pitulate, and marched out sad and defenceless; but
when about fifty had passed, the rabble commenced a tremendous fire on
their confiding and unprotected victims; nearly all were killed or
wounded, and but very few could re-enter the yard before the garrison
gates were again closed. These were again forced in an instant, and all
were massacred who could not climb over roofs, or leap into the
adjoining gardens. In a word, death met them in every place and in
every shape and this catholic massacre rivalled in cruelty, and
surpassed in treachery, the crimes of the September assassins of Paris
and the Jacobinical butcheries of Lyons and Avignon. It was marked, not
only by the fervour of the revolution, but by the subtlety of the
league, and will long remain a blot upon the history of the second
restoration.

_Massacre and Pillage at Nismes._

Nismes now exhibited a most awful scene of outrage and carnage, though
many of the protestants had fled to the Convennes and the Gardonenque.
The country houses of Messrs. Rey, Guiret, and several others, had been
pillaged, and the inhabitants treated with wanton barbarity. Two parties
had glutted their savage appetites on the farm of Madame Frat: the
first, after eating, drinking, and breaking the furniture, and stealing
what they thought proper, took leave by announcing the arrival of their
comrades, "compared with whom," they said, "they should be thought
merciful." Three men and an old woman were left on the premises: at the
sight of the second company two of the men fled. "Are you a catholic?"
said the banditti to the old woman. "Yes." "Repeat, then, your Pater and
Ave." Being terrified she hesitated, and was instantly knocked down with
a musket. On recovering her senses, she stole out of the house, but met
Ladet, the old _valet de ferme_, bringing in a salad which the
depredators had ordered him to cut. In vain she endeavoured to persuade
him to fly. "Are you a protestant?" they exclaimed; "I am." A musket
being discharged at him, he fell wounded, but not dead. To consummate
their work, the monsters lighted a fire with straw and boards, threw
their yet living victim into the flames, and suffered him to expire in
the most dreadful agonies. They then ate their salad, omelet, &c. The
next day, some labourers, seeing the house open and deserted, entered
and discovered the half consumed body of Ladet. The prefect of the Gard,
M. Darbaud Jouques, attempting to palliate the crimes of