"These last echoes of the civil war made much less noise than you would imagine, accustomed as we are now to the frightful publicity given by the press to every trial, even the least important, whether political or individual.The system of the Imperial government was that of all absolute governments.The censor allowed nothing to be published in the matter of politics except accomplished facts, and those were travestied.If you will take the trouble to look through files of the 'Moniteur' and the other newspapers of that time, even those of the West, you will not find a word about the four or five criminal trials which cost the lives of sixty or eighty 'brigands.'
The term /brigands/, applied during the revolutionary period to the Vendeans, Chouans, and all those who took up arms for the house of Bourbon, was afterwards continued judicially under the Empire against all royalists accused of plots.To some ardent and loyal natures the emperor and his government were the enemy; any form of warfare against them was legitimate.I am only explaining to you these opinions, not justifying them.
"Now," he said, after one of those pauses which are necessary in such long narratives, "if you realize how these royalists, ruined by the civil war of 1793, were dominated by violent passions, and how some exceptional natures (like that of Madame de la Chanterie's son-in-law and his friend) were eaten up with desires of all kinds, you may be able to understand how it was that the acts of brigandage which their political views justified when employed against the government in the service of the good cause, might in some cases be committed for personal ends.