Post a Comment. Monday, 22 January Carrier: the sex-life of a Proconsul. Carrier receives pleas for mercy from the mostly women of Nantes. Etching by Victor Pollet, c In a local historian from Nantes, A. For one man, in three months, that is a lot. We must either reconsider or concede to the pallid head of our Conventionnel a place in the gallery of irresistable don Juans and Hercules of love.
Did he hold orgies? Like Le Bon, Carrier gathered his accolytes around him and rowdy occasions are well-attested, notably the infamous drunken party held on the galliot La Gloire in the course of the noyades. Members of his circle, particularly his chief lieutenant, Guillaume Lamberty, had a considerable reputation for violence and lusty appetites.
No doubt there were women as well as alcohol involved, but the gatherings were more about solidarity than sex. The idea he was pursued by his inner demons is a tempting one; one night his servant Jean Cousine was asked to lock him in his room where he remained until eleven o'clock the next morning. On 29th January he wrote to the Committee of Public Safety that he was ill and exhausted, and asked to be relieved of his mission.
Between political conflict and poor health, it seems unlikely he had that much energy for feats of sexual debauchery. Did he take women from among the prisoners?
However, h is lieutenants Lamberty and Fouquet certainly succombed to the temptation posed by aristocratic silk petticoats, and were sent to the guillotine in February for sheltering "notorious counter-revolutionary women". For Carrier himself the evidence is again not decisive. Tronjolly also recounted that the husband of one of Carrier's mistresses was consigned to a noyade. We might add, though the context is slightly different, the deposition of Perotte Brevet, a tailoress, who claimed to have resisted the advances of Carrier when she tried to save her imprisoned brother from death.
