In a twenty-page letter to his fellow republicans, Carrier promised not to leave a single counter-revolutionary or monopolist (in reference to hoarders and aristocratic land owners) at large in Nantes. His vigorous action was endorsed by the Committee of Public Safety, and in the following days Carrier put large numbers of prisoners aboard vessels with trap doors for bottoms, and sank them in the Loire river. These executions, especially of priests and nuns, as well as women and children, known as the Drownings at Nantes ("Noyades"), along with his increasing demeanor, gained Carrier a reputation for wanton cruelty. He ordered the drowning in the Loire of 94 priests in November 1793. Some alleged that he ordered young male and female prisoners be tied together naked before the drownings, a method which was called a "republican marriage", but this accusation was later found to be a rumor started by counter-revolutionaries.