1194] In conformity with
this rule there is a general rounding up, prolonged for ten months,
which places the fortunes of a city of one hundred and twenty thousand
souls in the hands of its scoundrels. Thirty-two revolutionary
committees "whose members are thick as thieves select thousands of
guards devoted to them."[1195] In confiscated dwellings and warehouses,
they affix seals without an inventory; they drive out women and children
"so that there shall be no witnesses;" they keep the keys; they enter
and steal when they please, or install themselves for a revel with
prostitutes.--Meanwhile, the guillotine is kept going, and people are
fired at and shot down with grape-shot. The revolutionary committee
officially avow one thousand six hundred and eighty-two acts of murder
committed in five months,[1196] while a confederate of Robespierre's
privately declare that there were six thousand.[1197]

Blacksmiths are condemned to death for having shod the Lyonnese cavalry,
firemen for having extinguished fires kindled by republican bombshells,
a widow for having paid a war-tax during the siege, market women
for "having shown disrespect to patriots." It is an organized
"Septembrisade" made legal and lasting; its authors are so well
aware of the fact as to use the word itself in their public
correspondence.[1198]--At Toulon it is worse, people are slaughtered in
heaps, almost haphazard. Notwithstanding that the inhabitants the
most compromised, to the number of four thousand, take refuge on board
English vessels, the whole city, say the representatives, is guilty.
Four hundred workmen in the navy-yard having marched out to meet Freron,
he reminds them that they kept on working during the English occupation
of the town, and he has them put to death on the spot. An order is
issued to all "good citizens to assemble in the Champ de Mars on penalty
of death." They come there to the number of three thousand; Freron, on
horseback, surrounded by cannon and troops, arrives with about a hundred
Maratists, the former accomplices of Lemaille, Sylvestre, and other
well-known assassins, who form a body of local auxiliaries and
counselors; he tells them to select out of the crowd at pleasure
according to their grudge, fancy, or caprice; all who are designated
are ranged along a wall and shot. The next morning, and on the following
days, the operation is renewed: Freron writes on the 16th of Nivose
that "eight hundred Toulonese have already be