from the quality of
these men.

And yet, such as this government is, France accepts or submits to it.
In fact, Lyons, Marseilles, Toulon, Nimes, Bordeaux, Caen, and other
cities, feeling the knife at their throats,[34182] turn aside the stroke
with a movement of horror. They rise against their local Jacobins; but
it is nothing more than an instinctive movement. They do not think of
forming States within the State, as the "Mountain" pretends that they
do, nor of usurping the central authority, as the "Mountain" actually
does. Lyons cries, "Long live the Republic, one and indivisible,"
receives with honor the commissioners of the Convention, permits convoys
of arms and horses destined for the army of the Alps to pass. To excite
a revolt there, requires the insane demands of Parisian despotism just
as it requires the brutal persistence of religious persecution to render
the province of la Vendee insurgent. Without the prolonged oppression
that weighs down consciences, and the danger to life always imminent,
no city or province would have attempted secession. Even under this
government of inquisitors and butchers no community, save those of
Lyons and La Vendee, makes any sustained effort to break up the State,
withdraw from it and live by itself. The national sheaf has been too
strongly bound together by secular centralization. One's country exists;
and when that country is in danger, when the armed stranger attacks
the frontier, one follows the flag-bearer, whoever he may be, whether
usurper, adventurer, blackguard, or cut-throat, provided only that he
marches in the van and holds the banner with a firm hand.[34183] To tear
that flag from him, to contest his pretended right, to expel him and
replace him by another, would be a complete destruction of the common
weal. Brave men sacrifice their own repugnance for the sake of
the common good; in order to serve France, they serve her unworthy
government. In the committee of war, the engineering and staff officers
who give their days to the study of military maps, think of nothing
else than of knowing it thoroughly; one of them, d'Arcon, "managed the
raising of the siege of Dunkirk, and of the blockade of Maubeuge;[34184]
nobody excels him in penetration, in practical knowledge, in quick
perception and in imagination; it is a spirit of flame, a brain compact
of resources. I speak of him, says Mallet du Pan, "from an intimate
acquaintance of ten years. He is no more a revolutionn