Jean-Baptiste Carrier
Jean-Baptiste Carrier | |
---|---|
Deputy in the National Convention | |
In office 5 September 1792 – 16 December 1794 | |
Constituency | Cantal[1] |
Personal details | |
Born | 16 March 1756 Execution by guillotine |
Political party | The Mountain |
Jean-Baptiste Carrier (French pronunciation: [ʒɑ̃ batist kaʁje]; 16 March 1756 – 16 December 1794) was a French Revolutionary and politician most notable for his actions in the War in the Vendée during the Reign of Terror. While under orders to suppress a Royalist counter-revolution, he commanded the execution of 4,000 civilians, mainly priests, women and children in Nantes, some by drowning in the river Loire, which Carrier described as "the National Bathtub."[2] After the fall of the Robespierre government, Carrier was tried for war crimes by the Revolutionary Tribunal, found guilty, and executed.
Early life
This section needs additional citations for verification. (May 2021) |
Carrier was born at
Representative to Nantes
In 1793, Carrier was sent to
In a twenty-page letter to his fellow republicans, Carrier promised not to leave a single counter-revolutionary or monopolist (hoarders or aristocratic land owners) at large in Nantes.[6] His action was endorsed by the Committee of Public Safety. In the following days Carrier put large numbers of prisoners aboard vessels with trap doors for bottoms, and sank them in the Loire river.[7] These executions included priests and nuns, as well as women and children. They were known as the Drownings at Nantes.[8] Some alleged that Carrier ordered young male and female prisoners be tied together naked before the drownings, a method which was called a "republican marriage", but this accusation was later found to be a rumor started by counter-revolutionaries.[9][10]
He was described by Adolphe Thiers as being "one of those inferior and violent spirits, who in the excitement of civil wars become monsters of cruelty and extravagance."[11]
Trial and execution
In 1794, a member of the
At his trial before the Revolutionary Tribunal, Carrier was quick to denounce allegations of inhumanity, stating "I took but little share in the policing of Nantes; I was only there in passing, being first at Rennes and later with the army. My principal task was to watch over and see to the victualing of our troops, and for six months I supplied 200,000 men there without its costing the State a halfpenny. Hence I have little information to offer in the matter. I know little or nothing of the accused."[12] After this statement, a fellow representative, Phélippes, vocally charged Carrier with drownings, wholesale executions, demolitions, thefts, pillaging, laying waste to Nantes, famine and disorder, and the butchering of women and children. Men from the "Marat Company," a militia that Carrier used to purge Nantes, were present during the trial, including Perro-Chaux, Lévêque, Bollogniel, Grandmaison, and Mainguet. All were part of the Revolutionary Committee of Nantes, appointed directly or indirectly by Carrier. The jury passed a unanimous vote for Carrier's execution.
The Revolutionary Tribunal declared him guilty of, among other crimes, mass executions of citizens who did not fight against the Republic, through drownings and
References
- ^ "Jean-Baptiste Carrier". Assemblée nationale. Retrieved 18 May 2021.
- OCLC 401403.
- ^ Chronicle of the French Revolution, Longman Group 1989 p.30
- ^ Société La Haute-Auvergne (1955). "Documents nouveaux sur la jeunesse et les débuts de Jean-Baptiste CARRIER". Revue de la Haute-Auvergne. 34. Aurillac.
- ^ a b public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Carrier, Jean Baptiste". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 5 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 407. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the
- ^ Christopher Desloge, Desloge Chronicles – A Tale of Two Continents, Lulu.com, 2013 p.13
- ^ Chronicle of the French Revolution, Longman Group 1989 p.390
- ^ a b Robert, Adolphe; Cougny, Gaston (1890). Dictionnaire des parlementaires français (in French). Vol. 1. Paris. p. 595.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ Bertrand, Ernest. 1868. La justice révolutionnaire en France du 17 août 1792 au 12 prairial an III (31 mai 1793), 17:e article, Annuaire de la Société philotechnique, 1868, tome 30, p. 7-92.
- ^ Alain Gérard (1993). La Vendée: 1789–1793. p.265-266
- ^ Thiers, Adolphe and Frederic Shoberl, The History of the French Revolution. Vol. 3. New York: D. Appleton & Co, 1866 p.66
- ^ Lenotre, G. Tragic Episodes of the French Revolution in Brittany, With Unpublished Documents. Trans. H. Havelock. London: David Nutt, 1912 p.307
- Babeuf, Gracchus (1794). Du système de dépopulation ou La vie et les crimes de Carrier[Of the system of depopulation, or the life and crimes of Carrier] (in French). Paris. pp. 179–180.
- ^ Chronicle of the French Revolution, Longman Group 1989 p.462
Bibliography
- Carrier, Jean-Baptiste, Correspondence of Jean-Baptiste Carrier: people's representative to the Convention during his mission in Brittany, 1793-1794, Nantes: John Lane Company, 1920, Google Books, downloadable eBook.
- Hanson, Paul R. Historical Dictionary of the French Revolution. France: Scarecrow Press, 2004.
- Joes, Anthony James. Guerilla Conflict before the cold war. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1996.
- Lenotre, G. The French Revolution in Brittany. Edinburgh: Ballantyne, Hanson & Co, 1912.
- Lenotre, G. Tragic Episodes of the French Revolution in Brittany, With Unpublished Documents. Trans. H. Havelock. London: David Nutt, 1912.
- Stephens, Henry Morse. A History of the French Revolution. Vol. 3. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1891.
- Thiers, Adolphe and Frederic Shoberl. The History of the French Revolution. Vol. 3. New York: D. Appleton & Co, 1866.
- Webster, Noah. Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary. Vol. 2. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983.