h the Vendeans picked up along the
highways, and who are usually shot in groups of twenty five. "I came,"
says an eye-witness,[33169] "to a sort of gorge where there was a
semi-circular quarry; there, I noticed the corpses of seventy-five women
naked and lying on their backs." The victims of that day consisted of
girls from sixteen to eighteen years of age. One of them says to her
conductor, "I am sure you are taking us to die," and the German replies
in his broken jargon, probably with a coarse laugh," No, it is for a
change of air. They are placed in a row in front of the bodies of the
previous day and shot. Those who do not fall, see the guns reloaded;
these are again shot and the wounded dispatched with the butt ends of
the muskets. Some of the Germans then rifle the bodies, while others
strip them and "place them on their backs."--To find workmen for this
task, it is necessary to descend, not only to the lowest wretches in
France but, again, to the brutes of a foreign race and tongue, and yet
lower still, to an inferior race degraded by slavery and perverted by
license.

Such, from the top to the bottom of the ladder, at every stage of
authority and obedience, is the ruling staff of the revolutionary
government.[33170] Through its recruits and its work, through its morals
and modes of proceeding, it evokes the almost forgotten image of
its predecessors, for there is an image of it in the period from the
fourteenth to the seventeenth century. At that time also, society
was frequently overcome and ravaged by barbarians; dangerous nomads,
malevolent outcasts, bandits turned into soldiers suddenly pounced down
on an industrious and peaceful population. Such was the case in France
with the "Routiers" and the "Tard-venus," at Rome with the army of the
Constable of Bourbon, in Flanders with the bands of the Duke of Alba
and the Duke of Parma, in Westphalia and in Alsace, with Wallenstein's
veterans, and those of Bernard of Saxe-Weimar. They lived upon a town
or province for six months, fifteen months, two years, until the town
or province was exhausted. They alone were armed, master of the
inhabitants, using and abusing things and persons according to their
caprices. But they were declared bandits, calling themselves scorchers,
(ecorcheurs) riders and adventurers, and not pretending to be
humanitarian philosophers. Moreover, beyond an immediate and personal
enjoyment, they demanded nothing; they employed brutal force only