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ordered by
Carrier appears for the first time in the trial of the members of the Revolutionary Committee of Nantes by the Revolutionary Tribunal in 1794. It was present in the report of Charles-Gilbert Romme and in several letters and witness testimonies. However, while a few witnesses asserted that they had heard about "republican marriages", none had actually seen one; one cited a drunken boatman who had used the term "civic marriage" but hadn't suggested that the executed were paired according to sex. As both the assistant-prosecutor and the defence mentioned, there was not enough evidence for that particular accusation, and it was crossed out from the indictment by the president of the jury. The remaining facts were entirely sufficient for Carrier and several of his closest accomplices to be sentenced to death. The reports of "republican marriages" nevertheless became well-known and were later cited by many authors writing about the Terror, who would elaborate on them, for example by adding the claim that the two victims were a priest and a
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A Revolutionary
Tribunal was established , of which Carrier was the presiding demon—Carrier, known in all nations as the inventor of that last of barbarous atrocities, the Republican Marriage, in which two persons of different genders, generally an old man and an old woman, or a young man and a young
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Details of the practice vary slightly, but are generally consistent with the description offered above. One author described how "marriages RĂ©publicains... consisted in binding together a man and woman, back to back, stripped naked, keeping them exposed for an hour, and then hurling them into the
228:
While the executions of men, women and children by drowning in Nantes is not generally disputed, the factual nature of the "republican marriages," in particular, has been doubted by several historians who alleged it to be a legend. The claim that such a manner of execution has been practised and
194:, wrote that "innocent young women were unclothed in the presence of the monsters; and, to add a deeper horror to this infernal act of cruelty, were tied to young men, and both were cut down with sabers, or thrown into the river; and this kind of murder was called a republican marriage".
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were married (in March 1796), "few people considered the religious ceremony at all necessary: people got married with so much facility, and in so simple a manner, that the exaggeration is merely verbal which states that the republican marriage ceremony was completed by dancing round a
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379:(1804), p. 73: "There are many persons here, who are not content with a republican marriage, but get themselves also privately married by a priest, according to the forms of the Catholic religion".
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Bertrand, Ernest. 1868. La justice révolutionnaire en France du 17 août 1792 au 12 prairial an III (31 mai 1793), 17:e article, Annuaire de la Société philotechnique, 1868, tome 30, p. 7-92.
127:" marriage. Books describe parents horrified to learn that their children planned a "republican marriage" instead of being married in a church. As one source describes the institution:
314:(1797), p. vii (referring to "Mariages républicains à Nantes. Deux personnes de différens sexes, nuds, étaient attachées ensemble, on les précipitait ensuite en masse dans la Loire" .
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woman, bereft of every kind of clothing, were bound together before the multitude, exposed in a boat in that situation for half an hour or more, and then thrown into the river.
168:, who was sent to Nantes to suppress the counterrevolutionary forces and to appoint a Revolutionary Committee. One historian described the use of the practice as follows:
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who delight in tying 'counter-revolutionary' men and women into forced positions of sterile intercourse, in a grotesque 'marriage' of the soon-to-be dead". Thus, "if the
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363:(1832) p. 294: "How could you for a moment entertain the idea that not my daughter only, but myself and her brother, could consent to a purely republican marriage?"
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Crisis in
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Histoire Générale Et
Impartiale Des Erreurs, Des Fautes Et Des Crimes Commis Pendant La Révolution Française, Tome III
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History of Europe from the
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The earliest reports of such "marriages" date from 1794, when
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Painting by Joseph Aubert depicting preparations for a
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Brégeon, Jean-Joël. 1987. Carrier et la
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is popularly cited as having devised this method of execution.
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This form of execution is attributed to French Revolutionary
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them". This was reported to have been practised during the
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Dechristianization of France during the French Revolution
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and "involved tying a naked man and woman together and
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Alain Gérard (1993). La Vendée: 1789–1793, p. 265-266.
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between November 1793 and January 1794 in the city of
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Fatal Purity: Robespierre And the French Revolution
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