[87] Two hundred prominent merchants
are arrested in one night; more than fifteen hundred persons are
imprisoned; all who are well off are ransomed, even those against who
no political charge could be made; nine millions of fines are levied
against "rich egoists." One of these,[88] accused of "indifference and
moderatism," pays twenty thousand francs "not to be harnessed to the
car of the Revolution;" another "convicted of having shown contempt
for his section and for the poor by giving thirty livres per months,"
is taxed at one million two hundred thousand livres, while the new
authorities, a crooked mayor and twelve knaves composing the
Revolutionary Committee, traffic in lives and property.89 At
Marseilles, says Danton,[90] the object is "to give the commercial
aristocracy an important lesson;" we must "show ourselves as terrible
to traders as to nobles and priests;" consequently, twelve thousand of
them are proscribed and their possessions sold.[91] From the first day
the guillotine works as fast as possible; nevertheless, it does not
work fast enough for Representative Fr?ron who finds the means for
making it work faster.
"The military commission we have established in place of the
revolutionary tribunal," he writes, "works frightfully fast against
the conspirators.
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