Massacres and
persecutions of the Protestants have begun to take place in the South of
France, and the priests are at work again threatening with excommunication
and hell the purchasers and inheritors of emigrant estates and church
lands. These priests and emigrants are incorrigible. Frequent quarrels take
place almost every evening in the Palais Royal between the Prussian
officers and the French, particularly some of the officers from the army of
the Loire. I rather suspect these latter are the aggressors. The Prussians
being gorged with plunder come there to eat, drink and amuse themselves and
have as little stomach for fighting as the soldier of Lucullus had after
having enriched himself; but the officers of the army of the Loire are,
poor fellows, in a very different predicament; they have not even been paid
what is due to them, and they, having none of those nice felicities (to use
an expression of Charlotte Smith's)[41] which make life agreeable, are
ready for any combat, to set their life on any cast, "to mend it, or to be
rid of 't." The Prussians indulge in every sort of dissipation, which they
are enabled to do by the plunder which they have accumulated, and of which
they have formed, I understand, a _depot_ at St Germain.
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