for damages for the injuries to which he has just been subjected.--In Franche-Comté the authorities dare not condemn delinquents, and the police do not arrest them; the military commandant writes that "crimes of every kind are on the increase, and that he has no means of punishing them." Insubordination is permanent in all the provinces; one of the provincial commissions states with sadness: "When all powers are in confusion and annihilated, when public force no longer exists, when all ties are sundered, when every individual considers himself relieved from all kinds of obligation, when public authority no longer dares make itself felt, and it is a crime to have been clothed with it, what can be expected of our efforts to restore order?"[1306] All that remains of this great demolished State is forty thousand groups of people, each separated and isolated, in towns and small market villages where municipal bodies, elected committees, and improvised National Guards strive to prevent the worst excesses.--But these local chiefs are novices; they are human, and they are timid. Chosen by acclamation they believe in popular rights; in the midst of riots they feel themselves in danger. Hence, they generally obey the crowd. "Rarely," says one of the provincial commissions reports, "do the municipal authorities issue a summons; they allow the greatest excesses rather than enter upon prosecutions for which, sooner or later, they may be held responsible by their fellow-citizens. . . . Municipal bodies have no longer the power to resist anything."