Note 5 — Chapter III · THE RED-COATS.

Facts like these would seem incredible by their savage barbarity, did not authentic witnesses confirm them, almost daily, under the reign of the Grand Monarch. "The military constraint arrived in the town to the sound of bell and drum; then was furnished the melancholy spectacle of the house being demolished, the stones, the beams, the lumber, the iron publicly sold, because the owner had failed to pay his tax, etc., etc."—Vauban, La Dime Royale, vol. 1, chap. X. See also the New Code of Taxes, or the Collected Ordinances, Paris, 1761, article on Military Constraints; Forbonnais, Researches in Finance, etc.