312 ORIGIN OF THE WAR OF 1853 chap, almost incredible decree with a ferocity which x must have sprung in the first instance from terror, and was afterwards kept alive for the sake of that hideous sort of popularity which was to be gained by calling men Socialists, and then fiercely hunt- ing them down. None will ever know the num- ber of men who at this period were either killed or imprisoned in France, or sent to die in Africa or Cayenne ; but the panegyrist of Louis Bona- parte and his fellow-plotters acknowledges that 26,500 men the number of people who were seized and trans- ported within the few weeks which followed the 2d of December, amounted to the enormous num- ber of twenty-six thousand five hundred.* France perhaps could have borne the loss of many tens of thousands of ordinary soldiers and workmen without being visibly weakened ; but no nation in the world — no, not even France her- self — is so abounding in the men who will dare something for honour and liberty, as to be able to bear to lose in one month between twenty and thirty thousand men, seized from out of her most stirring and most courageous citizens. It could not be but that what remained of France when she had thus been stricken should for years seem to languish and to be of a poor spirit. This is why I have chosen to say that France was dismanned. But, besides the men killed and the men trans-
- Grauicr de Cassagnac, vol. ii. p. 438. To meet the cost of
these ■wholesale transportations, an extraordinary credit was opened on the 28th of January. It i3 only the title of the decree, and not the sum fixed, which is given in the 'Annuaire,' Appendix, p. 05. — Note to ilk Edition, 1863.
