ings at Nantes; at the
same time the revolutionary troops and militia were, according to
Meissner, merely organised bands who committed every kind of murder,
robbery, and extortion. The criminals who happened to be caught
occasionally during the Revolution sought to save themselves by the
cry of _a l'aristocrate_; when on trial they behaved in the most
audacious manner, and grinned at the judges when condemned, and the
women behaved most shamelessly. In 1790 only 490 accused, and in 1791
not more than 1198, were sent to the Conciergerie. A similar state of
affairs prevailed in the Commune of 1871. Among the population then in
Paris, deceived as they were in their patriotic hopes, unnerved by
inglorious combats, weakened by hunger and alcohol, no one cared to
bestir themselves but the unruly elements, the _declasses_, the
criminals, the madmen, and the drunkards who imposed their will upon
the city; that these were the main elements in the rising is shown by
the slaughter of helpless captives, by the refined cruelty of the
murderers, who compelled their victims to jump over a wall, and shot
them while doing so, while others were riddled by bullets; thus one
citizen received sixty-nine bullets, and Abbe Bengy had sixty-two
bayonet wounds."

The foregoing examples could easily be increased in order to show that
the criminal tactics of the Anarchists are nothing new. If they are
more formidable and more monstrous than those of the religious
dissenters of the Renaissance or the political criminals of the
Revolutionary period, the reason lies in the age in which we live. We
mean that those who use the progress of modern mechanics, chemistry,
technical science, and so on, solely in order to increase the terror
inspired by organised murder, and to make the furies of war
invincible, ought not to be so surprised if the revolutionaries in
their turn no longer content themselves with old-fashioned weapons,
but seek to utilise also the achievements of modern chemistry.
_Exampla trahunt._ The Anarchist propaganda should not be judged so
severely; new and wonderful as it appears to the majority, it is by no
means so in reality; it is the stock piece of all revolutionaries,
somewhat modernised and adapted to a new age and a new doctrine.

Certainly the Anarchist doctrine is something new, if you will; but we
consider this means little if it merely expresses the fact that these
new demands exceed all previous changes in society. This