he poor-list."[5339] In Normandy, according to statements made
by the curates, "of 900 parishioners in Saint-Malo, three-quarters
can barely live and the rest are in poverty." "Of 1,500 inhabitants in
Saint-Patrice, 400 live on alms." Of 500 inhabitants in Saint-Laurent
three-quarters live on alms." At Marboef, says a report, "of 500 persons
inhabiting our parish, 100 are reduced to mendicity, and besides these,
thirty or forty a day come to us from neighboring parishes."[5340]
At Bolbone in Languedoc[5341] daily at the convent gate is "general
almsgiving to 300 or 400 poor people, independent of that for the aged
and the sick, which is more numerously attended." At Lyons, in 1787,
"30,000 workmen depend on public charity for subsistence;" at Rennes, in
1788, after an inundation, "two-thirds of the inhabitants are in a state
of destitution;"[5342] at Paris, out of 650,000 inhabitants, the census
of 1791 counts 118,784 as indigent.[5343]--Let frost or hail come, as
in 1788, let a crop fail, let bread cost four sous a pound, and let a
workman in the charity-workshops earn only twelve sous a day,[5344] can
one imagine that people will resign themselves to death by starvation?
Around Rouen, during the winter of 1788, the forests are pillaged in
open day, the woods at Bagueres are wholly cut away, the fallen trees
are publicly sold by the marauders[5345]. Both the famished and the
marauders go together, necessity making itself the accomplice of crime.
From province to province we can follow up their tracks: four months
later, in the vicinity of Etampes, fifteen brigands break into
four farmhouses during the night, while the farmers, threatened by
incendiaries, are obliged to give, one three hundred francs, another
five hundred, all the money, probably, they have in their coffers[5346].
"Robbers, convicts, the worthless of every species," are to form the
advance guard of insurrections and lead the peasantry to the extreme
of violence[5347]. After the sack of the Reveillon house in Paris it is
remarked that "of the forty ringleaders arrested, there was scarcely one
who was not an old offender, and either flogged or branded."[5348] In
every revolution the dregs of society come to the surface. Never had
these been visible before; like badgers in the woods, or rats in the
sewers, they had remained in their burrows or in their holes. They issue
from these in swarms, and suddenly, in Paris, what figures![5349] "Never
had any like the