Four violent
measures concur, together or in turn, to bring about the physical or
social extermination of all Frenchmen who no longer belong to the sect
or the party.
The first operation consists in expelling them from the territory. -
Since 1789, they have been chased off through a forced emigration;
handed over to jacqueries, or popular uprisings, in the country, and
to insurrections in the cities,[1] defenseless and not allowed to
defend themselves, three-fourths of them have left France, simply to
escape popular brutalities against which neither the law nor the
government afforded them any protection. According as the law and the
administration, in becoming more Jacobin, became more hostile to them,
so did they leave in greater crowds. After the 10th of August and 2nd
of September, the flight necessarily was more general; for,
henceforth, if any one persisted in remaining after that date it was
with the almost positive certainty that he would be consigned to a
prison, to await a massacre or the guillotine. About the same time,
the law added to the fugitive the banished, all unsworn priests,
almost an entire class consisting of nearly 40 000 persons.
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