Directly, or through
them, he makes requisitions, sequestrates or confiscates as he sees
fit, taxes, imprisons, transports or decapitates as he see fit, and,
in his circumscription, he is the pasha.
But he is a pasha with a chain around his neck, and at short tether.
- From and after December, 1793, he is directed "to conform to the
orders of the Committee of Public Safety and report to it every ten
days."[84] The circumscription in which he commands is rigorously
"limited;" "he is reputed to be without power in the other
departments,"[85] while he is not allowed to grow old on his post.
"In every magistrature the grandeur and extent of power is compensated
by the shortness of its duration. Over-prolonged missions would soon
be considered as birthrights."[86] Therefore, at the end of two or
three months, often at the end of a month, the incumbent is recalled
to Paris or dispatched elsewhere, at short notice, on the day named,
in a prompt, absolute and sometimes threatening tone, not as a
colleague one humors, but as a subordinate who is suddenly and
arbitrarily revoked or displaced because he is deemed inadequate, or
"used up." For greater security, oftentimes a member of the Committee,
Couthon, Collot, Saint-Just, or some near relation of a member of the
Committee, a Lebas or young Robespierre, goes personally to the spot
to give the needed impulsion; sometimes, agents simply of the
Committee, taken from outside the Convention, and without any personal
standing, quite young men, Rousselin, Julien de la Dr?me, replace or
watch the representative with powers equal to his.
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