The details of these massacres figured in the Moniteur after the reaction of Thermidor. I cite a few lines:—
``I saw,'' says Thomas, ``after the taking of Noirmoutier, men and women and old people burned alive . . . women violated, girls of fourteen and fifteen, and massacred afterward, and tender babes thrown from bayonet to bayonet; children who were taken from beside their mothers stretched out on the ground.''
In the same number we read a deposition by one Julien, relating how Carrier forced his victims to dig their graves and to allow themselves to be buried alive. The issue of October 15, 1794, contained a report by Merlin de Thionville proving that the captain of the vessel le Destin had received orders to embark forty-one victims to be drowned—``among them a blind man of 78, twelve women, twelve girls, and fourteen children, of whom ten were from 10 to 6 and five at the breast.''
In the course of Carrier's trial (Moniteur, December 30, 1794) it was proved that he ``had given orders to drown and shoot women and children, and had ordered General Haxo to exterminate all the inhabitants of La Vendee and to burn down their dwellings.''
Carrier, like all wholesale murderers, took an intense joy in seeing his victims suffer. ``In the department in which I hunted the priests,'' he said, ``I have never laughed so much or experienced such pleasure as in watching their dying grimaces'' (Moniteur, December 22, 1794).
Carrier was tried to satisfy the reaction of Thermidor. But the massacres of Nantes were repeated in many other towns. Fouche slew more than 2,000 persons at Lyons, and so many were killed at Toulon that the population fell from 29,000 to 7,000 in a few months.
We must say in defence of Carrier, Freron, Fouche and all these sinister persons, that they were incessantly stimulated by the Committee of Public Safety. Carrier gave proof of this during his trial.
``I admit,'' said he (Moniteur, December 24, 1794), ``that 150 or 200 prisoners were shot every day, but it was by order of the commission. I informed the Convention that the brigands were being shot down by hundreds, and it applauded this letter, and ordered its insertion in the Bulletin. What were these deputies doing then who are so furious against me now? They were applauding. Why did they still keep me `on mission'? Because I was then the saviour of the country, and now I am a bloodthirsty man.''
Unhappily for him, Carrier did not know, as he remarked in the same speech, that only seven or eight persons led the Convention.
But the terrorised Assembly approved of all that these seven or eight ordered, so that they could say nothing in reply to Carrier's argument. He certainly deserved to be guillotined, but the whole Convention deserved to be guillotined with him, since it had approved of the massacres.