"Nobody in Saint-Afrique dares go outdoors at night"; nobody comes, and, the following day, the juge-de-paix dares not receive the complaint, because "he is afraid himself."-- Accordingly, on the 23rd of September, the municipal officers and the town-clerk, who made their rounds, were nearly beaten to death with clubs and stones; on the 10th of October another municipal officer was left for dead; a fortnight before this, a lieutenant of volunteers, M.Mazieres, "trying to do his duty, was assassinated in his bed by his own men." Naturally, nobody dares whisper a word, and, after two months of this order of things, it may be presumed that at the municipal elections of the 21st of October, the electors will be docile.

In any event, as a precaution, their notification eight days before, according to law, is dispensed with; as extra precaution, they are informed that if they do not vote for the Executive Power, they will have to do with the triangular cudgel.[3221] Consequently, most of them abstain; in a town of over 600 active citizens, 40 votes give a majority; Bourgougnon and Sarrus, the two chiefs of the Executive Power, are elected, one mayor, and the other syndic-attorney, and henceforth the authority they seized by force is conferred on them by the law.
IV .-- Ordinary practices of the Jacobin dictatorship.
The stationary companies of the clubs .-- Their personnel.
-- Their leaders.
This is roughly the type of government which spring up in every commune of France after the 10th of August; the club reigns, but the form and processes of its dictatorship are different, according to circumstances .-- Sometimes it operates directly through an executive gang or by lancing an excited mob; sometimes it operates indirectly through the electoral assembly it has had elected, or through the municipality, which is its accomplice.

If the administrations are Jacobin, it governs through them.

If they are passive, it governs alongside of them.

If they are refractory, it purges them,[3222] or breaks them up,[3223] and, to put them down, it resorts not only to blows, but even to murder[3224] and massacre.[3225] Between massacre and threats, all intermediaries meet, the revolutionary seal being everywhere impressed with inequalities of relief.
In many places, threats suffice.