But, if the Jacobin system, in spite of its surviving founders, gradually relaxes after Thermidor; if the main ligature tied around the man's neck, broke just as the man was strangling, the others that still bind him hold him tight, except as they are loosened in places; and, as it is, some of the straps, terribly stiffened, sink deeper and deeper into his flesh.—In the first place, the requisitions continue there is no other way of provisioning the armies and the cities; the gendarme is always on the road, compelling each village to contribute its portion of grain, and at the legal rate. The refractory are subject to keepers, confiscations, fines and imprisonment; they are confined and kept in the district lock ups "at their own expense," men and women, twenty two on PluviÔse 17, year III., in the district of Bar-sur-Aube; forty five, Germinal 7, in the district of Troyes; forty-five, the same day, in the district of Nogent-sur-Seine, and twenty others, eight days later, in the same district, in the commune of Traine alone.4299—The condition of the cultivator is certainly not an easy one, while public authority, aided by the public force, extorts from him all it can at a rate of its own; moreover, it will soon exact from him one half of his contributions in kind, and, it must be noted, that at this time, the direct contributions alone absorb twelve and thirteen sous on the franc of the revenue. Nevertheless, under this condition, which is that of laborers in a Muslim country, the French peasant, like the Syrian or Tunisian peasant, can keep himself alive; for, through the abolition of the "maximum," private transactions are now free, and, to indemnify himself on this side, he sells to private individuals and even to towns,42100 by agreement, on understood terms, and as dear as he pleases; all the dearer because through the legal requisitions the towns are half empty, and there are fewer sacks of grain for a larger number of purchasers; hence his losses by the government are more than made up by his gains on private parties; he gains in the end, and that is why he persists in farming.

The weight, however, of which he relieves himself falls upon the overburdened buyer, and this weight, already excessive, goes on increasing, through another effect of the revolutionary institution, until it becomes ten-fold and even a hundred-fold.—The only money, in fact, which private individuals possess melts away in their hands, and, so to say, destroys itself. When the guillotine stops working, the assignat, losing its official value, falls to its real value. In August, 1794, the loss on it is sixty six per cent., in October, seventy two per cent., in December, seventy eight per cent., in January, 1795, eighty one per cent., and after that date the constant issues of enormous amounts, five hundred millions, then a billion, a billion and a half, and, finally, two billions a month, hastens its depreciation.42101 The greater the depreciation of the assignats the greater the amount the government is obliged to issue to provide for its expenses, and the more it issues the more it causes their depreciation, so that the decline which increases the issue increases the depreciation, until, finally, the assignat comes down to nothing. On March II, 1795, the louis d'or brings two hundred and five francs in assignats, May 11, four hundred francs, June 12, one thousand francs, in the month of October, one thousand seven hundred francs, November 13, two thousand eight hundred and fifty francs, November 21 three thousand francs, and six months later, nineteen thousand francs. Accordingly, an assignat of one hundred francs is worth in June, 1795, four francs, in August three francs, in November fifteen sous, in December ten sous, and then five sous. Naturally, all provisions rise proportionately in price. A pound of bread in Paris, January 2, 1796, costs fifty francs, a pound of meat sixty francs, a pound of candles one hundred and eighty francs, a bushel of potatoes two hundred francs, a bottle of wine one hundred francs. The reader may imagine, if he can, the distress of people with small incomes, pensioners and employees, mechanics and artisans in the towns out of work,42102 in brief, all who have nothing but a small package of assignats to live on, and who have nothing to do, whose indispensable wants are not directly supplied by the labor of their own hands in producing wine, candles, meat, potatoes and bread.

Immediately after the abolition of the "maximum,"42103 the cry of hunger increases. From month to month its accents become more painful and vehement in proportion to the increased dearness of provisions, especially in the summer of 1795, as the harvesting draws near, when the granaries, filled by the crop of 1794, are getting empty. And these hungering cries go up by millions: for a good many of the departments in France do not produce sufficient grain for home consumption, this being the case in fertile wheat departments, and likewise in certain districts; cries also go up from the large and small towns, while in each village numbers of peasants fast because they have no land to provide them with food, or because they lack strength, health, employment and wages. "For a fortnight past," writes a municipal body in Seine-et-Marne,42104 "at least two hundred citizens in our commune are without bread, grain and flour; they have had no other food than bran and vegetables. We see with sorrow children deprived of nourishment, their nurses without milk, unable to suckle them; old men falling down through inanition, and young men in the fields too weak to stand up to their work." And other communes in the district "are about in the same condition." The same spectacle is visible throughout the Ile-de-France, Normandy, and in Picardy. Around Dieppe, in the country,42105 entire communes support themselves on herbs and bran. "Citizen representatives," write the administrators, "we can no longer maintain ourselves. Our fellow citizens reproach us with having despoiled them of their grain in favor of the large communes."—"All means of subsistence are exhausted," writes the district of Louviers;42106 "we are reduced here for a month past to eating bran bread and boiled herbs, and even this rude food is getting scarce. Bear in mind that we have seventy-one thousand people to govern, at this very time subject to all the horrors of famine, a large number of them having already perished, some with hunger and others with diseases engendered by the poor food they live on. "—In the Caen district,42107 "the unripe peas, horse peas, beans, and green barley and rye are attacked;" mothers and children go after these in the fields in default of other food; "other vegetables in the gardens are already consumed; furniture, the comforts of the well to do class, have become the prey of the farming egoist; having nothing more to sell they consequently have nothing with which to obtain a morsel of bread."

"It is impossible," writes the representative on mission, "to wait for the crop without further aid. As long as bran lasted the people ate that; none can now be found and despair is at its height. I have not seen the sun since I came. The harvest will be a month behind. What shall we do? What will become of us?"—"In Picardy," writes the Beauvais district, "the great majority of people in the rural communes search the woods" to find mushrooms, berries and wild fruits.42108 "They think themselves lucky," says the Bapaume district, "if they can get a share of the food of animals." "In many communes," the district of Vervier reports, "the inhabitants are reduced to living on herbage." "Many families, entire communes," reports the Laon commissary, "have been without bread two or three months and live on bran or herbs.... Mothers of families, children, old men, pregnant women, come to the (members of the) Directory for bread and often faint in their arms.

And yet, great as the famine is in the country it is worse in the towns; and the proof of it is that the starving people flock into the country to find whatever they can to live on, no matter how, and, generally speaking, in vain.—"Three quarters of our fellow citizens," writes the Rozoy municipality,42109 "are forced to quit work and overrun the country here and there, among the farmers, to obtain bread for specie, and with more entreaty than the poorest wretches; for the most part, they return with tears in their eyes at not being able to find, not merely a bushel of wheat, but a pound of bread." "Yesterday," writes the Montreuil-sur-Mer municipality,42110 "more than two hundred of our citizens set out to beg in the country," and, when they get nothing, they steal. "Bands of brigands42111 spread through the country and pillage all dwellings anywise remote. ... Grain, flour, bread, cattle, poultry, stuffs, etc., all come in play. Our terrified shepherds are no longer willing to sleep in their sheep pens and are leaving us." The most timid dig Carrots at night or, during the day, gather dandelions; but their town stomachs cannot digest this food. "Lately," writes the procureur—syndic of Saint-Germain,42112 "the corpse of a father of a family, found in the fields with his mouth still filled with the grass he had striven to chew, exasperates and arouses the spirit of the poor creatures awaiting a similar fate."

What then, do people in the towns do in order to survive?—In small towns or scattered villages, each municipality, using what gendarmes it has, makes legal requisitions in its vicinity, and sometimes the commune obtains from the government a charitable gift of wheat, oats, rice or assignats. But the quantity of grain it receives is so small, one asks how it is that, after two months, six months or a year of such a system, that half of the inhabitants are not in the grave yard. I suppose that many of them live on what they raise in their gardens, or on their small farms; others are helped by their relations, neighbors and companions; in any event, it is clear that the human body is very resistant, and a few mouthfuls suffice to keep it going a long time.—At Ervy,42113 in Aube, "not a grain of wheat has been brought in the last two market days." "To morrow,42114 Prairial 25, in Bapaume, the main town of the district, there will be only two bushels of flour left (for food of any sort)." "At Boulogne-sur-Mer, for the past ten days, there has been distributed to each person only three pounds of bad barley, or maslin, without knowing whether we can again distribute this miserable ration next decade." Out of sixteen hundred inhabitants in Brionne, "twelve hundred and sixty42115 are reduced to the small portion of wheat they receive at the market, and which, unfortunately, for too long a time, has been reduced from eight to three ounces of wheat for each person, every eight days." For three months past, in Seine et Marne,42116 in "the commune of Meaux, that of LafertÉ, Lagny, Daumartin, and other principal towns of the canton, they have had only half a pound per head, for each day, of bad bread." In Seine et Oise, "citizens of the neighborhood of Paris and even of Versailles42117 state that they are reduced to four ounces of bread." At Saint-Denis,42118 with a population of six thousand, "a large part of the inhabitants, worn out with suffering, betake themselves to the charity depots. Workmen, especially, cannot do their work for lack of food. A good many women, mothers and nurses, have been found in their houses unconscious, without any sign of life in them, and many have died with their infants at their breasts." Even in a larger and less forsaken town, Saint-Germain,42119 the misery surpasses all that one can imagine. "Half-a-pound of flour for each inhabitant," not daily, but at long intervals; "bread at fifteen and sixteen francs the pound and all other provisions at the same rate; a people which is sinking, losing hope and perishing. Yesterday, for the fÊte of the 9th of Thermidor, not a sign of rejoicing; on the contrary, symptoms of general and profound depression, tottering specters in the streets, mournful shrieks of ravaging hunger or shouts of rage, almost every one, driven to the last extremity of misery, welcoming death as a boon."

Such is the aspect of these huge artificial agglomerations, where the soil, made sterile by habitation, bears only stones, and where twenty, thirty, fifty and a hundred thousand suffering stomachs have to obtain from ten, twenty and thirty leagues off their first and last mouthful of food. Within these close pens long lines of human sheep huddle together every day bleating and trembling around almost empty troughs, and only through extraordinary efforts do the shepherds daily succeed in providing them with a little nourishment. The central government, strenuously appealed to, enlarges or defines the circle of their requisitions; it authorizes them to borrow, to tax themselves; it lends or gives to them millions of assignats;42120 frequently, in cases of extreme want, it allows them to take so much grain or rice from its storehouses, for a week's supply.—But, in truth, this sort of life is not living, it is only not dying. For one half, and more than one half of the inhabitants simply subsist on rations of bread obtained by long waiting for it at the end of a string of people and delivered at a reduced price. What rations and what bread!"It seems," says the municipality of Troyes, "that42121 the country has anathematized the towns. Formerly, the finest grain was brought to market; the farmer kept the inferior quality and consumed it at home. Now it is the reverse, and this is carried still further, for, not only do we receive no wheat whatever, but the farmers give us sprouted barley and rye, which they reserve for our commune; the farmer who has none arranges with those who have, so as to buy it and deliver it in town, and sell his good wheat elsewhere. Half a pound per day and per head, in PluviÔse, to the thirteen thousand or fourteen thousand indigent in Troyes; then a quarter of a pound, and, finally, two ounces with a little rice and some dried vegetables, "which feeble resource is going to fail us."42122 Half a pound in PluviÔse, to the twenty thousand needy in Amiens, which ration is only nominal, for "it often happens that each individual gets only four ounces, while the distribution has repeatedly failed three days in succession,'' and this continues. Six months later, Fructidor 7, Amiens has but sixty nine quintals of flour in its market storehouse, "an insufficient quantity for distribution this very day; to morrow, it will be impossible to make any distribution at all, and the day after to morrow the needy population of this commune will be brought down to absolute famine."—"Complete desperation! There are already "many suicides."42123 At other times, rage predominates and there are riots. At Evreux,42124 Germinal 21, a riot breaks out, owing to the delivery of only two pounds of flour per head and per week, and because three days before, only a pound and a half was delivered. There is a riot at Dieppe,42125 Prairial 14 and 15, because "the people are reduced here to three or four ounces of bread." There is another at Vervins, Prairial 9, because the municipality which obtains bread at a cost of seven and eight francs a pound, raises the price from twenty-five to fifty sous. At Lille, an insurrection breaks out Messidor 4, because the municipality, paying nine francs for bread, can give it to the poor only for about twenty and thirty sous.—Lyons, during the month of NivÔse, remains without bread "for five full days."42126 At Chartres, Thermidor 15,42127 the distribution of bread for a month is only eight ounces a day, and there is not enough to keep this up until the 20th of Thermidor. On the fifteenth of Fructidor, La Rochelle writes that "its public distributions, reduced to seven or eight ounces of bread, are on the point of failing entirely." For four months, at Painboeuf, the ration is but the quarter of a pound of bread.42128 And the same at Nantes, which has eighty-two thousand inhabitants and swarms with the wretched; "the distribution never exceeded four ounces a day," and that only for the past year. The same at Rouen, which contains sixty thousand inhabitants; and, in addition, within the past fortnight the distribution has failed three times. In other reports, those who are well-off suffer more than the indigent because they take no part in the communal distribution, "all resources for obtaining food being, so to say, interdicted to them."—Five ounces of bread per diem for four months is the allowance to the forty thousand inhabitants of Caen and its district.42129 A great many in the town, as well as in the country, live on bran and wild herbs." At the end of Prairial, "there is not a bushel of grain in the town storehouses, while the requisitions, enforced in the most rigorous and imposing style, produce nothing or next to nothing." Misery augments from week to week: "it is impossible to form any idea of it; the people of Caen live on brown bread and the blood of cattle. ... Every countenance bears traces of the famine... Faces are of livid hue.... It is impossible to await the new crop, until the end of Fructidor."—Such are the exclamations everywhere. The object now, indeed, is to cross the narrowest and most terrible defile; a fortnight more of absolute fasting and hundreds of thousands of lives would be sacrificed.42130 At this moment the government half opens the doors of its storehouses; it lends a few sacks of flour on condition of re-payment,—for example, at Cherbourg a few hundreds of quintals of oats; by means of oat bread, the poor can subsist until the coming harvest. But above all, it doubles its guard and shows its bayonets. At Nancy, a traveler sees42131 "more than three thousand persons soliciting in vain for a few pounds of flour." They are dispersed with the butt-ends of muskets.—Thus are the peasantry taught patriotism and the townspeople patience. Physical constraint exercised on all in the name of all; this is the only procedure which an arbitrary socialism can resort to for the distribution of food and to discipline starvation.