in 1515.
The climate of Nantes is mild, and reckoned remarkably healthy: every
article of life is cheap, and from its mild temperature it abounds
in the finest fruits and most excellent wines. Its population is
estimated at 60,000 inhabitants. The numbers that were destroyed
during the Revolution, or, as the French emphatically term it, "Le
regne de la Terreur," were never ascertained; but the frightful
history of that bloody period would probably justify the computation
at half the number of its present population, many having fallen
victims to the murders that were termed "_Noyades_," independent of
those who perished in the Vendean war.
The spot where the gallant Charette was shot, with several other
leaders of the Vendean army, is shown; and in the cemetery, a large
mound of earth marks the place where the bodies were thrown in, at the
time of the "_Fuzillades_" when the infamous Carrier presided at the
execution of the brave Royalists.[7] The print beneath represents this
monster on the banks of the Loire directing the Noyades.
[Illustration]
[Footnote 7: Chaque nuit on venait en prendre par centaines, pour les
mettre sur les bateaux. La on liait les malheureux deux a deux, et
on les poussait dans l'eau a coups de baionette. On saisissait
indistinctement tout ce qui se trouvait a l'entrepot, tellement
qu'on noya un jour l'etat major d'une corvette Anglaise, qui etait
prisonnier de guerre. Une autre fois, Carrier, voulant donner un
exemple de l'austerite des moeurs republicaines, fit enfermer trois
cent filles publiques de la ville, et les malheureuses creatures
furent noyees. Enfin, l'on estime qu'il a peri a l'entrepot quinze
mille personnes en un mois.--_Memoires de Madame la Marquise de
Laroche-Jaquelin_.]
At the end of a fine avenue of trees, on the Boulevard, is a large
and splendid mansion built by that Deputy, and which is at present
inhabited by a merchant. Carrier's mistress (to whom he left it,
together with a very considerable fortune, amassed from the spoils
of his plunder, and the murder of the innocent inhabitants) was very
lately sentenced to two years' hard labour for some crime she had
committed: and it is no less remarkable, that, of the remaining
inhabitants known to have participated in the atrocities of that
frightful period, there is not one but is reduced to poverty, and most
of them in the extreme of wretchedness, shunned by all, and suffering
the ignominy they have so justly me
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