[Footnote 3253: These two famines were due to inclement seasons and were aggravated, the last one by the consequences of invasion and the necessity of supporting 150,000 foreign troops, and the former by the course taken by Napoleon who applies the maximum afresh, with the same intermeddling, the same despotism and the same failure as under the Convention.( "Souvenirs", by PASQUIER (Etienne-Dennis, duc), chancelier de France. in VI volumes, Librarie Plon, Paris 1893.) "I do not exaggerate in stating that our operations in the purchase and transport (of grain) required a full quarter of the time, and often one-third, more than would have been required in commerce."--Prolongation of the famine in Normandy. "Bands of famished beggars overran the country.... Riots and pillaging around Caen; several mills burnt.... Suppression of these by the imperial guard. In the executions which resulted from these even women were not spared."--The two principal guarantees at the present day against this public danger are, first, easier circumstances, and next the multiplication of good roads and of railroads, the dispatch and cheapness of transportation, and the superabundant crops of Russia and the United States.] [Footnote 3254: J. Gebelin, "Histoire des milices provinciales" (1882), p.87, 143, 157, 288.--Most of the texts and details may be found in this excellent work.--Many towns, Paris, Lyons, Reims, Rouen, Bordeaux, Tours, Agen, Sedan and the two generalities of Flanders and Hainault are examples of drawing by lot; they furnished their contingent by volunteers enlisted at their own expense; the merchants and artisans, or the community itself, paying the bounty for enlistment. Besides this there were many exemptions in the lower class.--Cf. "The Ancient Régime," p.390. (Ed. Laff. p. 289.)] [Footnote 3255: J. Gebelin, ibid., 239, 279, 288. (Except the eight regiments of royal grenadiers in the militia who turned out for one month in the year.)] [Footnote 3256: Example afforded by one department. ("Statistics of Ain," by Rossi, prefect, 1808.) Number of soldiers on duty in the department, in 1789, 323; in 1801, 6,729; in 1806, 6,764.--"The department of Ain furnished nearly 30,000 men to the armies, conscripts and those under requisition."--It is noticeable, consequently, that in the population of 1801, there is a sensible diminution of persons between twenty and thirty and, in the population of 1806, of those between twenty-five and thirty-five years of age. The number between twenty and thirty is as follows: in 1789, 39,828; in 1801, 35,648; in 1806, 34,083.]