of those years are full of signs of deep-seated confusion, of riots, murders and acts of pillage, which were perhaps to be expected, but which cannot be ignored. The spirit of disorder appeared in many forms. In some cases the outbreaks were due to fear and hatred of 'aristocrats.' In some they were a recrudescence of the peasant war against the châteaux. In some they arose from the conflict between the priesthood of the old ecclesiastical system and the decrees of the National Assembly, and these religious controversies, heated by passion and embittered by ancient rancours, produced, especially at Nîmes and Montauban and over the whole of the South of France, a terrible agitation almost amounting to civil war. In some cases they were due to purely local and personal reasons. In many cases they were caused by the fear of starvation, and their object was the seizure of grain. In others, especially at Lyons and Marseilles, they were due to the excessive severity displayed by the National Guards in maintaining order, and to the bitter conflict that was beginning between the bourgeois and the labouring population. Elsewhere, as at Avignon, they originated in a political revolution, and called to the front the large ruffianly element which, under the lax rule of the Popes, had for long been allowed to harbour in that city. In other cases, again, there is little doubt that criminals took advantage of the disorder of the time to make politics the pretext for private plunder. All sorts of opportunities for disorder offered, and in the midst of such vast changes it was inevitable that those opportunities should be sometimes abused.