We call them all requisitions, and lay no stress on any discrimination. But the necessities of an army of occupation for food and clothing, as well as the immediate needs of war, and outrages done by tirailleurs and by people without any license, who yet are sympathized with by the district, have made summary and harsh impositions seem just and necessary. No absolute rule can without difficulty be laid down, and the temper of a commander, the false information he receives concerning the plots of the conquered province, will sometimes give rise to severities of a deplorable character. The civil government in occupied territory must go on, under control of the invading commander, at the expense of the inhabitants. For this end taxes must be raised as before.
Wrongs ought to be repaired at the making of a peace.
For penalties on a town or district in the way of fines, or of bodily inflictions on a principal inhabitant, or of burning, which has been threatened even in quite recent times, there is very seldom a sufficient justification. Nor do severe requisitions or wholesale punishments do any good. Napoleon in his Memoirs acknowledges that the excesses in the way of requisitions during the war with Spain contributed not a little to the French reverses in the Peninsula. Heffter is more harsh. A definite limit to the right of taking cannot be laid down, for there is no measure of rights in war.