--This is not a mere conjecture--I have listened to the histories
of many of these unhappy outcasts, who were more than thirty years old,
and they have all told me, they were born in the state in which I beheld
them, and that they did not remember to have heard that their parents
were in any other. The National Assembly profess to effectuate an entire
regeneration of the country, and to eradicate all evils, moral, physical,
and political. I heartily wish the numerous and miserable poor, with
which Arras abounds, may become one of the first objects of reform; and
that a nation which boasts itself the most polished, the most powerful,
and the most philosophic in the world, may not offer to the view so many
objects shocking to humanity.
The citadel of Arras is very strong, and, as I am told, the chef d'oeuvre
of Vauban; but placed with so little judgement, that the military call it
_la belle inutile_ [the useless beauty]. It is now uninhabited, and
wears an appearance of desolation--the commandant and all the officers of
the ancient government having been forced to abandon it; their houses
also are much damaged, and the gardens entirely destroyed.--I never heard
that this popular commotion had any other motive than the general war of
the new doctrines on the old.
I am sorry to see that most of the volunteers who go to join the army are
either old men or boys, tempted by extraordinary pay and scarcity of
employ.
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