ted, kept in his room with
a guard over him, and then, although ill, sent out of the town under an
escort.--At Strasbourg "thirty-six houses of magistrates are marked
for pillage."[1305]--At Besancon, the President of the Parliament is
constrained to let out of prison the insurgents arrested in a late
out-break, and to publicly burn the whole of the papers belonging to
the prosecution.--In Alsace, since the beginning of the troubles, the
provosts were obliged to fly, the bailiffs and manorial judges hid
themselves, the forest-inspectors ran away, and the houses of the guards
were demolished. One man, sixty years of age, is outrageously beaten and
marched about the village, the people, meanwhile, pulling out his hair;
nothing remains of his dwelling but the walls and a portion of the roof.
All his furniture and effects are broken up, burnt or stolen. He is
forced to sign, along with his wife, an act by which he binds himself
to refund all penalties inflicted by him, and to abandon all claims
for damages for the injuries to which he has just been subjected.--In
Franche-Comte the authorities dare not condemn delinquents, and the
police do not arrest them; the military commandant writes that "crimes
of every kind are on the increase, and that he has no means of punishing
them." Insubordination is permanent in all the provinces; one of the
provincial commissions states with sadness:

"When all powers are in confusion and annihilated, when public force
no longer exists, when all ties are sundered, when every individual
considers himself relieved from all kinds of obligation, when public
authority no longer dares make itself felt, and it is a crime to have
been clothed with it, what can be expected of our efforts to restore
order?"[1306]

All that remains of this great demolished State is forty thousand
groups of people, each separated and isolated, in towns and small market
villages where municipal bodies, elected committees, and improvised
National Guards strive to prevent the worst excesses.--But these local
chiefs are novices; they are human, and they are timid. Chosen by
acclamation they believe in popular rights; in the midst of riots they
feel themselves in danger. Hence, they generally obey the crowd.

"Rarely," says one of the provincial commissions reports, "do the
municipal authorities issue a summons; they allow the greatest excesses
rather than enter upon prosecutions for which, sooner or later, they
may be hel