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Taine, Hippolyte, 1828-1893

"The French Revolution - Volume 3"


The revolutionary r?gime with anti-Christian despoiling and leveling
laws, is despotically applied. The 18th of Fructidor is carried out
over and over again; the constitution is revised according to the last
Parisian pattern, while the Legislative Corps and Directory are
repeatedly purged in military fashion.[121] Only valets are tolerated
at the head of it: its army is added to the French army; twenty
thousand Swiss are drafted in Switzerland and made to fight against
the Swiss and the friends of Switzerland. Belgium, incorporated with
France, is subjected to the conscription. National and religious
sentiment suppressed, exploited, offended, to the extend of stirring
up insurrections,[122] religious and national. Five or six rural and
lasting Vend?es take place in Belgium, Switzerland, Piedmont, Venetia,
Lombardy, the Roman States and Naples, while fire, pillaging and
shooting are employed to repress them. Any description of this would
be feeble; statements in figures are necessary and I can give but two.
One of them is the list of robberies committed abroad,[123] and this
comprises only the rapine executed according to order; it omits
private plunderings without any orders by officers, generals, soldiers
and commissaries; these are enormous, but cannot be estimated.


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