on land
are impassable. "we are assured that the people of Brest have long been
on half-rations and perhaps on quarter-rations."]

[Footnote 42151: 1st It is difficult to arrive at even approximate
figures, but the following statements will render the idea clear. I.
Wherever I have compared the mortality of the Revolution with that of
the ancient regime I have found the former greater than the latter,
even in those parts of France not devastated by the civil war; and the
increase of this mortality is enormous, especially in years II. and
III.--At Troyes, with 25,282 inhabitants (in 1790), during the five
years of 1786, 1787, 1788, 1789 and 1792 (1790 and 1791 are missing),
the average annual mortality is 991 deaths, or 39 per thousand
inhabitants; during the years II, III, IV, this average is 1,166 or 47
per thousand inhabitants; the increase is then 7 deaths per year, nearly
one fifth. (Documents provided by M. Albert Babeau.)--At Rheims, the
average mortality from 1780 to 1789 is 1,350, which, for a population of
35,597, (1790), gives 41 deaths per annum to every thousand inhabitants.
In the year II., there are 1,836 deaths which gives for each of the two
years 64 deaths to every thousand persons; the increase is 23 deaths
a year, that is to say more than one-half above the ordinary rate.
(Statistics communicated by M. Jadart, archiviste at Rheims.)--At
Limoges, the yearly average of mortality previous to 1789 was 825 to
20,000 inhabitants, or at the rate of 41 to a thousand. From January 1,
1792, to September 22, 1794, there are 3,449 deaths, that is to say, a
yearly average of 63 deaths to one thousand inhabitants, that is to say,
22 extra per annum, while the mortality bears mostly on the poor, for
out of 2,073 persons who die between January 17, 1793, and September
22, 1794, over one-half, 1,100, die in the hospital.--(Louis Guibert,
"Ancien registre des paroisses de Limoges," pp. 40, 45, 47.)--At
Poitiers, in year IX., the population is 18,223, and the average
mortality of the past ten years was 724 per annum. But in year
II., there are 2,094 deaths, and in year III. 2,032, largely in the
hospitals. Thus, even on comparing the average mortality of the ten
years of the Revolution with the mortality of years II. and III., the
average rate has almost trebled.--The same applies to Loudens, where the
average death-rate being 151, in year II., it rises to 425. Instead
of the triple for Chatellerault, it is double, whe