nations, effects which are the natural result of
private passions and isolated interests. Robespierre is said to have
promoted both the destruction of the republican armies and those of La
Vendee, in order to reduce the national population. That he was capable
of imagining such a project is probable--yet we need not, in tracing the
conduct of the war, look farther than to the character of the agents who
were, almost necessarily, employed in it. Nearly every officer qualified
for the command of an army, had either emigrated, or was on service at
the frontiers; and the task of reducing by violence a people who resisted
only because they deemed themselves injured, and who, even in the
estimation of the republicans, could only be mistaken, was naturally
avoided by all men who were not mere adventurers. It might likewise be
the policy of the government to prefer the services of those, who, having
neither reputation nor property, would be more dependent, and whom,
whether they became dangerous by their successes or defeats, it would be
easy to sacrifice.

Either, then, from necessity or choice, the republican armies in La
Vendee were conducted by dissolute and rapacious wretches, at all times
more eager to pillage than fight, and who were engaged in securing their
plunder, when they should have been in pursuit of the enemy. On every
occasion they seemed to retreat, that their ill success might afford them
a pretext for declaring that the next town or village was confederated
with the insurgents, and for delivering it up, in consequence, to murder
and rapine. Such of the soldiers as could fill their pocket-books with
assignats, left their less successful companions, and retired as invalids
to the hospitals: the battalions of Paris (and particularly "the
conquerors of the Bastille") had such ardour for pillage, that every
person possessed of property was, in their sense, an aristocrat, whom it
was lawful to despoil.*

* _"Le pillage a ete porte a son comble--les militaires au lieu de
songer a ce qu'ils avoient a faire, n'ont pense qu'a remplir leurs
sacs, et a voir se perpetuer une guerre aussi avantageuse a leur
interet--beaucoup de simples soldats ont acquis cinquante mille
francs et plus; on en a vu couverts de bijoux, et faisant dans tous
les genres des depenses d'une produgaloite, monstreuse."
Lequinio, Guerre de la Vendee._

"The most unbridled pillage prevailed--officers, i