"
Lequinio, Guerre de la Vendee._
"The most unbridled pillage prevailed--officers, instead of
attending to their duty, thought only of filling their portmanteaus,
and of the means to perpetuate a war they found so profitable.--Many
private soldiers made fifty thousand livres, and they have been seen
loaded with trinkets, and exercising the most abominable
prodigalities of every kind."
Lequinio, War of La Vendee.
"The conquerors of the Bastille had unluckily a most unbridled
ardour for pillage--one would have supposed they had come for the
express purpose of plunder, rather than fighting. The stage coaches
for Paris were entirely loaded with their booty."
Report of Benaben, Commissioner of the Department of Maine and
Loire.
--The carriages of the army were entirely appropriated to the conveyance
of their booty; till, at last, the administrators of some departments
were under the necessity of forbidding such incumbrances: but the
officers, with whom restrictions of this sort were unavailing, put all
the horses and waggons of the country in requisition for similar
purposes, while they relaxed themselves from the serious business of the
war, (which indeed was nearly confined to burning, plundering, and
massacring the defenceless inhabitants,) by a numerous retinue of
mistresses and musicians.
It is not surprizing that generals and troops of this description were
constantly defeated; and their reiterated disasters might probably have
first suggested the idea of totally exterminating a people it was found
so difficult to subdue, and so impracticable to conciliate.
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