- In the first place, the requisitions
continue there is no other way of provisioning the armies and the
cities; the gendarme is always on the road, compelling each village to
contribute its portion of grain, and at the legal rate. The
refractory are subject to keepers, confiscations, fines and
imprisonment; they are confined and kept in the district lock ups "at
their own expense," men and women, twenty two on Pluvi?se 17, year
III., in the district of Bar-sur-Aube ; forty five, Germinal 7, in the
district of Troyes ; forty-five, the same day, in the district of
Nogent-sur-Seine, and twenty others, eight days later, in the same
district, in the commune of Traine alone.[99] - The condition of the
cultivator is certainly not an easy one, while public authority, aided
by the public force, extorts from him all it can at a rate of its own;
moreover, it will soon exact from him one half of his contributions in
kind, and, it must be noted, that at this time, the direct
contributions alone absorb twelve and thirteen sous on the franc of
the revenue. Nevertheless, under this condition, which is that of
laborers in a Muslim country, the French peasant, like the Syrian or
Tunisian peasant, can keep himself alive; for, through the abolition
of the "maximum," private transactions are now free, and, to indemnify
himself on this side, he sells to private individuals and even to
towns,[100] by agreement, on understood terms, and as dear as he
pleases; all the dearer because through the legal requisitions the
towns are half empty, and there are fewer sacks of grain for a larger
number of purchasers ; hence his losses by the government are more
than made up by his gains on private parties; he gains in the end, and
that is why he persists in farming.
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