further south in Perigord and Rouergue, in the west in Bretagne, as well as in the east in Lyonnais, Alsace, Franche-Comté, and Champagne, peasants and vagabonds went about the country in bands, burning country-houses and title-deeds, and murdering those who attempted resistance. ♦Weakness of the Central Government.♦ The central government, whose duty it was to protect life and property, was impotent even to attempt the restoration of order. The Assembly, through fear that the King would use authority for the undoing of its work, had left him without means of enforcing obedience to the laws. His only agents were the administrative bodies, and he had no means of compelling them to perform their duties. The highest authority in reality rested with the administrative bodies which were lowest in the hierarchical scale--namely, with the municipalities. Of these there were no less than 44,000, each acting independently of the other, and though, according to the constitution, bound to carry out the instructions of the directories of districts and departments, able to disregard them with impunity. For the maintenance of order a Riot Act had been passed, but that the King might not take advantage of it for the suppression of constitutional rights, the municipalities alone had been empowered to put it in force. Sometimes municipal officers were unable, sometimes unwilling, to call out the national guard for the forcible dispersion of rioters. In towns the bourgeoisie served on the national guard, and there was no want of educated men to hold office. But in rural districts there were no inhabitants except a few nobles and curés and an unlettered peasantry. In hundreds of instances the mayor and his colleagues could neither read nor write, spoke only their own patois, and were incapable even of understanding the laws that they were required to enforce. National guards, in place of protecting the noble and his family from harm, took part with their neighbours in destroying their dwelling, and in maltreating all whom interest or prejudice incited them to regard as conspirators against the revolution. ♦Mutinies in the army.♦