第872章

- Mallet-Dupan， No. for November 25， 1798.)[128] M. Léonce de Lavergne ("Economie rurale de la France since 1789，" p.38) estimates at a million the number of men sacrificed in the wars between 1792 and 1800. - "Trustworthy officials， who， a year a go， have had the official documents in their possession， have certified to me that the war statistics for the levying of troops between 1794 and the middle of 1795 had raised 900，000 men of whom 650，000 had been lost in battle， in the hospitals or by desertion."Mallet-Dupan. (No. for December 10， 1798. - Ibid. (No. for March 20， 1799.) "Dumas affirmed that， in the Legislative Corps， the National Guard had renewed the battalions of the defenders of the country three times. . . . The fact of the shameful administration of the hospitals is proved through the admissions of generals， commissaries and deputies that the soldiers were dying for want of food and medicine. If we add to this the extravagance with which the leaders of the armies let the me be killed， we can readily comprehend this triple renewal in the space of seven years. - As an illustration there was the village of four hundred and fifty inhabitants in 1789 furnished (1792 and 1793) fifty soldiers. ("Histoire du Village de Croissy， Seine-et-Oise pendant la Revolution，"by Campenon.).- La Vendée was a bottomless pit， like Spain and Russia afterwards. "A good republican， who entrusted with the supply the Vendée army with provisions for fifteen months， assured me that out of two hundred thousand men whom he had seen precipitated into this gulf there were not ten thousand that came of it." (Meissner， "Voyage àParis，" p.338， latter end of 1795) - The following figures ("Statistiques des Préfets" years IX.， until XI.) are exact. Eight departments， (Doubs， Ain， Eure， Meurthe， Aisne， Aude， Dr？me， Moselle)furnish the total number of their volunteers， recruits and conscripts， amounting to 193，343. These three departments (Arthur Young， "Voyage en France，" II.， 31) had， in 1790， a population of 2，446，000 souls：

the proportion indicates that out of 26 million Frenchmen a little more than 2 millions were called up for military service. - On the other hand， five departments (Doubs， Eure， Meurthe， Aisne， Moselle)gave， not only the number of their soldiers， 131，322， but likewise that of their dead， 56，976， or out of 1000 men furnished 435 died.

This proportion shows 870，000 dead out of two million soldiers.

[129] The statistics of the prefects and reports of council-generals of the year IX. all agree in the statements of the notable diminution of the masculine adult population. - Lord Malmesbury had already made the same observation in 1796. ("Diary，" October 21 and 23， 1796， from Calais to Paris.) "Children and women were working in the fields. Men evidently reduced in number. . . . Carts often drawn by women and most of them by old people or boys. It is plain that the male population has diminished； for the women we saw on the road surpassed the number of men in the proportion of four to one." -- Wherever the number of the population is filled up it is through the infantile and feminine increase. Nearly all the prefects and council-generals state that precocious marriages have multiplied to excess through conscription. - Dufort de Cheverney， "Mémoires，" September 1st， 1800.