" It is certain that obedience will be maintained
and that the garrison, joined to the seventeen patriots, will do as
they like with their conquest.
In effect, all, both bodies and goods, are at their disposal, and they
consequently begin with the surrounding countryside, entering private
houses to get at their stores, also the farmhouses to have the grain
threshed, in order to verify the declarations of their owners and see
if these are correct: if the grain is not threshed out at once it will
be done summarily and confiscated, while the owner will be sentenced
to twelve months in irons; if the declaration is not correct, he is
condemned as a monopolist and punished with death. Armed with this
order,[156] each band takes the field and gathers together not only
grain, but supplies of every description. "That of Grenoble, the
agent writes,[157] does wonderfully; in one little commune alone, four
hundred measures of wheat, twelve hundred eggs, and six hundred pounds
of butter had been found. All this was quickly on the way to
Grenoble." In the vicinity of Paris, the forerunners of the throng,
provided "with pitchforks and bayonets, rush to the farms, take oxen
out of their stalls, grab sheep and chickens, burn the barns, and sell
their booty to speculators.
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