They will gather and fight and, win or lose, they will then scatter to their homes again, until the church bells call them out to repel a fresh attack of the enemy.
That is our real weakness.

There will never be any discipline, never any common aim.
"If all the peasants in the west would join in a great effort, and march on Paris, I believe that the peasantry of the departments through which they pass would join us.

It would only be the National Guards of the towns, and the new levies, that we should have to meet; and I believe that we might take Paris, crush the scum of the faubourgs, and hang every member of the Convention.

But they will never do it.

It will be a war of defence, only; and a war so carried out must, in the long run, be an unsuccessful one.
"However, the result will be that we shall never be very far away from home, and shall often return for a few days.