Legislators, the nation entrusts you with the maintenance and defense of its liberty, its independence, and the sovereignty of its rights. The law establishing the monarchy, which your predecessors set up without any regard for the claims and grievances of the nation, is contrary to the rights of man. It is time that this tyrannical law at last be abolished, that the nation make use of all its rights, and that it govern itself.
"Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions can only be based on the usefulness to the community." Legislators, these are the principles of the constitution of every free nation. We are entitled to them because your predecessors decreed them and because Frenchmen have adopted them and have sworn to defend them.
The goal of every political association is the preservation of man's natural and inalienable right to liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression.
All citizens are equal before the law. All are equally worthy of human dignity and equally eligible to all public offices, positions, and employments, based on their abilities, and without other distinction than that of virtues and talents.
Legislators, such are the eternal basis of all political principles. Whatever is contrary to such principles must be excluded from a free constitution. How, then, could our constituents, your predecessors, establish upon these bases the monstrous pretension of one particular family that the crown be delegated hereditarily, by order of primogeniture? What can become of that reigning family at a time when everything must be regenerated? What has that reigning family done to be preferred to every other? Should there be a law that makes one person inviolate? Does that inviolability guarantee him against the assassin's blade? Does this privilege not subvert every principle? Who would recognize therein the principles of that sovereign reason which consecrated the inalienable rights of man by decreeing that there no longer was any hereditary distinction? Is that supreme distinction founded upon usefulness to the community? What constituent is wise enough to be able to ensure and guarantee that the son of the greatest and most just of kings will be like his father, not a traitor or a scoundrel? According to this pernicious law, would it not follow that the son could be wicked, and with impunity bring misery upon men that the same law would subject to the fury of his crimes? No, legislators, it is only the hired fomenters of tyranny who have been capable of abandoning themselves to such delirium! And it is in the sanctuary destined for the triumph of liberty, reason, and justice that this undeserved claim has obtained the force of law! What infamy! The nation cannot subscribe to it. Empty claims have been made in the past that are supposed to be in effect today. Because there is one sole sovereign, he has the incontestable right to approve or reject the laws that its representatives impose on him.
What, then, has this ruling family done to be elevated to this position? What has given rise to this homage? Could it be the ruin of our finances? Could it be the iron scepter that is used to smite us stealing our gold and exhausting our subsistence? Or could it be the descendants of that family, rife with emigrant rebels and criminals burdened with debt and accusations that our constituents have forced us to recognize as masters? Do not be offended by that word, Legislators. It signifies nothing to us. But such is the pretension of kings, such is the intention of cowards and slaves. . . .
Does not the gold required by the enormous civil list, which cannot be reduced until a change of reign, perpetuate the means of corruption? And might not those means ruin the nation before it had the right to abolish them? And as for the independent guard which our constituents granted their King, which the nation pays for by maintaining the civil list, can a private force exist in accordance with the terms of the Rights of Man? And if it is a public force, must it serve only the King? And is not that law that allows the King alone to chose and dismiss the ministers, despite his alleged sense of responsibility, an inexhaustible source of abuse, crime, and disorder, as well as an eternal wellspring of division and contradiction? And, finally, does not that suspensive veto, which allows a single person to oppose our best laws despite the general will, completely destroy our Constitution? Can the legislative power survive in the presence of that destructive law? And can the judicial power, created and sustained by the legislature, be effective if the executive power paralyzes our laws?
Legislators, admit that our constituents have created nothing; and if you wish to be something useful to the nation, repeal one law which nullifies the national will.
We all know the history of our misfortunes so it would be useless to review it. The indignation which it provokes has reached its height. Let us hasten to destroy the cause of it and reestablish our rights. Let the executive power be appointed and reelected by the people, just as, with some slight differences, the other two branches of government are. That accomplished, all will soon be made right.
Done at Marseilles, in the Town Hall, 27 June, Year IV of liberty. [1792]
Signed: The General Council of the Commune of Marseilles
2 February 1766
Sire,
The good of Your MajestyÕs service, the interests of your justice and your authority, and the salvation of the State, all make it imperative for your parlement to convey to Your Majesty the just protest of the magistracy crushed by continuous illegal acts, the last of which clearly reveals the use of absolute power, the subversion of the lawÕs authority, and the open infraction of the most sacred rights of the State. . . . New orders have formed a body of commissioners at Saint-Malo responsible for continuing the prosecution of this same case against the members of the parlement sitting at Rennes.
If the criminal impulses of the enemies of the magistracy, secret enemies of the State and of Your Majesty, can prevail to such a point that magistrates can be tried before commissioners, then all rights of station and dignity are henceforth trampled underfoot, and are, from then on, extinguished in the kingdom. . . .
Sire, if this law can be broken, all hierarchy by birth and distinction, all bodies, all ranks, all dignities must henceforth fear the imperious force of absolute power. They then must watch with terror each movement of a small number of persons who, at a word, are transported to the farthest extremities of the kingdom, transformed into a tribunal, placed into action, suspended and made to disappear, but who, in a new disguise, are placed immediately in possession of the sole power to which all the legitimately established powers in the state would be subordinated.
Sire, your parlement has already shown Your Majesty the contradiction that the establishment of these commissions have with the laws of the state, the injuries they cause to the security of the citizens, the impressions of fear and terror which they arouse in the citizens' minds, and the slow but inevitable deterioration they would cause to even the authority of the sovereign, whose principal strength is closely bound to the love of his subjects and their confidence in his justice. . . .
The cold began to be felt at the end of October 1708, on the evening of the Feast of the Apostles Saint Simon and Jude, 28 October 1708. The wind shifted to the north, the rain that had been falling all day long turned into ice and snow, and one saw therein a warning of what was to happen later on because the snow, having frozen in the trees, weighed on them so heavily that branches as heavy as men were seen to succumb under the burden and fall to the ground, and I am an eyewitness that most of the oak trees of the parish were badly damaged.
Nothing withstood this cold; many men died of it, but to tell the truth not in the immediate vicinity; almost no birds remained; partridge were taken by hand or were found dead, together with other game, either as a result of the cold or because the ground was always covered with snow. But if only that had been the greatest evil! Wheat died and vines dried up; none of the large trees, neither the oaks nor the fruit trees, could withstand it; and the chestnut and walnut trees were especially ill treated. When one had confidence to venture out, one could hear the oaks breaking apart, and I have seen some open to a width of three fingers from top to bottom.
Finally, after three weeks of this cold, which increased continually, the thaw came. Its sad effects were not yet known. Work was begun on the vines in the usual manner, but this soon became impossible because the cold began again at the start of Lent toward the middle of February and lasted fifteen days in the same violent manner. The sun, however, was stronger and made the cold more bearable to men during the day, but much more damaging to what remained of the produce of the earth, which could not resist the terrible nights that caused almost everything to die, so that it was scarcely possible to gather enough to provide for next year's seed.
Wheat was soon at 28 livres the septier, and wine at 100 francs the pipe. It was hardly possible even for those who knew how, to find money, when there wasn't any. The number of poor people increased incredibly because the continuing rains of the previous year, 1708, had been very bad and had damaged the grain crops. . . . The poor of the countryside were destitute of any aid, no longer possessing a cabbage or a leek in their gardens, so they crowded into the cities to take part in the liberalities of the inhabitants, which were very considerable, at least in Nantes—for I cannot speak of other cities.
But they were soon begrudged the only help they had. They were forced, by the threat of great penalties, to return to their homes, and there soon appeared the most beautiful edicts in the world to help them, which, however, served only to increase their misfortune. Each parish was supposed to feed its own poor; but for this it would have been necessary for the poor to feed the poor. So these lovely edicts were without effect, and the only way to help the poor, by decreasing the taxes with which they were burdened, was never put into practice. On the contrary, they were increased.
This land produces grain, but everything else is lacking. And even the sale of this produce is uncertain due to the variability of the harvest, which is reduced considerably by too much drought or too much rain. The sale of young cattle, which the inhabitants pursue with all possible industriousness, is the only sure source of income. And as it is insufficient to pay the taxes, they supplement it by annual emigration. They go to work on a part of the forests throughout France, to do road work, or to work in the carrying trade. After that, they go to do the harvest work in Languedoc and Burgundy and then return home for their own harvest, and to replant the land that their wives have cultivated during the good season.
Thus it is that with the greatest sobriety and the most arduous work these men bring back each year the money necessary to pay the taxes of their district and even of the valley, which they do to exchange part of the money earned outside the province for wine, hemp, iron, and other goods that they don't have at home and which the valley furnishes them either from its soil or through its trade.
Those who have the most intelligence or are accustomed to the work, hire others and make a profit from their labor. These entrepreneurs have some money left over each year after they have paid their taxes.
Because they have little property, they buy up one after another the fields cultivated by their families or others that are within their reach.
This picture shows to what extent emigration is necessary in all these districts and how villages pay more in taxes than their soil can produce. It is astonishing that this emigration is not total, and that need and the sight of misery does not destroy among the people the feeling that ties men to the place of their birth.
For a long time the inhabitants of the Cantal region have been engaged in the boilermaker's trade. The boiler factory established in Aurillac favors them in this kind of industry, which takes them even beyond the frontiers of the kingdom. The greatest number return each year and bring to the tax collectors and to their families the money they have earned. At last, repelled by these long trips, accustomed to an easier life, and disgusted with agriculture, they take their whole family and move to the place where they have spent their winters, either abandoning their land or giving it away at the lowest price.
The Limagne is the place where indigence is greatest. The inhabitants do not even have the cruel resource of seeking a living for their families elsewhere for part of the year, because the vines demand constant care. They cannot neglect them for one year without harming the harvests of following years. Some travelers who have crossed both the mountains and the valley have been struck by the external differences they see. In the mountains, especially to the west and south of the province, men are big and strong, their bearing and their confident air depict a well-developed character and seem to indicate that they know that there is no real difference between one man and another. In the Limagne, on the contrary, they are small, ugly, bent and present only the image of men ground down by slavery, threatened by the least illness that may happen to them to be forced to have recourse to beggary, pursued without respite by need. They seem even to be ignorant of their superiority over the animals. The observer cannot recover from his astonishment when he sees all the signs of poverty surrounding him in a country that is so pleasing to the eye on account of its varied forms and of the wealth that nature has lavished there. . . . He sees people live on bread made of rye mixed with barley whose bran has not even been removed. It is without any doubt the worst bread eaten in France. . . . Never does the peasant go to the butcher shop, and he eats a few pieces of salted pork four or five times a year only. He sells good grain and green beans he has raised in order to live on black beans, which are used elsewhere only as fodder for livestock.
He sells his wine and throws water on the residue of his vat to make his best drink. If nature has given him several daughters, he employs them to gather in grass in the grain fields and limits his ambition to having a cow so as to cut down his work by coupling it to the plow together with his neighbor's cow. The butter he gets from it is sold and his soup and his vegetables are seasoned only with the same walnut oil that feeds his lamp at night.
I. The small properties of the peasants are found every where, to a degree we have no idea of in England; they are found in every part of the kingdom, even in those provinces where other tenures prevail; but in Quercy, Languedoc, the whole district of the Pyrenées, Béarn, Gascogne, part of Guienne, Alsace, Flanders, and Lorraine, they abound to a greater degree than common. In Flanders, Alsace, on the Garonne, the Béarn, I found many in comfortable circumstances, such as might rather be called small farmers than cottagers, and in Basse Bretagne, many are reputed rich, but in general they are poor and miserable, much arising from the minute division of their little farms among all the children. In Lorraine, and the part of Champagne that joins it, they are quite wretched. I have, more than once, seen division carried to such excess, that a single fruit tree, standing in about ten perch of ground, has constituted a farm, and the local situation of a family decided by the possession.
II. Hiring at money rent is the general practice in Picardy, Artois, part of Flanders, Normandy (except the Pays de Caux), Isle of France, and Pays de Beauce; and I found some in Béarn and about Navarre. Such tenures are found also in most parts of France, scattered among those which are different and predominant; but, upon a moderate estimate, they have not yet made their way through more than a sixth or seventh of the kingdom.
III. Feudal tenures—These are fiefs granted by the seigneurs of parishes, under a reservation of fines, quit rents, forfeitures, services, etc., I found them abounding most of Bretagne, Limousin, Berry, La Manche, etc. where they spread through whole provinces; but they are scattered very much in every part of the kingdom. About Verson, Vatan, etc., in Berry, they complained so heavily of these burdens, that the mode of levying and enforcing them must constitute much of the evil; they are every where much more burdensome than apparent, from the amount which I attribute to that circumstance. Legal adjudications, they assert, are very severe against the tenant, in favour of the seigneur.
IV. Monopoly—This is commonly practised in various of the provinces where métaying is known; men of some substance hire great tracts of land, at a money rent, and re-let it in small divisions to métayers, who pay half the produce. I heard many complaints of it in La Manche, Berry, Poitou, and Angoumois, and it is met with in other provinces; it appears to flow from the difficulties inherent in the métaying system, but is itself a mischievous practice, well known in Ireland, where these middle men are almost banished.
V. Métayers—This is the tenure under which, perhaps, seven-eigths of the lands of France are held. In Champagne there are many at tier franc, which is the third of the produce, but in general it is half. The landlord commonly finds half the cattle and half the feed; and the métayer labour, implements, and taxes; but in some districts the landlord bears a share of these.
At the first blush, the great disadvantage of the métaying system is to landlords; but, on a nearer examination, the tenants are found in the lowest state of poverty, and some of them in misery. At Vatan, in Berry, I was assured that the Métayers almost every year borrowed their bread of the landlord before the harvest came round, yet hardly worth borrowing, for it was made of rye and barley mixed; I tasted enough of it to pity sincerely the poor people; but no common person there eats wheaten bread; with all this misery among the farmers, the landlord's situation may be estimated by the rents he receives. At Salbris, in Sologne, for a sheep-walk that feeds 700 sheep, and 200 English acres of other land, paid the landlord, for his half, about 331. sterling; the whole rent, for land and stock too, did not, therefore, amount to 1s. per head on the sheep! In Limousin, the métayers are considered as little better than menial servants, removable at pleasure, and obliged to conform in all things to the will of the landlords; it is commonly computed that half the tenantry are deeply in debt to the proprietor, so that he is often obliged to turn them off with the loss of these debts, in order to save his land from running waste.
In all the modes of occupying land, the great evil is the smallness of farms. There are large ones in Picardy, the Ile of France, the Pays de Beauce, Artois, and Normandy; but, in the rest of the kingdom, such are not general. The division of the farms and population is so great, that the misery flowing from it is in many places extreme; the idleness of the people is seen the moment you enter a town on market-day; the swarms of people are incredible. At Landivisiau, in Bretagne, I saw a man who walked seven miles to bring two chickens, which would not sell for 24s. the couple, as he told me himself. At Avranches men attending each a horse, with a pannier load of sea ooze, not more than four bushels. Near Issenheim, in Alsace, a rich country, women, in the midst of harvest, where their labour is nearly as valuable as that of men, reaping grass by the road side to carry home to their cows.
Gifts, pensions, and large profits reserved to nobles only take the spirit of emulation away from both nobles and commoners. Emulation is taken away from the nobles because, by being born noble and aspiring to everything, they need credit. Emulation is also taken away from the commoners because these people cannot aspire to anything, and emulation becomes useless to them. To deprive a State of the genius that could enlighten, instruct, and defend it, is a crime toward the nation. . . .
To close off employment possibilities and respectable occupations to the most numerous and useful class is like killing genius and talents, and forcing them to run away from an ungrateful home. However, in our current constitution, only nobles enjoy all prerogatives like landed wealth, honors, dignities, graces, pensions, retirements, responsibility for government, and free schools. . . . These [privileges] constitute the favors the State lavishes exclusively on the nobility, at the expense of the Third Estate.
The nobility enjoys and owns everything, and would like to free itself from everything. However, if the nobility commands the army, the Third Estate makes it up. If nobility pours a drop of blood, the Third Estate spreads rivers of it. The nobility empties the royal treasury, the Third Estate fills it up. Finally, the Third Estate pays everything and does not enjoy anything.
Lauris (sénéchaussée Aix)
Sire, it is with the heaviest pain that we see huge pensions granted to vile and scheming courtiers. They take credit in front of Your Majesty. Significant remunerations are tied to jobs without duties.
If only you knew, Sire, how much sweat, how many tears soak the money going into your treasury. Without doubt, your kindness will be more on its guard against people's indiscreet requests who consume in one day the fruits of taxes from thousands of your poor subjects.
We cannot hide, Sire, that the nobility consumes the major part of State income. Indeed, it is this order of citizens, to whom we probably give the most merit, that furnishes the crown officers, the governors, the commanders, the quartermasters, and all the people who have honorable positions. A noble man, who knows how to dance well, ride a horse well, and handle a sword, thinks he deserves everything, and, nonetheless, he pretends that he does not owe anything to the State. If he is only greedy for glory, then he should serve Your Majesty and the nation and receive no income.
Upper Alsace, Bailliage de Belfort
To His Grace, Monsieur Necker, Minister of Finances
Statement concerning the unjust, onerous, and humiliating dues and other unheard of burdens which the undersigned inhabitants of the seigneury of Montjoye-Vaufrey are made to endure by the Count of Montjoye-Vaufrey. The seigneury of Montjoye-Vaufrey is small with almost inaccessible mountains, covered in large part by forests of beech and fir trees. The soil is naturally barren and produces nothing but brambles and thorn bushes. It is part of Upper Alsace and enclosed by the diocese of Basle, lying on the kingdom's border.
Close to one thousand individuals live in this region, which is almost wild because of its location. There they stagnate, living in misery, crushed beneath the entire weight of the most inhumane and detestable feudal system and the victims of the thousands of abuses that the seigneur of Montjoye heaps upon them. The truth of these statements will be found to be more than convincing once we have outlined the rights that the [seigneur] claims to have over them and the manner in which these rights are exercised.
The Tithe of the Sixth Sheaf
The seigneur demands one of every six sheaves produced on the majority of the lands of the seigneury. The other sheaves are left to the owner, who uses one and a half sheaves for seed because the soil only yields four sheaves for every sheaf planted. The remaining three and a half sheaves constitute his only profit from sowing and are used to feed himself and to pay other seigneurial dues.
The Right of Mortmain
The same lands on which the seigneur collects this unusual tithe are also subject to mortmain [death duty], and he exercises this right with such cruelty that the poor unfortunate owner cannot sell his land, even when reduced to a state of destitution deserving of the greatest compassion. We have seen infirm persons, possessing land, but forbidden to sell it by the seigneur, who are led by their charitable fellow-citizens from village to village begging for alms. Gardens, houses, and orchards were once exempt from this duty, but today he takes everything in case the owner dies without an heir.
Corvées
It would seem that the owners of these same lands should be left to enjoy their produce in peace, obliged as they are to submit to such an outrageous tithe and to the odious exercise of the right of mortmain. But far from it. In addition, this seigneur requires five days of work from them, and if he obliges them to perform this service in actual labor, he assigns the work when it is convenient for him. It is often the case that those subject to the corvée are not able to fulfill their tasks in a day, whereupon they are obliged to continue their work the next day, even though only one day of work is counted. If he does not require actual labor from them, someone who has two oxen is forced to pay him six livres. . . . Some people have preferred to endure this additional charge rather than to provide the actual labor, but the worker with no beasts of burden performs the corvée with his own hands. Or, if he wants to commute his work into money, he is forced to pay three livres fifteen sols, whereas before he would only have paid thirty-three sols. Poor beggars are not exempt. They are seen going from door to door asking for bread in order to go and work for the seigneur, because recently he refuses all food to those required to work at the corvée.
Taxes, Hens, the Sale of Wine, Residence Rights
For each journal of land [a measure of land equal to the amount a plowman could plow in a day] he takes eight deniers in taxes, three hens for each hearth, and the poor are no more exempt than the richest inhabitant. He collects a tenth of the wine sold in inns, whereas the king only takes a twentieth. He makes each person who moves to a new community pay a florin a year for this right. Outsiders are also subject to this payment.
Withholding Right
For approximately ten years, he has assumed a withholding right with respect to most of the land sold in the seigneury. He sells this right to whomever he wants; therefore the heir can be banished from the land. The rights of family are held in just as much contempt as those of humanity.
Communal Forests
His greed leads him to appropriate all of the communal forests, selling them for his own profit. This usurpation has already been seen in the communities of Montjoye, Monnoiront, and Les Choseaux. He gives them to whomever he pleases. The distribution is never in proportion to the needs of the individual, demonstrating his absolute mastery. However, individuals pay royal taxes and even the subsidy, a tax which in Alsace is particularly heavy on forests.
Communal Pasturelands
The same observations can be made with regard to communal pasturelands. The seigneur does not allow land to be cleared at all unless one agrees to plant and give him a sixth of what is produced. Otherwise it is forbidden to touch the smallest bramble or thorn. Sometimes he seizes certain portions of these pasturelands that meet his needs, and at other times he cedes them to different individuals.
Beating the Woods
Nothing demonstrates the slavery in which he holds these unfortunate people, and the odious use that he makes of his power, more than their obligation to cater to his whims. When it pleases him, and as often as it pleases him, he obliges them to beat the woods in order to satisfy his desire to hunt. As he does all of the others, he exercises the right arbitrarily. The farmer who is thus forced to wander through the woods for a whole day receives neither sustenance, nor a bonus, nor payment. If he refuses to do this work, the seigneur levies a fine to compensate for his loss of recreation, and his judge never fails to rule in favor of the plaintiff. . . .
For more than a century, they have taken their seigneur to court in order to oblige him to produce the legal titles which give him the right to oppress them. To thwart these just measures, the predecessors of the current seigneur had the deputies of the leading communities clapped in irons and imprisoned, charging them with insubordination and holding them in custody at the seigneur's will. The current seigneur has again outdone his predecessors. For two months, he has kept . . . an entire family composed of six heads of household in prison, and he has charged each fifteen gold louis. He has had several others imprisoned. This kind of violence holds all of these unfortunate people in the cruelest fear and slavery. Until now, each imprisonment has been the signal for the creation of a new tax, and it is in this very unusual manner that he perpetuates these different humiliations and creates new ones.
Certain enemies of the People, as well as certain laws, have misled some of the inhabitants of our countryside and terrorized others into joining their schemes and their thievery. There is no longer either liberty or security in several of our markets. The People's magistrates are reduced to either authorizing these excesses because they exist, or being massacred when they call for the implementation of the laws. Such attempts should have been, and indeed were, denounced to the King and the National Assembly. Every French heart trembled with horror and indignation at the realistic scene that was described. The call was immediately answered by citizens armed by the law and for the law, as well as voluntary national guardsmen from Paris, ever faithful to the principles [of the Revolution] and to freedom. They marched in order to reestablish the public peace, to maintain respect for property, and to ensure that those who had already been found guilty be punished and not escape the law's vengeance. The national guard of Versailles and the majority of the national guardsmen of the Department, now occupied with maintaining the peace in their homes, if necessary will rush to assist their efforts. . . .
Citizens, the markets should be free under the protection of the laws and the police. Any armed mob, without the authorization of law, is but a rabble of highwaymen, who should be, and will be, punished without fail. Being peaceful men, farmers will always flee at the sight of these mobs, and they will use any means to keep their goods and property out of their hands. The buyer must not have the right to tax the price of the merchandise that he is buying, and if he taxes it, he is nothing but a thief. No one but the owner has the right to propose a price and to bargain freely with the buyer.
If, of their own authority, citizens or communities were going to search the barns and granaries located in their own community, they would be breaking the law and infringing on liberty and property. If they were going to search the barns and granaries located in other communities, and if they claimed they were going to take the grain by force, the communities that harvested that grain would consequently want to keep all that they had harvested from their land for themselves. This is what is now occurring. The communities that don't harvest enough to feed themselves, and the towns that don't harvest anything, will get smaller or die off from famine, or arm themselves to procure the sustenance they lack. From then on, there will be nothing but highwaymen and killers. And the French, who used to be so well known for their calm demeanor and character, would be nothing more than ferocious savages among whom there would be neither commerce nor a society, and who would soon devour and destroy one another. What must citizens do then for their own good and the common good? Respect the law, respect property, and maintain the peace. Then everything would take its natural course: jobs would multiply; the workers would find employment and income; the property owner would improve his possessions; and this culture would spread and increase available sustenance.
Niort, 25 August, 1793, Year IV [sic] of Freedom
The departmental adviser reported to you, in the last mail, the troubling events which occurred in the district of Châtillon. New information shows us that the crowd is continuing to gather, that the leaders of bandits, far from scattering them, every day battle with them anew and retreat anew. The council meanwhile has taken strong measures, and at this moment there are three thousand national guardsmen in the region to establish order. It is with the greatest of sorrow that we inform you that six patriots have already fallen victim to this rabble, but at least forty of their number were killed.
We had reason to hope that these gatherings would cease as soon as the public troops arrived. Our hopes were misguided, and this causes us the greatest of worries. Having already dispatched all of the armed force that was at our disposal, the departments of the Vendée, Loire-Inférieure, and Maine-en Loire showed us unequivocal proof of their fraternity and neighborliness by coming to our aid during these circumstances. Without these departments, this unfortunate region would today have fallen to the rebels. . . .
We can not hide from you sirs, that a severe and swift example needs to be set. Already several of these bandits have been arrested, and the departmental adviser requests that you issue a decree whereby the criminal court of Niort judges this case as the last resort. It is the only way to bring peace back to this unfortunate region. We hope that you will not refuse us this request.
Toulouse, September 28th of the Year II of the French Republic
The revolutionary march is in full swing in Toulouse. The enthusiasm of the local chapter of the Committee of Public Safety is continuous and fruitful. The constituted authorities are all newly elected, and the army, designed to spread and advance the Revolution, adds immeasurably to our speeches and to our civil institutions. Things will get to the point where our presence won't be needed anymore.
Montauban is set up on the same model as Toulouse, but has an advantage over Toulouse in that it has a larger number of educated patriots.
Through the use of a Committee and a revolutionary army, Castres, capital of the department of Tarn, made an about-face in two days. The administration is deftly trying out new ideas, and soon this town will be on the same track as Montauban and Toulouse.
I am leaving with my colleague Chaudron-Roussau for the [department of the] Ariège. The problems have dissipated entirely in that department. All of the administrative positions would have already been totally changed, and without any fuss, if only the educated patriots were equal in number to that of malicious administrators. And the shortage of education is at the point where we have to fill administrative positions with commissioners.
There remains the department of Aude, which is reportedly extremely bad. We will take our instruments of reform there, as we have elsewhere, and will turn the department around. Since the revolutionary army is the best tool to impose order, with it we can convert a thousand political sinners every minute. . . .
You know that Bordeaux is getting better every day, but it is not enough to be satisfied with a few attempts on behalf of the people. We have the correct means to take the Revolution to its end there. We should be going in on the 10th, and I assure you that the Republic will fully and entirely triumph there, if we are as strict as the circumstances require.
Godspeed, in fraternity,
M.-A Baudot