The minister requests the Assembly
to array itself in all its terrors, and to call forth all its majesty.
He desires that the grave and severe principles announced by them may
give vigor to the king's proclamation. After this we should have looked
for courts civil and martial, breaking of some corps, decimating of
others, and all the terrible means which necessity has employed in such
cases to arrest the progress of the most terrible of all evils;
particularly, one might expect that a serious inquiry would be made into
the murder of commandants in the view of their soldiers. Not one word of
all this, or of anything like it. After they had been told that the
soldiery trampled upon the decrees of the Assembly promulgated by the
king, the Assembly pass new decrees, and they authorize the king to make
new proclamations. After the secretary at war had stated that the
regiments had paid no regard to oaths, _pretes avec la plus imposante
solennite_, they propose--what? More oaths. They renew decrees and
proclamations as they experience their insufficiency, and they multiply
oaths in proportion as they weaken in the minds of men the sanctions of
religion. I hope that handy abridgments of the excellent sermons of
Voltaire, D'Alembert, Diderot, and Helvetius, on the Immortality of the
Soul, on a Particular Superintending Providence, and on a Future State
of Rewards and Punishments, are sent down to the soldiers along with
their civic oaths.
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