They are placed in a row in front of
the bodies of the previous day and shot. Those who do not fall, see
the guns reloaded; these are again shot and the wounded dispatched
with the butt ends of the muskets. Some of the Germans then rifle the
bodies, while others strip them and "place them on their backs." - To
find workmen for this task, it is necessary to descend, not only to
the lowest wretches in France but, again, to the brutes of a foreign
race and tongue, and yet lower still, to an inferior race degraded by
slavery and perverted by license.
Such, from the top to the bottom of the ladder, at every stage of
authority and obedience, is the ruling staff of the revolutionary
government.[170] Through its recruits and its work, through its morals
and modes of proceeding, it evokes the almost forgotten image of its
predecessors, for there is an image of it in the period from the
fourteenth to the seventeenth century. At that time also, society was
frequently overcome and ravaged by barbarians; dangerous nomads,
malevolent outcasts, bandits turned into soldiers suddenly pounced
down on an industrious and peaceful population. Such was the case in
France with the "Routiers" and the "Tard-venus," at Rome with the army
of the Constable of Bourbon, in Flanders with the bands of the Duke of
Alba and the Duke of Parma, in Westphalia and in Alsace, with
Wallenstein's veterans, and those of Bernard of Saxe-Weimar.
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