Napoleonic France
In his book, Le Crime de Napoléon, French historian Claude Ribbe has claimed that in the early 19th century, Napoleon used poison gas to put down slave rebellions in Haiti and Guadeloupe. Based on accounts left by French officers, he alleges that enclosed spaces including the holds of ships were used as makeshift gas chambers where sulfur dioxide gas (probably generated by burning sulfur, which would have been readily available from volcanoes in the area) was used to execute up to 100,000 rebellious slaves. These claims remain controversial.
Read more about this topic: Gas Chamber
Famous quotes containing the word france:
“The bugle-call to arms again sounded in my war-trained ear, the bayonets gleamed, the sabres clashed, and the Prussian helmets and the eagles of France stood face to face on the borders of the Rhine.... I remembered our own armies, my own war-stricken country and its dead, its widows and orphans, and it nerved me to action for which the physical strength had long ceased to exist, and on the borrowed force of love and memory, I strove with might and main.”
—Clara Barton (1821–1912)