors, threatening him with the guillotine." -
Ibid., 166. He addressed the sans-culottes in the popular club: "Now
is the time to put yourselves in the place of the rich. Strike, and
don't put it off!" - Ibid., 165. " 42 633 livres were placed in the
hands of Gachez and the committee, as secret revolutionary service
money. . . . Between December 4 and 10 Gachez received 20 000
livres, in three orders, for revolutionary expenses and provisional
aid. . . . The leaders of the party disposed of these sums without
control and, it may be added, without scruple; Gachez hands over only
four thousand livres to the sectional poor-committee. On Nivôse 12,
there remains in the treasury of the poor fund only 3738 livres, 12
000 having been diverted or squandered."

[101] "Frochot," by Louis Passy, 172. (Letter of Pajot, member of the
revolutionary committee of Aignay-le-Duc.) "Denunciations occupied
most of the time at our meetings, and it is there that one could see
the hatreds and vengeance of the colleagues who ruled us."

[102] Archives Nationales, D., § I, No.4. The following is a sample
among others of the impositions of the revolutionary committees.
(Complaint of Mariotte, proprietor, former mayor of Chatillon-sur-
Seine, Floréal 27, year II.) "On Brumaire 23, year II., I was stopped
just as I was taking post at Mussy, travelling on business for the
Republic, and provided with a commission and passport from the
Minister of war. . . . I was searched in the most shameful manner;
citizen Ménétrier, member of the committee, used towards me the
foulest language . . . . I was confined in a tavern; instead of
two gendarmes which would have been quite sufficient to guard me, I
had the whole brigade, who passed that night and the next day
drinking, until, in wine and brandy the charge against me in the
tavern amounted to sixty francs. And worse still, two members of the
same committee passed a night guarding me and made me pay for it. Add
to this, they said openly before me that I was a good pigeon to pluck.
. . . They gave me the escort of a state criminal of the highest
importance, three national gendarmes, mounted, six National Guards,
and even to the Commandant of the National Guard; citizen Mièdan,
member of the revolutionary committee, put himself at the head of the
cortege, ten men to conduct one! . . . . I was obliged to pay my
torturers, fifty francs to the commandant, and sixty to his men."

[103] Moniteur, XXI., 261. (Speech by an inhabitant of Troyes in the
Jacobin Club, Paris, Messidor 26, year II.)

[104] Albert Babeau, II., 164. (Depositions of the tavern-keeper and
of the commissioner, Garnier.)

[105] "Frochot," by Louis Passy, 170, 172. (Letter by Pajot and
petition of the Aignay municipality, March 10, 1795.) - Bibliotheque
Nationale, L., 41. No.1802. (Denunciation by six sections of the
commune of Dijon to the National Convention.)

[106] "Recueil de Pièces Authentiques sur la Révolution de
Strasbourg," I., 187, and letter of Burger, Thermidor 25, year II.

[107] Archives Nationales, D., § I, 6 (file37) - Letter of the members
of the Strasbourg revolutionary committee, Ventôse 13, year III.,
indicating to the mayor and municipal officers of Chalons-sur-Marne
certain Jacobins of the town as suitable members of the Propaganda at
Strasbourg.

[108] "Recueil de Pièces Authentiques concernant la Révolution à
Strasbourg," I.,71. Deposition of the recorder Weis on the circuit of
the Revolutionary Tribunal, composed of Schneider, Clavel and Taffin.
"The judges never left the table without having become intoxicated
with everything of the finest, and, in this state, they gathered in
the tribunal and condemned the accused to death." - Free living and
"extravagant expenditure" were common even "among the employees of the
government." "I encountered," says Meissner, "government carters
served with chickens, pastry and game, whilst at the traveler's table
there was simply an old leg of mutton and a few poor side-dishes."
("Voyage en France," toward the end of 1795, p.371.)

[109] Some of them, nevertheless, are not ugly, but merely sots. The
following is a specimen. A certain Velu, a born vagabond, formerly in
the alms-house and brought up there, then a shoemaker or a cobbler,
afterwards teaching school in the faubourg de Vienne, and at last a
haranguer and proposer of tyrannicide motions, short, stout and as
rubicund as his cap, is made President of the Popular club at Blois,
then delegate for domiciliary visits, and, throughout the reign of
Terror, he is a principal personage in the town, district and
department. (Dufort de Cheverney, "Mémoires," (MS.) March 21, 1793
and June, 1793.) In June, 1793, this Velu is ordered to visit the
chateau de Cheverney, to verify the surrender of all feudal documents.
He arrives unexpectedly, meets the steward, Bambinet, enters the
mayor's house, who keeps an inn, and drinks copiously, which gives
Bambinet time to warn M. Dufort de Cheverney and have the suspicious
registers concealed. - This done, "Velu is obliged to leave his
bottle and march to the chateau. - He assumed haughtiness and aimed
at familiarity; he would put his hand on his breast and, taking yours,
address you: "Good day, brother." - He came there at nine o'clock in
the morning, advanced, took my hand and said: "Good-day, brother, how
are you?" "Very well, citizen, and how are you?" "You do not tutoyer -
you are not up to the Revolution? "We'll see - will you step in the
parlor?" "Yes, brother, I'll follow you." - We enter; he sees my wife
who, I may say, has an imposing air. He boldly embraces her and,
repeating his gesture on the breast, takes her hand and says: "Good-
day, sister." "Come," I interpose, "let us take breakfast, and, if you
please, you shall dine with me." "Yes, but on one condition, that tu
me tutoie." "I will try, but I am not in the habit of it." After
warming up his intellect and heart with a bottle of wine, we get rid
of him by sending him to inspect the archives-room, along with my son
and Bambinet. It is amusing, for he can only read print. . .
Bambinet, and the procureur, read the titles aloud, and pass over the
feudalisms. Velu does not notice this and always tells them to go on.
- After an hour, tired out, he comes back: "All right," he says, "now
let me see your chateau, which is a fine one." He had heard about a
room where there were fantocini, in the attic. He goes up, opens some
play-books, and, seeing on the lists of characters the name of King
and Prince, he, says to me: "You must scratch those out, and play only
republican pieces." The descent is by a back-stairs. On the way down
he encounters a maid of my wife's, who is very pretty; he stops and,
regarding my son, says: "You must as a good Republican, sleep with
that girl and marry her." I look at him and reply: " Monsieur Velu,
listen; we are well behaved here, and such language cannot be allowed.
You must respect the young people in my house." A little disconcerted,
he tames down and is quite deferential to Madame de Cheverney. - "You
have pen and ink on your table," he says, "bring them here." "What
for," I ask, "to take my inventory?" "No, but I must make a procès-
verbal. You help me; it will be better for you, as you can fix it to
suit you" This was not badly done, to conceal his want of knowledge.
- We go in to dinner. My servants waited on the table; I had not
yielded to the system of a general table for all of us, which would
not have pleased my servants any more than myself. Curiosity led them
all to come in and see us dining together. - "Brother," says Velu to
me, "don't these people eat with you?" (He saw the table set for only
four persons.) I reply: " Brother, that would not be any more
agreeable to them than to myself. Ask them." - He ate little, drank
like an ogre, and was talkative about his amours; getting carried away
he got so close to being naughty that he upset my wife, without
actually going to far. Apropos of the Revolution, and the danger we
incurred, he said innocently: "Don't I run as much risk as anybody? It
is my opinion that, in three months, I shall have my head off! But we
must all take our chance!" - Now and then, he indulged in sans-
culottisms. He seized the servant's hand, who changed his plate :
"Brother, I beg you to take my place, and let me wait on you in my
turn " - He drank the cordials, and finally left, pleased with his
reception. - Returning to the inn, he stays until nine o'clock at
night and stuffs himself, but is not intoxicated. One bottle had no
effect on him; he could empty a cask and show no signs of it.

[110] Moniteur, XXII., 425. (Session of Brumaire 13, year III.)
Cambon, in relation to the revolutionary committees, says: "I would
observe to the Assembly that they were never paid." A member replies:
"They took their pay themselves." ("Yes, yes." - Applause.)

[111] Moniteu, XXII., 711. (Report by Cambon, Frimaire 6, year III.)
- Cambon stated, indeed, Frimaire 26, year II., (Moniteur, XVIII.,
680), concerning these taxes "Not one word, not one sou has yet
reached the Treasury; they want to override the Convention which made
the Revolution."

[112] Ibid., 720. "The balances reported, of which the largest
portion is already paid into the vaults of the National Treasury,
amount to twenty millions one hundred and sixty-six thousand three
hundred and thirty livres." - At Paris, Marseilles, and Bordeaux, in
the3 large towns where tens of millions were raised in three-quarters
of the districts, Cambon, three months after Thermidor, could not yet
obtain, I will not say the returns, but a statement of the sums
raised. The national agents either did not reply to him, or did it
vaguely, or stated that in their districts there was neither civic
donation nor revolutionary tax, and particularly at Marseilles, where
a forced loan had been made of four millions. - Cf. De Martel, "
Fouché," P.245. (Memorial of the central administration of Nièvre,
Prairial 19, year III.) "The account returned by the city of Nevers
amounts to eighty thousand francs, the use of which has never been
verified. . . . This tax, in part payment of the war subsidy, was
simply a trap laid by the political actors in order to levy a
contribution on honest, credulous citizens." - Ibid., 217. On
voluntary gifts and forced taxation cf. at Nantes, the use made of
revolutionary taxes, brought out on the trial of the revolutionary
committee.

[113] Ludovic Sciout, IV., 19. Report of Representative Becker.
(Journal des Débats et Décrets, p.743, Prairial, year III.) He returns
from a mission to Landau and renders an account of the executions
committed by the Jacobin agents in the Rhenish provinces. They levied
taxes, sword in hand, and threatened the refractory with the
guillotine at Strasbourg. The receipts which passed under the
reporter's eyes "presented the sum of three millions three hundred and
forty-five thousand seven hundred and eighty-five livres, two deniers,
whilst our colleague, Cambon, reports only one hundred and thirty-
eight thousand paid in."

[114] Moniteur, XXII., 754. (Report of Grégoire, Frimaire 24, year
III.) "Rascallery - this word recalls the old revolutionary
committees, most of which formed the scum of society and which showed
so many aptitudes for the double function of robber and persecutor."

[115] Archives Nationales, AF., II., 107. (Orders of Representatives
Ysabeau and Tallien, Bordeaux, Brumaire 11 and 17, year II.) - Third
order, promulgated by the same parties, Frimaire 2, year II.,
replacing this committee by another of twelve members and six
deputies, each at two hundred francs a month. Fourth order, Pluviôse
16, year II., dismissing the members of the foregoing committee, as
exagérés and disobedient. It is because they regard their local
royalty in quite a serious light.-Ibid., AF., II., 46. ("Extracts
from the minutes of the meetings of the revolutionary committee of
Bordeaux," Prairial, year II.) This extract, consisting of eighteen
pages, shows in detail the inside workings of a revolutionary
committee the number of arrested goes on increasing; on the 27th of
Prairial there are 1524. The committee is essentially a police
office; it delivers certificates of civism, issues warrants of arrest,
corresponds with other committees, even very remote, at Limoges, and
Clermont-Ferrand, delegates any of its members to make investigations
or domicialiary searches, to affix seals, and it receives and
transmits denunciations, summons the denounced to appear before it,
reads interrogations, writes to the Committee of Public Safety, etc.
The following are samples of its warrants of arrest: "Muller, a
riding-master, will be confined in the former Petit Seminaire, under
suspicion of aristocracy, according to public opinion." - Another
example, (Archives Nationales, F.7, 2475. Register of the procès-
verbaux of the revolutionary committee of the Piques section, Paris,
June 3, 1793.) Warrant of arrest against Boucher, grocer, rue Neuve du
Luxembourg, "suspect" of incivisme and "having cherished wicked and
perfidious intentions against his wife." Boucher, arrested, declares
that, "what he said and did in his own house, concerned nobody but
himself." On which he was led to prison.

[116] Archives Nationales, AF., II., 30 (No.105). Examination of Jean
Davilliers, and other ransomed parties.

[117] Berryat Saint-Prix, 313. (Trial of Lacombe and his accomplices
after Thermidor.)

[118] Archives Nationales, AF., II., 46. (Letter of Julien to the
Committee of Public Safety, Bordeaux, Messidor 12, year II.) -
Moniteur, XXII., 713. (Report by Cambon, Frimaire 6, year III.) At
Verins, citizens were imprisoned and then set at liberty "on
consideration of a fee." - Albert Babeau, II., 164, 165, 206. (Report
by Cambon, Frimaire 6, year II.) "Citoyenne (madame) Deguerrois,
having come to procure the release of her husband, a public
functionary demanded of her ten thousand livres, which he reduced to
six thousand for doing what she desired." - "One document attests that
Massey paid two thousand livres, and widow Delaporte six hundred
livres, to get out of prison."

[119] Mallet-Dupan, "First letter to a Genoa merchant," (March I,
1796), pp.33-35. "One of the wonders of the reign of Terror is the
slight attention given to the trafficking in life and death,
characteristic of terrorism. . . . We scarcely find a word on the
countless bargains through which 'suspect' citizens bought themselves
out of captivity, and imprisoned citizens bought off the guillotine.
. . . Dungeons and executions were as much matters of trade as the
purchase of cattle at a fair." This traffic "was carried on in all the
towns, bourgs and departments surrendered to the Convention and
Revolutionary Committees." . . . . "It has been established since
the 10th of August." "I will only cite among a multitude of instances
the unfortunate Duc du Châtelet: never did anybody pay more for his
execution!" - Wallon, "Histoire du Tribunal Revolutionnaire de Paris,"
VI., 88. (Denunciation of Fouquier-Tinville, signed Saulnie.)
According to Saulnie he dined regularly twice a week at No 6 rue
Serpente, with one Demay, calling himself a lawyer and living with a
woman named Martin. In this death-trap, in the middle of orgies, the
freedom or death of those in prison was bargained for in money with
impunity. One head alone, belonging to the house of Boufflers,
escaping the scaffold through the intrigues of these vampires, was
worth to them thirty thousand livres, of which one thousand were paid
down and a bond given for the rest, payable on being set at liberty.
- Morellet, "Memoires," II., 32. The agent of Mesdames de Bouffiers
was Abbé Chevalier, who had formerly known Fouquier-Tinville in the
office of a procureur an Parliament and who, renewing the
acquaintance, came and drank with Fouquier. "He succeeded in having
the papers of the ladies Bouffiers, which were ready to be sent to the
Tribunal, placed at the bottom of the file." - Mallet-Dupan, "
Memoires," II., 495. "Fouquier-Tinville received a pension of one
thousand crowns a month from Mesdames de Bouffiers; the ransom
increased one quarter each month on account of the atrocity of the
circumstances. This method saved these ladies, whilst those who paid
a sum in gross lost their lives. . . It was Du Vaucel, fermier-
general, who saved the Princess of Tarente . . . .for five hundred
louis, after having saved two other ladies for three hundred louis,
given to one of the Jacobin leaders."

[120] "Tableau des Prisons de Toulouse," 324. Coudert, of the
Municipal Council, shoemaker, charged with the duty of taking silver-
plate from the accused, did not know how, or was unwilling, to draw up
any other than an irregular and valueless procès-verbal. On this, an
accused party objected and refused to sign. "Take care, you,"
exclaims Coudert in a rage, "with your damned cleverness, you are
playing the stubborn. You are nothing but a bloody fool! You are
getting into a bad box! If you don't sign, I'll have you guillotined."
Frequently, there are no papers at all. (De Martel, "Fouché," p.236.
Memorial by the authorities of Allier, addressed to the Convention,
document 9.) October 30, 1793. Order of the revolutionary committee
enjoining nocturnal visits in all " suspect " houses in Moulins, to
remove all gold, silver and copper. "Eleven parties are made up. .
. . each to visit eight or ten houses. Each band is headed by one
of the committee, with one municipal officer, accompanied by
locksmiths and a revolutionary guard. The dwellings of the accused
and other private individuals are searched. They force secretaries
and wardrobes of which they do not find the keys. They pillage the
gold and silver coin. They carry off plate, jewels, copper utensils
and other effects, bed-clothes, docks, vehicles, etc. No receipt is
given. No statement is made of what is carried off. They rest
content by at the end of the month, reporting, in a sort of procès-
verbal drawn up at a meeting of the committee, that, according to
returns of the visits made, very little plate was found, and only a
little money in gold and silver, all without any calculation or
enumeration." - "Souvenirs et Journal d'un Bourgeois d'Evreux," p.93.
(February 25, 1795.) The meetings of the popular club "were largely
devoted to reading the infamous doings and robberies of the
revolutionary committee. . . . The members who designated
'suspects' often arrested them themselves, and drew up a procès-verbal
in which they omitted to state the jewels and gold they found."

[121] Ibid., 461. (Vendemaire 24, year III. Visit of Representative
Malarmé.) The former Duc de Narbonne-Lorra aged eighty-four, says to
Malarmé: "Citizen representative, excuse me if I keep my cap on; I
lost my hair in that prison, without having been able to get
permission to have a wig made; it is worse than being robbed on the
road." "Did they steal anything from you?" "They stole one hundred and
forty five louis d'or and paid me with an acquittance for a tax for
the sans-culottes, which is another robbery done to the citizens of
this commune where I have neither home nor possessions." "Who
committed this robbery? " "It was Citizen Berger, of the municipal
council." " Was nothing else taken from you?" "They took a silver
coffee-pot, two soap-cases and a silver shaving-dish" "Who took those
articles?" "It was Citizen Miot (a notable of the council)." Miot
confesses to having kept these objects and not taken them to the
Mint.-Ibid., 178. (Ventôse 20, year II.) Prisoners all have their
shoes taken, even those who had but one pair, a promise being made
that they should have sabots in exchange, which they never got. Their
cloaks also were taken with a promise to pay for them, which was never
done. - "Souvenirs et Journal d'un Bourgeois d'Evreux," p.92.
(February 25, 1795.) The sessions of the popular club were largely
devoted to reading the infamies and robberies of the revolutionary
committee. Its members, who designated the suspects, often arrested
them themselves; they made levies and reports of these in which they
omitted the gold and jewels found."

[122] Moniteur, XXII. 133. (Session of Vendémiaire II, year III.)
Report by Thibaudeau. "These seven individuals are reprobates who
were dismissed by the people's representatives for having stolen the
effects of persons arrested. A document is on record in which they
make a declaration that, not remembering the value of the effects
embezzled, they agree to pay damages to the nation of twenty-two
francs each."

[123] Berryat Saint-Prix, 447. Judge Ragot was formerly a joiner at
Lyons, and Viot, the public prosecutor, a former deserter from the
Penthièvre regiment. "Other accused persons were despoiled. Little
was left them other than their clothes, which were in a bad state.
Nappier, the bailiff, was, later, (Messidor, year III.), condemned to
irons for having appropriated a part of the effects, jewels and
assignats belonging to persons under accusation."

[124] The words of Camille Desmoulins in " La France Libre," (August,
1782).

[125] De Martel, " Fouché," 362.-Ibid.,, 132, 162, 179, 427, 443. -
Lecarpentier, in La Manche, constantly stated: "Those who do not like
the Revolution, must pay those who make it."

[126] Marcelin Boudet, 175. (Address of Monestier to the popular
clubs of Puy-de-Dome, February 23, 1793.)

[127] Alexandrine des Echerolles, "Une famille noble sous la
Terreur."

[128] Archives Nationales, AF., II., 65. (Letter of General Kermorvan
to the president of the committee of Public Safety, Valenciennes,
Fructidor 12, year III.)

[129] Report by Courtois, " Sur les papiers de Robespierre," (Pieces
justificatives, pp. 312-324), Letters of Reverchon, Germinal 29,
Floréal 7 and 23, and by La Porte, Germinal 24, year II.

[130] Ibid. Letter by La Porte "I do not know what fatality induces
patriots here not to tolerate their brethren whom they call strangers
. . . They have declared to us that they would not suffer any of
them to hold office." The representatives dared arrest but two robbers
and despoilers, who are now free and declaiming against them at Paris.
"Countless grave and even atrocious circumstances are daily presented
to us on which we hesitate to act, lest we should strike patriots, or
those who call themselves such . . . Horrible depredations are
committed."

[131] Ibid. Letter by Reverchon : "These fanatics all want the
Republic simply for them-selves." . . . "They call themselves
patriots only to cut the throats of their brethren and get rich." -
Guillon de Montléon, " Histoire de la ville de Lyons Pendant la
Révolution III., 166. (Report by Fouché, April, 1794.) "Innocent
persons, acquitted by the terrible tribunal of the Revolutionary
committee, were again consigned to the dungeons of criminals through
the despotic orders of the thirty-two committees, because they were so
unfortunate as to complain that, on returning home, they could not
find the strictly necessary objects they had left there."

[132] Meissner, "Voyage en France dans les Derniers Mois de 1795,"
p.343. "A certain domain was handed over to one of their creatures by
the revolutionary departments for almost nothing, less than the
proceeds of the first cut of wood."- Moniteur, XXIII., 397. (Speech
by Bourdon de l'Oise, May 6, 1795.) "A certain farmer paid for his
farm worth five thousand francs by the sale of one horse."

[133] Moniteur, XXII., 82. (Report by Grégoire, Fructidor 14, year
II.) Ibid., 775. (Report by Grégoire, Frimaire 24, year III.)

[134] "Recueil de Pièces Authentiques sur la Révolution à Strasbourg,"
II., p. I. (Procès-verbal, drawn up in the presence of the elder
Mouet and signed by him.)

[135] Moniteur, XXII., 775. (Report of Grégoire, Frimaire 24, year
III.) - Ibid., 711. (Report by Cambon, Frimaire 6, year III.) -
Archives Nationales, AF., II., 65. (Letter of General Kermorvan,
Valenciennes, Fructidor 12, year III.)

[136] "Tableau des Prisons de Toulouse," 184. (Visit of Ventôse 27,
year II.)

[137] Archives Nationales, F.7, 7164. (Department of Var "Ideé
générale et appréciation avec détails sur chaque canton," year V.)

[138] Ibid., F.7, 7171 (No. 7915).- (Department of Bouches-du-Rhône,
"Ideé générale," year V.) - (Letters of Miollis, commissioner of the
Directory in the department, Ventôse 14 and 16, year V. Letter of
Gen. Willot to the Minister, Ventôse 10, and of Gen. Merle to Gen.
Willot, Ventôse 17, year V.) "Several sections of anarchists travel
from one commune to another exciting weak citizens to riots and
getting them to take part in the horrors they are meditating."- Ibid.,
F 7, 7164. Letter of Gen. Willot to the Minister, Aries, Pluviôse
12, year V., with supporting documents, and especially a letter of the
director of the jury, on the violence committed by, and the reign of,
the Jacobins in Aries.) Their party "is composed of the vilest
artisans and nearly all the sailors." The municipality recruited
amongst former terrorists, "has enforced for a year back the agrarian
law, devastation of the forests, pillage of the wheat-crops, by bands
of armed men under pretext of the right of gleaning, the robbery of
animals at the plough as well as of the flocks," etc.

[139] Ibid., F.7, 7171. "These commissioners (of the quarter) notify
the exclusives, and even swindlers, when warrants are out against
them. . . . The same measures carried out in the primary
assemblies on the 1st of Thermidor last, in the selection of municipal
officers, have been successfully revived in the organization of the
National Guard - threats, insults, shouting, assaults, compulsory
ejection from meetings then governed by the amnestied, finally, the
appointment of the latter to the principal offices. In effect, all,
beginning with the places of battalion leaders and reaching to those
of corporals, are exclusively filled by their partisans. The result
is that the honest, to whom serving with men regarded by them with
aversion is repugnant, employ substitutes instead of mounting guard
themselves, the security of the town being in the hands of those who
themselves ought to be watched."

[140] Archives Nationales, F.7, 3273. (Letter of Mérard, former
administrator and judge in 1790 and 1791, in years III., IV. and V.,
to the Minister, Apt, Pluviôse 15, year III., with personal references
and documentary evidence.) "I can no longer refrain at the sight of so
many horrors . . . . The justices of the peace and the director of
the jury excuse themselves on the ground that no denunciations or
witnesses are brought forward. Who would dare appear against men
arrogating to themselves the title of superior patriots, foremost in
every revolutionary crisis, and with friends in every commune and
protectors in all high places? The favor they enjoyed was such that
the commune of Gordes was free of any levy of conscripts and from all
requisitions. People thus disposed, they said, to second civic and
administrative views, could not be humored too much. . . . . This
discouraging state of things simply results from the weakness,
inexperience, ignorance, apathy and immorality of the public
functionaries who, since the 18th of Fructidor, year V., swarm, with a
few exceptions only, among the constituted authorities. Whatever is
most foul and incompetent is in office, every good citizen being
frightened to death."- Ibid. (Letter of Montauban, director of the
registry since 1793 to the Minister of the Interior, a compatriot,
Avignon, Pluviôse 7, year VII.) "Honest folks are constantly annoyed
and put down by the authors and managers of the 'Glaciere'. . . .
. by the tools of the bloody tribunal of Orange and the incendiaries
of Bedouim." He enjoins secrecy on this letter, which, "if known to
the Glacièrists, or Orangeists, would cost him his life."

[141] Ibid., F.7, 7164. (Department of Var, year V., "Ideé
Générale.") "National character is gone; it is even demoralized: an
office-holder who has not made his fortune quickly is regarded as a
fool."

[142] Moniteur, XXII., 240. (Indictment of the fourteen members of
the Revolutionary committee of Nantes, and the summing-up of the
examination, Vendémiaire 23, year II.) When there is no special
information concerning the other committees the verdict, on the whole,
is nearly always as overwhe1ming.-Ibid. (Session of Vendémiaire 12,
year III. complaint of a deputation from Ferney-Voltaire.) "The Gex
district was, for over a year, a prey to five or six scoundrels who
took refuge there. Under the mask of patriotism they succeeded in
getting possession of all the offices. Vexations of every kind,
robberies of private houses, squandering of public money, were
committed by these monsters." (The Ferney deputies brought with them
the testimony of witnesses.) - Ibid., 290. (Letters of Representative
Goupilleau, Beziers, Vendémiaire 28, year III. on the terrorists of
Vaucluse.) " These carnivorous fellows, regretting the times when they
could rob and massacre with impunity . . . . Who, six months ago,
were starving and who now live in the most scandalous opulence . . .
Squanderers of the public funds, robbers of private fortunes . . .
Guilty of rapine, of forced contributions, of extortions," etc. -
Prudhomme, "Les crimes de la Révolution," VI., 79. (On the
Revolutionary committee installed by Fouché at Nevers.) The local
investigation shows that the eleven leaders were men of vile
character, unfrocked and disreputable priests, lawyers and notaries
driven out of their professional bodies, and even from the popular
clubs, on account of their dishonesty, penniless actors, surgeons
without patients, depraved, ruined, incapable men, and two jail-birds.

[143] Beaulieu, III., 754. - Cf. "The Revolution," vol. II., ch.
I., § 9.

[144] "Recueil de pièces authentiques sur la Révolution à Strasbourg,"
I., 21. - Archives Nationales D., I., § 6. (Orders by Rousselin,
Frimaire II, year II.)

[145] "Un Sejour en France de 1792 à 1795," p.409.

[146] I have not found a complete list of the towns and departments
which had a revolutionary army. The correspondence of representatives
on mission and published documents verify the presence of
revolutionary armies in the towns mentioned.

[147] De Martel, "Fouché," 338. (Text of the orders of the
commissioners of Public Safety.) The detachment sent to Lyons
comprises twelve hundred fusiliers, six hundred gunners, one hundred
and fifty horses. Three hundred thousand livres are remitted as
traveling expenses to the commissary, fifty thousand to Collot
d'Herbois, and nineteen thousand two hundred to the Jacobin civilians
accompanying them.

[148] Moniteur. (Session of Brumaire 17 year III.) Letter of
Representative Calès to the Convention. "Under the pretext of
guarding the prisons, the municipality (of Dijon) had a revolutionary
army which I broke up two days ago, as it cost six thousand francs a
month, and would not obey the commander of the armed force, and served
as a support to intriguers. These soldiers, who were all workmen out
of employment, do nothing but post themselves in the tribunes of the
clubs, where they, with the women they bring along with them, applaud
the leaders, and so threaten citizens who are disposed to combat them,
and force these to keep their mouths shut." ??De Martel, "Fouché,"
425. "Javogues, to elude a decree of the Convention (Frimaire 14)
suppressing the revolutionary army in the departments, converted the
twelve hundred men he had embodied in it in the Loire into paid
soldiers."? Ibid., 132. (Letter of Goulin, Bourg, Frimaire 23.)
"Yesterday, at Bourg-Régeriéré, I found Javogues with about four
hundred men of the revolutionary army whom he had brought with him on
the 20th instant."

[149] Buchez et Roux, XXIX., 45. - Moniteur, XX., 67. (Report of
Barère, Germinal 7.) - Sauzay, IV., 303. (Orders of Representative
Bassal at Bésançon.)

[150] We see by Barère's report (Germinal 7, year II.) that the
revolutionary army of Paris, instead of being six thousand men, was


 


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