Young und Okey - 1915 - Travels in France and Italy during the years 1787,

Travels in France and Italy/169
course they did not approve of; they seemed to think that I might be an
honest fellow, which I confirmed by crying, vive Ie 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.
27th. To Besancon; 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. Mary 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 destroys:
and these abominations not inflicted on marked persons, who
were odious for their former conduct or principles, but an indiscriminating
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’hôte 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. From Strasbourg hither,
I have not been able to see a newspaper. Here I asked for the Cabinet
Literaire. None. The gazettes? At the coffee-house. Very easily replied,
but not so easily found. Nothing but the Gazette de France, for which,
at this period, a man of common sense would not give one sol. To four
other coffee-houses; at some no paper at all, not even the Mercure; at
the Caffé Militaire, the Courier de l’Europe a fortnight old; and welldressed
people are now talking of the news of two or three weeks past,