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."[33135] 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,[33136] "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[33137] "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, Frejus, at Marseilles, after Thermidor, the intermittent returns to Terrorism always restore the same quarries of the justiciary and the police to office.[33138] "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,[33139] 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.[33140]—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-Rhone, 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?[33141] 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,[33142] 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."—"Bolognie 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 Baroissiere 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;[33143] nevertheless, the weeding-out continues as the system develops itself. At Strasbourg,[33144] 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.[33145]

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;[33146] Ysabeau and Tallien have at Bordeaux a corps of three thousand men; Salicetti, Albitte and Gasparin, one of two thousand men at Marseilles; Ysore 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, Besancon, Belfort, Bourg, Dijon, Strasbourg, Toulouse, Auch and Nantes.[33147] When, on March 27, 1794, the Committee of Public Safety, threatened by Hebert, has them disbanded for being Hebertists, 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,"[33148] 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 regime is established and lasts. "The revolutionary army,[33149] 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[33150] 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!"[33151] 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 Reole 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.[33152] 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."[33153]—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,[33154] 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,[33155] 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,[33156] each band takes the field and gathers together not only grain, but supplies of every description. "That of Grenoble, the agent writes,[33157] 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."[33158] "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."[33159]—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 proces-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.[33160]—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.[33161] 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.[33162]—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.[33163]—Pinard, another Committee-commissioner, ransoms, steals off into the country and himself kills, through preference, women and children.[33164] 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,[33165] 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!"[33166] 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,[33167] 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.[33168] 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,[33169] "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.[33170] 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.

*****

[Footnote 3301: "The Revolution," II., pp. 298-304, and p. 351.]

[Footnote 3302: "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 a 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, Charge 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."]

[Footnote 3303: 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.]

[Footnote 3304: 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!"]

[Footnote 3305: 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."]

[Footnote 3306: 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."]

[Footnote 3307: Archives Nationales, Cf. 31167. (Report of Robin, Nivose 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.]

[Footnote 3308: Moniteur, XIX., 103. (Meeting of the Jacobin club, Dec. 28, 1793.) Dubois-Crance 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?"]

[Footnote 3309: Ibid., XVII., 410. (Speech by Maribon-Montaut, Jacobin club, Brumaire 21, year II.)]

[Footnote 3310: Dauban, "Paris in 1794," 142. (Police report of Ventose 13, year II.)]

[Footnote 3311: Morellet, "Memoires," II. 449.]

[Footnote 3312: Dauban, ib.,, 35. (Note drawn up in January, 1794, probably by the physician Quevremont de Lamotte.)—Ibid., 82.—Cf. Morellet, II., 434-470. (Details on the issue of certificates of civism, in September, 1793.)]

[Footnote 3313: Archives Nationales, F.7, 31167. (Report by Latour-Lamontagne, Ventose 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."]

[Footnote 3314: 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."]

[Footnote 3315: Ibid., 141. (Report by Charmont, Ventose 12.)—Ibid, 140. "There is only one way, it is said at the Cafe 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."]

[Footnote 3316: Ibid., 307. (Report of Germinal 7.)]

[Footnote 3317: Wallon, "Histoire du Tribunal Revolutionaire," IV., 129.]

[Footnote 3318: Archives Nationales, AF., II., 46. (Act of the Committee of Public Safety, Prairial 15.): "Citizens Pillon, Gouste and Ne, 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 Liberte, No. 32, is appointed on the said Revolutionary Committee to complete it, as it was only composed of eleven members."—And other similar acts.]

[Footnote 3319: 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]

[Footnote 3320: Archives Nationales, F.7, 31167. (Report, Nivose 1, year II., by Leharival.)]

[Footnote 3321: Dauban, "Paris en 1794," 307. (Report of March 29, 1794.) It here relates to the "Piques" Section, Place Vendome.]

[Footnote 3322: Dauban, ib., 308. (Note found among Danton's papers and probably written by the physician, Quevremont de Lamotte.)]

[Footnote 3323: Dauban, ib., 125. (Report of Berard, Ventose 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."]

[Footnote 3324: Dauban, ibid., 307. (Report of March 29, 1794.)]

[Footnote 3325: Ibid., 150. (Report of Ventose 14.)—Archives Nationales, F.7, 31167. (Reports of Nivose 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."]

[Footnote 3326: 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."]

[Footnote 3327: Dauban, ibid., 345. (Order of the day by Henriot, Floreal 9.)]

[Footnote 3328: Mallet-Dupan, II., 56. (March, 1794.)]

[Footnote 3329: 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."]

[Footnote 3330: Meissner, "Voyage a 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 etrangeres, 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."]

[Footnote 3331: Moniteur, XXIV., 397 (Speech of Dubois-Crance in the Convention Floreal 16, year III.)—Archives Nationales, F.7, 31167. (Report by Rolin, Nivose 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."]

[Footnote 3332: Archives des Affaires etrangeres, 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.]

[Footnote 3333: 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. Honore. 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 Debats et Correspondence de la Societe 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. (Ventose 13.) Motion adopted in the Jacobin club, obliging the ministers to turn out of office any individual excluded from the club.]

[Footnote 3334: Dauban, ibid., 307. (Report of Germinal 9.)]

[Footnote 3335: Moniteur, XXII. 353. (Session of Brumaire 20, year III. Reclamation made by M. Belanger at the bar of the Convention.)]

[Footnote 3336: 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."]

[Footnote 3337: Dauban, ibid., 171, (report of Ventose 17), and 243, (report of Ventose 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 Ventose 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.]

[Footnote 3338: Archives des Affaires etrangeres, 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."]

[Footnote 3339: Dauban, ibid., 36 and 48. (Case of the Notary, Brichard.)]

[Footnote 3340: 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, "Memoires 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.)]

[Footnote 3341: 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."]

[Footnote 3342: Buchez et Roux, XXXV., 407. (Lists in Robespierre's handwriting.)]

[Footnote 3343: Miot de Melito, "Memoires," 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."]

[Footnote 3344: "The Revolution," II., 338, 348, 354.]

[Footnote 3345: Martel, "Types Revolutionnaires," 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.]

[Footnote 3346: Archives des Affaires etrangeres, vol. 1411. Orders of the day by Henriot, September 16, Vendemiaire 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."]

[Footnote 3347: Wallon, "Histoire du Tribunal Revolutionnaire 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 Hotel-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.]

[Footnote 3348: Morellet, "Memoires," I., 436-472.]

[Footnote 3349: 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." (Ventose 13, year II.)]

[Footnote 3350: Arnault, "Souvenirs d'un Sexagenaire," III., 111. Details on another member of the commune, Bergot, ex-employee at the Halle-aux-Cuirs and police administrator, may be found in "Memoires 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."]

[Footnote 3351: "Memoires sur les Prisons," I., 211. (" Tableau Historique de St. Lazare.") The narrator is put into prison in the rue de Sevres in October, 1793.—II., 186. ("An historical account of the jail in the rue de Sevres.") The narrator was confined there during the last months of the Reign of Terror.]

[Footnote 3352: A game of chance.]

[Footnote 3353: "Un Sejour en France de 1792 a 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."]

[Footnote 3354: Schmidt, "Tableaux Historiques de la Revolution Francaise," 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."]

[Footnote 3355: Barere, "Memoires," II., 324.]

[Footnote 3356: 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 etrangeres," by Fr. Masson, 382. (According to "Paris a 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."]

[Footnote 3357: "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 etrangeres," vol.334. (Letter of the agents, Thionville, Ventose 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?'"]

[Footnote 3358: Lagros: "La Revolution 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."]

[Footnote 3359: 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.]

[Footnote 3360: "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."]

[Footnote 3361: 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. (Ventose 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. PP 2 to 5.)]

[Footnote 3362: Daubari, "La Demagogie en 1793," XII. (The expression of an old peasant, near Saint-Emilion, to M. Vatel engaged in collecting information on the last days of Petion, Guadet and Buzot.)]

[Footnote 3363: Archives Nationales, D. p 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, Pluviose 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.]

[Footnote 3364: "Souvenirs de M. Hua," 178-205. "M. P..., mayor of Crepy-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.)]

[Footnote 3365: "Frochot," by Louis Passy, 175. (Letter of Pajot, member of the Revolutionary committee of Troyes, Vendemiaire, 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."]

[Footnote 3366: Marcelin Boudet, "Les conventionnels d'Auvergne," 161. (Justification of Etienne Bonarme, the last months of 1794.)]

[Footnote 3367: Pans, "Histoire de Joseph Lebon," II., 92. (Declaration by Guerard, 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 (a 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."]

[Footnote 3368: Report by Courtois on the papers found in Robespierre's domicile, 370. (Letter of Maignet to Payan, administrator of the department of Drome, 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 Drome or the Isere, 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."]

[Footnote 3369: Archives des Affaires etrangeres, vols. 322 to 334, and 1409 to 1411.—These agents reside in Nimes, 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 Ventose, 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.]

[Footnote 3370: 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 Etrangeres, 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.]

[Footnote 3371: 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 Pieces Authentiques concernant la Revolution a Strasbourg," I., 128, 187. (Expressions of the representative Baudot in a letter dated Brumaire 29, year II.)]

[Footnote 3372: 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 etrangeres, vol. 333, letter of Garrigues, Auch, Pluviose 24, year II.): "A delegate of Dartigoyte goes to l'Isle and, in the popular club, wants the cure 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."]

[Footnote 3373: Lallier, "Une commission D'enquete 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.)]

[Footnote 3374: 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 cure of the country, who, some time ago, abjured sacerdotal fanaticism."—Archives des Affaires etrangeres, 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."]

[Footnote 3375: Archives Nationales, AF., II, 58. (Letter of Javogues to Collot d'Herbois, Brumaire 28, year II.)]

[Footnote 3376: "Recueil des Pieces Authentiques," etc., I., 195. (Acts passed Jan.21, 1793.)]

[Footnote 3377: Archives des Affaires etrangeres, vol. 326. (Letters from Brutus, September 24; from Topino-Lebrun, jr., September 25 and October 6, 1793.—Vol. 330. Letters from Brutus, Nivose 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."]

[Footnote 3378: Archives des Affaires etrangeres, vol.1411. (Letter of Haupt, Brumaire 26, year II.)—Vol. 333. (Letter of Blessman and Haueser, Pluviose 4, year II.)]

[Footnote 3379: Archives des Affaires etrangeres, vol. 333. (Letter of Chartres and of Caillard, Cornmune Aifranchie, Nivose 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-general in the former parliament at Bordeaux, Roullat, procureur-syndic of the department, Sallenave, merchant. These executions excite sympathy, but nobody murmurs."]

[Footnote 3380: Ibid., vol. 333. (Letter of Cuny, sr., Nivose 20.) Vols. 331, 332. (Letters of Chepy, passim, and especially those dated Frimaire II.)—Vol. 329. (Letter of Chepy, 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 Chambery, 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."]

[Footnote 3381: 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, Nivose, 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."]

[Footnote 3382: Ibid. (Letter of Haupt, Belfort, September 1, 1793.)]

[Footnote 3383: Report by Courtois on the papers found in Robespierre's domicile, p. 274. (Letter of Darthe, Ventose 29, year II.)]

[Footnote 3384: "Tableau des Prisons de Toulouse," by citizen Pescayre (published in year III.), p.101.]

[Footnote 3385: 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 etrangeres, vol. 332, Chepy (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 Perrieu 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, Vendemiaire II, year III.)—Ibid. (Session of Brumaire 5, year III., letter of Cales, and session of Brumaire 17, year III., report by Cales.) "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."]

[Footnote 3386: Baroly, "Les Jacobins Demasques," (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."]

[Footnote 3387: Archives Nationales, D. P I., 10. (Orders of representatives Delacroix, Louchet, and Legendre, Nivose 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.)]

[Footnote 3388: Ibid. AF., II., 111. (Order of Albitte and La Porte, Prairial 18, year II.)]

[Footnote 3389: 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."]

[Footnote 3390: "Tableau des Prisons de Toulouse," by citizen Pescare, 162, 166, 435.]

[Footnote 3391: Berryat Saint-Prix, "La Justice Revolutionaire," (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.]

[Footnote 3392: 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., PI, 10. (Orders of the Representatives Delacroix, Louchet and Legendre, on mission in the department of Seine-Inferieure 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.)]

[Footnote 3393: Albert Babeau, II., 296.]

[Footnote 3394: 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 presumons semblable a ceux de son mary."]

[Footnote 3395: 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, modere, intrigant, egoiste fanatique. Fait et arete par nous, membre du Comite."—Ib., Memoire des Commissaires de la 5e seiscion dite de la liberte nomme par le citoyen de Baris (Paris) pour faire les visite de l'argenteri che 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 a 24 fr.]

[Footnote 3396: Albert Babeau, II., 154.]

[Footnote 3397: Archives Nationales, D., PI, 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 Pluviose and Ventose, 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."]

[Footnote 3398: Ibid. Orders of Albert, Ventose 5, and Pluviose 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.]

[Footnote 3399: 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.]

[Footnote 33100: 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 Nivose 12, there remains in the treasury of the poor fund only 3738 livres, 12 000 having been diverted or squandered."]

[Footnote 33101: "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."]

[Footnote 33102: Archives Nationales, D., P 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, Floreal 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 Menetrier, 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 Miedan, 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."]

[Footnote 33103: Moniteur, XXI., 261. (Speech by an inhabitant of Troyes in the Jacobin Club, Paris, Messidor 26, year II.)]

[Footnote 33104: Albert Babeau, II., 164. (Depositions of the tavern-keeper and of the commissioner, Garnier.)]

[Footnote 33105: "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.)]

[Footnote 33106: "Recueil de Pieces Authentiques sur la Revolution de Strasbourg," I., 187, and letter of Burger, Thermidor 25, year II.]

[Footnote 33107: Archives Nationales, D., P I, 6 (file 37)—Letter of the members of the Strasbourg revolutionary committee, Ventose 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.]

[Footnote 33108: "Recueil de Pieces Authentiques concernant la Revolution a 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.)]

[Footnote 33109: 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, "Memoires," (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 proces-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.]

[Footnote 33110: 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.)]

[Footnote 33111: 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."]

[Footnote 33112: 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 the 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, "Fouche," P.245. (Memorial of the central administration of Nievre, 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.]

[Footnote 33113: Ludovic Sciout, IV., 19. Report of Representative Becker. (Journal des Debats et Decrets, 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."]

[Footnote 33114: Moniteur, XXII., 754. (Report of Gregoire, 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."]

[Footnote 33115: 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, Pluviose 16, year II., dismissing the members of the foregoing committee, as exageres 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 proces-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.]

[Footnote 33116: Archives Nationales, AF., II., 30 (No.105). Examination of Jean Davilliers, and other ransomed parties.]

[Footnote 33117: Berryat Saint-Prix, 313. (Trial of Lacombe and his accomplices after Thermidor.)]

[Footnote 33118: 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."]

[Footnote 33119: 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 Chatelet: 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 Abbe 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."]

[Footnote 33120: "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 proces-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, "Fouche," 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 proces-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 proces-verbal in which they omitted to state the jewels and gold they found."]

[Footnote 33121: Ibid., 461. (Vendemaire 24, year III. Visit of Representative Malarme.) The former Duc de Narbonne-Lorra aged eighty-four, says to Malarme: "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. (Ventose 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."]

[Footnote 33122: Moniteur, XXII. 133. (Session of Vendemiaire 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."]

[Footnote 33123: Berryat Saint-Prix, 447. Judge Ragot was formerly a joiner at Lyons, and Viot, the public prosecutor, a former deserter from the Penthievre 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."]

[Footnote 33124: The words of Camille Desmoulins in "La France Libre," (August, 1782).]

[Footnote 33125: De Martel, "Fouche," 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."]

[Footnote 33126: Marcelin Boudet, 175. (Address of Monestier to the popular clubs of Puy-de-Dome, February 23, 1793.)]

[Footnote 33127: Alexandrine des Echerolles, "Une famille noble sous la Terreur."]

[Footnote 33128: Archives Nationales, AF., II., 65. (Letter of General Kermorvan to the president of the committee of Public Safety, Valenciennes, Fructidor 12, year III.)]

[Footnote 33129: Report by Courtois, "Sur les papiers de Robespierre," (Pieces justificatives, pp. 312-324), Letters of Reverchon, Germinal 29, Floreal 7 and 23, and by La Porte, Germinal 24, year II.]

[Footnote 33130: 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."]

[Footnote 33131: Ibid. Letter by Reverchon: "These fanatics all want the Republic simply for themselves."... "They call themselves patriots only to cut the throats of their brethren and get rich."—Guillon de Montleon, "Histoire de la ville de Lyons Pendant la Revolution III.", 166. (Report by Fouche, 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."]

[Footnote 33132: 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."]

[Footnote 33133: Moniteur, XXII., 82. (Report by Gregoire, Fructidor 14, year II.) Ibid., 775. (Report by Gregoire, Frimaire 24, year III.)]

[Footnote 33134: "Recueil de Pieces Authentiques sur la Revolution a Strasbourg," II., p. I. (Proces-verbal, drawn up in the presence of the elder Mouet and signed by him.)]

[Footnote 33135: Moniteur, XXII., 775. (Report of Gregoire, 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.)]

[Footnote 33136: "Tableau des Prisons de Toulouse," 184. (Visit of Ventose 27, year II.)]

[Footnote 33137: Archives Nationales, F.7, 7164. (Department of Var "Idee generale et appreciation avec details sur chaque canton," year V.)]

[Footnote 33138: Ibid., F.7, 7171 (No. 7915).—(Department of Bouches-du-Rhone, "Idee generale," year V.)—(Letters of Miollis, commissioner of the Directory in the department, Ventose 14 and 16, year V. Letter of Gen. Willot to the Minister, Ventose 10, and of Gen. Merle to Gen. Willot, Ventose 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, Pluviose 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.]

[Footnote 33139: 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."]

[Footnote 33140: Archives Nationales, F.7, 3273. (Letter of Merard, former administrator and judge in 1790 and 1791, in years III., IV. and V., to the Minister, Apt, Pluviose 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, Pluviose 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 Glacierists, or Orangeists, would cost him his life."]

[Footnote 33141: Ibid., F.7, 7164. (Department of Var, year V., "Idee Generale.") "National character is gone; it is even demoralized: an office-holder who has not made his fortune quickly is regarded as a fool."]

[Footnote 33142: Moniteur, XXII., 240. (Indictment of the fourteen members of the Revolutionary committee of Nantes, and the summing-up of the examination, Vendemiaire 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 Vendemiaire 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, Vendemiaire 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 Revolution," VI., 79. (On the Revolutionary committee installed by Fouche 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.]