The object of the Jacobin, first of all, is the destruction of his adversaries, avowed or presumed, probable or possible. Four violent measures concur, together or in turn, to bring about the physical or social extermination of all Frenchmen who no longer belong to the sect or the party.

The first operation consists in expelling them from the territory.—Since 1789, they have been chased off through a forced emigration; handed over to jacqueries, or popular uprisings, in the country, and to insurrections in the cities,4101 defenseless and not allowed to defend themselves, three-fourths of them have left France, simply to escape popular brutalities against which neither the law nor the government afforded them any protection. According as the law and the administration, in becoming more Jacobin, became more hostile to them, so did they leave in greater crowds. After the 10th of August and 2nd of September, the flight necessarily was more general; for, henceforth, if any one persisted in remaining after that date it was with the almost positive certainty that he would be consigned to a prison, to await a massacre or the guillotine. About the same time, the law added to the fugitive the banished, all unsworn priests, almost an entire class consisting of nearly 40 000 persons.4102 It is calculated that, on issuing from the reign of Terror, the total number of fugitives and banished) amounted to 150 0004103 the list would have been still larger, had not the frontier been guarded by patrols and one had to cross it at the risk of one's life; and yet, many do risk their lives in attempting to cross it, in disguise, wandering about at night, in mid-winter, exposed to gunshots, determined to escape cost what it will, into Switzerland, Italy, or Germany, and even into Hungary, in quest of security and the right of praying to God as one pleases.4104—If any exiled or deported person ventures to return, he is tracked like a wild beast, and, as soon as taken, he is guillotined.4105 For example, M. de Choiseul, and other unfortunates, wrecked and cast ashore on the coast of Normandy, are not sufficiently protected by the law of nations. They are brought before a military commission; saved temporarily through public commiseration, they remain in prison until the First Consul intervenes between them and the homicidal law and consents, through favor, to deport them to the Dutch frontier.—If they have taken up arms against the Republic they are cut off from humanity; a Pandour4106 taken prisoner is treated as a man; an ÉmigrÉ made prisoner is treated like a wolf—they shoot him on the spot. In some cases, even the pettiest legal formalities are dispensed with. "When I am lucky enough to catch 'em," writes Gen. Vandamme, "I do not trouble the military commission to try them. They are already tried—my saber and pistols do their business."4107

The second operation consists in depriving "suspects" of their liberty, of which deprivation there are several degrees; there are various ways of getting hold of people.—Sometimes, the "suspect" is "adjourned," that is to say, the order of arrest is simply suspended; he lives under a perpetual menace that is generally fulfilled; he never knows in the morning that he will not sleep in a prison that night. Sometimes, he is put on the limits of his commune. Sometimes, he is confined to his house with or without guards, and, in the former case, he is obliged to pay them. Again, finally, and which occurs most frequently, he is shut up in this or that common jail.—In the single department of Doubs, twelve hundred men and women are "adjourned;" three hundred put on the limits of the commune, fifteen hundred confined to their houses, and twenty two hundred imprisoned.4108 In Paris, thirty-six such prisons and more than "violins", or temporary jails, soon filled by the revolutionary committees, do not suffice for the service.4109 It is estimated that, in France, not counting more than 40,000 provisional jails, twelve hundred prisons, full and running over, contain each more than two hundred inmates.4110 At Paris, notwithstanding the daily void created by the guillotine, the number of the imprisoned on FlorÉal 9, year II., amounts to 7,840; and, on Messidor 25 following, notwithstanding the large batches of 50 and 60 persons led in one day, and every day, to the scaffold, the number is still 7,502.4111 There are more than one thousand persons in the prisons of Arras, more than one thousand five hundred in those of Toulouse, more than three thousand in those of Strasbourg, and more than thirteen thousand in those of Nantes. In the two departments alone of Bouches du-RhÔne and Vaucluse, Representative Maignet, who is on the spot, reports from 12,000 to 15,000 arrests.4112 "A little before Thermidor," says Representative Beaulieu, "the number of incarcerated arose to nearly 400,000, as is apparent on the lists and registers then before the Committee of General Security."4113—Among these poor creatures, there are children, and not alone in the prisons of Nantes where the revolutionary searches have collected the whole of the rural population; in the prisons of Arras, among twenty similar cases, I find a coal-dealer and his wife with their seven sons and daughters, from seventeen down to six years of age; a widow with her four children from nineteen down to twelve years of age; another noble widow with her nine children, from seventeen down to three years of age, and six children, without father or mother, from twenty-three down to nine years of age.4114—These prisoners of State were treated, almost everywhere, worse than robbers and assassins under the ancient rÉgime. They began by subjecting them to rapiotage, that is to say, stripping them naked or, at best, feeling their bodies under their shirts; women and young girls fainted away under this examination, formerly confined to convicts on entering the bagnio.4115—Frequently, before consigning them to their dungeons or shutting them up in their cells, they would be left two or three nights pell-mell in a lower hall on benches, or in the court on the pavement, "without beds or straw." "The feelings are wounded in all directions, every point of sensibility, so to say, being played upon. They are deprived one after the other of their property, assignats, furniture, and food, of daylight and lamp-light, of the assistance which their wants and infirmities demand, of a knowledge of public events, of all communication, either immediate or written, with fathers, sons and husbands."4116 They are obliged to pay for their lodgings, their keepers, and for what they eat; they are robbed at their very doors of the supplies they send for outside; they are compelled to eat at a mess-table; they are furnished with scant and nauseous food, "spoilt codfish, putrid herrings and meat, rotten vegetables, all this accompanied with a mug of Seine water colored red with some drug or other."4117 They starve them, bully them, and vex them purposely as if they meant to exhaust their patience and drive them into a revolt, so as to get rid of them in a mass, or, at least, to justify the increasing rapid strokes of the guillotine. They are huddled together in tens, twenties and thirties, in one room at La Force, "eight in a chamber, fourteen feet square," where all the beds touch, and many overlap each other, where two out of the eight inmates are obliged to sleep on the floor, where vermin swarm, where the closed sky-lights, the standing tub, and the crowding together of bodies poisons the atmosphere.—In many places, the proportion of the sick and dying is greater than in the hold of a slave-ship. "Of ninety individuals with whom I was shut up two months ago," writes a prisoner at Strasbourg, "sixty-six were taken to the hospital in the space of eight days."4118 In the prisons of Nantes, 3000 out 13,000 prisoners die of typhoid fever and of the rot in two months.4119 400 priests4120 confined on a vessel between decks, in the roadstead of Aix, stowed on top of each other, wasted with hunger, eaten up by vermin, suffocated for lack of air, half-frozen, beaten, mocked at, and constantly threatened with death, suffer still more than Negroes in a slave-hold; for, through interest in his freight, the captain of the slaver tries to keep his human consignment in good health, whilst, through revolutionary fanaticism, the crew of the Aix vessel detests its cargo of "black-frocks" and would gladly send them to the bottom.—According to this system, which, up to Thermidor 9, grows worse and worse, imprisonment becomes a torture, oftentimes mortal, slower and more painful than the guillotine, and to such an extent that, to escape it, Champfort opens his veins and Condorcet swallows poison.4121The third expedient consists of murder, with or without trial.—178 tribunals, of which 40 are ambulatory, pronounce in every part of the territory sentences of death which are immediately executed on the spot.4122 Between April 6, 1793, and Thermidor 9, year II., (July 27th, 1794) that of Paris has 2,625 persons guillotined,4123 while the provincial judges do as much work as the Paris judges. In the small town of Orange alone, they guillotine 331 persons. In the single town of Arras they have 299 men and 93 women guillotined. At Nantes, the revolutionary tribunals and military committees have, on the average, 100 persons a day guillotined, or shot, in all 1,971. In the city of Lyons the revolutionary committee admit 1,684, while Cadillot, one of Robespierre's correspondents, advises him of 6,000.4124—The statement of these murders is not complete, but 17,000 have been enumerated,4125 "most of them effected without any formality, evidence or direct charge," among others the murder of "more than 1200 women, several of whom were octogenarians and infirm;"4126 particularly the murder of 60 women or young girls, condemned to death, say the warrants, for having attended the services of unsworn priests, or for having neglected the services of a sworn priest.

"The accused, ranged in order, were condemned at sight. Hundreds of death-sentences took about a minute per head. Children of seven, five and four years of age, were tried. A father was condemned for the son, and the son for the father. A dog was sentenced to death. A parrot was brought forward as a witness. Numbers of accused persons whose sentences could not be written out were executed."

At Angers, the sentences of over four hundred men and three hundred and sixty women, executed for the purpose of relieving the prisons, were mentioned on the registers simply by the letters S or G (shot or guillotined).4127 At Paris, as in the provinces, the slightest pretext4128 served to constitute a crime. The daughter of the celebrated painter, Joseph Vernet,4129 was guillotined for being a " receiver," for having kept fifty pounds of candles in her house, distributed among the employees of La Muette by the liquidators of the civil list. Young de MaillÉ,4130 aged sixteen years, was guillotined as a conspirator, "for having thrown a rotten herring in the face of his jailer, who had served it to him to eat." Madame de Puy-Verin was guillotined as "guilty" because she had not taken away from her deaf, blind and senile husband a bag of card-counters, marked with the royal effigy.—In default of any pretext,4131 there was the supposition of a conspiracy; blank lists were given to paid emissaries, who undertook to search the various prisons and select the requisite number of heads; they wrote names down on them according to their fancy, and these provided the batches for the guillotine.

"As for myself," said the juryman Vilate, "I am never embarrassed. I am always convinced. In a revolution, all who appear before this tribunal ought to be condemned."—

At Marseilles, the Brutus Commission,4132 "sentencing without public prosecutor or jurymen, sent to the prisons for those it wished to put to death. After having demanded their names, professions and wealth they were sent down to a cart standing at the door of the Palais de Justice; the judges then stepped out on the balcony and pronounced the death-sentence." The same proceedings took place at Cambrai, Arras, Nantes, Le Mans, Bordeaux, NÎmes, Lyons, Strasbourg, and elsewhere.—Evidently, the judicial comedy is simply a parade; they make use of it as one of the respectable means, among others less respectable, to exterminate people whose opinions are not what they should be, or who belong to the proscribed classes;4133 Samson, at Paris, and his colleagues in the provinces, the execution-platoons of Lyons and Nantes, are simply the collaborators of murderers properly so called, while legal massacres complete other massacres pure and simple.

Of this latter description, the fusillades of Toulon come first, where the number of those who are shot largely surpasses one thousand;4134 next the great drownings of Nantes, in which 4,800 men, women and children perished,4135 the other drownings, for which no figures may be given;4136 then the countless popular murders committed in France between July 14, 1789, and August 10, 1792; the massacre of one 1,300 prisoners in Paris, in September, 1792; the long train of assassinations which, in July, August and September, 1789, extends over the entire territory; finally, the dispatch of the prisoners, either shot or sabered, without trial at Lyons and in the West. Even excepting those who had died fighting or who, taken with arms in their hands, were shot down or sabered on the spot, there were 10,000 persons slaughtered without trial in the province of Anjou alone:4137 accordingly, the instructions of the Committee of Public Safety, also the written orders of Carrier and Francastel, direct generals to "bleed freely" the insurgent districts,4138 and spare not a life: it is estimated that, in the eleven western departments, the dead of both sexes and of all ages exceeded 400,000.4139—Considering the program and principles of the Jacobin sect this is no great number; they might have killed a good many more. But time was wanting; during their short reign they did what they could with the instrument in their hands. Look at their machine, the gradual construction of its parts, the successive stages of its operation from its starting up to Thermidor 9, and see how limited the period of its operation was. Organized March 30 and April 6, 1793, the Revolutionary Committees and the Revolutionary Tribunal had but seventeen months in which to do their work. They did not drive ahead with all their might until after the fall of the Girondists, and especially after September, 1763 that is to say for a period of eleven months. Its loose wheels were not screwed up and the whole was not in running order under the impulse of the central motor until after December, 1793, that is to say during eight months. Perfected by the law of Prairial 22, it works for the past two months, faster and better than before, with an energy and rapidity that increase from week to week.—At that date, and even before it, the theorists have taken the bearings of their destinies and accepted the conditions of their undertaking. Being sectarians, they have a faith, and as orthodoxy tolerates no heresy, and as the conversion of heretics is never sincere or durable, heresy can be suppressed only by suppressing heretics. "It is only the dead," said BarÈre, Messidor 16, "who never return." On the 2nd and 3rd of Thermidor,4140 the Committee of Public Safety sends to Fouquier-Tinville a list of four hundred and seventy-eight accused persons with orders "to bring the parties named to trial at once." Baudot and Jean Bon St. Andre, Carrier, Antonelle and Guifroy, had already estimated the lives to be taken at several millions and, according to Collot d' Herbois, who had a lively imagination, "the political perspiration should go on freely, and not stop until from twelve to fifteen million Frenchmen had been destroyed."4141

To make amends, in the fourth and last division of their work, that is to say, in spoliation, they went to the last extreme: they did all that could be done to ruin individuals, families and the State; whatever could be taken, they took.—The Constituent and Legislative Assemblies had, on their side, begun the business by abolishing tithes and all feudal rights without indemnity, and by confiscating all ecclesiastical property; the Jacobin operators continue and complete the job; we have seen by what decrees and with what hostility against collective and individual property, whether they attribute to the State the possession of all corporations whatever, even laic, such as colleges, schools and scientific or literary societies, hospitals and communes, or whether they despoil individuals, indirectly through assignats and the maximum, or directly through the forced loan, revolutionary taxes,4142 seizures of gold and silver coin, requisitions of common useful utensils,4143 sequestrations of prisoners' property, confiscations of the possessions of emigrants and exiles and of those deported or condemned to death. No capital invested in real or personal property, no income in money or produce, whatever its source, whether leases, mortgages, private credits, pensions, agricultural, industrial or commercial gains, the fruits of economy or labor, from the farmers', the manufacturers' and the merchant's stores to the robes, coats, shirts and shoes, even to the beds and bed-rooms of private individuals—nothing escapes their rapacious grasp: in the country, they carry off even seed reserved for planting; at Strasbourg and in the Upper Rhine, all kitchen utensils; in Auvergne and elsewhere, even the shepherd's pots. Every object of value, even those not in public use, comes under requisition: for instance,4144 the Revolutionary Committee of Bayonne seizes a lot of "cotton cloth and muslin," under the pretext of making "breeches for the country's defenders." On useful objects being taken it is not always certain that they will be utilized; between their seizure and putting them to service, robbery and waste intervene. At Strasbourg,4145 on a requisition being threatened by the representatives, the inhabitants strip themselves and, in a few days, bring to the municipality "6,879 coats, breeches and vests, 4,767 pairs of stockings, 16,921 pairs of shoes, 863 pairs of boots, 1351 cloaks, 20,518 shirts, 4,524 hats, 523 pairs of gaiters, 143 skin vests, 2,673, 900 blankets, besides 29 quintals of lint, 21 quintals of old linen, and a large number of other articles."

But "most of these articles remain piled up in the storehouses, part of them rotten, or eaten by rats, the rest being abandoned to the first-comer.... The end of spoliation was attained."—Utter loss to individuals and no gain, or the minimum of a gain, to the State. Such is the net result of the revolutionary government. After having laid its hand on three-fifths of the landed property of France; after having wrested from communities and individuals from ten to twelve billions of real and personal estate; after having increased, through assignats and territorial warrants, the public debt, which was not five billions in 1789, to more than fifty billions;4146 no longer able to pay its employees; reduced to supporting its armies as well as itself by forced contributions on conquered territories, it ends in bankruptcy; it repudiates two-thirds of its debt, and its credit is so low that the remaining third which it has consolidated and guaranteed afresh, loses eighty-three per cent. the very next day. In its hands, the State has itself suffered as much as the private individuals.—Of the latter, more than 1 200 000 have suffered physically: several millions, all who owned anything, great or small, have suffered through their property.4147 But, in this multitude of the oppressed, it is the notables who are chiefly aimed at and who, in their possessions as well as in their persons, have suffered the most.