fifty soldiers.
(" Histoire du Village de Croissy, Seine-et-Oise pendant la Revolution,"
by Campenon.).--La Vendee was a bottomless pit, like Spain and Russia
afterwards. "A good republican, who entrusted with the supply the Vendee
army with provisions for fifteen months, assured me that out of two
hundred thousand men whom he had seen precipitated into this gulf there
were not ten thousand that came of it." (Meissner, "Voyage a Paris,"
p.338, latter end of 1795)--The following figures ("Statistiques des
Prefets" years IX., until XI.) are exact. Eight departments, (Doubs,
Ain, Eure, Meurthe, Aisne, Aude, Drome, Moselle) furnish the total
number of their volunteers, recruits and conscripts, amounting to
193,343. These three departments (Arthur Young, "Voyage en France,"
II., 31) had, in 1790, a population of 2,446,000 souls: the proportion
indicates that out of 26 million Frenchmen a little more than 2
millions were called up for military service.--On the other hand, five
departments (Doubs, Eure, Meurthe, Aisne, Moselle) gave, not only the
number of their soldiers, 131,322, but likewise that of their dead,
56,976, or out of 1000 men furnished 435 died. This proportion shows
870,000 dead out of two million soldiers.]

[Footnote 51129: The statistics of the prefects and reports of
council-generals of the year IX. all agree in the statements of the
notable diminution of the masculine adult population.--Lord Malmesbury
had already made the same observation in 1796. ("Diary," October 21 and
23, 1796, from Calais to Paris.) "Children and women were working in the
fields. Men evidently reduced in number.... Carts often drawn by women
and most of them by old people or boys. It is plain that the male
population has diminished; for the women we saw on the road surpassed
the number of men in the proportion of four to one."--Wherever the
number of the population is filled up it is through the infantile and
feminine increase. Nearly all the prefects and council-generals
state that precocious marriages have multiplied to excess through
conscription.--Dufort de Cheverney, "Memoires," September 1st, 1800.
"The conscription having spared the married, all the young men married
at the age of sixteen. The number of children in the commune is double
and triple what it was formerly."]

[Footnote 51130: Sauzay, X., 471. (Speech by Representative Biot,
Aug.29, 1799.)]

[Footnote 51131: Albert Babeau, II., 466. (Letter of Milany, July 1,
1