"A Revolutionary Tribunal was formed at Nantes, under the direction of Carrier, and it soon outstripped even the rapid march of Danton and Robespierre. Their principle was that it was necessary to destroy _en masse_, all the prisoners. At their command was formed a corps, called the Legion of Marat, composed of the most determined and bloodthirsty of the revolutionists, the members of which were entitled, on their own authority, to incarcerate any person whom they chose. The number of their prisoners was soon between three and four thousand, and they divided among themselves all their property. Whenever a further supply of captives was wanted, the alarm was spread of a counter-revolution, the _generale_ beat, the cannon planted; and this was followed immediately by innumerable arrests. Nor were they long in disposing of their captives. The miserable wretches were either slain with poinards in prison, or carried out in a vessel and drowned by wholesale in the Loire. On one occasion a hundred 'fanatical priests,' as they were termed, were taken out together, striped of their clothes, and precipitated into the waters.... Women big with child, infants eight, nine, and ten years of age, were thrown together into the stream, on the sides of which men, armed with sabres, were placed to cut off their heads if the waves should throw them undrowned on the shore. "On one occasion, by orders of Carrier, twenty-three of the revolutionists, on another twenty-four, were guillotined without any trial. The executioner remonstrated, but in vain. Among them were many children of seven or eight years of age, and seven women; the executioner died two or three days after, with horror at what he himself had done. So great was the multitude of captives who were brought in on all sides, that the executioners, as well as the company of Marat, declared themselves exhausted with fatigue; and a new method of disposing of them was adopted, borrowed from Nero, but improved on the plan of that tyrant. A hundred or a hundred and fifty victims, for the most part women and children, were crowded together in a boat, with a concealed trap-door in the bottom, which was conducted into the middle of the Loire; at a signal given, the crew leaped into another boast, the bolts were withdrawn, and the shrieking victims precipitated into the waters, amid the laughter of the company of Marat, who stood on the banks to cut down any who approached the shore. This was what Carrier called his _Republican Baptisms_. The _Republican Marriages_ were, if possible, a still greater refinement of cruelty. Two persons of different sexes, bereft of every species of dress, were bound together, and after being left in torture in that situation for half an hour, thrown into the river. Such was the quantity of corpses accumulated in the Loire, that the water of that river was affected, so as to render a public ordinance necessary, forbidding the use of it to the inhabitants;