书城公版The Origins of Contemporary France
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第759章

[100] Archives Nationales, AF., II., 59. (Memorials dated Messidor 28, year II., by an emissary of the Committee of Public Safety, sent to Troyes, Prairial 29, to report on the situation of things and on the troubles in Troyes.) - Albert Babeau, II., 203, 205 and 112, 122.

- Cf. 179. "Gachez, intoxicated, about eleven o'clock at night, with several women as drunk as himself, compelled the keeper of the Temple of Reason to open the doors, threatening him with the guillotine." -Ibid., 166. He addressed the sans-culottes in the popular club: "Now is the time to put yourselves in the place of the rich. Strike, and don't put it off!" - Ibid., 165. " 42 633 livres were placed in the hands of Gachez and the committee, as secret revolutionary service money. . . . Between December 4 and 10 Gachez received 20 000livres, 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 Niv?se 12, there remains in the treasury of the poor fund only 3738 livres, 12000 having been diverted or squandered."[101] "Frochot," by Louis Passy, 172. (Letter of Pajot, member of the revolutionary committee of Aignay-le-Duc.) "Denunciations occupied most of the time at our meetings, and it is there that one could see the hatreds and vengeance of the colleagues who ruled us."[102] Archives Nationales, D., § I, No.4. The following is a sample among others of the impositions of the revolutionary committees.

(Complaint of Mariotte, proprietor, former mayor of Chatillon-sur-Seine, Floréal 27, year II.) "On Brumaire 23, year II., I was stopped just as I was taking post at Mussy, travelling on business for the Republic, and provided with a commission and passport from the Minister of war. . . . I was searched in the most shameful manner;citizen Ménétrier, member of the committee, used towards me the foulest language . . . . I was confined in a tavern; instead of two gendarmes which would have been quite sufficient to guard me, Ihad the whole brigade, who passed that night and the next day drinking, until, in wine and brandy the charge against me in the tavern amounted to sixty francs. And worse still, two members of the same committee passed a night guarding me and made me pay for it. Add to this, they said openly before me that I was a good pigeon to pluck.

. . . They gave me the escort of a state criminal of the highest importance, three national gendarmes, mounted, six National Guards, and even to the Commandant of the National Guard; citizen Mièdan, member of the revolutionary committee, put himself at the head of the cortege, ten men to conduct one! . . . . I was obliged to pay my torturers, fifty francs to the commandant, and sixty to his men."[103] Moniteur, XXI., 261. (Speech by an inhabitant of Troyes in the Jacobin Club, Paris, Messidor 26, year II.)[104] Albert Babeau, II., 164. (Depositions of the tavern-keeper and of the commissioner, Garnier.)[105] "Frochot," by Louis Passy, 170, 172. (Letter by Pajot and petition of the Aignay municipality, March 10, 1795.) - Bibliotheque Nationale, L., 41. No.1802. (Denunciation by six sections of the commune of Dijon to the National Convention.)[106] "Recueil de Pièces Authentiques sur la Révolution de Strasbourg," I., 187, and letter of Burger, Thermidor 25, year II.

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

[108] "Recueil de Pièces Authentiques concernant la Révolution àStrasbourg," I.,71. Deposition of the recorder Weis on the circuit of the Revolutionary Tribunal, composed of Schneider, Clavel and Taffin.

"The judges never left the table without having become intoxicated with everything of the finest, and, in this state, they gathered in the tribunal and condemned the accused to death." - Free living and "extravagant expenditure" were common even "among the employees of the government." "I encountered," says Meissner, "government carters served with chickens, pastry and game, whilst at the traveler's table there was simply an old leg of mutton and a few poor side-dishes."("Voyage en France," toward the end of 1795, p.371.)[109] Some of them, nevertheless, are not ugly, but merely sots. The following is a specimen. A certain Velu, a born vagabond, formerly in the alms-house and brought up there, then a shoemaker or a cobbler, afterwards teaching school in the faubourg de Vienne, and at last a haranguer and proposer of tyrannicide motions, short, stout and as rubicund as his cap, is made President of the Popular club at Blois, then delegate for domiciliary visits, and, throughout the reign of Terror, he is a principal personage in the town, district and department. (Dufort de Cheverney, "Mémoires," (MS.) March 21, 1793and June, 1793.) In June, 1793, this Velu is ordered to visit the chateau de Cheverney, to verify the surrender of all feudal documents.