The Terror spread to the provinces. Local tribunals were everywhere
established to search out and condemn suspected persons. The city of
Lyons, which ventured to resist the revolutionary government, was
partially demolished and hundreds of its citizens were put to death. At
Nantes, where echoes of the Vendee insurrection were long heard, the
brutal Jacobin deputy Carrier loaded unhappy victims on old hulks which
were towed out into the Loire and sunk. The total number of those who
perished in the provinces is unknown, but it may have reached ten
thousand.
When the total loss of life by means of revolutionary tribunals is
calculated, it will certainly be found to bear slight comparison with
the enormous sacrifice of life which any one of the numerous great wars
of the nineteenth century has entailed. The chief wonder about the
Reign of Terror is that its champions and supporters, who had so much
at stake, did not do worse things.
[Sidenote: Factions among the Revolutionaries]
A more calamitous phase of the Terror than the slaughter of royalists
and reactionaries was the wretched quarreling among various factions of
the radicals and the destruction.
Pages:
1062
1063
1064
1065
1066
1067
1068
1069
1070
1071
1072
1073
1074
1075
1076
1077
1078
1079
1080
1081
1082
1083
1084
1085
1086