the 'Decade," only
39 remain at the end of twenty-two months, and of the 120 brought by the
'Bayonnaise," only one is left.--Meanwhile, in France, in the casemates
of the islands of Rhe and Oleron, over twelve hundred priests become
stifled or rot away, while, on all sides, the military commissioners in
the departments shoot down vigorously. At Paris, and in its environs,
at Marseilles, Lyons, Bordeaux, Rennes, and in most of the large towns,
sudden arrests and clandestine abductions go on multiplying.[5186]
"Nobody, on retiring to rest, is sure of awaking in freedom the next
morning.... From Bayonne to Brussels, there is but one sentiment, that
of unbounded consternation. No one dares either to speak to, encounter,
look at or help one another. Everybody keeps aloof, trembles and hides
away."--So that through this third offensive reaction, the Jacobin
Conquest is completed, and the conquering band, the new feudalism,
becomes a fixed installation. "All who pass here," writes a Tours
habitant, "state that there is no difference in the country between
these times and Robespierre's[5187]..... It is certain that the soil
is not tenable, and that the people are continually threatened with
exactions as in a conquered country.... Proprietors are crushed down
with impositions to such an extent that they cannot meet their daily
expenses, nor pay the cost of cultivation. In some of my old parishes
the imposition takes about thirteen out of twenty sous of an income...
The interest on money amounts to four per cent. a month... Tours, a prey
to the terrorists who devour the department and hold all the offices,
is in the most deplorable state; every family at all well-off, every
merchant, every trader, is leaving it."--The veteran pillagers and
murderers, the squireens, (hobereaux) of the reign of Terror, again
appear and resume their fiefs. At Toulouse, it is Barrau, a shoemaker,
famous up to 1792 for his fury under Robespierre, and Desbarreaux,
another madman of 1793, formerly an actor playing the parts of valet,
compelled in 1795 to demand pardon of the audience on his knees on the
stage, and, not obtaining it, driven out of the house, and now
filling the office of cashier in the theatre and posing as department
administrator. At Blois, we find the ignoble or atrocious characters
with whom we are familiar, the assassins and robbers Hezine, Giot,
Venaille, Bezard, Berger, and Gidouin.[5188] Immediately after
Fructidor, they stirred u