Those of Troyes had just tortured Huez after the fashion of Hurons, while those of Caen did worse; Major de Belzance, not less innocent, and under sworn protection,[1324] was cut to pieces like Laperouse in the Fiji Islands, and a woman ate his heart.
VI .-- Taxes are no longer paid.
Devastation of the Forests .-- The new game laws.
It is, under such circumstances, possible to foretell whether taxes come in, and whether municipalities that sway about in every popular breeze will have the authority to collect the odious revenues .-- Towards the end of September,[1325] I find a list of thirty-six committees or municipal bodies which, within a radius of fifty leagues around Paris, refuse to ensure the collection of taxes.

One of them tolerates the sale of contraband salt, in order not to excite a riot.

Another takes the precaution to disarm the employees in the excise department.

In a third the municipal officers were the first to provide themselves with contraband salt and contraband tobacco.
At Peronne and at Ham, the order having come to restore the toll-houses, the people destroy the soldiers' quarters, conduct all the employees to their homes, and order them to leave within twenty-four hours, under penalty of death.

After twenty months' resistance Paris will end the matter by forcing the National Assembly to give in and by obtaining the final suppression of its octroi.[1326]--Of all the creditors whose hand each one felt on his shoulders, that of the exchequer was the heaviest, and now it is the weakest; hence this is the first whose grasp is to be shaken off; there is none which is more heartily detested or which receives harsher treatment.