ruling the city through
terror."[3236]--It is not surprising that such men, invested with such
power, use it in conformity with their nature, and that the interregnum,
which is their reign, spreads over France a circle of devastations,
robberies, and murders.

V.--The companies of traveling volunteers.

Quality of the recruits.--Election of officers.--Robberies
and murders.

Usually, the stationary band of club members has an auxiliary band of
the same species which roves about. I mean the volunteers, who inspire
more fear and do more harm, because they march in a body and are
armed.[3237] Like their brethren in the ordinary walks of life, many of
them are town and country vagabonds; most of them, living from hand to
mouth, have been attracted by the pay of fifteen sous a day; they
have become soldiers for lack of work and bread.[3238] Each commune,
moreover, having been called upon for its army contingent, "they have
picked up whatever could be found in the towns, all the scamps hanging
around street-corners, men with no pursuit, and, in the country,
wretches and vagabonds of every description; nearly all have been forced
to march by money or drawing lots," and it is probable that the
various administrations thought that "in this way they would purge
France."[3239] To the wretched "bought by the communes," add others
of the same stamp, procured by the rich as substitutes for their
sons.[3240] Thus do they pick over the social dunghill and obtain at a
discount the natural and predestined inmates of houses of correction,
poor-houses and hospitals, with an utter disregard of quality, even
physical, "the halt, the maimed and the blind," the deformed and the
defective, "some too old, and others too young and too feeble to support
the fatigues of war, others so small as to stand a foot lower than their
guns," a large number of boys of sixteen, fourteen, and thirteen; in
short, the reprobate of great cities as we now see him, stunted, puny,
and naturally insolent and insurgent.[3241] "One-third of them are found
unfit for service" on reaching the frontier.[3242]--But, before reaching
the frontier, they act like "pirates" on the road.--The others, with
sounder bodies and better hearts, become, under the discipline of
constant danger, good soldiers at the end of a year. In the mean time,
however, they make no less havoc, for, if they are less disposed to
robbery, they are more fanatical. Nothing is more delic