The government, powerless and disarmed, was rendered responsible for the severities of nature. Secret emissaries, armed bands, went amongst the towns and cities where markets were held, and there disseminated the most alarming reports, provoking the people to tax grain and flour, stigmatising the corn-dealers as monopolists--the perfidious charge of monopoly being a sure sentence of death. The fear of being accused of starving the people checked every speculation of business, and tended much more than actual want to the dearth of the markets. Nothing is so scarce as a commodity which is concealed. The corn-stores were crimes in the eyes of consumers of bread. The Maire of Etampes, Simoneau, an honest man, and an intrepid magistrate, was one victim sacrificed to the people's suspicions. Etampes was one of the great markets that supplied Paris. It was therefore necessary for it to preserve the liberty of commerce and the supply of flour. A mob, composed of men and women of the adjacent villages, assembling at the sound of the tocsin, marched upon the city one market-day, preceded by drums, armed with guns and pitchforks, in order to carry off the grain by force from the proprietors, divide it amongst themselves, and to exterminate, as they declared, the monopolists, amongst whom sinister voices mingled in low tones the name of Simoneau. The national guard disappeared, a detachment of one hundred men of the eighteenth regiment of cavalry were at Etampes, and the sole force at the Maire's disposal. The officer answered for these soldiers _as for himself_. After long conversations with the seditious, to bring them back to reason and the law, Simoneau returned to the _maison commune_, ordered the red flag to be unfurled, proclaimed martial law, and then advanced upon the rebels, surrounded by the municipal body, and in the centre of the armed force; on reaching the square of the town, the crowd surrounded and cut off the detachment. The troopers left the Maire exposed--not one drew his sword in his defence. In vain did he summon them, in the name of the law, and by the weapons they wore, to render aid to the magistrate against assassins--in vain did he seize the bridle of one of the horsemen near him, crying, "_Help, my friends_."