,
Russia and even the Porte.[51118] At length, the veils fall and the
character of the sect stands out nakedly. Defense of the country,
deliverance of the people, all its grand phrases disappear in the realm
of empty words. It reveals itself just as it is, an association of
pirates on a cruise, who after ravaging their own coast, go further off
and capture bodies and goods, men and things. Having eaten France, the
Parisian band undertakes to eat all Europe, "leaf by leaf, like the head
of an artichoke."[51119]

Why recount the tragic comedy they play at home and which they repeat
abroad? The piece abroad is the same as that played in Paris for the
past eight years,[51120] an absurd, hasty translation in Flemish,
Dutch, German, and Italian, a local adaptation, just as it happens, with
variations, elisions and abbreviations, but always with the same
ending, a shower of blows with gun and sword on all property-owners,
communities, and individuals, compelling the surrender of their purses
and valuables of every description, and which they gave up, even to
remaining without a sou or even a shirt. As a rule, the nearest general,
or resident titulary in every small state which has to be turned to
account, stirs up malcontents against the established authorities,
never lacking under the ancient regime, especially all social outcasts,
adventurers, coffee-house ranters and young hot-heads, in short the
Jacobins of the country; these, to the French representative, are
henceforth the people of the country, if only a knot of the vilest sort.
The legal authorities are forbidden to repress them, or punish them;
they are inviolable. Employing threats or main force, he interferes in
their support, or to sanction their assaults; he breaks up, or
obliges them to break up, the vital organ of society; here, royalty or
aristocracy, there, the senate and the magistracy, everywhere the old
hierarchy, all cantonal, provincial and municipal statutes and secular
federation or constitutions. He then inaugurates on this cleared ground
the government of Reason, that is to say, some artificial imitation
of the French constitution; he himself, to this end, appoints the new
magistrates. If he allows them to be elected, it is by his clients and
under his bayonets; this constitutes a subject republic under the name
of an ally, and which commissioners dispatched from Paris manage to
the beat of the drum. The revolutionary regime with anti-Christian
despo