33137 ([return])
[ Archives Nationales, F.7, 7164. (Department of Var "Ideé générale et appréciation avec détails sur chaque canton," year V.)]
33138 ([return])
[ Ibid., F.7, 7171 (No. 7915).—(Department of Bouches-du-Rhône, "Ideé générale," year V.)—(Letters of Miollis, commissioner of the Directory in the department, Ventôse 14 and 16, year V. Letter of Gen. Willot to the Minister, Ventôse 10, and of Gen. Merle to Gen. Willot, Ventôse 17, year V.) "Several sections of anarchists travel from one commune to another exciting weak citizens to riots and getting them to take part in the horrors they are meditating."—Ibid., F 7, 7164. Letter of Gen. Willot to the Minister, Aries, Pluviôse 12, year V., with supporting documents, and especially a letter of the director of the jury, on the violence committed by, and the reign of, the Jacobins in Aries.) Their party "is composed of the vilest artisans and nearly all the sailors." The municipality recruited amongst former terrorists, "has enforced for a year back the agrarian law, devastation of the forests, pillage of the wheat-crops, by bands of armed men under pretext of the right of gleaning, the robbery of animals at the plough as well as of the flocks," etc.]
33139 ([return])
[ Ibid., F.7, 7171. "These commissioners (of the quarter) notify the exclusives, and even swindlers, when warrants are out against them.... The same measures carried out in the primary assemblies on the 1st of Thermidor last, in the selection of municipal officers, have been successfully revived in the organization of the National Guard—threats, insults, shouting, assaults, compulsory ejection from meetings then governed by the amnestied, finally, the appointment of the latter to the principal offices. In effect, all, beginning with the places of battalion leaders and reaching to those of corporals, are exclusively filled by their partisans. The result is that the honest, to whom serving with men regarded by them with aversion is repugnant, employ substitutes instead of mounting guard themselves, the security of the town being in the hands of those who themselves ought to be watched.">[
33140 ([return])
[ Archives Nationales, F.7, 3273. (Letter of Mérard, former administrator and judge in 1790 and 1791, in years III., IV. and V., to the Minister, Apt, Pluviôse 15, year III., with personal references and documentary evidence.) "I can no longer refrain at the sight of so many horrors.... The justices of the peace and the director of the jury excuse themselves on the ground that no denunciations or witnesses are brought forward. Who would dare appear against men arrogating to themselves the title of superior patriots, foremost in every revolutionary crisis, and with friends in every commune and protectors in all high places? The favor they enjoyed was such that the commune of Gordes was free of any levy of conscripts and from all requisitions. People thus disposed, they said, to second civic and administrative views, could not be humored too much..... This discouraging state of things simply results from the weakness, inexperience, ignorance, apathy and immorality of the public functionaries who, since the 18th of Fructidor, year V., swarm, with a few exceptions only, among the constituted authorities. Whatever is most foul and incompetent is in office, every good citizen being frightened to death."—Ibid. (Letter of Montauban, director of the registry since 1793 to the Minister of the Interior, a compatriot, Avignon, Pluviôse 7, year VII.) "Honest folks are constantly annoyed and put down by the authors and managers of the 'Glaciere'.... . by the tools of the bloody tribunal of Orange and the incendiaries of Bedouim." He enjoins secrecy on this letter, which, "if known to the Glacièrists, or Orangeists, would cost him his life.">[
33141 ([return])
[ Ibid., F.7, 7164. (Department of Var, year V., "Ideé Générale.") "National character is gone; it is even demoralized: an office-holder who has not made his fortune quickly is regarded as a fool.">[