66] 
assumed, or heen invested with, ex- 
traordinary powers. General Hoche, 
commander-in-chief of the army of 
the Sambre and Meuse, had issued 
orders and precepts to the commis- 
sioners, appointed to receive the 
public levies of money in those 
districts, that shewed the high au- 
thority by which he acted. The 
pay-master of the army had called 
upon them for the remittance of the 
sums accruing from taxes: but the 
general strictly forbad them to obey 
his requisition ; that money being 
necessary to defray the charges of a 
numerous body of troops, to be de- 
tached from his army on a particu- 
lar service. This officer, who was 
a rigid republican, had, from the 
beginning of the contest between 
the councils and the directory, been 
considered by these as a man pecu- 
liarly deserving of their confidence 
in a business, wherein the safety of 
the present governmtent required 
the most spirited exertions. He 
had, in consequence, like the several 
officers in whom the circumstances 
of the times had compelled the di- 
rectory to place high trusts, acted 
with great latitude of authority in 
the posts which he occupied, though, 
to his honour, it was fully acknow- 
ledged, that he behaved with the 
strictest fidelity to his principles and 
aa ar bi are 
He had transfused those principles 
so effectually into the officers and 
soldiers under his command, that 
they seemed actuated entirely by his 
own mind. They presented an ad- 
dress to the directory, which, for 
matter and manner, was held the 
completest that had been framed by 
any division of the army. 
In imitation, they said, of the 
precedents set before them, by the 
ANNUAL REGISTER, 
1797. 
other divisions of the army, they 
deemed themselves bound, as fel 
low-citizens and soldiers, to unite 
their complaints with those of every 
Frenchman that valued the liberty 
of his country, and revered the con- 
stitution that protected it. Deeply 
interested in its preservation, against — 
the insidious measures of its pre- 
tended friends, they had come to 
‘a determination to express their 
readiness to march into the heart of 
the republic, if summoned, by its 
real friends, to their assistance. 
They had patiently endured, they — 
said, a variety of sufferings in the 
service of their country, in hope of 
rendering it, by their labours and 
courage, victorious and triumphant 
over all its enemies, and of laying 
a just foundation for a claim to those 
rewards that had been held out ta 
them. Relying, therefore, on the 
equity of the patriotic members of 
both councils, they supplicated them 
to take their demands into considers 
ation, and requested the directors, 
as the first magistrates of the repub- 
lic, to urge the propriety, and the 
necessity of doing justice to its faith- 
ful defenders. 
In the mean time, it was with the 
deepest grief, they beheld the ma- 
chinations carried on in the bosom 
of the republic, by men who, though 
, well known to be its enemies, were 
tamely suffered to assume the cha- 
racter of its friends; and, under that — 
perfidious mask, to labour secretly 
for its destruction. But did they 
imagine, that those brave Frenche 
men who had taken up arms, in 
the defence of their liberty, and 
had, in that noble cause, overcome, 
in the field, the veteran troops of 
the most powerful depots, and van- 
quished two-thirds of the military of. 
Europe, 
