But the total effect of all this is yet more damaging, for, out of the vast numbers of workers it ruins it forms beggars unwilling to work, dangerous sluggards going about begging and extorting bread from peasants who have not too much for themselves.  “The vagabonds about the country,” says Letrosne,[31] “are a terrible pest; they are like an enemy’s force which, distributed over the territory, obtains a living as it pleases, levying veritable contributions. . . .  They are constantly roving around the country, examining the approaches to houses, and informing themselves about their inmates and of their habits.- Woe to those supposed to have money! . . .  What numbers of highway robberies and what burglaries!  What numbers of travelers assassinated, and houses and doors broken into!  What assassinations of curates, farmers and widows, tormented to discover money and afterwards killed!  Twenty-five years anterior (page 384/284) to the Revolution it was not infrequent to see fifteen or twenty of these “invade a farm-house to sleep there, intimidating the farmers and exacting whatever they pleased.”  In 1764, the government takes measures against them which indicate the magnitude of the evil[32].

“Are held to be vagabonds and vagrants, and condemned as such, those who, for a preceding term of six months, shall have exercised no trade or profession, and who, having no occupation or means of subsistence, can procure no persons worthy of confidence to attest and verify their habits and mode of life. . . .  The intent of His Majesty is not merely to arrest vagabonds traversing the country but, again, all mendicants whatsoever who, without occupations, may be regarded as suspected of vagabondage.”

The penalty for able-bodied men is three years in the galleys; in case of a second conviction, nine years; and for a third, imprisonment for life.  Under the age of sixteen, they are put in an institution.  “A mendicant who has made himself liable to arrest by the police,” says the circular, “is not to be released except under the most positive assurance that he will no longer beg; this course will be followed only in case of persons worthy of confidence and solvent guaranteeing the mendicant, and engaging to provide him with employment or to support him, and they shall indicate the means by which they are to prevent him from begging.”  This being furnished, the special authorization of the intendant must be obtained in addition.  By virtue of this law, 50,000 beggars are said to have been arrested at once, and, as the ordinary hospitals and prisons were not large enough to contain them, jails had to be constructed.  Up to the end of the ancient régime this measure is carried out with occasional intermissions:  in Languedoc, in 1768, arrests were still made of 433 in six months, and, in 1785, 205 in four months[33].  A little before this time 300 were confined in the depot of Besançon, 500 in that of Rennes and 650 in that of Saint Denis.