onderfully; in one little commune alone, four
hundred measures of wheat, twelve hundred eggs, and six hundred pounds
of butter had been found. All this was quickly on the way to Grenoble."
In the vicinity of Paris, the forerunners of the throng, provided "with
pitchforks and bayonets, rush to the farms, take oxen out of their
stalls, grab sheep and chickens, burn the barns, and sell their booty
to speculators."[33158] "Bacon, eggs, butter and chickens--the peasants
surrender whatever is demanded of them, and thenceforth have nothing
that they can take to market. They curse the Republic which has brought
war and famine on them, and nevertheless they do what they are told:
on being addressed, 'Citizen peasant, I require of you on peril of your
head,'... it is not possible to refuse."[33159]--Accordingly, they are
only too glad to be let off so cheaply. On Brumaire 19, about seven
o'clock in the evening, at Tigery, near Corbeil, twenty-five men "with
sabers and pistols in their belts, most of them in the uniform of the
National Guards and calling themselves the revolutionary army," enter
the house of Gibbon, an old ploughman, seventy-one years of age, while
fifty others guard all egress from it, so that the expedition may not
be interfered with. Turlot, captain, and aid-de-camp to General Henriot,
wants to know where the master of the house is.--"In his bed," is the
reply.--"Wake him up."--The old man rises.--Give up your arms."--His
wife hands over a fowling-piece, the only arm on the premises. The band
immediately falls on the poor man, "strikes him down, ties his hands,
and puts a sack over his head," and the same thing is done to his wife
and to eight male and two female servants. "Now, give us the keys of
your closets;" they want to be sure that there are no fleur-de-lys or
other illegal articles. They search the old man's pockets, take his
keys, and, to dispatch business, break into the chests and seize or
carry off all the plate, "twenty-six table-dishes, three soup-ladles,
three goblets, two snuff-boxes, forty counters, two watches, another
gold watch and a gold cross." "We will draw up a proces-verbal of all
this at our leisure in Meaux. Now, where's your silver? If you don't say
where it is, the guillotine is outside and I will be your executioner."
The old man yields and merely requests to be untied. But it is better
to keep him bound, "so as to make him 'sing.'" They carry him into the
kitchen and "put his feet i