" - If anybody fails to conform to the new code
he is punished, and to the advantage of the new sovereigns. In
Ag?nois, a gentleman having paid the rent which was associated with
his fief the people take his receipt from him, mulct him in a sum
equal to that which he paid, and come under his windows to spend the
money on good cheer, in triumph and with derision.
Many of the National Guards who still possess some degree of energy,
several of the municipalities which still preserve some love of
order, and a number of the resident gentry, employ their arms
against these excited swarms of brutal usurpers. Some of the
ruffians, taken in the act, are judged somewhat after the fashion of
a drum-head court-martial, and immediately executed as examples.
Everybody in the country sees that the peril to society is great and
urgent, and that if such acts go unpunished, there will be no such
thing as law and property in France. The Bordeaux parliament,
moreover, insists upon prosecutions.
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