The Gazette

Revolutionary Horrors!

[To give my readers a true idea of the
more than savage barbarities which
have marked the progress of French
anarchists, I shall occasionally furnish
them with extracts from the "Bloody
Buoy," a work collected from French
writings. May the bloody picture serve
as a caution against French principles;
Let it serve as a mirror of our own
destiny, if we adhere to the infamous
politics of obdurate and unprincipled
jacobins.] Where is the hardy wretch who
will not shudder at excesses so unparalleled,
and creep at the outrages
committed against humanity? Nay
where is the unfeeling heart that does
not beat indignant at the perpetrators
of such monstrous deeds? Look at
Frenchmen, as the authors of these
crimes, and let them become a reproach
among the nations of the earth.]

"DEBOURGES, a witness, says.
I have seen, during six days, nothing
but drownings, guillotinings and shoot-
ings. Being once on guard, I com-
manded a detachment that conducted
the fourth mass of women to be shot at
Gignac. When I arrived, I found the
dead bodies of seventy five women al-
ready stretched on the spot. They were
quite naked. I was informed that they
were girls from fifteen to eighteen year
of age. When they had the misfortune
not to fall dead after the shot, they were
dispatched with sabres."

"Soon after the first National As-
sembly had decreed, that the Comtat
of Avignon belonged to the French na-
tion, an army of assassins, of whom one
Jourdan, sur named the Cut-throat.
was the commander, took possession of
the unfortunate city of Avignon. The
churches were immediately pillaged.
the sacred vases profaned and carried
off: the altars levelled to the ground.
The prisons were soon filled, and the
unhappy victims were released only to
suffer death. A deep pit was dug to
receive their dead bodies, six hundred
of which were thrown into it, mangled
and distorted, before ten o'clock the
next day. Among them was Mr. Nollhac,
a priest, in the eightieth year of
his age. He had been thirty years rec-
tor of St. Symphorien, a parish which
he preferred to all others, and which
he could not be prevailed on to quit
for a more lucrative one, because he
would not desert the poor. During his
rectorship he had been the common
father of his parishioners, the refuge of
the indigent, the comforter of the
afflicted, and the friend and counsellor
of every honest man. When the hour
of danger approached, his friends ad-
vised him to fly: but no intreaties
could prevail on him to abandon his
flock: "No," said the good old man,
"I have watched over them in the halcyon
days of peace, and shall I now
leave them amidst storms and tempests,
without a guide, without any one to
comfort them in their last dreary
moments?"—Mr. Nollhac, who, till
now, had been respected even by the
Cut-throats, was sent to the prison the
evening before the execution. His ap-
pearance and his salutation, were those
of a consoling angel: "I come, my
children, to die with you: we shall
soon appear in the presence of that
God whom we serve, and who will
not desert us in the hour of death."
He fortified their drooping courage, ad-
ministered the last consolatory pledges
of his love, and the next day embraced
and cheered each individual as he was
called forth by the murderers.

Two of these stood at the door with
a bar of iron in their hands, and as the
prisoners advanced knocked them down:
the bodies were then delivered
over to
the other ruffians, who hacked and dis-
figured them with their
sabres,
before
they threw them into the pit,
that they
might not afterwards be
known by their
friends and relations.
When the Cut.
throats were
dispersed,
every
one was
anxious to find the body of Mr. Nollhac.
It was at last discovered by
the cassock,
and the crucifix which he
wore on
his
breast. That breast had been pierced
in fifty places, and the skull was entirely
mashed!