"
Only the federates of Mayenne, Ile-et-Vilaine, and especially of
Finisterre, were "young men well brought up and well informed about
the cause they were going to support." In Normandy, the Central
Committee, unable to do better, has to recruit its soldiers, and
especially gunners, from the band of Carabots, former Jacobins, a lot
of ruffians ready for anything, pillagers and runaways at the first
canon-shot. At Caen, Wimpffen, having ordered the eight battalions of
the National Guard to assemble in the court, demands volunteers and
finds that only seventeen step forth; on the following day a formal
requisition brings out only one hundred and thirty combatants; other
towns, except Vire, which furnishes about twenty, refuse their
contingent. In short, a marching army cannot be formed, or, if it
does march, it halts at the first station, that of Evreux before
reaching Vernon, and that of Marseilles at the walls of Avignon.
On the other hand, by virtue of being sincere and logical, those who
have rebelled entertain scruples and themselves define the limits of
their insurrection. The fugitive deputies at their head would believe
themselves guilty of usurpation had they, like the "Mountain" at
Paris, constituted themselves at Caen en sovereign assembly[60]:
according to them, their right and their duty is reduced to giving
testimony concerning the 31st of May and the 1st of June, and to
exhorting the people and to being eloquent.
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