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Taine, Hippolyte, 1828-1893

"The French Revolution - Volume 3"

, until XI.) are exact. Eight
departments, (Doubs, Ain, Eure, Meurthe, Aisne, Aude, Dr?me, Moselle)
furnish the total number of their volunteers, recruits and conscripts,
amounting to 193,343. These three departments (Arthur Young, "Voyage
en France," II., 31) had, in 1790, a population of 2,446,000 souls:
the proportion indicates that out of 26 million Frenchmen a little
more than 2 millions were called up for military service. - On the
other hand, five departments (Doubs, Eure, Meurthe, Aisne, Moselle)
gave, not only the number of their soldiers, 131,322, but likewise
that of their dead, 56,976, or out of 1000 men furnished 435 died.
This proportion shows 870,000 dead out of two million soldiers.
[129] The statistics of the prefects and reports of council-generals
of the year IX. all agree in the statements of the notable diminution
of the masculine adult population. - Lord Malmesbury had already made
the same observation in 1796. ("Diary," October 21 and 23, 1796, from
Calais to Paris.) "Children and women were working in the fields. Men
evidently reduced in number. . . . Carts often drawn by women and
most of them by old people or boys. It is plain that the male
population has diminished; for the women we saw on the road surpassed
the number of men in the proportion of four to one.


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