ent and
guilty--and Merlin de Thionville, with other members, so perfectly
comprehended this detestable project, that they already began to devise
schemes for repeopling La Vendee, when its miserable natives should be
destroyed.*

* It is for the credit of humanity to believe, that the decree was
not understood according to its real intention; but the nation has
to choose between the imputation of cruelty, stupidity, or slavery--
for they either approved the sense of the decree, believed what was
not possible, or were obliged to put on an appearance of both, in
spite of their senses and their feelings. A proclamation, in
consequence, to the army, is more explicit--"All the brigands of La
Vendee must be exterminated before the end of October."

From this time, the representatives on mission, commissaries of war,
officers, soldiers, and agents of every kind, vied with each other in the
most abominable outrages. Carrier superintended the fusillades and
noyades at Nantes, while Lequinio dispatched with his own hands a part of
the prisoners taken at La Fontenay, and projected the destruction of the
rest.--After the evacuation of Mans by the insurgents, women were brought
by twenties and thirties, and shot before the house where the deputies
Tureau and Bourbotte had taken up their residence; and it appears to have
been considered as a compliment to these republican Molochs, to surround
their habitation with mountains of the dead. A compliment of the like
nature was paid to the representative Prieur de la Marne,* by a
volunteer, who having learned that his own brother was taken amongst the
enemy, requested, by way of recommending himself to notice, a formal
permission to be his executioner.--The Roman stoicism of Prieur accepted
the implied homage, and granted the request!!

* This representative, who was also a member of the Committee of
Public Welfare, was not only the Brutus, but the Antony of La
Vendee; for we learn from the report of Benaben, that his stern
virtues were accompanied, through the whole of his mission in this
afflicted country, by a cortege of thirty strolling fiddlers!

Fourteen hundred prisoners, who had surrendered at Savenay, among whom
were many women and children, were shot, by order of the deputy
Francastel, who, together with Hentz, Richard, Choudieu, Carpentier, and
others of their colleagues, set an example of rapine and cruelty