Chapter 380 Closing the net and catching fish

Chapter 381 Close the net and catch fish

The rioting farmers immediately shouted, "Don't be afraid! Everyone, come on!"

"Fight with those nobles!"

"There are many of us, don't be afraid! Beat them!"

However, it was the nobles who took the lead in attacking.

Two gunshots of "bang bang" came from the ranks of the nobles. The noble "commander" who led him immediately frowned and turned around and shouted: "Who is shooting randomly?!"

The undercover agent from South Netherland who fired just now hid behind the others and shouted loudly: "We must let @% of the untouchables know how powerful we are!"

"@%#, they are rioting, use our swords to defend the city hall!"

"For His Majesty the King, warriors, teach those untouchables a lesson!"

Most of the nobles who came here were young people. After such incitement, blood immediately rushed to their heads, and another twenty or thirty people began to shoot with guns.

The farmers on the opposite side shrank back in fear at first, but with the encouragement of Saint-Just and other liberal leaders, they quickly regained their composure and raised their guns to fight back.

The two sides were shouting and cursing at both ends of the street nearly a hundred steps apart, and kept firing guns at the opposite side. For a while, the noise and gunshots were mixed with gunpowder smoke, and soon enveloped the two nearby blocks.

However, although their momentum was very large, both sides were composed of rookies who had never been on the battlefield. In addition, the distance was too far, and even after fighting for a long time, few people were shot.

At this moment, whistles suddenly sounded around the street, and more than 400 police officers were divided into two teams and outflanked the two parties in the conflict.

Reims has not been very peaceful recently, and the police are on alert almost all the time. However, limited by the communication level of this era, it took them more than an hour to gather enough people to disperse the rioters.

The farmers immediately became chaotic. Some people continued to "fight" under the command of Saint Just and the others, some had already escaped through the cracks between the surrounding buildings, and more were looking around in panic, not knowing what to do. good.

The nobles, on the other hand, became proud and began to arrogantly say provocative words or curse. Some even remotely commanded the police to intercept the fleeing peasants.

When the whole street was in chaos, several men wearing gray coats and extremely low felt hats emerged from the corner, showed their intelligence agency credentials to the police leader, and then pointed towards the nobles.

The police immediately turned and ran towards the nobles, and soon surrounded the more than 200 people.

Several young nobles stepped forward and pointed fingers at the police - after the police reform, most of the police were civilians. Although they were highly trained, they were still looked down upon by the nobles - and shouted: "Don't stay here. Those rioters are running away!"

"What are you going to do? These are all nobles. The person you want to arrest is over there."

The leading security inspector looked at the few people coldly and said in a deep voice: "Did you shoot first just now?"

"Yes," a curly-haired noble said proudly, "You police can't deal with those untouchables, so let us teach them a lesson!"

"You were all involved in the firefight just now?"

"That's not a fire union, we are protecting..."

Before the noble finished speaking, he saw the security inspector winking at the surrounding police and gesturing to the nobles in front of him: "Arrest all those who participated in the riot!"

"Yes, sir!"

The nobles suddenly panicked, some yelled, some showed their prominent identities, and most of them argued with the police, "What do you want to do? Those untouchables on the other side of the riot!"

"Let me go, I'm here to quell the riot..."

"Let me go, look, I don't even have a gun."

In a short time, about 200 arrogant nobles were restrained by the police and stood in a row lying on the wall facing the street.

The police inspector walked past them and said in a cold voice: "Gathering a crowd to shoot citizens in the city of Reims without permission, no matter who you are, this is a riot!

"As for those without guns, their swords can still kill people, but we stopped them in time."

A captain next to him came over and whispered: "Sir, they are all nobles, and some of them have very unusual identities. Look..."

The police inspector glared at him: "Can nobles gather in crowds to riot?"

"No, can't..."

"Take them all away!"

"yes!"

The police inspector's pocket contained an order personally signed by the chief of the police department, asking him to arrest all the troublemaking nobles, so at this time he was very stable and did not care about his identity at all.

Of course, the chief of the police department received the instruction of His Royal Highness the Crown Prince to arrest the nobles who "participated in the riot" on such a large scale.

When Joseph heard Talleyrand mention that many nobles were incited to go to the northwest provinces to "protect the interests of the nobles," he immediately realized that this was a very useful starting point.

So he asked Fouche to send people to keep an eye on those nobles, and told the police department not to worry, and to arrest them as much as possible if there was evidence.

…

Zesfield Village.

Saint-Just loudly encouraged the hundreds of peasants in front of him: "Don't be afraid of those nobles. Most of them can't walk a mile with their guns on their backs. We almost defeated them today.

"Although we didn't rush into the city hall the day before yesterday, but next time we will have more people, we will definitely be able to..."

From time to time, the peasants followed him and waved their arms or shouted loudly. The crowd was very excited. After these two riots, they were no longer so afraid of the police, and as Mr. Saint Just said, more and more people gathered around them.

Next time, there should be 2,000 people attacking the city hall together. By then, who would care about a few hundred policemen?

Especially those peasants who made the most noise and rushed to the front, and received subsidies from the "Committee" of the Southern Netherlands, they were even more eager to fight.

Saint Just continued his speech: "In order to avoid being sucked by those nobles for another 50 years, we must unite and use..."

Just as he was full of passion, the parish priest Joly ran over breathlessly, waved to the farmers and shouted: "Everyone be careful, don't be fooled by the ill-intentioned Southern Netherlands people!"

Saint Just frowned and looked at him and said: "Priest who sold his soul, do you think your tricks of sowing discord will work?"

More than a dozen mounted policemen following Father Joly finally ran to the gathering field - not all mounted policemen rode horses, many rural mounted policemen walked.

The leader glanced at Saint Just coldly, jumped onto the stone platform where the latter was speaking, and then took out a letter from his pocket and showed it to the farmers present: "Everyone, take a look, this is the letter from the Southern Netherlands Parliament to your Mr. Saint Just.

"It says that the Southern Netherlands people will provide money and guns, and Mr. Saint Just will be responsible for inciting the peasants to start riots in French cities. Their excuse is that the government will set a high land redemption fee.

"Oh, you can come up and see for yourself, there is Mr. Saint Just's signature here...