- On all sides there is a swarm of working people, and
resistance is fruitless. There are too many of them, the
constabulary being drowned in the flood. For, these rustic
legislators are the National Guard itself, and when they vote
reductions upon, or requisitions for, supplies, they enforce their
demands with their guns. The municipal officials, willingly or
unwillingly, must needs serve the insurgents. At Donjon the
Electoral Assembly has seized the mayor of the place and threatened
to kill him, or to burn his house, if he did not put the cutting of
wheat at forty sous; whereupon he signs, and all the mayors with
him, "under the penalty of death." As soon as this is done the
peasants, "to the sound of fifes and drums," spread through the
neighboring parishes and force the delivery of wheat at forty sous,
and show such a determined spirit that the four brigades of
gendarmes sent out against them think it best to retire. - Not
content with taking what they want, they provide for reserve
supplies; wheat is a prisoner.
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