ABSTRACT
The department of La Manche has of course an almost entirely rural population. There are no large towns and few factories and, with the exception of Cherbourg, no place in which workers come together in large numbers. At first the revolution was hardly noticed there. The upper classes immediately bent beneath the blow, and the lower classes scarcely felt it. Agricultural populations are usually less quick than others to receive political impressions but more stubborn in retaining them; they are the last to rise and the last to settle down again. My steward, who is half-peas ant, wrote telling me what was happening in the country immediately after the 24th February:
