Page:The Works of Honoré de Balzac Volume 29.djvu/30

6 do nothing for the revolted districts, so they reposed complete confidence in them. Perhaps also they expected that this measure, by setting the citizens at odds among themselves, would extinguish the rebellion at its source. "Free companies will be organized in the departments of the West"—so ran the proviso which brought about such dreadful retaliation.

This impolitic ordinance drove the West into so hostile an attitude, that the Directory had no hope left of subduing it all at once. In a few days, therefore, the Assemblies were asked for particular enactments with regard to the slight reinforcements due by virtue of the proviso that had authorized the formation of the free companies. So a new law had been proclaimed a few days before this story begins, and came into effect on the third complementary day of the calendar in the year VII., ordaining that these scanty levies of men should be organized into regiments. The regiments were to bear the names of the departments of the Sarthe, Ourthe, Mayenne, Ille-et-Vilaine, Morbihan, Loire-Inférieure, and Maine-et-Loire. These regiments—so the law provided—are specially enrolled to oppose the Chouans, and can never be drafted over the frontiers on any pretext whatsoever. These tedious but little known particulars explain at once the march of the body of men under escort by the Blues, and the weakness of the position in which the Directory found themselves. So, perhaps, it is not irrelevant to add that these beautiful and patriotic intentions of theirs came no further on the road to being carried out than their insertion in the Bulletin des Lois. The decrees of the Republic had no longer the forces of great moral ideas, of patriotism, or of terror behind them. These had been the causes of their former practical efficiency; so now they created men and millions on paper which never found their way into the army or the treasury. The machinery of the Revolutionary government was directed by incapable hands, and circumstances made impression on the administration of the law instead of being controlled by it.