8 Refers to the Civil List, a rich source of income for politically connected aristocrats ruined by the Revolution.

"Well, sir, since you compel me, let me use you, boldly, as an example. Like your noble ancestors, who followed Saint Louis to the Crusades, you really should be able to show us, for those thousands of francs, at least a regiment, a company—what am I saying! Half a company, if it were composed of fifty combat-ready men, all dedicated to the good cause, to life, and to death. All you have is servants who, in case there's a revolution, will make you afraid of them. "The throne, the altar, the nobility may perish tomorrow, gentlemen, as long as you have still not created, in every district, a force of five hundred dedicated men. Dedicated, let me say, not only with the courage of Frenchmen, but also with the steadiness of the Spanish. "Half of this troop should be composed of our children, our nephews—in a word, of real gentlemen. Each of them will have at his side, not some word-crazed petty bourgeois, ready to hoist the tricolor flag if another 18159 gives him yet another chance, but a good peasant, simple, frank, like Cathelineau.10 Our young sons and nephews will have taught them—the peasants ought to be sons of the women who nursed their betters.11 Each of us ought to give up one-fifth of our income, in order to form this little, dedicated troop of five hundred in each district. And then you'll be able to rely on a foreign occupation. Foreign soldiers will never get as far as Dijon, on their own, if they can't be sure of finding five hundred friendly soldiers in every department. "Foreign kings will only listen to you when you inform them of twenty thousand gentlemen, ready to take up arms, on their behalf, and open the ports of France. This will be painful, you may say. Gentlemen, it's the price of keeping ourselves alive. Between liberty of the press, and our existence as gentlemen, it is war to the death. Turn yourself into manufacturers, or peasants—or pick up your guns. Be timid, if you so choose, but do not be stupid. Open your eyes. "Formez vos battalions, get your battalions ready, I say to you, in the words of the 'Marseillaise,'12 that Jacobin song. Then you'll have some noble King Gustavus Adolphus,13 moved by an imminent threat to the very principle of monarchy, who will come five hundred miles from his own country, and do for us what that Gustavus did for the Protestant princes. Do you prefer to go on talking, and never act? In fifty years all there will be, in Europe, is the presidents of republics—not a king left. And when those four letters—K-I-N-G—disappear, so too will all the priests and all the gentlemen. All I can see is candidates paying court to dirt- covered majorities.