untry, they threaten to set their houses on fire.--There
is no asylum to be had, either in their own homes nor in the homes of
others, nor in places along the roads, fugitives being stopped in all
the small villages and market-towns. In Dauphiny[1342] "the Abbess of
St. Pierre de Lyon, one of the nuns, M. de Perrotin, M. de Bellegarde,
the Marquis de la Tour-du-Pin, and the Chevalier de Moidieu, are
arrested at Champier by the armed population, led to the Cote
Saint-Andre, confined in the town-hall, whence they send to Grenoble
for assistance," and, to have them released, the Grenoble Committee is
obliged to send commissioners. Their only refuge is in the large cities,
where some semblance of a precarious order exists, and in the ranks of
the City Guards, which march from Lyons, Dijon, and Grenoble, to keep
the inundation down. Throughout the country scattered chateaux are
swallowed up by the popular tide, and, as the feudal rights are often in
plebeian hands, it insensibly rises beyond its first overflow.--There
is no limit to an insurrection against property. This one extends from
abbeys and chateaux to the "houses of the bourgeoisie."[1343] The grudge
at first was confined to the holders of charters; now it is extended to
all who possess anything. Well-to-do farmers and priests abandon their
parishes and fly to the towns. Travelers are put to ransom. Thieves,
robbers, and returned convicts, at the head of armed bands, seize
whatever they can lay their hands on. Cupidity becomes inflamed by such
examples; on domains which are deserted and in a state of confusion,
where there is nothing to indicate a master's presence, all seems to
lapse to the first comer. A small farmer of the neighborhood has carried
away wine and returns the following day in search of hay. All the
furniture of a chateau in Dauphin is removed, even to the hinges of the
doors, by a large reinforcement of carts.--" It is the war of the
poor against the rich," says a deputy, "and, on the 3rd of August, the
Committee on Reports declares to the National Assembly "that no kind of
property has been spared." In Franche-Comte, "nearly forty chateaux and
seignorial mansions have been pillaged or burnt."[1344] From Lancers
to Gray about three out of five chateaux are sacked. In Dauphin
twenty-seven are burned or destroyed; five in the small district of
Viennese, and, besides these, all the monasteries--nine at least in
Auvergne, seventy-two, it is said, in Macon