is
figures.--Joly, a commissioner on the Committee, very expert in the
art of garroting, ties the hands of prisoners together two and two and
conducts them to the river.[33162]--Grand-maison, another member of
the Committee, a former dancing-master, convicted of two murders
and pardoned before the Revolution, strikes down with his saber
the imploring hands stretched out to him over the planks of the
lighter.[33163]--Pinard, another Committee-commissioner, ransoms, steals
off into the country and himself kills, through preference, women and
children.[33164] Naturally, the three bands which operate along with
them, or under their orders, comprise only men of their species. In the
first one, called the Marat company, each of the sixty members swears,
on joining it, to adopt Marat's principles and carry out Marat's
doctrine. Goullin,[33165] one of the founders, demands in relation to
each member, "Isn't there some one still more rascally? For we must have
that sort to bring the aristocrats to reason!"[33166] After Frimaire
5 "the Maratists" boast of their arms being "tired out" with striking
prisoners with the flat of their sabers to make them march to the
Loire,[33167] and we see that, notwithstanding this fatigue, the
business suited them, as their officers tried to influence Carrier to be
detailed on the "drowning" service and because it was lucrative. The men
and women sentenced to death, were first stripped of their clothes down
to the shirt, and even the shift; it would be a pity to let valuable
objects go to the bottom with their owners, and therefore the drowners
divide these amongst themselves; a wardrobe in the house of the adjutant
Richard is found full of jewelry and watches.[33168] This company of
sixty must have made handsome profits out of the four or five thousand
drowned.-The second band, called "the American Hussars," and who
operated in the outskirts, was composed of blacks and mulattos, numerous
enough in this town of privateers. It is their business to shoot women,
whom they first violate; "they are our slaves," they say; "we have won
them by the sweat of our brows." "Those who have the misfortune to be
spared, become in their hands mad in a couple of days; in any event they
are re-arrested shortly afterwards and shot.--The last band, which
is styled "The German Legion," is formed out of German deserters and
mercenaries speaking little or no French. They are employed by the
Military Commission to dispatc