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[ "Archives nationales," A F.,VI., 1297. (Documents 206 to 210.) (Report to the Emperor by Count Dumas, April 10, 1810.) Besides the 170 millions of penalties 1,675,457 francs of penalty were inflicted on 2335 individuals, "abettors or accomplices."—Ibid., A F.,VI., 1051. (Report of Gen. Lacoste on the department of Haute-Loire, Oct. 13, 1808.) "He always calculated in this department on the desertion of one-half of the conscripts. In most of the cantons the gendarmes traffic with the conscription shamefully; certain conscripts pension them to show them favors."—Ibid., A F.,VI., 1052. (Report by Pelet, Jan. 12, 1812.) "The operation of the conscription has improved (in the Herault); the contingents of 1811 have been furnished. There remained 1800 refractory, or deserters of the previous classes; 1600 have been arrested or made to surrender by the flying column; 200 have still to be pursued." Faber,—"Notice (1807) sur l'intérieur de la France," p. 141: "Desertion, especially on the frontiers, is occasionally frightful; 80 deserters out of 160 have sometimes been arrested."—Ibid., p.149: It has been stated in the public journals that in 1801 the court in session at Lille had condemned 135 refractory out of the annual conscription, and that which holds its sittings at Ghent had condemned 70. Now, 200 conscripts form the maximum of what an arrondissement in a department could furnish."—Ibid, p.145. "France resembles a vast house of detention where everybody is suspicious of his neighbor, where each avoids the other... One often sees a young man with a gendarme at his heels oftentimes, on looking closely, this young man's hands are found tied, or he is handcuffed."—Mathieu Dumas, III., 507 (After the battle of Dresden, in the Dresden hospitals): "I observed, with sorrow, that many of these men were slightly wounded: most of them, young conscripts just arrived in the army, had not been wounded by the enemy's fire, but they had mutilated each other's feet and hands. Antecedents of this kind, of equally bad augury, had already been remarked in the campaign of 1809.">[
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[ De Ségur, III., 474.—Thiers, XIV., 159. (One month after crossing the Niemen one hundred and fifty thousand men had dropped out of the ranks.)]
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[ Bulletin 29 (December 3, 1812).]
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[ "De Pradt, Histoire de l'Ambassade de Varsovie," p.219.]
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[ M. de Metternich, I., 147.—Fain, "Manuscript," of 1813, II., 26. (Napoleon's address to his generals.) "What we want is a complete triumph. To abandon this or that province is not the question; our political superiority and our existence depend on it. "—II., 41, 42. (Words of Napoleon to Metternich.) "And it is my father-in-law who favors such a project! And he sends you! In what attitude does he wish to place me before the French people? He is strangely deluded if he thinks that a mutilated throne can offer an asylum to his daughter and grandson.... Ah, Metternich, how much has England given you to make you play this part against me?" (This last phrase, omitted in Metternich's narrative, is a characteristic trait; Napoleon at this decisive moment, remains insulting and aggressive, gratuitously and even to his own destruction.)]