" Finally, there is the law of
hostages, this being atrocious, conceived in the spirit of September,
1792, suggested by the famous motions of Collot d'Herbois against
those in confinement, and of Billaud-Varennes against the youth, Louis
XVII., but extended, elaborated and drawn up with cool legal acumen,
and enforced and applied with the foresight of an administrator. --
Remark that, without counting the Belgian departments, where an
extensive insurrection is under way and spreading, more than one-half
of the territory falls under the operation of this law. for, out of
the eighty-six departments of France,[105] properly so called, forty-
five are at this moment, according to the terms of the decree,[106] "
declared to be in a state of civil uprising." Actually, in these
departments, according to official reports, armed mobs of conscripts
are resisting the authorities charged with recruiting them, bands of
two hundred, three hundred and eight hundred men overrun the country,
troops of brigands force open the prisons, assassinate the gendarmes
and set their inmates free; the tax-collectors are robbed, killed or
maimed, municipal officers slain, proprietors ransomed, estates
devastated, and diligences stopped on the highways.
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