f Caen until the decision of the National
Assembly. The Assembly heard with indignation the recital of these
troubles, occasioned by the enemies of the constitution, and the
adherents of fanaticism and the aristocracy. "The only part we have to
take," said Cambon, "is to convoke the high national court, and send the
accused before it." They deferred pronouncing on this proposition until
the moment when they should be in possession of all the papers relative
to the troubles in Caen.

Gensonne detailed the particulars of similar disturbances in La Vendee:
the mountains of the south, La Lozere, l'Herault, l'Ardeche, which were
but ill repressed by the recent dispersion of the camp of Jales, the
first act of the counter-revolutionary army, were now greatly agitated
by the two-fold impulse of their priests and gentry. The plains,
furnished with streams, roads, towns, and easily kept down by the
central force, submitted without resistance to the _contre-coups_ of
Paris. The mountains preserve their customs longer, and resist the
influence of new ideas as to a conquest by armed strangers. It seems as
though the appearance of these natural ramparts gave their inhabitants
confidence in their strength, and a solid conviction of the
unchangeableness of things, which prevents them from being so easily
carried away by the rapid currents of alteration.

The mountaineers of these countries felt for their nobles that voluntary
and traditional devotion which the Arabs have for their sheiks, and the
Scots for the chieftains of their clans. This respect and this
attachment form part of the national honour in these rural districts.
Religion, more fervent in the south, was in the eyes of these people a
sacred liberty, on which revolution made attempts in the name of
political liberty. They preferred the liberty of conscience to the
liberty as citizens. Under all these titles the new institutions were
odious: faithful priests nourished this hatred, and sanctified it in the
hearts of the peasantry, whilst the nobility kept up a royalism, which
pity for the king's misfortunes and the royal family made more full of
sympathy at the daily recital of fresh outrages.

Mende, a small village hidden at the bottom of deep valleys, half way
between the plains of the south and those of the Lyonnais, was the
centre of counter-revolutionary spirit. The _bourgeoisie_ and the
nobility, mingled together from the smallness of their fortunes, the
familiarit