Estimated Number of Victims
The precise number of victims is not known. According to Roger Dupuy, there were between 7 and 11 drowning executions, with 300 to 400 victims each time. According to Jacques Hussenet, 1,800 to 4,800 people drowned on the orders of Carrier, and perhaps 2,000 others drowned on the orders by other Republican revolutionaries in Nantes. Jean-Clément Martin wrote that between 1,800 and 4,000 people died in mass drownings. In 1879, Alfred Lallie reported that 4,860 people were drowned confirmed by Hippolyte Taine. According Reynald Secher, 4,800 victims suffered execution by drowning just during the fall 1793. For Gaston Martin, about 1800 died, for Fouquet 9000 died, for Mellinet 3500 were killed.
According to historian Reynald Secher, these murders are one component of a systematic policy of extermination (genocide) of the residents of the Vendée planned by the revolutionary Committee of Public Safety, and approved by a vote of the National Convention in Paris on 1 October 1793.
Read more about this topic: Drownings At Nantes
Famous quotes containing the words estimated, number and/or victims:
“... many of the so-called grievances of women are false. No man ever unfairly discriminated against me. If one tried to, I ... was equal to the emergency, and such experience really added a great deal to the zest of life.... women, as a habit, over- estimated their ability, and ... they were too untrained even to appreciate the magnitude of their undertaking.”
—Alice Foote MacDougall (1867–1945)
“In many ways, life becomes simpler [for young adults]. . . . We are expected to solve only a finite number of problems within a limited range of possible solutions. . . . It’s a mental vacation compared with figuring out who we are, what we believe, what we’re going to do with our talents, how we’re going to solve the social problems of the globe . . .and what the perfect way to raise our children will be.”
—Roger Gould (20th century)
“In all sincerity, we offer to the loved ones of all innocent victims over the past 25 years, abject and true remorse. No words of ours will compensate for the intolerable suffering they have undergone during the conflict.”
—Combined Loyalist Military Command. New York Times, p. A12 (October 14, l994)