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The extensive range and the worst enormities of the proscriptions and confiscations probably arose not so much from Sulla's own wish as from this spirit of indifference, which in his position indeed was hardly more pardonable.
His proscriptions, confiscations, butcheries, unheard-of cruelties which anticipated and surpassed those of the French Revolution of 1793, availed nothing. The Marian or plebeian movement, apparently checked for a moment, resumed its march with renewed vigor under Julius, and triumphed at Pharsalia.
As a matter of course, moreover, in all the communities of the peninsula the persons of note who were not well affected to Rome were got rid of, so far as this could be accomplished by political processes and confiscations of property.
"Factotum" Mansfeld; the Counts Aremberg and Meghem, the Duke of Aerschot, the Sanguinary Noircarmes, were already counting their share in the coming confiscations. In the internecine conflict approaching, there would be gold for the gathering, even if no honorable laurels would wreath their swords.
But as people began to take refuge from their persecutions amongst themselves, they have driven them from that last asylum. The state of France is perfectly simple. It consists of but two descriptions, the oppressors and the oppressed. The first has the whole authority of the state in their hands, all the arms, all the revenues of the public, all the confiscations of individuals and corporations.
The peace which now reigned in Europe allowed the United Provinces to direct their whole efforts toward the reform of those internal abuses resulting from feudality and fanaticism. Confiscations were reversed, and property secured throughout the republic.
By such means an insurrection was at last produced, which, from the weakness, or, as some suppose, from the wicked policy of an administration eager for confiscations, and desirous of such a state of the country as might, in some measure, justify their course of government, made such a progress that the insurgents became masters of Glasgow and the country adjacent.
A sum of forty millions of florins, which the confiscations in Bohemia and Moravia had produced, would have sufficed to reimburse both himself and his allies; but the Jesuits and his favourites soon squandered this sum, large as it was.
Yet, this amount, with the addition of large sums annually derived from confiscations, of five millions, at which the proceeds of the hundredth penny was estimated, and the two millions yearly, for which the tenth and twentieth pence had been compounded, was insufficient to save the treasury from beggary and the unpaid troops from mutiny. Nevertheless, for the moment the joy created was intense.
The insurrection being put down, a general amnesty seems to have been extended to the rebels. The Bishop of Bayeux was exiled from England; some confiscations were made, and some rewards distributed; but almost without exception the leaders escaped punishment. The most notable exception, besides Odo, was William of St. Calais, the Bishop of Durham.
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