书城公版The Origins of Contemporary France
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第998章

. . 1st. The first contingent of volunteers demanded of the country consisted of 97,000 men (i1791). 60,000 enthusiasts responded to the call, enlisted for a year and fulfilled their engagement; but for no consideration would they remain longer. 2nd. Second call for volunteers in April 1792. Only mixed levies, partial, raised by money, most of them even without occupation, outcasts and unable to withstand the enemy. 3rd. 300,000 men recruited, which measure partly fails; the recruit can always get off by furnishing a substitute. 4th. Levy in mass of 500,000 men, called volunteers, but really conscripts."[64] "Mémorial" (Speech by Napoleon before the Council of State). "Iam inflexible on exemptions; they would be crimes; how relieve one's conscience of having caused one man to die in the place of another ?"- "The conscription was an unprivileged militia: it was an eminently national institution and already far advanced in our customs; only mothers were still afflicted by it, while the time was coming when a girl would not have a man who had not paid his debt to his country."[65] Law of Fructidor 8, year XIII, article 10. - Pelet de La Lozère, 229. (Speech by Napoleon, Council of State, May 29, 1804.) - Pelet adds: "The duration of the service was not fixed. . . . As a fact in itself, the man was exiled from his home for the rest of his life, regarding it as a desolating, permanent exile. . . . Entire sacrifice of existence. . . . An annual crop of young men torn from their families and sent to death." - Archives nationales, F7, 3014. (Reports of prefects, 1806.) After this date, and even from the beginning, there is extreme repugnance which is only overcome by severe means. .