- The company of
Maratists, the American Hussars and the German Legion at Nantes. -
General character of the Revolutionary government and of the
administrative staff of the Reign of Terror.
The last manipulators of the system remain, the hands which seize, the
armed force which takes bodily hold of men and things. - The first
who are employed for this purpose are the National Guard and the
ordinary gendarmerie. Since 1790, these bodies are of course
constantly weeded out until only fanatics and robots are left;[143]
nevertheless, the weeding-out continues as the system develops itself.
At Strasbourg,[144] on Brumaire 14, the representatives have
dismissed, arrested and sent to Dijon the entire staff of the National
Guard to serve as hostages until peace is secured; three days
afterwards, considering that the cavalry of the town had been mounted
and equipped at its own expense, they deem it aristocratic, bourgeois,
and "suspect," and seize the horses and put the officers in arrest. -
At Troyes, Rousselin, "National civil commissioner," dismisses, for
the same reason, and with not less dispatch, all of the gendarmes at
one stroke, except four, and "puts under requisition their horses,
fully equipped, also their arms, so as to at once mount well known and
tried sans-culottes.
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