upper national court, of which he himself has
designated the members. Twenty of the electors thus denounced are
condemned and proscribed; Duprat threatens to enter by force and have
them executed on the spot, and, under his leadership, the army of
Mandrins advances against Avignon.--Its progress is arrested, and, for
two months, restrained by the two mediating commissioners for France;
they reduce its numbers, and it is on the point of being disbanded, when
the brute again boldly seizes its prey, about to make its escape. On the
21st of August, Jourdan, with his herd of miscreants, obtains possession
of the palace. The municipal body is driven out, the mayor escapes in
disguise, Tissot, the secretary, is cut down, four municipal officers
and forty other persons are thrown into prison, while a number of houses
belonging to the fugitives and to priests are pillaged, and thus supply
the bandits with their first financial returns.[2446]--Then begins the
great fiscal operation which is going to fill their pockets. Five front
men, chosen by Duprat and his associates, compose, with Lecuyer as
secretary, a provisional municipal body, which, taxing the town 300,000
francs and suppressing the convents, offers the spoils of the churches
for sale. The bells are taken down, and the hammers of the workmen
engaged in breaking them to pieces are heard all day long. A strong-box
full of plate, diamonds, and gold crosses, left with the director of the
Mont-de-Piete, on deposit, is taken and carried off to the commune; a
report is spread that the valuables pawned by the poor had been stolen
by the municipality, and that those "robbers had already sent away
eighteen trunks full of them." Upon this the women, exasperated at the
bare walls of the churches, together with the laborers in want of work
or bread, all the common class, become furious, assemble of their own
accord in the church of the Cordeliers, summon Lecuyer to appear before
them, drag him from the pulpit and massacre him.[2447]

This time there seems to be an end of the brigand party, for the entire
town, the populace and the better class, are against them, while the
peasants in the country shoot them down wherever they come across
them.--Terror, however, supplies the place of numbers, and, with the 350
hired killers bravos still left to them, the extreme Jacobins undertake
to overcome a city of 30,000 souls. Mainvielle the elder, dragging along
two cannon, arrives with a patrol