The local exactions of Germany in France may not be
worse than the local exactions of the First Napoleon in Germany, but they are unquestionably very oppressive indeed. Paris is to pay £8,000,000, say £4 a head,—numbers of the population certainly not possessing so much. Le Mans, a little town of about 37,000 souls, is fined £160,000, or say, £4 10s. a head, a still heavier fine, had not Paris been already starved for four months ; Alencon, a poor country town or big village of 16,000 souls, is fined £12,000,—or 15s. a head ; and for the fact of these Francs-Tireurs who broke down the bridge near Toul the other day, an extra fine of £400,000 has been imposed on Lorraine,— which the Germans propose to annex. It is a cruelly oppressive system, but is being applied all over the country with a merciless and tolerably equal hand.
Previous page
