Strange—when the smoke arose, only half were found dead. The rest remained either wounded or untouched. The unscathed stared in horror; the wounded screamed to be despatched.
The soldiers could not fire again. Some of the prisoners had freed themselves, and were escaping. The dragoons were ordered forward to cut them down. The victims were killed piece-meal. One man, a mayor of his town, reached the river, but there his bleeding hand betrayed him, and he was cast into the river.
The soldiers protested against the use to which they were put. The massacres lasted until night-fall. Yet when the grave-diggers came next morning, some hearts still beat. The sextons put the martyrs out of their misery at once by blows on the head with their pickaxes.
“We are purging the land,” wrote Collet d’Herbois to the Convention.
Every day twenty-two were regularly shot. By this time, the fear of life rendered death sweet. Girls, men, children, prayed that they might be shot with their parents. Sometimes they permitted this, and little boys and girls were shot, holding their father’s hands.
Women who were seen to shed tears at executions, were shot.
Mourning was prohibited under pain of death.
One lad of fourteen, says, “Quick—quick! You have killed papa! I want to overtake him!”
One De Rochefort[2] was accompanied by a son to the butchering-ground, whither he went with three relatives. The men fell—the boy, aged fifteen, remained standing.
The executioner hesitated—the people murmured.