In the same number we read a deposition by one Julien, relating how Carrier forced his victims to dig their graves and to allow themselves to be buried alive.The issue of October 15, 1794, contained a report by Merlin de Thionville proving that the captain of the vessel le Destin had received orders to embark forty-one victims to be drowned--``among them a blind man of 78, twelve women, twelve girls, and fourteen children, of whom ten were from 10 to 6 and five at the breast.''
In the course of Carrier's trial (Moniteur, December 30, 1794)it was proved that he ``had given orders to drown and shoot women and children, and had ordered General Haxo to exterminate all the inhabitants of La Vendee and to burn down their dwellings.''
Carrier, like all wholesale murderers, took an intense joy in seeing his victims suffer.``In the department in which I hunted the priests,'' he said, ``I have never laughed so much or experienced such pleasure as in watching their dying grimaces''
(Moniteur, December 22, 1794).
Carrier was tried to satisfy the reaction of Thermidor.But the massacres of Nantes were repeated in many other towns.
Fouche slew more than 2,000 persons at Lyons, and so many were killed at Toulon that the population fell from 29,000 to 7,000 in a few months.
We must say in defence of Carrier, Freron, Fouche and all these sinister persons, that they were incessantly stimulated by the Committee of Public Safety.Carrier gave proof of this during his trial.
``I admit,'' said he (Moniteur, December 24, 1794), ``that 150or 200 prisoners were shot every day, but it was by order of the commission.I informed the Convention that the brigands were being shot down by hundreds, and it applauded this letter, and ordered its insertion in the Bulletin.What were these deputies doing then who are so furious against me now? They were applauding.Why did they still keep me `on mission'? Because Iwas then the saviour of the country, and now I am a bloodthirsty man.''
Unhappily for him, Carrier did not know, as he remarked in the same speech, that only seven or eight persons led the Convention.
But the terrorised Assembly approved of all that these seven or eight ordered, so that they could say nothing in reply to Carrier's argument.He certainly deserved to be guillotined, but the whole Convention deserved to be guillotined with him, since it had approved of the massacres.
The defence of Carrier, justified by the letters of the Committee, by which the representatives ``on mission'' were incessantly stimulated, shows that the violence of the Terror resulted from a system, and not, as has sometimes been claimed, from the initiative of a few individuals.
The thirst for destruction during the Terror was by no means assuaged by the destruction of human beings only; there was an even greater destruction of inanimate things.The true believer is always an iconoclast.Once in power, he destroys with equal zeal the enemies of his faith and the images, temples, and symbols which recall the faith attacked.
We know that the first action of the Emperor Theodosius when converted to the Christian religion was to break down the majority of the temples which for six thousand years had been built beside the Nile.We must not, therefore, be surprised to see the leaders of the Revolution attacking the monuments and works of art which for them were the vestiges of an abhorred past.
Statues, manuscripts, stained glass windows, and plate were frenziedly broken.When Fouche, the future Duke of Otranto under Napoleon, and minister under Louis XVIII., was sent as commissary of the Convention to the Nievre, he ordered the demolition of all the towers of the chateaux and the belfries of the churches ``because they wounded equality.''
Revolutionary vandalism expended itself even on the tomb.
Following a report read by Barrere to the Convention, the magnificent royal tombs at Saint-Denis, among which was the admirable mausoleum of Henri II., by Germain Pilon, were smashed to pieces, the coffins emptied, and the body of Turenne sent to the Museum as a curiosity, after one of the keepers had extracted the teeth in order to sell them as curiosities.The moustache and beard of Henri IV.were also torn out.
It is impossible to witness such comparatively enlightened men consenting to the destruction of the artistic patriotism of France without a feeling of sadness.To excuse them, we must remember that intense beliefs give rise to the worst excesses, and also that the Convention, almost daily invaded by rioters, always yielded to the popular will.
This glowing record of devastation proves, not only the power of fanaticism: it shows us what becomes of men who are liberated from all social restraints, and of the country which falls into their hands.
