The minister
requests the Assembly to array itself in all its terrors, and to
call forth all its majesty. He desires that the grave and severe
principles announced by them may give vigor to the king's
proclamation. After this we should have looked for courts, civil and
martial, breaking of some corps, decimating of others, and all the
terrible means which necessity has employed in such cases to arrest
the progress of the most terrible of all evils; particularly, one
might expect that a serious inquiry would be made into the murder of
commandants in the view of their soldiers. Not one word of all this or
of anything like it. After they had been told that the soldiery
trampled upon the decrees of the Assembly promulgated by the king, the
Assembly pass new decrees, and they authorize the king to make new
proclamations. After the secretary at war had stated that the
regiments had paid no regard to oaths pretes avec la plus imposante
solemnite, they propose- what? More oaths. They renew decrees and
proclamations as they experience their insufficiency, and they
multiply oaths in proportion as they weaken in the minds of men, the
sanctions of religion. I hope that handy abridgments of the
excellent sermons of Voltaire, d'Alembert, Diderot, and Helvetius,
on the Immortality of the Soul, on a particular superintending
Providence, and on a Future State of Rewards and Punishments are
sent down to the soldiers along with their civic oaths.
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