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Republican marriage ((フランス語:mariage républicain)) was a form of execution that allegedly occurred in Nantes during the Reign of Terror in Revolutionary France and "involved tying a naked man and woman together and drowning them".〔Ruth Scurr, ''Fatal Purity: Robespierre And the French Revolution'' (2006) p. 305.〕 This was reported to have been practised during the drownings at Nantes (''noyades'') that were ordered by local Jacobin representative-on-mission Jean-Baptiste Carrier between November 1793 and January 1794 in the city of Nantes. Most accounts indicate that the victims were drowned in the Loire River, although a few sources describe an alternative means of execution in which the bound couple is run through with a sword, either before,〔William Stafford, ''English Feminists and Their Opponents in the 1790s: unsex'd and proper females'' (2002) p. 161.〕 or instead of drowning.〔Steven Blakemore, ''Crisis in Representation: Thomas Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft, Helen Maria Williams and the Rewriting of the French Revolution'' (1997) p. 212.〕 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 suspect it to be a legend.〔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.〕〔Alain Gérard (1993). La Vendée: 1789–1793. p.265-266〕 The earliest reports of such "marriages" date from 1794, when Carrier was tried for his crimes, and they were soon cited by contemporary counter-revolutionary authors such as Louis-Marie Prudhomme and Louis Gabriel Ambroise de Bonald.〔Louis-Marie Prudhomme, '' Histoire Générale Et Impartiale Des Erreurs, Des Fautes Et Des Crimes Commis Pendant La Révolution Française, Tome III'' (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" (marriages in Nantes. Two people of different sexes, nude, were attached together, then put en masse into the Loire'' ).〕〔"The dreadful invention of the republican marriages passes the genius of man", Louis Gabriel Ambroise de Bonald, '' Théorie du pouvoir politique et religieux dans la société civile'' (1796), p. 558.〕 == Descriptions of the practice == This form of execution is attributed to French Revolutionary Jean-Baptiste Carrier,〔Archibald Alison and Edward Sherman Gould, ''History of Europe from the Commencement of the French Revolution in 1789, to the Restoration of the Bourbons in 1815'' (1850) p. 44.〕 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: :A Revolutionary Tribunal was established (Nantes ), 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 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.〔 Details of the practice vary slightly, but are generally consistent with the description offered above. One author described how "marriages Républicains... 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 current of "la Baignoire Nationale", as the bloodhounds termed the Loire".〔John Murray, (Hand-book for travellers in France ) (1843), p. 165.〕 British radical and Girondist sympathizer Helen Maria Williams, in her ''Sketch of the Politics of France, 1793–94'',〔Helen Maria Williams, ''Sketch of the Politics of France, 1793–94'' (1795), p. 42-43.〕 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".〔 According to literary scholar Steven Blakemore, Williams seems to have regarded this as a form of "terrorist misogynism".〔 Williams' description of the women as "innocent", in his view, "not only suggests that they were not guilty of aiding the rebels, but that they were young 'virgins'".〔 He argues that in Williams' text, the male Jacobin executioners are portrayed as "sadistic, public voyeurs 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 Old Regime, for Williams, represents the forced confinement of female beauty, the Terror represents beauty's degrading death."〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Republican marriage」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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