would be expected of such seed! Alison continues:

"A Revolutionary Tribunal was formed at Nantes, under the direction of
Carrier, and it soon outstripped even the rapid march of Danton and
Robespierre. Their principle 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, on their own
authority, to incarcerate any person whom they chose. The number of
their prisoners was soon between three and four thousand, and they
divided among themselves all their property. Whenever a further supply
of captives was wanted, the alarm was spread of a counter-revolution,
the _generale_ beat, the cannon planted; and this was followed
immediately by innumerable arrests. Nor were they long in disposing of
their captives. The miserable wretches were either slain with poinards
in prison, 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, striped of their clothes, and
precipitated into the waters.... Women big with child, infants eight,
nine, and ten years of age, were thrown together into the stream, on the
sides of which men, armed with sabres, were placed to cut off their
heads if the waves should throw them undrowned on the shore.

"On one occasion, by orders of Carrier, twenty-three of the
revolutionists, on another twenty-four, were guillotined without any
trial. The executioner remonstrated, 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. 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 improved 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 trap-door in the bottom, which was conducted into the middle
of the Loire; at a signal given, the crew leaped into another boast, the
bolts were withdrawn, and the shrieking victims precipitated into the
waters, amid the laughter of the company of Marat, who stood on the
ba