That nothing might be wanting to these outrages against nature, they were escribed as jests, and called “Noyades, water parties,” and “civic baptisms”!  Carrier, a Deputy of the Convention, used to dine and make parties of pleasure, accompanied by music and every species of gross luxury, on board the barges appropriated to these execrable purposes.

—­At one time, six hundred children appear to have been destroyed in this manner;—­young people of different sexes were tied in pairs and thrown into the river;—­thousands were shot in the high roads and in the fields; and vast numbers were guillotined, without a trial!*

* Six young women, (the Mesdemoiselles la Meterie,) in particular, sisters, and all under four-and-twenty, were ordered to the Guillotine together:  the youngest died instantly of fear, the rest were executed successively.—­A child eleven years old, who had previously told the executioner, with affecting simplicity, that he hoped he would not hurt him much, received three strokes of the Guillotine before his head was severed from his body.

—­Two thousand died, in less than two months, of a pestilence, occasioned by this carnage:  the air became infected, and the waters of the Loire empoisoned, by dead bodies; and those whom tyranny yet spared, perished by the elements which nature intended for their support.*

     * Vast sums were exacted from the Nantais for purifying the air, and
     taking precautions against epidemical disorders.

But I will not dwell on horrors, which, if not already known to all Europe, I should be unequal to describe:  suffice it to say, that whatever could disgrace or afflict mankind, whatever could add disgust to detestation, and render cruelty, if possible, less odious than the circumstances by which it was accompanied, has been exhibited in this unfortunate city.—­Both the accused and their witnesses were at first timid through apprehension, but by degrees the monstrous mysteries of the government were laid open, and it appeared, beyond denial or palliation, that these enormities were either devised, assisted, or connived at, by Deputies of the Convention, celebrated for their ardent republicanism and revolutionary zeal.—­The danger of confiding unlimited power to such men as composed the majority of the Assembly, was now displayed in a manner that penetrated the dullest imagination, and the coldest heart; and it was found, that, armed with decrees, aided by revolutionary committees, revolutionary troops, and revolutionary vehicles of destruction,* missionaries selected by choice from the whole representation, had, in the city of Nantes alone, and under the mask of enthusiastic patriotism, sacrificed thirty thousand people!