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A much deeper mark was made on the history of the century by its methods. Compared with the soul-searing horrors let loose during the Bolshevist fit of frenzy, the worst atrocities recorded of Deputy Carrier and his noyades during the French Revolution were but the freaks of compassionate human beings.
"I think he will succeed;" Adolphe said, "anyhow, we will have our boat out below the bend of the river, and lend a hand to Pierre to get them out." The Noyades When left alone Harry blew out the other candles, but left that in the lantern burning, and threw himself down on the locker and thought over every detail of the work for the next day.
Noyades of Carrier, fusilades of Collot d'Herbois, are cited as examples very suitable for imitation in adequate emergencies.
There is another point in the history of the fine old houses which command the Loire, of which, I sup- pose, one may be tolerably sure; that is, their having, placid as they stand there to-day, looked down on the horrors of the Terror of 1793, the bloody reign of the monster Carrier and his infamous noyades.
We transcribe only some of his expressions: "Nearly all things which men are hanged or imprisoned for doing to one another are Nature's every-day performances;" she "has a hundred hideous deaths" reserved for her victims, "such as the ingenious cruelty of a Nabis or a Domitian never surpassed," which "she uses with the most supercilious disregard both of mercy and justice;" "she inflicts torture in apparent wantonness;" "everything which the worst men commit against life and property is perpetrated on a larger scale by natural agents;" "Nature has noyades more fatal than those of Carrier: her plague and cholera far surpass the poison-cups of the Borgias."
The extermination en masse of the enemies of the democratic dictatorship, which had already been effected at Lyons and Toulon by grape-shot, became still more horrible, by the noyades of Nantes, and the scaffolds of Arras, Paris, and Orange.
"I can understand those mad devils of '93 I can understand the roll- call of the guillotine the noyades the conflagrations the foul orgies of murderous drunkards, drunken with blood. Those men had schemed as I have schemed, and worked as I have worked, and waited as I have waited to fail like me!"
Cannonading gives place to guillotining and fusillading. At Nantes, the unspeakable horror of the noyades. Beside which, behold destruction of the Catholic religion; indeed, for the time being, of religion itself; a new religion promulgated of the Goddess of Reason, with the first of the Feasts of Reason, ushered in with carmagnole dance.
Louis at Versailles; at Lyons, upon the fusillades; at Nantes, upon the noyades; at the Abbaye, the Carmelite monastery, the Barriere du Trone, and the cemetery of the Rue Picpus in Paris, upon the Red Terror; at Nimes and Avignon and in La Vendee, upon the White Terror; had collected, in all parts of France, masses of books, manuscripts, public documents and illustrated material on the whole struggle: full sets of the leading newspapers of the Revolutionary period, more than seven thousand pamphlets, reports, speeches, and other fugitive publications, with masses of paper money, caricatures, broadsides, and the like, thus forming my library on the Revolution, which has since been added to that of Cornell University.
The eminently informed Herault de Sechelles was the patron and confidant of the exterminating reforms of Carrier; and Carnot, when the mode of reforming by noyades and fusillades was debated at the Committee, pleaded the cause of Carrier, whom he describes as a good, nay, an excellent patriot.
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