INFERNAL COLUMNS: Difference between revisions
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I hasten to describe to you the measures which I have just put in hand for the extermination of all remaining rebels scattered about the interior of the Vendée. I was convinced that the only way to do this was by deploying a sufficient number of columns, to spread right across the countryside and effect a general sweep, which would completely purge the districts as they passed. Tomorrow these 12 columns will set out simultaneously, moving from east to west.</i> | I hasten to describe to you the measures which I have just put in hand for the extermination of all remaining rebels scattered about the interior of the Vendée. I was convinced that the only way to do this was by deploying a sufficient number of columns, to spread right across the countryside and effect a general sweep, which would completely purge the districts as they passed. Tomorrow these 12 columns will set out simultaneously, moving from east to west.</i> | ||
Later... | |||
<i>There is no more Vendée. I have trampled the children to death with our horses, I have massacred the women, and they are no longer able to give birth to any brigands. I am not guilty of taking a single prisoner, I have exterminated them all… The roads are covered with corpses. There are so many of them at several places they form pyramids. The firing squads work incessantly… Brigands arrive who pretend that they will surrender as prisoners… but we are not taking any. One would be forced to feed them with the bread of liberty, but compassion is not a revolutionary virtue.</i> | |||