Nowhere did Jacobin rulers display their real character more openly, and nowhere, from 1789 to 1799, was this character so well maintained.

At Toulon, the demagogues in the year V., as in the year II., are[33137] "former workmen and clerks in the Arsenal who had become 'bosses' by acting as informers and through terrorism, getting property for nothing, or at an insignificant price, and plotting sales of national possessions, petty traders from all quarters with stocks of goods acquired in all sorts of ways, through robberies, through purchases of stolen goods from servants and employees in the civil, war and navy departments, and through abandoned or bought-up claims; in a word, men who, having run away from other communes, pass their days in coffee-houses and their nights in houses of ill-fame."-- At Draguignan, Brignolles, Vidauban, Frejus, at Marseilles, after Thermidor, the intermittent returns to Terrorism always restore the same quarries of the justiciary and the police to office.[33138] "Artisans, once useful, but now tired of working, and whom the profession of paid clubbists, idle guardians," and paid laborers "has totally demoralized," scoundrels in league with each other and making money out of whatever they can lay their hands on, like thieves at a fair, habitually living at the expense of the public, "bestowing the favors of the nation on those who share their principles, harboring and aiding many who are under the ban of the law and calling themselves model patriots,[33139] that is, in the pay of gambling hells and houses of prostitution."-- In the rural districts, the old bands "consisting of hordes of homeless brigands" who worked so well during the anarchy of the Constituent and Legislative assemblies, form anew during the anarchy of the Directory; they make their appearance in the vicinity of Apt "commencing with petty robberies and then, strong in the impunity and title of sans-culottes, break into farm-houses, rob and massacre the inmates, strip travelers, put to ransom all who happen to cross their path, force open and pillage houses in the commune of Gorges, stop women in the streets, tear off their rings and crosses," and attack the hospital, sacking it from top to bottom, while the town and military officers, just like them, allow them to go on.[33140]--Judge by this of their performances in the time of Robespierre, when the vendors and administrators of the national possessions exercised undisputed control.

Everywhere, at that time, in the departments of Var, Bouches-du-Rhone, and Vaucluse, "a club of would-be patriots" had long prepared the way for their exactions.

It had "paid appraisers for depreciating whatever was put up for sale, and false names for concealing real purchasers; "a person not of their clique, was excluded from the auction-room; if he persisted in coming in they would, at one time, put him under contribution for the privilege of bidding," and, at another time, make him promise not to bid above the price fixed by the league, while, to acquire the domain, they paid him a bonus.

Consequently, "national property" was given away "for almost nothing," the swindlers who acquired it never being without a satisfactory warrant for this in their own eyes.