We will go from parish to parish, and leave behind us dead corpses, and burning houses." "You will not ask soldiers to do the work of executioners ?" said Bourbotte.
"I expect the soldiers to do the work of the Convention," said Barrere; "and I also expect the officers to do the same: these are not times in which a man can be chary as to the work which he does." "We must not leave a royalist alive in the west of France," said Westerman.

"You may be assured, Generals, that our soldiers will obey us, however slow yours may be to obey you." "Perhaps so," said Bourbotte; "my men have not yet been taught to massacre unarmed crowds." "It is difficult to know what they have been taught," said Westerman.
"Whenever they have encountered a few peasants with clubs in their hands, your doughty heroes have invariably ran away." Westerman as he spoke, stood leaning on the back of a chair, and Bourbotte also rose as he answered him.
"I have yet to learn," aid he, "that you yourself ever were able to make good soldiers out of country clowns in less than a month's time.

When you have done so, then you may speak to me on the subject without impertinence." "I give you my word, citizen General," answered Westerman, "I shall say to you, then and now, whatever I, in the performance of my duty, may think fits and if you deem me impertinent, you may settle that point with the Convention, or, if you prefer it, with myself." "Westerman, you are unfair to General Bourbotte," said Santerre; "he has said nothing which need offend you." "It is the General that is offended, not I," said Westerman; "I only beg that he may not talk mawkish nonsense, and tell us that his fellows are too valiant, and too noble to put to the sword unarmed royalists, when everybody knows they are good for nothing else, and that they would run and scatter from the fire of a few muskets, like a lot of plovers from a volley of stones." "I grant you," said Bourbotte, "that my soldiers are men and not monsters.

They are, as yet, French peasants, not German cut-throats." "Now, by Heaven, Bourbotte," said the Prussian, "you shall swallow that word," and he seized a pistol from off the table.

"German cut-throat! and that from you who have no other qualities of a soldier than what are to be found in a light pair of heels.