e on the equality of the taxes," writes the
provincial commission of Alsace,[1328] "the people generally refused
to make any payments, until those who were exempt and privileged should
have been inscribed on the local lists." In many places the peasants
threaten to obtain the reimbursement of their installments, while in
others they insist that the decree should be retrospective and that the
new rate-payers should pay for the past year. "No collector dare send an
official to distrain; none that are sent dare fulfill their mission."--"
It is not the good bourgeois" of whom there is any fear, "but the rabble
who make the latter and every one else afraid of them;" resistance and
disorder everywhere come from "people that have nothing to lose."--Not
only do they shake off taxation, but they usurp property, and declare
that, being the Nation, whatever belongs to the Nation belongs to
them. The forests of Alsace are laid waste, the seignorial as well as
communal, and wantonly destroyed with the wastefulness of children or
of maniacs. "In many places, to avoid the trouble of removing the woods,
they are burnt, and the people content themselves with carrying off the
ashes."--After the decrees of August 4th, and in spite of the law which
licenses the proprietor only to hunt on his own grounds, the impulse
to break the law becomes irresistible. Every man who can procure a gun
begins operations;[1329] the crops which are still standing are trodden
under foot, the lordly residences are invaded and the palings are
scaled; the King himself at Versailles is wakened by shots fired in his
park. Stags, fawns, deer, wild boars, hares, and rabbits, are slain by
thousands, cooked with stolen wood, and eaten up on the spot. There is
a constant discharge of musketry throughout France for more than two
months, and, as on an American prairie, every living animal belongs to
him who kills it. At Choiseul, in Champagne, not only are all the hares
and partridges of the barony exterminated, but the ponds are exhausted
of fish; the court of the chateau even is entered, to fire on the
pigeon-house and destroy the pigeons, and then the pigeons and fish, of
which they have too many, are offered to the proprietor for sale--It
is "the patriots" of the village with "smugglers and bad characters"
belonging to the neighborhood who make this expedition; they are seen
in the front ranks of every act of violence, and it is not difficult
to foresee that, under the