I have
not seen the sun since I came. The harvest will be a month behind.
What shall we do? What will become of us?" - "In Picardy," writes the
Beauvais district, "the great majority of people in the rural communes
search the woods" to find mushrooms, berries and wild fruits.[108]
"They think themselves lucky," says the Bapaume district, "if they can
get a share of the food of animals." "In many communes," the district
of Vervier reports, "the inhabitants are reduced to living on
herbage." "Many families, entire communes," reports the Laon
commissary, "have been without bread two or three months and live on
bran or herbs. . . . Mothers of families, children, old men,
pregnant women, come to the (members of the) Directory for bread and
often faint in their arms.
And yet, great as the famine is in the country it is worse in the
towns; and the proof of it is that the starving people flock into the
country to find whatever they can to live on, no matter how, and,
generally speaking, in vain. - "Three quarters of our fellow
citizens," writes the Rozoy municipality,[109] "are forced to quit
work and overrun the country here and there, among the farmers, to
obtain bread for specie, and with more entreaty than the poorest
wretches; for the most part, they return with tears in their eyes at
not being able to find, not merely a bushel of wheat, but a pound of
bread.
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