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[ Mallet-Dupan, ibid., number for January 10 1791. "December 31, 1796. Marquis Litta had already paid assessments amounting to 500,000 livres milanais, Marquis T., 420,000, Count Grepi 900,000, and other proprietors in proportion." Ransom of the "Decurioni of Milan, and other hostages sent into France, 1,500,000 livres."—This is in conformity with the Jacobin theory. In the old instructions of Carnot, we read the following sentence: "Assessments must be laid exclusively on the rich; the people must see that we are only liberators.... Enter as benefactors of the people, and at the same time as the scourge of the great, the rich and enemies of the French name." (Carnot, I., 433.)]
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[ Ludovic Sciout, IV., 776. (Reports of the year VII., Archives Nationales, F.7, 7701 and 7718.) "Out of 1,400 men composing the first auxiliary battalion of conscripts, 1087 cowardly deserted their flag (Haute-Loire), and out of 900 recently recruited at Puy, to form the nucleus of the second battalion, 800 again have imitated their example."—Dufort de Cheverney, "Mémoires," September, 1799. "We learned that out of 400 conscripts confined in the (Blois) chateau, who were to set out that night, 100 had disappeared."—October 12, 1799: "The conscripts are in the château to the number of 5 or 600. They say that they will not desert until out of the department and on the road, so as not to compromise their families."—October 14, "200 have deserted, leaving about 300."—Archives Nationales, F.7, 3267. (Reports every ten days on refractory conscripts or deserters arrested by the military police, year VIII. Department of Seine-et-Oise.) In this department alone, there are 66 arrests in Vendémiaire, 136 in Brumaire, 56 in Frimaire and 86 in Pluviôse.]
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[ Mallet-Dupan, No. for January 25, 1799. (Letter from Belgium.) "To-day we see a revolt like that which the United Provinces made against the Duke of Alba. Never have the Belgians since Philip II. displayed similar motives for resistance and vengeance.">[
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[ Decrees of Fructidor 19, year VI. and Vendémiaire 27, year VII.—Mallet-Dupan, No. for November 25, 1798.)]
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[ M. Léonce de Lavergne ("Economie rurale de la France since 1789," p.38) estimates at a million the number of men sacrificed in the wars between 1792 and 1800.—"Trustworthy officials, who, a year a go, have had the official documents in their possession, have certified to me that the war statistics for the levying of troops between 1794 and the middle of 1795 had raised 900,000 men of whom 650,000 had been lost in battle, in the hospitals or by desertion." Mallet-Dupan. (No. for December 10, 1798.—Ibid. (No. for March 20, 1799.) "Dumas affirmed that, in the Legislative Corps, the National Guard had renewed the battalions of the defenders of the country three times.... The fact of the shameful administration of the hospitals is proved through the admissions of generals, commissaries and deputies that the soldiers were dying for want of food and medicine. If we add to this the extravagance with which the leaders of the armies let the me be killed, we can readily comprehend this triple renewal in the space of seven years.—As an illustration there was the village of four hundred and fifty inhabitants in 1789 furnished (1792 and 1793) fifty soldiers. (" Histoire du Village de Croissy, Seine-et-Oise pendant la Revolution," by Campenon.).—La Vendée was a bottomless pit, like Spain and Russia afterwards. "A good republican, who entrusted with the supply the Vendée army with provisions for fifteen months, assured me that out of two hundred thousand men whom he had seen precipitated into this gulf there were not ten thousand that came of it." (Meissner, "Voyage à Paris," p.338, latter end of 1795)—The following figures ("Statistiques des Préfets" years IX., until XI.) are exact. Eight departments, (Doubs, Ain, Eure, Meurthe, Aisne, Aude, Drôme, Moselle) furnish the total number of their volunteers, recruits and conscripts, amounting to 193,343. These three departments (Arthur Young, "Voyage en France," II., 31) had, in 1790, a population of 2,446,000 souls: the proportion indicates that out of 26 million Frenchmen a little more than 2 millions were called up for military service.—On the other hand, five departments (Doubs, Eure, Meurthe, Aisne, Moselle) gave, not only the number of their soldiers, 131,322, but likewise that of their dead, 56,976, or out of 1000 men furnished 435 died. This proportion shows 870,000 dead out of two million soldiers.]