uniformity of thought, clothing, and gait which they now lacked
entirely.

This column was a contingent slowly and with difficulty raised in the
district of Fougeres, from which it was due under the levy ordered by
the executive Directory of the Republic on the preceding 10th
Messidor. The government had asked for a hundred million of francs and
a hundred thousand men as immediate reinforcements for the armies then
fighting the Austrians in Italy, the Prussians in Germany, and menaced
in Switzerland by the Russians, in whom Suwarow had inspired hopes of
the conquest of France. The departments of the West, known under the
name of La Vendee, Brittany, and a portion of Lower Normandy, which
had been tranquil for the last three years (thanks to the action of
General Hoche), after a struggle lasting nearly four, seemed to have
seized this new occasion of danger to the nation to break out again.
In presence of such aggressions the Republic recovered its pristine
energy. It provided in the first place for the defence of the
threatened departments by giving the responsibility to the loyal and
patriotic portion of the inhabitants. In fact, the government in
Paris, having neither troops nor money to send to the interior, evaded
the difficulty by a parliamentary gasconade. Not being able to send
material aid to the faithful citizens of the insurgent departments, it
gave them its "confidence." Possibly the government hoped that this
measure, by arming the insurgents against each other, would stifle the
insurrection at its birth. This ordinance, the cause of future fatal
reprisals, was thus worded: "Independent companies of troops shall be
organized in the Western departments." This impolitic step drove the
West as a body into so hostile an attitude that the Directory
despaired of immediately subduing it. Consequently, it asked the
Assemblies to pass certain special measures relating to the