ried the
republicans with one voice. They demanded that the fire of the English
corvette should cease, and there being no boat at hand, Gesril du Papeu
swam to the English ship, and having delivered his message, returned and
surrendered himself prisoner. It is said that Hoche considered the
capitulation sacred, but Tallien arrived armed with full powers from the
Convention to treat the emigrants according to law. The prisoners had been
conducted to Auray; Hoche, unwilling to be the witness of acts he could
not prevent, returned to Brest. Not one French officer would consent to be
a member of the military commission who were to try, or rather condemn,
the captives. It was composed of Belgians and Swiss, and it was difficult
to induce the soldiers to execute the sentence. Sombreuil and a few others
were shot at Vannes. The execution of the rest took place in a field now
called the Champ des Martyrs. They were brought out in twenties, and
placed before a trench, dug beforehand, and shot. The massacre lasted
three weeks. In all there were 952 victims. Two chapels have been erected;
the one attached to the Chartreuse, and the other on the Champ des
Martyrs. That in the Chartreuse has inscribed over the front, in letters
of gold, "France in tears has raised it." The interior walls are overlaid
with black and white marble, with two marble bas-reliefs by David of
Angers: one representing the Duc d'Angouleme praying over the bones of the
victims in 1814, when they were transferred from the Champ des Martyrs to
the Chartreuse; the other, the laying of the first stone of the mausoleum
by the Duchesse d'Angouleme in 1823. In 1829 the solemn inauguration of
the expiatory monument took place; and it must have been touching to the
spectators to have assisted at the ceremony with the Duchesse d'Angouleme,
daughter of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, niece of the martyr saint the
Princess Elizabeth, and herself long subjected to imprisonment and
indignities. Only one year after this ceremony she again took the road to
exile, where she ended her troublous life, a pattern of piety and
resignation--

"Sa mort fut le soir d'un beau jour."

In the centre of the mausoleum is the vault containing the bones, and over
it a sarcophagus on a pedestal, upon which are inscribed the names of the
victims. On the sarcophagus are busts of Sombreuil and the other chiefs of
the expedition; and a profile of Monseigneur d'Herce, Bishop of Dol, o