within twenty-one days; and in order to carry this decree
into execution they poured their troops from all sides into that
doomed country. The decisive battle was won near Chollet: D Elbee
and Beauchamp, two of their most noble leaders, fell, and then their
soldiers, seized with terror, fled, and the republic celebrated the most
bloody triumph. Humanity shudders at the atrocities which then ensued.
The convention had proscribed the whole population of the Vendee,
and its generals executed the dreadful proscription with tiger
rage;--children, old men, and women were pitilessly massacred, and ruin
marked the path of the victors. The bulk of the Vendee army had passed
the Loire, where it was reinforced by many malcontents arriving from
Bretagne, and after several victories intended to march upon Paris;
whilst Charette with a small force occupied the most inaccessible parts
of the Vendee, and conquered the islands of Boccin and Noirmoutier.
But it was in vain that they struggled against the masses which the
convention soon poured forth against them.

After changing results, the death-blow was given to them at Maus, in the
month of December: 20,000 then fell in the field of battle, and, soon
after, the remnant of their army was annihilated. Again vengeance
fell upon the inhabitants of the Vendee: columns sur-named "Infernal"
inarched through the country in all directions, destroying thousands
of its inhabitants, and carrying thousands more as prisoners to Nantes,
where they were delivered over to the tiger-fangs of the monster
Carrier. Doomed to death, they were there either crushed in bodies by
the cannon's thunder, slain with the sword, or drowned by hundreds in
the Loire. Similar atrocities filled Lyons, the ornament of the south of
France; and Bordeaux and Marseilles suffered the like hard fate.

Nor was Paris, the seat of the revolution, free from scenes of
slaughter. As it has been said of Rome, she did "fearful execution
on herself." After the fall of the Girondists, their mortal foes, the
Jacobins, proceeded to establish the most democratic constitution
that ever existed. From that time the committee of public safety, now
composed of decimvirs under the infamous, Robespierre, exercised all the
powers of government, ruling the provinces, generals, and armies, with
despotic sway, by means of its commissioners, and exercising, by the
revolutionary tribunal, supreme authority over both property and life.
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