- The large towns themselves are
not safe. Three or four hundred rustics, led by their municipal
officers, forcibly enter Tours, to compel the municipality to lower
the price of corn and diminish the rate of leases. Two thousand
slate-quarry-men, armed with guns, spits, and forks, force their way
into Angers to obtain a reduction on bread, fire upon the guard, and
are charged by the troops and the National Guard; a number remain
dead in the streets, two are hung that very evening, and the red
flag is displayed for eight days. "The town," say the dispatches,
"would have been pillaged and burnt had it not been for the Picardy
regiment." Fortunately, as the crop promises to be a good one,
prices fall. As the Electoral Assemblies are closed, the
fermentation subsides; and towards the end of the year, like a clear
spell in a steady storm, the gleam of a truce appears in the civil
war excited by hunger.
But the truce does not last long, as it is broken in twenty places
by isolated explosions; and towards the month of July, 1791, the
disturbances arising from the uncertainty of basic food supplies
begin again, to cease no more.
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