over the whole business, tried the experiment of reversing its policy. Intendants of provinces pointed out that the flight of the Protestants and the disabilities of those who stayed behind were ruining France, and even Bossuet, who a few years before had seen the hand of God in the dispersion of the Protestants, now urged that they should not be coerced but educated in the true Roman Catholic faith. In 1698 an Edict was actually issued to relax the persecution of the Protestants. But this experiment in humanity was a mere flash in the pan. Madame de Maintenon, her Confessor, and the Bishops of the South were resolved to destroy the Protestants if they would not renounce their faith. Resistance was punished by the galleys or the gibbet, burning alive, or the favourite punishment of breaking on the wheel and leaving the victim to die 'une mort naturelle,' as it is unctuously put by the Roman Catholic writer. For convoking assemblies of Protestants and preaching, Claude Brousson, once a lawyer of Nîmes, and a man of blameless life, was broken on the wheel at Montpellier in November 1698, and in order that those present might not hear his prayers, Baville, the governor of Languedoc, kept the drums going till he was dead. In June 1703 a poor old notary of Falgeroles, aged 80, was broken on the wheel, on an accusation of having assisted in a fire at Genolhac. Baville, whom Cavalier describes as 'le plus cruel et le plus barbare de tous les tyrans,' was determined to suppress the Protestants at all costs and by any means and seems to have regarded them as little better than vermin.

This was the state of affairs when the revolt broke out in the Cévennes in 1702, and Cavalier, who with Roland led it till the summer of 1704, left an account of it of extraordinary interest in his 'Mémoires sur la guerre des Cévennes.' These 'Mémoires,' admirably edited by M. Frank Puaux, had a curious history. Cavalier appears to have written them somewhere about 1708, in order to state the facts as he knew them and also to justify his action in relinquishing the struggle in 1704. Cavalier himself was an uneducated man and the 'Mémoires' appear to have been compiled from his notes and descriptions, and were not published till 1726, at Dublin, and then only in an English translation from

the French original. The French MS. seems to have been lost, though there is a French version of it in the Royal Archives at the Hague. M. Puaux has translated the English version back into French; and it makes excellent reading. The style is simple and straightforward, without any rhetorical flourishes, and though Cavalier was a zealous Protestant, his modest statement of the facts as he knew them contrasts very favourably with the calumnies and insinuations which disfigure the accounts of the war written by Roman Catholics.

According to Cavalier the war in the Cévennes was almost the result of an accident. In 1699 a party of boys sang psalms outside the Church of Monteils near Alais. The priest, not a bad sort of man, as Cavalier admits, contented himself with complaining to their parents; but a fortnight later the boys repeated their performance and this time the priest had the boys and their relations arrested. Some of them escaped, and after burning the images in three churches took to the woods on the mountains north of Alais. Here they were joined by a zealous young Protestant preacher named Daniel, who a little later was captured at Anduze and hanged at Nîmes. The priests offered him his life if he would recant; but Daniel refused, being convinced, says Cavalier, that they would hang him whether he recanted or not. Car la réligion romaine rarement se contredit, mère du parjure et du meurtre, et suivant ses principes, ne se croyant pas obligée de tenir sa parole vis à vis des hérétiques.'

Cavalier seems to have been mistaken in describing this incident as the origin of the war. Nothing much seems to have happened in the next two or three years, and it was not till 1702 that the war really began with the murder of the Abbé du Chayla. In the summer of that year an assembly of Protestants was held in the wood of Fourques on the mountains north of Pont de Montvert on the Tarn. Seguier, the preacher, told the assembly at the end of a long address that five or six men and women were imprisoned at Pont de Montvert in the house of the Abbé du Chayla-archiprêtre' of the diocese of Nîmes, and were being tortured by methods of the Abbé's own invention. The Abbé du Chayla was a fanatical Roman Catholic, who, to do him justice, had

been a missionary in Siam before settling down in Languedoc and devoting himself to Protestant hunting. About sixty men volunteered to follow Seguier to rescue the prisoners. They entered the town of Pont de Montvert, singing the 68th psalm (Exurgat Deus') and proceeded to Du Chayla's house, where they demanded the release of the prisoners. The Abbé replied by ordering his men to fire. Two of the rescue party were killed and several wounded, whereupon the rescuers broke into the house, freed the prisoners and captured the Abbé as he was trying to escape through a window. He was allowed a quarter of an hour to make his peace with God and was then shot on the spot. The party then proceeded to the house of his deputy whom they also shot, and they then burnt the Château de la Devèze. Troops were hurried up from Montpellier far away in the south. Séguier was captured and burnt alive, a pardon was offered to those who surrendered; but as Cavalier grimly puts it, those who were fools enough to believe it and return to their houses were hanged before their own front doors. When they did not return their houses were burnt to the ground. The war in the Cévennes had begun. On the one side were the local militia under Broglio, an incompetent man and brotherin-law of Baville, with a stiffening of Royal troops, soon to be strongly reinforced. On the other a handful of peasants, most of them unarmed, desperate men fleeing for their lives yet ready to die sooner than give up their faith. Claude Brousson had said: 'Il faut que l'état perisse ou que la liberté de conscience soit rétablie.'

In the earlier part of the year 1702 a Protestant, Pierre Bosanquet, had been broken on the wheel at Nîmes, and fired by this, Roland, who was living at Nîmes, had made a great address to a gathering of Protestants at La Vaunage, a valley some twelve miles south of Nîmes, inciting those present to follow him in defence of their faith. If,' he said, 'their allies the woods and the mountains failed them, the holy Spirit would bring them through.' Hearing of the rising in the north he sent word to Cavalier that he would join him, and arrived with twenty-eight young men, bringing up the total number of the insurgents to some sixty They were joined by Gideon Laporte, an uncle

of Roland who, according to Cavalier, was an experienced soldier; according to M. Tallon, editor of the 'Fragment de la Guerre des Camisards,' an ironmonger who went bankrupt, then became a pig-dealer, and finally leader of the rebels, but M. Tallon wrote as a zealous Roman Catholic. Laporte pointed out that the first thing to do was to obtain arms. They began by taking the weapons of the Roman Catholics in the neighbouring villages, by which means they collected about twenty guns and then proceeded to burn some more churches, according to Cavalier to prevent the enemy using them as forts, a rather thin excuse. The fact was that the brutalities of Baville and Broglio had exasperated the Protestants beyond all endurance and the war rapidly became a war of extermination. The priests took refuge in the nearest town, and early in September 1702, the Camisards, now numbering about sixty, engaged a detachment of some two hundred men under a redoubtable and truculent soldier, le Capitaine Poul. The result was disastrous; the Camisards were hopelessly defeated and the survivors took to the woods 'like foxes with a pack of hounds in full cry behind them,' Cavalier's own description. Broglio was so pleased that he sent eighteen companies of cavalry and infantry to complete the business, with the usual result, that when the troops arrived the Camisards had vanished and there was nobody to kill.

This engagement was typical of the fighting throughout the war. It was guerilla fighting from first to last. The Camisards laid ambushes, cut off detachments, intercepted convoys, slew everybody they took, and when troops were sent after them, their intimate knowledge of the country enabled them to escape into the wilderness. M. Puaux has reproduced a delightful old map of the mountains of the Cévennes ou se retirent les fanatiques de Languedoc,' 'Dessiné sur les lieux,' and published by Nolin, geographer to the King, at Paris in 1703. In the left-hand upper corner the Royal troops are shown coming down a narrow path among the rocks, the 'Causses,' the flat table-topped mountains of the Hautes Cévennes are suggested, likewise the rivers and the woods, but instead of being 'dessiné sur les lieux' the cartographer peppered the map with names to suit his fancy. Montpellier, for example, is shown north-west of Vol. 250.-No. 496.

Nîmes instead of south-west, and Uzès is shown some ten miles due east of Nîmes instead of fifteen miles north. It is not surprising that the French officers, being completely ignorant of the country, were constantly outmanoeuvred by the Camisards and cut off in detail. Cavalier describes a characteristic incident. Late in December 1702 he attacked and defeated a party of recruits near Lussan, and found in the pocket of the officer in command an order signed by Baville and Broglio, instructing all local authorities to find lodgment for the officer and his men. This suggested to Cavalier an excellent way of getting possession of the Castle of Servas, near Alais, a strong place on a steep hill, quite impregnable without siege guns. It had a garrison of forty men grands persecuteurs et auteurs du massacre de plusieurs protestants du voisinage.' Cavalier selected six of his most trusted men including one wounded, bound them as prisoners and marched them in front of twelve more of his men dressed in the royal uniform into the village of Plans near Servas. Here he introduced himself to the local authority as Broglio's nephew and insisted that the prisoners should be placed in security in the Château. The local man much impressed hurried off to the Governor of the Château, followed in a leisurely way by Cavalier with his sham prisoners. The Governor was at first suspicious, but on seeing the order congratulated Cavalier on his capture of the 'Barbets' (Camisards) and invited him to pass the night in the Château, prisoners, guards and all. While they were at supper Cavalier's men entered the Château one by one on various excuses, and at a given signal fell on the guards at the gate, let in the rest of Cavalier's men, seized the governor and the garrison, and put them all to the sword 'pour venger tant de cruautés commises contre les protestants du voisinage.' After this they blew up the Castle. So far Mme de Maintenon and Chamillart had concealed everything from the King, but this exploit frightened them so much that they had to inform him of the state of affairs, and early in 1703 Montrevel Maréchal de France was sent to Languedoc with 10,000 men with orders to exterminate the Protestants 'le plus rapidement possible.'

The real difficulty for the Camisards was their almost total lack of arms, ammunition, and anything approach