4137 ([return])
[ Camille Boursier, p.159.]
4138 ([return])
[ Ibid., 203. Representative Francastel announces "the firm determination to purge, to bleed freely this Vendean question." This same Francastel wrote to General Grignon: "Make those brigands tremble! Give them no quarter! The prisons in Vendée are overflowing with prisoners!... The conversion of this country into a desert must be completed. Show no weakness and no mercy... These are the views of the Convention.... I swear that Vendée shall be depopulated.">[
4139 ([return])
[ Granier de Cassagnac, "His. du Directoire," II., 241.—(Letter of General Hoche to the Minister of the Interior, Feb. 2, 1796.) "Only one out of five remains of the population of 1789.">[
4140 ([return])
[ Campardon, II., 247, 249, 251, 261, 321. (Examination of Fouquier-Tinville, Cambon's words.)]
4141 ([return])
[ Article by Guffroy, in his journal Le Rougiff: "Down with the nobles, and so much the worse for the good ones, if there are any! Let the guillotine stand permanently throughout the Republic. Five millions of inhabitants are enough for France!"—Berryat Saint-Prix, 445. (Letter of Fauvety, Orange, Prairial 14, year II.) "We have but two confined in our arrondissement. What a trifle!"—Ibid., 447. (Letter of the Orange Committee to the Committee of Public Safety, Messidor 3.) "As soon as the Committee gets fully agoing it is to try all the priests, rich merchants and ex-nobles."—(Letter of Juge, Messidor 2.) "Judging by appearances more than three thousand heads will fall in the department."—Ibid., 311. At Bordeaux, a huge scaffold is put up, authorized by the Military Committee, with seven doors, two of which are large and like barn-doors, called a four-bladed guillotine, so as to work faster and do more. The warrant and orders for its construction bear date Thermidor 3 and 8, year II.—Berryat Saint-Prix, 285. Letter of Representative Blutel, on mission at Rochefort, after Thermidor: "A few men, sunk in debauchery and crime, dared proscribe (here) virtues, patriotism, because it was not associated with their sanguinary excitement: the tree of Liberty, they said, required for its roots ten feet of human gore.">[