"Directly a prisoner was confessed, the peasants no longer hesitated to kill him, as his spiritual salvation was made secure; several escaped death by refusing confession, and by saying that they were not yet in a state of grace; one of them was spared because he was a Protestant and could not confess. They were afraid to send him into damnation. History has dealt very severely with the unfortunate patriots who slaughtered the Vendeans; many of them displayed heroic courage and died like martyrs. Those who were cut into pieces could be counted by hundreds. I will give one instance, among many, of a boy of sixteen who, over the dead body of his father, shouted '_Vive la nation!_' until he was pierced through by a score of bayonettes. The most celebrated of these martyrs was Sauveur, a municipal officer of Roche-Bernard, rather let us say of Roche-Sauveur, for it should preserve his name. This town, which is a thoroughfare between Nantes and Vannes, was attacked on the 16th by an immense gathering of nearly six thousand peasants; there were hardly any armed men in the town and it was compelled to surrender. The maddened crowd began at once by butchering twenty-two persons on the square, on the pretext of a gun going off suddenly in the air; they rushed upon the town hall and discovered the _procureur syndic_, Sauveur, a fearless magistrate who had stuck to his post. He was seized and dragged off; they put him into a dungeon whence, next day, he was taken out to be barbarously massacred. They sampled all kinds of weapons on him, principally pistols: they fired at him with small shot, trying to make him cry, '_Vive le roi!_' but he would only shout, '_Vive la république!_' Infuriated, they fired at his mouth with gunpowder and dragged him before the Calvary to beg for mercy; he lifted his eyes to heaven in adoration, but still he cried, '_Vive la nation!_' Next they shot his left eye out and kicked him on a few paces; mangled and bleeding, he stood with hands clasped looking upward. "'Commend thy spirit to God!' yelled his assassins. "They shot him down; he fell, but rose again, clasping tightly his magisterial medal and still kissing it. Again he was fired upon; he fell on one knee, dragged himself to the edge of a trench with stoical calmness, without a single groan or cry of anger or of despair! His fortitude drove the frenzied mob to madness, for his only words were-- "'Finish me off, my friends,' and '_Vive la République!_ Do not keep me lingering on, friends; '_Vive la nation!_' "He made his confession of faith to the end, and they silenced him with blows from the butt ends of their rifles!"