"[153] -
Sometimes the scene, theatrical and played by the light of flambeaux,
makes the actors think that they have performed an extraordinary and
meritorious action, "that they have saved the country." "This very
night," writes the agent at Bordeaux,[154] nearly three thousand men
have been engaged in an important undertaking, with the members of the
Revolutionary Committee and of the municipality at the head of it.
They visited every wholesale dealer's store in town and in the
Faubourg des Chartrons, taking possession of their letter-books,
sealing up their desks, arresting the merchants and putting them in
the Seminiare. . . . Woe to the guilty ! " - If the prompt
confinement of an entire class of individuals is a fine thing for a
town, the seizure of a whole town itself is still more imposing.
Leaving Marseilles with a small army,[155] commanded by two sans-
culottes, they surround Martigne and enter it as if it were a mill.
The catch is superb; in this town of five thousand souls there are
only seventeen patriots; the rest are Federalists or Moderates. Hence
a general disarmament and domiciliary visits. The conquerors depart,
carrying off every able-bodied boy, "five hundred lads subject to the
conscription, and leave in the town a company of sans-culottes to
enforce obedience.
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