书城公版The Origins of Contemporary France
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第997章

[51] Lafayette, "Mémoires." (Letter of October 17, 1779, and notes made in Auvergne, August 1800.) "You know how many beggars there were, people dying of hunger in our country. We see no more of them. The peasants are richer, the land better tilled and the women better clad." - "The Ancient Régime," 340, 34, 342. - " The Revolution,"III., p.366, 402.

[52] "The Ancient Régime," P.340. (ED. Laff. I. pp. 254, 256.)-" The Revolution," III., 212. (Ed. Laff. II. p. 271, 297.)[53] These two famines were due to inclement seasons and were aggravated, the last one by the consequences of invasion and the necessity of supporting 150,000 foreign troops, and the former by the course taken by Napoleon who applies the maximum afresh, with the same intermeddling, the same despotism and the same failure as under the Convention.( "Souvenirs", by PASQUIER (Etienne-Dennis, duc), chancelier de France. in VI volumes, Librarie Plon, Paris 1893.) "Ido not exaggerate in stating that our operations in the purchase and transport (of grain) required a full quarter of the time, and often one-third, more than would have been required in commerce." -Prolongation of the famine in Normandy. "Bands of famished beggars overran the country. . . . Riots and pillaging around Caen; several mills burnt. . . . Suppression of these by the imperial guard. In the executions which resulted from these even women were not spared." -The two principal guarantees at the present day against this public danger are, first, easier circumstances, and next the multiplication of good roads and of railroads, the dispatch and cheapness of transportation, and the superabundant crops of Russia and the United States.

[54] J. Gebelin, "Histoire des milices provinciales" (1882), p.87, 143, 157, 288. - Most of the texts and details may be found in this excellent work. - Many towns, Paris, Lyons, Reims, Rouen, Bordeaux, Tours, Agen, Sedan and the two generalities of Flanders and Hainault are examples of drawing by lot; they furnished their contingent by volunteers enlisted at their own expense; the merchants and artisans, or the community itself, paying the bounty for enlistment. Besides this there were many exemptions in the lower class. - Cf. "The Ancient Régime," p.390. (Ed. Laff. p. 289.)[55] J. Gebelin, ibid., 239, 279, 288. (Except the eight regiments of royal grenadiers in the militia who turned out for one month in the year.)[56] Example afforded by one department. ("Statistics of Ain," by Rossi, prefect, 1808.) Number of soldiers on duty in the department, in 1789, 323; in 1801, 6,729; in 1806, 6,764. - " The department of Ain furnished nearly 30,000 men to the armies, conscripts and those under requisition." - It is noticeable, consequently, that in the population of 1801, there is a sensible diminution of persons between twenty and thirty and, in the population of 1806, of those between twenty-five and thirty-five years of age. The number between twenty and thirty is as follows: in 1789, 39,828; in 1801, 35,648; in 1806, 34,083.

[57] De Dampmartin. "Evénemens qui se sont passés sous mes yeux pendant la révolution fran?aise," V. II. (State of the French army, Jan. 1, 1789.) Total on a peace footing, 177,890 men. - This is the nominal force; the real force under arms was 154,000; in March 1791, it had fallen to 115,000, through the multitude of desertions and the scarcity of enlistments, (Yung, "Dubois-Crancé et la Révolution," I., 158. Speech by Dubois-Crancé.)[58] "The Ancient Régime," P 390, 391. - "The Revolution," p. 328-330.

(Ed. Laff. I. 289 and 290, pp. 542-543) - Albert Babeau, "le Recrutement militaire sous 1'ancien Régime." (In "la Réforme sociale"of Sept. I, 1888, p. 229, 238.)- An officer says, "only the rabble are enlisted because it is cheaper." - Yung, ibid., I., 32. (Speech by M.

de Liancourt in the tribune.) "The soldier is classed apart and is too little esteemed." - Ibid., p. 39. ("Vices et abus de la constitution actuelle fran?aise," memorial signed by officers in most of the regiments, Sept. 6, 1789.) "The majority of soldiers are derived from the offscourings of the large towns and are men without occupation."[59] Gebelin, p. 270. Almost all the cahiers of the third-estate in 1789 demand the abolition of drafting by lot, and nearly all of those of the three orders are for volunteer service, as opposed to obligatory service; most of these demand, for the army, a volunteer militia enlisted through a bounty; this bounty or security in money to be furnished by communities of inhabitants which, in fact, was already the case in several towns.

[60] Albert Babeau, ibid., 238. "Colonels were allowed only 100francs per man; this sum, however, being insufficient, the balance was assessed on the pay of the officers."[61] This principle was at once adopted by the Jacobins. (Yung, ibid., 19, 22, 145. Speech by Dubois-Crancé at the session held Dec.12, 1789.) "Every citizen will become a soldier of the Constitution." No more casting lots nor substitution. "Each citizen must be a soldier and each soldier a citizen." - The first application of the principle is a call for 300,000 men (Feb. 26, 1793), then through a levy on the masses which brings 500,000 men under the flag, nominally volunteers, but conscripts in reality. (Baron Poisson, "l'Armée et la Garde Nationale,"III, 475.)[62] Taine wrote this in 1888, after the end of the second French Empire, after the transformation of Prussia into the Empire of Germany. Taine apparently had a premonition of the terrible wars of the 20th century, of Nazism, Communism and their death and concentration camps. (SR.)[63] Baron Poisson, "l'Armée et la Garde nationale," III., 475.

(Summing up.) "Popular tradition has converted the volunteer of the Republic into a conventional personage which history cannot accept. .