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[ Ibid., 720. "The balances reported, of which the largest portion is already paid into the vaults of the National Treasury, amount to twenty millions one hundred and sixty-six thousand three hundred and thirty livres."—At Paris, Marseilles, and Bordeaux, in the large towns where tens of millions were raised in three-quarters of the districts, Cambon, three months after Thermidor, could not yet obtain, I will not say the returns, but a statement of the sums raised. The national agents either did not reply to him, or did it vaguely, or stated that in their districts there was neither civic donation nor revolutionary tax, and particularly at Marseilles, where a forced loan had been made of four millions.—Cf. De Martel, "Fouché," P.245. (Memorial of the central administration of Nièvre, Prairial 19, year III.) "The account returned by the city of Nevers amounts to eighty thousand francs, the use of which has never been verified.... This tax, in part payment of the war subsidy, was simply a trap laid by the political actors in order to levy a contribution on honest, credulous citizens."—Ibid., 217. On voluntary gifts and forced taxation cf. at Nantes, the use made of revolutionary taxes, brought out on the trial of the revolutionary committee.]
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[ Ludovic Sciout, IV., 19. Report of Representative Becker. (Journal des Débats et Décrets, p.743, Prairial, year III.) He returns from a mission to Landau and renders an account of the executions committed by the Jacobin agents in the Rhenish provinces. They levied taxes, sword in hand, and threatened the refractory with the guillotine at Strasbourg. The receipts which passed under the reporter's eyes "presented the sum of three millions three hundred and forty-five thousand seven hundred and eighty-five livres, two deniers, whilst our colleague, Cambon, reports only one hundred and thirty-eight thousand paid in.">[
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[ Moniteur, XXII., 754. (Report of Grégoire, Frimaire 24, year III.) "Rascallery—this word recalls the old revolutionary committees, most of which formed the scum of society and which showed so many aptitudes for the double function of robber and persecutor.">[
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[ Archives Nationales, AF., II., 107. (Orders of Representatives Ysabeau and Tallien, Bordeaux, Brumaire 11 and 17, year II.)—Third order, promulgated by the same parties, Frimaire 2, year II., replacing this committee by another of twelve members and six deputies, each at two hundred francs a month. Fourth order, Pluviôse 16, year II., dismissing the members of the foregoing committee, as exagérés and disobedient. It is because they regard their local royalty in quite a serious light.-Ibid., AF., II., 46. ("Extracts from the minutes of the meetings of the revolutionary committee of Bordeaux," Prairial, year II.) This extract, consisting of eighteen pages, shows in detail the inside workings of a revolutionary committee the number of arrested goes on increasing; on the 27th of Prairial there are 1524. The committee is essentially a police office; it delivers certificates of civism, issues warrants of arrest, corresponds with other committees, even very remote, at Limoges, and Clermont-Ferrand, delegates any of its members to make investigations or domicialiary searches, to affix seals, and it receives and transmits denunciations, summons the denounced to appear before it, reads interrogations, writes to the Committee of Public Safety, etc. The following are samples of its warrants of arrest: "Muller, a riding-master, will be confined in the former Petit Seminaire, under suspicion of aristocracy, according to public opinion."—Another example, (Archives Nationales, F.7, 2475. Register of the procès-verbaux of the revolutionary committee of the Piques section, Paris, June 3, 1793.) Warrant of arrest against Boucher, grocer, rue Neuve du Luxembourg, "suspect" of incivisme and "having cherished wicked and perfidious intentions against his wife." Boucher, arrested, declares that, "what he said and did in his own house, concerned nobody but himself." On which he was led to prison.]
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[ Archives Nationales, AF., II., 30 (No.105). Examination of Jean Davilliers, and other ransomed parties.]