iling and leveling laws, is despotically applied. The 18th of
Fructidor is carried out over and over again; the constitution is
revised according to the last Parisian pattern, while the Legislative
Corps and Directory are repeatedly purged in military fashion.[51121]
Only valets are tolerated at the head of it: its army is added to the
French army; twenty thousand Swiss are drafted in Switzerland and made
to fight against the Swiss and the friends of Switzerland. Belgium,
incorporated with France, is subjected to the conscription. National and
religious sentiment suppressed, exploited, offended, to the extend of
stirring up insurrections,[51122] religious and national. Five or six
rural and lasting Vendees take place in Belgium, Switzerland, Piedmont,
Venetia, Lombardy, the Roman States and Naples, while fire, pillaging
and shooting are employed to repress them. Any description of this would
be feeble; statements in figures are necessary and I can give but two.

One of them is the list of robberies committed abroad,[51123] and this
comprises only the rapine executed according to order; it omits private
plunderings without any orders by officers, generals, soldiers and
commissaries; these are enormous, but cannot be estimated. The only
approximate total which can be arrived at, is the authentic list of
robberies which the Jacobin corsair, authorized by letters of marque,
had already committed in December, 1798, outside of France, on public
or on private parties; exactions in coin imposed in Belgium, Holland,
Germany and Italy, amounting to 655 millions; seizure and removal of
gold and silver objects, plate, jewels, works of art and other precious
objects, 305 millions; requisitions of provisions, 361 millions;
confiscations of the property, real estate and movables, of deposed
sovereigns, that of the regular and secular clergy, that of corporations
and associations even laic, of absent or fugitive proprietors, 700
millions; in all, in three years 2 billion livres.--If we closely
examine this monstrous sum, we find, as in the coffers of an Algerian
pirate, a booty which up to this time, belligerent Christians,
commanders of regular armies, would have shrunk from taking, and on
which the Jacobin chiefs incontinently and preferably lay hands:

* the plate and furniture of churches in the Netherlands, in Liege, and
in the Electoral sections of the Lower Rhine, 25 millions;

* the plate and furniture of churches in Lombardy,