They are placed in a row in front of the bodies of the previous day and shot.

Those who do not fall, see the guns reloaded; these are again shot and the wounded dispatched with the butt ends of the muskets.

Some of the Germans then rifle the bodies, while others strip them and "place them on their backs."-- To find workmen for this task, it is necessary to descend, not only to the lowest wretches in France but, again, to the brutes of a foreign race and tongue, and yet lower still, to an inferior race degraded by slavery and perverted by license.
Such, from the top to the bottom of the ladder, at every stage of authority and obedience, is the ruling staff of the revolutionary government.[33170] Through its recruits and its work, through its morals and modes of proceeding, it evokes the almost forgotten image of its predecessors, for there is an image of it in the period from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century.

At that time also, society was frequently overcome and ravaged by barbarians; dangerous nomads, malevolent outcasts, bandits turned into soldiers suddenly pounced down on an industrious and peaceful population.

Such was the case in France with the "Routiers" and the "Tard-venus," at Rome with the army of the Constable of Bourbon, in Flanders with the bands of the Duke of Alba and the Duke of Parma, in Westphalia and in Alsace, with Wallenstein's veterans, and those of Bernard of Saxe-Weimar.