书城公版The Origins of Contemporary France
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第764章

[139] Ibid., F.7, 7171. "These commissioners (of the quarter) notify the exclusives, and even swindlers, when warrants are out against them. . . . The same measures carried out in the primary assemblies on the 1st of Thermidor last, in the selection of municipal officers, have been successfully revived in the organization of the National Guard - threats, insults, shouting, assaults, compulsory ejection from meetings then governed by the amnestied, finally, the appointment of the latter to the principal offices. In effect, all, beginning with the places of battalion leaders and reaching to those of corporals, are exclusively filled by their partisans. The result is that the honest, to whom serving with men regarded by them with aversion is repugnant, employ substitutes instead of mounting guard themselves, the security of the town being in the hands of those who themselves ought to be watched."[140] Archives Nationales, F.7, 3273. (Letter of Mérard, former administrator and judge in 1790 and 1791, in years III., IV. and V., to the Minister, Apt, Pluvi?se 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, Pluvi?se 7, year VII.) "Honest folks are constantly annoyed and put down by the authors and managers of the 'Glaciere'. . . .

. by the tools of the bloody tribunal of Orange and the incendiaries of Bedouim." He enjoins secrecy on this letter, which, "if known to the Glacièrists, or Orangeists, would cost him his life."[141] Ibid., F.7, 7164. (Department of Var, year V., "IdeéGénérale.") "National character is gone; it is even demoralized: an office-holder who has not made his fortune quickly is regarded as a fool."[142] Moniteur, XXII., 240. (Indictment of the fourteen members of the Revolutionary committee of Nantes, and the summing-up of the examination, Vendémiaire 23, year II.) When there is no special information concerning the other committees the verdict, on the whole, is nearly always as overwhe1ming.-Ibid. (Session of Vendémiaire 12, year III. complaint of a deputation from Ferney-Voltaire.) "The Gex district was, for over a year, a prey to five or six scoundrels who took refuge there. Under the mask of patriotism they succeeded in getting possession of all the offices. Vexations of every kind, robberies of private houses, squandering of public money, were committed by these monsters." (The Ferney deputies brought with them the testimony of witnesses.) - Ibid., 290. (Letters of Representative Goupilleau, Beziers, Vendémiaire 28, year III. on the terrorists of Vaucluse.) " These carnivorous fellows, regretting the times when they could rob and massacre with impunity . . . . Who, six months ago, were starving and who now live in the most scandalous opulence . . .

Squanderers of the public funds, robbers of private fortunes . . .

Guilty of rapine, of forced contributions, of extortions," etc. -Prudhomme, "Les crimes de la Révolution," VI., 79. (On the Revolutionary committee installed by Fouché at Nevers.) The local investigation shows that the eleven leaders were men of vile character, unfrocked and disreputable priests, lawyers and notaries driven out of their professional bodies, and even from the popular clubs, on account of their dishonesty, penniless actors, surgeons without patients, depraved, ruined, incapable men, and two jail-birds.

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

I., § 9.

[144] "Recueil de pièces authentiques sur la Révolution à Strasbourg,"I., 21. - Archives Nationales D., I., § 6. (Orders by Rousselin, Frimaire II, year II.)[145] "Un Sejour en France de 1792 à 1795," p.409.

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

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