Note 29 — Chapter XXXVIII · (continued 2)

There was a town called Bedouin in the department of Vaucluse, which contained about 500 houses and some 2000 inhabitants: they had a good trade in silk, and the place was flourishing. In the month of May, 1794, the tree of liberty which had been planted without this town was cut down during the night. Fearing in those dreadful times the consequence of this act of individual indiscretion, the townsmen themselves informed the deputy Maignet of it, an ex-priest, who was then upon a Robespierrean mission in the department. This availed nothing in their favour: he issued a decree proscribing not only the people of Bedouin, but of the surrounding communes also, and condemned the town to be burnt. An officer, by name Suchet, commanded the battalion which accompanied Maignet’s commission to execute this decree. Sixty fathers of families, after the mockery of a revolutionary trial, were put to death, those who were spared being placed at the foot of the scaffold during the execution. Suchet then gave the word for setting fire to the town, and it was burnt to the ground. The church was the only building which was not destroyed by the flames, and that was demolished by means of gunpowder. Such of the inhabitants as had fled were hunted out in their retreats by the soldiers of the detachment, and shot like wild beasts. The answer of Robespierre’s Committee of Public Safety to the report of this transaction was, Le Comité est satisfaite de la conduite de Maignet.

Prud’homme, Hist. des Erreurs, des Fautes, et des Crimes commis pendant la Revolution Française, t. 2. 170–176.

I know not whether the Suchet of Tarragona was the Suchet of Bedouin. If he was not, then has France produced two monsters of the name instead of one.