The French Revolution (Vol.1-3). Taine Hippolyte

(return) [ "Archives Nationales," H. 1453. Letter of the Count de Perigord, military commandant of Languedoc, April 22nd.]

      1125 (return) [ Floquet, VII. 511 (from the 11th to the 14th July).]

      1126 (return) [ "Archives Nationales," H. 1453. Letter of the municipal authorities of Nantes, January 9th; of the sub-delegate of Ploërmel, July 4th; ibid. F7, 2353. Letter of the intermediary commission of Alsace, September 8th ibid. F7, 3227. Letter of the intendant, Caze de la Bove, June 16th; ibid. H. 1453. Letter of Terray, intendant of Lyons, July 4th; of the prévot des échevins, July 5th and 7th.]

      1127 (return) [ (A tax on all goods entering a town. SR.)]

      1128 (return) [ "Archives Nationales," H. 1453. Letter of the mayor and councils of Agde, April 21st; of M. de Perigord, April 19th, May 5th.]

      1129 (return) [ "Archives Nationales," H. 1453. Letters of M. de Caraman, March 23rd, 26th 27th 28th; of the seneschal Missiessy, March 24th; of the mayor of Hyères, March 25th, etc.; ibid. H. 1274; of M. de Montmayran, April 2nd; of M. de Caraman, March 18th, April 12th; of the intendant, M. de la Tour, April 2nd; of the procureur-géneral, M. d'Antheman, April 17th, and the report of June 15th; of the municipal authorities of Toulon, April 11th; of the sub-delegate of Manosque, March 14th; of M. de Saint-Tropez, March 21st.—Minutes of the meeting, signed by 119 witnesses, of the insurrection at Aix, March 5th, etc.]

      1130 (return) [ An uprising of the peasants. The term is used to indicate a country mob in contradistinction to a city or town mob.-Tr.]

      1131 (return) [ "Archives Nationales," H.1274. Letter of M. de la Tour, April 2nd (with a detailed memorandum and depositions).]

      1132 (return) [ "Archives Nationales," H. 1274. Letter of M. de Caraman, April 22nd:—"One real benefit results from this misfortune … The well-to-do class is brought to sustain that which exceeded the strength of the poor daily laborers. We see the nobles and people in good circumstances a little more attentive to the poor peasants: they are now habituated to speaking to them with more gentleness." M. de Caraman was wounded, as well as his Son, at Aix, and if the Soldiery, who were stoned, at length fired on the crowd, he did not give the order.—Ibid, letter of M. d'Anthéman, April 17th; of M. de Barentin, June 11th.]

CHAPTER II. PARIS UP TO THE 14TH OF JULY.

       Table of Contents

I.—Mob recruits in the vicinity

       Table of Contents

      Entry of vagabonds.—The number of paupers.

INDEED it is in the center that the convulsive shocks are strongest. Nothing is lacking to aggravate the insurrection—neither the liveliest provocation to stimulate it, nor the most numerous bands to carry it out. The environs of Paris all furnish recruits for it; nowhere are there so many miserable wretches, so many of the famished, and so many rebellious beings. Robberies of grain take place everywhere—at Orleans, at Cosne, at Rambouillet, at Jouy, at Pont-Saint-Maxence, at Bray-sur-Seine, at Sens, at Nangis.1201 Wheat flour is so scarce at Meudon, that every purchaser is ordered to buy at the same time an equal quantity of barley. At Viroflay, thirty women, with a rear-guard of men, stop on the main road vehicles, which they suppose to be loaded with grain. At Montlhéry stones and clubs disperse seven brigades of the police. An immense throng of eight thousand persons, women and men, provided with bags, fall upon the grain exposed for sale. They force the delivery to them of wheat worth 40 francs at 24 francs, pillaging the half of it and conveying it off without payment. "The constabulary is disheartened," writes the sub-delegate; "the determination of the people is wonderful; I am frightened at what I have seen and heard."—After the 13th of July, 1788, the day of the hail-storm, despair seized the peasantry; well disposed as the proprietors may have been, it was impossible to assist them. "Not a workshop is open;1202 the noblemen and the bourgeois, obliged to grant delays in the payment of their incomes, can give no work." Accordingly, "the famished people are on the point of risking life for life," and, publicly and boldly, they seek food wherever it can be found. At Conflans-Saint-Honorine, Eragny, Neuville, Chenevières, at Cergy, Pontoise, Ile-Adam, Presle, and Beaumont, men, women, and children, the hole parish, range the country, set snares, and destroy the burrows. "The rumor is current that the Government, informed of the damage done by the game to cultivators, allows its destruction … and really the hares ravaged about a fifth of the crop. At first an arrest is made of nine of these poachers; but they are released, "taking circumstances into account." Consequently, for two months, there is a slaughter on the property of the Prince de Conti and of the Ambassador Mercy d'Argenteau; in default of bread they eat rabbits.—Along with the abuse of property they are led, by a natural impulse, to attack property itself. Near Saint-Denis the woods belonging to the abbey are devastated. "The farmers of the neighborhood carry away loads of wood, drawn by four and five horses;" the inhabitants of the villages of Ville-Parisis, Tremblay, Vert-Galant, Villepinte, sell it publicly, and threaten the wood-rangers with a beating. On the 15th of June the damage is already estimated at 60,000 livres.—It makes little difference whether the proprietor has been benevolent, like M. de Talaru,1203 who had supported the poor on his estate at Issy the preceding winter. The peasants destroy the dike which conducts water to his communal mill; condemned by the parliament to restore it, they declare that not only will they not obey. Should M. de Talaru try to rebuild it they will return with three hundred armed men, and tear it away the second time.

For those who are most compromised Paris is the nearest refuge. For the poorest and most exasperated, the door of nomadic life stands wide open. Bands rise up around the capital, just as in countries where human society has not yet been formed, or has ceased to exist. During the first two weeks of May1204 near Villejuif a band of five or six hundred vagabonds strive to force Bicêtre and approach Saint-Cloud. They arrive from thirty, forty, and sixty leagues off, from Champagne, from Lorraine, from the whole circuit of country devastated by the hailstorm. All hover around Paris and are there engulfed as in a sewer, the unfortunate along with criminals, some to find work, others to beg and to rove about under the injurious prompting of hunger and the rumors of the public thoroughfares. During the last days of April,1205 the clerks at the tollhouses note the entrance of "a frightful number of poorly clad men of sinister aspect." During the first days of May a change in the appearance of the crowd is remarked. There mingle in it "a number of foreigners, from all countries, most of them in rags, armed with big sticks, and whose very aspect announces what is to be