WILD DOGS OF 1793.

Press, Volume LIII, Issue 9321, 23 January 1896, Page 6

WILD DOGS OF 1793.

-» So many startling events happened from day to day during the Reign of Terror that the apparition of wild dogg in Paris is commonly overlooked. But it was quite natural. The greater part of those grandeee who fled or wont into hiding kopt dogs, and very few of them were able to make any arrangement for the poor beasts when they left home. The dogs, abandoned, took to the streets, of course, and shortly they began to congregate in two packs, one occupying the Champs-Elysiies and one the Bois do Boulogne. Soon they became a public danger. Carlyle pokes fun at Santcrre, the brewer, who proposed a law that all clogs should be hauged; he had not noticed the paragraphs in the newspapers telling how people had been attacked in the Champs-Elysees. At length the situation became really grave, as is easily understood when thousands of starving animals have to find subsistence in a starving city. Many of them were wolf-hounds, and of powerful fighting breeds. So, in September 1793, drastic measures were taken against the Champs-Elysees pack. Two battalions of the National Guard surrounded the area, leaving a gap towards the Rue Royale. while multitudes of ragamuffins beat the cover. The game was driven up the Ruo Royale to the Place Royale, where troope made a battue of It, firing volleys. Three days consecutively this operation was repeated, and more than three thousand dead dogs lay in the plaoe. A certain Gaspardin received orders to clear them away, and he, short of means, applied for the Royal equipages. It was a timely jest, greeted with applause. So M. Gaspardin packed the dogs neck and heels in gilded coaches as full as they would hold, and made a State procession through delighted Paris.