In order to make it perfectly plain that with them murder and robbery are the order of the day, they massacred their first general, Patrix, guilty of having released a prisoner, and elected in his place an old highway tramp named Jourdan, condemned to death by the court at Valence, but who had escaped on the eve of his execution, and who bore the nickname of Coupe-tete, because he is said to have cut off the heads at Versailles of two of the King's guards.[2441]--Under such a commander the troop increases until it forms a body of five or six thousand men, which stops people in the streets and forcibly enrolls them; they are called Mandrins, which is severe for Mandrin,[2442] because their war is not merely on public persons and property, as his was, but on the possessions, the proprieties, and the lives of private individuals.

One detachment alone, at one time, extorts in Cavaillon 25,000 francs, in Baume 12,000, in Aubignon 15,000, in Pioline 4,800, while Caumont is taxed 2,000 francs a week.

At Sarrians, where the mayor gives them the keys, they pillage houses from top to bottom, carry off their plunder in carts, set fire, violate and slay with all the refinements of torture of so many Hurons.

An old lady of eighty, and a paralytic, is shot at arms length, and left weltering in her blood in the midst of the flames.

A child five years of age is cut in two, its mother decapitated, and its sister mutilated; they cut off the ears of the cure, set them on his brow like a cockade, and then cut his throat, along with that of a pig, and tear out the two hearts and dance around them.[2443] After this, for fifty days around Carpentras, to which they lay siege in vain, the unprovoked, cruel instincts of the chauffeurs manifested at a later date, the ancient cannibalistic desires which sometimes reappear in convicts, and the perverted and over-strained sensuality found in maniacs, have full play.
On beholding the monster it has nourished, Avignon, in alarm, utters cries of distress.[2444] But the brute, which feels its strength, turns against its former abettors, shows its teeth, and exacts its daily food.