Besan9on 173 



horses, their voitures, their servants, and even for liberty to 

 kill their own partridges, but the poor farmer nothing of all this : 

 and what is more, we have in England a tax paid by the rich 

 for the relief of the poor ; hence the assertion of Monsieur I'Abbe, 

 that because taxes existed before they must exist again, did not 

 at all prove that they must be levied in the same manner; our 

 English method seemed much better. There was not a word of 

 this discourse they did not approve of; they seemed to think 

 that I might be an honest fellow, which I confirmed by crying, 

 Vive le tiers, sans impositions, when they gave me a bit of a huzza, 

 and I had no more interruption from them. My miserable 

 French was pretty much on a par with their own patois. I got, 

 however, another cockade, which I took care to have so fastened 

 as to lose it no more. I do not half like travelling in such an 

 unquiet and fermenting moment ; one is not secure for an hour 

 beforehand. — 35 miles. 



2']th. To Besangon; the country mountain, rock, and wood, 

 above the river; some scenes are fine. I had not arrived an 

 hour before I saw a peasant pass the inn on horseback, followed 

 by an officer of the guard bourgeois, of which there are 1200 here, 

 and 200 under arms, and his parti-coloured detachment, and 

 these by some infantry and cavalry. I asked why the militia 

 took the pas of the king's troops ? For a very good reason, they 

 replied, the troops would be attacked and knocked on the head, but 

 the populace will not resist the milice. This peasant, who is a 

 rich proprietor, applied for a guard to protect his house in a 

 village where there is much plundering and burning. The 

 mischiefs which have been perpetrated in the country, towards 

 the mountains and Vesoul, are numerous and shocking. Many 

 chateaus have been burnt, others plundered, the seigneurs 

 hunted down like wild beasts, their wives and daughters ravished, 

 their papers and titles burnt, and all their property destroyed : 

 and these abominations not inflicted on marked persons, who 

 were odious for their former conduct or principles, but an in- 

 discriminating blind rage for the love of plunder. Robbers, 

 galley-slaves, and villains of all denominations have collected 

 and instigated the peasants to commit all sorts of outrages. 

 Some gentlemen at the table d'hote informed me that letters 

 were received from the Maconois, the Lyonois. Auvergne, 

 Dauphine, etc., and that similar commotions and mischiefs were 

 perpetrating everywhere; and that it was expected they would 

 pervade the whole kingdom. The backwardness of France is 

 beyond credibility in everything that pertains to intelligence. 



