The Directory forbids him to take his troops into the territory of the department.[2428]--Meanwhile, on the 29th of March, the Marseilles army effects a breach with its cannon in the walls of defenseless Arles; its fortifications are demolished and a tax of 1,400,000 francs is levied on the owners of property.
In contempt of the National Assembly's decree the Mint bandits, the longshoremen, the whole of the lowest class again take up their arms and lord it over the disarmed population.

Although "the King's commissioner and most of the judges have fled, jury examinations are instituted against absentees," the juries consisting of the members of the Mint band.[2429] The conquerors imprison, smite and slaughter as they please.
Countless peaceable individuals are struck down and mauled, dragged to prison and many of them are mortally wounded.

An old soldier, eighty years of age, retired to his country home three months earlier, dies after twenty days' confinement in a dungeon, from a blow received in the stomach by a rifle butt; women are flogged.

"All citizens that with an interest in law and order," nearly five thousand families, have emigrated; their houses in town and in the country are pillaged, while in the surrounding boroughs, along the road leading from Arles to Marseilles, the villains forming the hard core of the Marseilles army, rove about and gorge themselves as in a vanquished country.[2430] They eat and drink voraciously, force the closets, carry off linen and food, steal horses and valuables, smash the furniture, tear up books, and burn papers.[2431] All this is only the appropriate punishment of the aristocrats.

Moreover, it is no more than right that patriots should be indemnified for their toil, and a few blows too many are not out of place in securing the rule of the right party .-- For example, on the false report of order being disturbed at Chateau-Renard, Bertin and Rebecqui send off a detachment of men, while the municipal body in uniform, followed by the National Guard, with music and flags, comes forth to meet and salute it.