eatables as much as they want, and then, heated by drink, they burn
the excise offices, force open several prisons, and set free all the
smugglers and deserters. To put an end to this saturnalia a grand
banquet in the open air is suggested, in which the National Guard is
to fraternize with the whole garrison; but the banquet turns into a
drinking-bout, entire companies remaining under the tables dead
drunk; other companies carry away with them four hogsheads of wine,
and the rest, finding themselves left in the lurch, are scattered
abroad outside the walls in order to rob the cellars of the
neighboring villages. The next day, encouraged by the example set
them, a portion of the garrison, accompanied by a number of workmen,
repeat the expedition in the country. Finally, after four days of
this orgy, to prevent Besançon and its outskirts from being
indefinitely treated as a conquered country, the burgess guard, in
alliance with the soldiers who have remained loyal, rebel against
the rebellion, go in quest of the marauders and hang two of them
that same evening. -- Such is rioting![21] an irruption of brute
force which, turned loose on the habitations of men, can do nothing
but gorge itself, waste, break, destroy, and do damage to itself;
and if we follow the details of local history, we see how, in these
days, similar outbreaks of violence might be expected at any time.

At Troyes,[22] on the 18th of July, a market-day, the peasants
refuse to pay the entrance duties; the octroi having been suppressed
at Paris, it ought also to be suppressed at Troyes. The populace,
excited by this first disorderly act, gather into a mob for the
purpose of dividing the grain and arms amongst themselves, and the
next day the town-hall is invested by seven or eight thousand men,
armed with clubs and stones. The day after, a band, recruited in
the surrounding villages, armed with flails, shovels, and pitch-