[28] We might today call this sentiment a desire to acquire and retain. (Sentiment of acquisiton). (SR.)[29] Taine's remark in a footnote. (SR.)[30] Archives Nationales, D., 55, I., file 2. (Letter by Joifroy, national agent in the district of Bar-sur-Aube, Germinal 5, year III.)"Most of the farmers, to escape the requisition, have sold their horses and replaced them with oxen." - Memoirs (in ms.) of M. Dufort de Cheverney (communicated by M. Robert de Crévec?ur). In June, 1793, "the requisitions fall like hail, every week, on wheat, hay, straw, oats, etc.," all at prices fixed by the contractors, who make deductions, postpone and pay with difficulty. Then come requisitions for hogs. "This was depriving all the country folks of what they lived on." As the requisitions called for live hogs, there was a hog St. Bartholomew. Everybody killed his pig and salted it down."(Environs of Blois.) In relation to refusing to gather in crops, see further on. - Dauban, "Paris in 1794, p.229. (Ventose 24, general orders by Henriot.) "Citizen Guillon being on duty outside the walls, saw with sorrow that citizens were cutting their wheat to feed rabbits with."[31] Decree of Messidor 23, year II., on the consolidation with the national domain of the assets and liabilities of hospitals and other charitable institutions. (See reports of prefets on the effect of this law, on the ruin of the hospitals, on the misery of the sick, of foundlings and the infirm, from years IX. to XIII.) - Decrees of August 8 and 12, 1793, and July 24, 1794, on academies and literary societies. - Decree of August 24, 1793, § 29, on the assets and liabilities of communes.
[32] Schmidt, I., 144. (Two billions September 27, 1793; one billion four hundred millions June 19, 1794.) - Decree of August 24, September 13, 1793, on the conversion of title-deeds and the formation of the Grand Ledger. - Decrees of July 31, August 30 and September 5, on calling in the assignats à face royale. - Decrees of August 1 and September 5, 1793, on the refusal to accept assignats at par.
[33] Archives Nationales, F.7, 4421. (Documents on the revolutionary taxes organized at Troyes, Brumaire 11, year II.) Three hundred and seventy-three persons are taxed, especially manufacturers, merchants and land-owners; the minimum of the tax is one hundred francs, the maximum fifty thousand francs, the total being one million seven hundred and sixty-two thousand seven hundred francs. Seventy-six petitions attached to the papers show exactly the situation of things in relation to trade, manufactures and property, the state of fortunes and credit of the upper and lower bourgeois class.
[34] Mallet-Dupan, "Mémoires," II., 17. "I have seen the thirty-second list of émigrés at Marseilles, merely of those whose possessions have been confiscated and sold; there are twelve thousand of them, and the lists were not finished." - Reports of préfets. (Var by Fanchet, year IX.) "The emigration of 1793 throws upon Leghorn and the whole Italian coast a very large number of Marseilles and Toulon traders. These men, generally industrious, have established (there)more than one hundred and sixty soap factories and opened a market for the oil of this region. This event may be likened to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes." - Cf. the reports on the departments of the Rh?ne, Aude, Lot and Garonne, Lower Pyrenees, Orme, etc.
[35] Archives des Affaires étrangères, vol. 332. (Letter of Désgranges, Bordeaux, Brumaire 12, year II.) "Nobody here talks about trade any more than if it had never existed."[36] Dr. Ja?n, "Choix de documents et lettres privées trouvees dans des papiers de famille," p.144. (Letter of Géd?on Ja?n, banker at Paris, November 18, 1793.) "Business carried on with difficulty and at a great risk occasion frequent and serious losses, credit and resources being almost nothing."[37] Archives Nationales, F.7, 2475. (Letters of Thullier, procureur-syndic of the Paris department, September 7 and 10, 1793. - Report by a member of the Piques section, September 8 and 10, 1793. - Cf. the petitions of traders and lawyers imprisoned at Troyes, Strasbourg, Bordeaux, etc. - Archives Nationales, AF.,II., 271. Letter of Francastel: "At least three thousand monopolist aristocrats have been arrested at Nantes.... and this is not the last purification."[38] Decrees of May 4, 15, 19, 20 and 23, and of August 30, 1793. -Decrees of July 26, August 15, September II, 1793, and February 24, 1794. - Camille Boursier, "Essai sur la Terreur en Anjou," p. 254.
(Letter of Buissart to his friend Maximilian Robespierre, Arras, Pluviose 14, year II.) "we are dying with starvation in the midst of abundance; I think that the mercantile aristocracy ought to be killed out like the nobles and priests. The communes, with the help of a storehouse of food and goods must alone be allowed to trade. This idea, well carried out, can be realized; then, the benefits of trade will turn to the advantage of the Republic, that is to say, to the advantage of buyer and seller."[39] Archives Nationales, AF., II., 49. (Documents on the levy of revolutionary taxes, Belfort, Brumaire 30, year II.) " Verneur, sr., taxed at ten thousand livres, for having withheld goods deposited with him by his sister, in order to save them from the coming taxation."Campardon I., 292. (Judgments of the revolutionary commission at Strasbourg.) - "The head-clerk in Hecht's apothecary shop is accused of selling two ounces of rhubarb and manna at fifty-four sous; Hecht, the proprietor, is condemned to a fine of fifteen thousand livres.