of food, the fugitives made their way to Normandy, in the hope of occupying Granville, a port town, and of receiving aid from England. But they had no siege pieces, and their repeated attempts to storm the fortifications failed. Then despair, long since felt by the chiefs, overtook the whole body. The ranks of the fighting men, incessantly called on to repel the attacks of the pursuing enemy, were gradually thinned; there was dearth of food, and the sufferings of the wounded were intense. The republicans massacred every man, woman, and child left behind. The peasants forced their officers to lead them back to their own country. Angers was reached, where was a bridge over the Loire. But their attempt to force an entrance into the town failed. A defeat took place outside Le Mans (December 12); the retreat became a flight. Thousands were killed and made prisoners; a few escaped in boats; the rest were hunted down and slaughtered on the banks of the Loire. ♦The Terror in the departments.♦ While this civil war was continuing in the west, scenes similar to those occurring in Paris occurred simultaneously throughout the country. The will of the Commune was law in most of the departments of France. Some of the deputies in mission joined the Hébertist faction, and their colleagues followed in their train, not daring to venture collision with them. Men, in fact, adopted the language then in vogue, and acted cruelly, instigated by fear lest if they showed clemency they would offer a handle which their enemies would use to compass the ruin of themselves and their families. The deputies in mission, so long as they found protection in Paris, exercised uncontrolled powers over the properties and lives of their fellow-citizens. They imposed fines and taxes, set aside laws, created criminal offences, and erected criminal courts. Many decrees of the Convention merely extended to the whole country measures already in force in different departments. As instruments the deputies had at their service the municipalities, which were reconstituted over and over again; the clubs, from which they drove all who were not prepared slavishly to applaud their actions; and, finally, the revolutionary committees, to which they delegated the same arbitrary powers that they themselves exercised. These committees, of which there was one established in every district and every populous commune, were, as a rule, formed of the most fanatic, the most cowardly, and the most worthless men whom the neighbourhood produced. Many thousand persons were at their bidding flung into prison on the merest pretext or without any motive at all being given. One would be imprisoned because he was related to an emigrant, another because he was a fanatic, a third because he was an egotist, a fourth because he had done nothing for the revolution, a fifth because he had 100_l._ or 50_l._ a year. Persons of both sexes, of every age and rank, were involved in the same proscription.