XII. 1793. CHAP. them as to their enemies; and the Chouan bands were swelled by multitudes who were driven to despair by the conflagration of their dwellings, and the massacre of their relations. Strengthened by such recruits, the unconquerable Charette maintained the contest, and often took a bloody revenge on his enemies. Acquainted with every road and point of ambuscade in the country, capable of enduring the extremities of hunger, serene in danger, cheerful in misfortune, affable with his soldiers, inexhaustible in resources, invincible in resolution, he displayed in that guerilla warfare the talents of a consummate general. In vain Thurreau sent against him General Haxo, one of the ablest of the Republican commanders: his indefatigable opponent retreated before him till he arrived at a favourable place for the attack, and then turning to his men, and ordering them to halt, "We have retired far enough," said he "now is the time to show the Con266, 272, vention that La Vendée still exists." With that they B174, 176 precipitated themselves with such fury upon their pur369, 371, suers, that the column was broken, and put to flight, and Laroch. 414. General Haxo himself slain, while bravely endeavouring to restore the combat.1 1 Jom. v. 273. Lac. Beauch, ii. 410-418. 94. at Nantes. Legion of Marat. : While Thurreau was pursuing with varied success the Executions system of extermination in La Vendée, the scaffold was erected at Nantes, and those infernal executions were commenced, which have affixed a stain upon the French Revolution, unequalled since the beginning of the world. A Revolutionary Tribunal was formed there under the direction of Carrier, and it soon outstripped even the rapid progress in atrocity of Danton and Robespierre. "Their principle," says the Republican historian, "was, that it was necessary to destroy en masse all the prisoners. At their command was formed a corps called the Legion of Marat, composed of the most determined and bloodthirsty of the Revolutionists, the members of which were entitled, of their own authority, to incarcerate any person whom they chose. The number of their 6 XII. 1793. prisoners was soon between three and four thousand, CHAP. and they divided among themselves all their property. Whenever a fresh supply of captives was wanted, the alarm was spread of a counter-revolution, the générale beat, the cannon planted; and this was immediately followed by innumerable arrests. Nor were they long in disposing of the captives. The miserable wretches were either slain with poniards in the prisons, or carried out in a vessel and drowned by wholesale in the Loire. On one occasion, a hundred fanatical priests,' as they were termed, were taken out together, stripped of their clothes, and precipitated into the waves. The same vessel served for many of these noyades; and the horror expressed by many of the citizens for that mode of execution, formed the ground for fresh arrests and increased murders. Women big with child, children eight, nine, and ten years of age, were thrown together into the stream, on the banks of which, men, armed with sabres, were placed to cut them down, if the waves should throw them undrowned on the shore. The citizens, with loud shrieks, implored the lives of the little innocents, and numbers offered to adopt them as their Trib. Rév. own; but, though a few were granted to their urgent 74. Procès entreaty, the greater part were doomed to destruction. Thus were consigned to the grave whole generations at 104. Bonch. once the ornament of the present, the hope of the Th. vi. 374. future."1* So immense were the numbers of those who vi. 339. were cut off by the guillotine or mowed down by fusil * "Pour en représenter, les tragiques histoires, Je les peins dans le meurtre à l'envi triomphants, Les autres dans le sein de leurs dieux domestiques; Le mari par sa femme en son lit égorgé, Le fils tout dégouttant du meurtre de son père, Cinna, Act i. scene 3. 1 Bull. du No. 19, p. Toul. v. 103, ii. 279-281. Prudhom. 1793. CHAP. lades, that three hundred men were occupied for six XII. weeks, in covering with earth the vast multitude of corpses that filled the trenches which had been cut in the Place of the Department at Nantes to receive the dead bodies. Ten thousand died of disease, pestilence, and horror, in the prisons of that department alone. 95. On one occasion, by orders of Carrier, twenty-three Carrier's of the Royalists, on another twenty-four, were guillotined Republican together, without any trial. The executioner remon baptisms and mar riages. strated, but in vain. Among them were many children of seven or eight years of age, and seven women; the executioner died two or three days after with horror at what he himself had done. At another time, one hundred and forty women, incarcerated as suspected, were drowned together, though actively engaged in making bandages and shirts for the Republican soldiers. So great was the multitude of captives who were brought in on all sides, that the executioners, as well as the company of Marat, declared themselves exhausted with fatigue; and a new method of disposing of them was adopted, borrowed from Nero, but an improvement on the plan of that tyrant. A hundred, or a hundred and fifty victims, for the most part women and children, were crowded together in a boat, with a concealed trapdoor in the bottom, which was conducted into the middle of the Loire; at a signal given, the crew leapt into another boat, the bolts were withdrawn, and the shrieking victims sank into the waves, amidst the laughter of the company of Marat, who stood on the banks to cut down any who approached the shore. This was what Carrier called his Republican Baptisms. The Republican Marriages were, if possible, a still greater refinement in cruelty. Two persons of different sexes, generally an old man and an old woman, or a young man and young woman, bereft of every species of dress, were bound together, and after XII. 1793. being left in torture in that situation for half an hour, CHAP. thrown into the river.* On one occasion, one of these victims was a woman who had just come out of travail hardly was she delivered of the infant when she was stripped, bound to a man, and, after an hour's exposure in that way, despatched by strokes of the sabre. It was ascertained, by authentic documents, that six hundred children had, on one occasion alone, perished by the inhuman species of death styled the Republican baptisms. The noyades at Nantes alone. amounted to twenty-five, on each of which occasions from eighty to a hundred and fifty persons perished; and such was the quantity of corpses accumulated in the Loire, that the water of that river was infected so as to render a public ordinance necessary, forbidding the use of it by the inhabitants. No less than eighteen thousand 281, 283. perished in these ways, or by the guillotine, in that city Lac. xii. alone, during the administration of Carrier; and the Toul. v. 104, mariners, when they heaved their anchors, frequently Prudhombrought up boats charged with corpses. Birds of prey 336, 338. flocked to the shores, and fed on human flesh; while Bull, du the very fish became so poisonous, as to induce an order Procès de of the municipality of Nantes, prohibiting them to be 34, 37, 74. taken by the fishermen.1 The scenes in the prisons which preceded these horrid executions exceeded all that romance has figured of the * "Quid memorem infandas cædes quid facta tyranni Eneid, viii. 483. "Non, mihi si linguæ centum sint, oraque centum, Ibid. vi. 625. +18,000 hommes araient péri par la guillotine, et 10,000 étaient incarcérés dans l'entrepôt ; et c'était Carrier qui commandait toutes ces atrocités. -Déposition d'ALTAROCHE, Administrateur du Départment du Cantal; Bullétin du Trib. Rév. No. 19, p. 74. 1 Bonch. ii. Th. vi. 373. 164, 165. 105-120. me, vi. 335, Trib. Rév. Carrier, 26, XII. 1793. 96. Dreadful scenes in CHAP. terrible. Many women died of terror the moment a man entered their cells, conceiving that they were about to be led out to the noyades; the floors were covered with the bodies of their infants, numbers of whom were yet quiverthe prisons. ing in the agonies of death. On one occassion, the inspector entered the prison to seek for a child, where the evening before he had left above three hundred infants; they were all gone in the morning, having been drowned the preceding night. To every representation of the citizens in favour of these innocent victims, Carrier answered, "They are all vipers; let them be stifled." Three hundred young women of Nantes were drowned by him in one night; so far from having had any share in political discussions, they were of the unfortunate class who live by the pleasures of others. Several hundred persons were thrown every night, for some months, into the river: their shrieks at being led out of the entrepôt on board the barks wakened all the inhabitants of the town, and froze every heart with horror. Early in the noyades, Lamberty, at a party at Carrier's, pointing to the Loire, said, "It has already passed two thousand eight hundred." "Yes," replied Carrier, "they are in the national bath." Fouché boasted that he had 1 Toul. v. 119, 120. Beauch. ii. 284, 285. la Révolu river. Laroch. 394. despatched nine thousand in other quarters on the same From Saumur to Nantes, a distance of sixty Prudhom miles, the Loire was for several weeks red with human me, Vic, de blood; the ensanguined stream, far at sea, divided the tion, vi. 337, blue waves of the deep.1* The multitude of corpses it bore teaubriand, to the ocean was so prodigious, that the adjacent coast i. Pref. 45. was strewed with them; and a violent west wind and high tide having brought part of them back to Nantes, followed 339. Chau Etud. Hist. "Sed illos Magna premit strages; peraguntque cadavera partem Cædis; viva graves elidunt corpora trunci. Intrepidus tanti sedit securus ab alto Spectator sceleris; miseri tot millia vulgi |