re, who was a pupil of Jurieu, communicated his
mystic faith to young children who were called the "petits prophetes,"
the most famous of whom was a girl named "La belle Isabeau." Brought up
on the study of the prophets and the Apocalypse, these children went
from village to village quoting and requoting the most obscure and
terrible passages from these ancient prophecies (see ANTICHRIST). It is
necessary to remember that at this time the Protestants were without
ministers, all being in exile, and were thus deprived of all real
religious instruction. They listened with enthusiasm to this strange
preaching, and thousands of those who were called New Catholics were
seen to be giving up attendance at Mass. The movement advanced in
Languedoc with such rapidity that at one time there were more than three
hundred children shut up in the prisons of Uzes on the charge of
prophesying, and the Faculty of Medicine of Montpellier, which was
entrusted with their examination, went so far in their ignorance as to
pronounce these irresponsible infants guilty of fanaticism. After the
peace of Ryswick, 1697, the fierceness of the persecution was redoubled
in the South. "I will show no mercy to the preachers," wrote the
terrible Baville, the so-called "king of Languedoc," and he kept his
word. The people of the Cevennes were in despair, for their loyalty to
the king had been remarkable. In 1683 on the 6th of September an
assembly composed of fifty pastors, sixty-four noblemen and thirty-four
notables, held at Colognac, had drawn up a statement of its unalterable
loyalty to Louis XIV. It is important to notice that the revolt of the
Cevennes was essentially a popular movement. Among its leaders there was
not a single nobleman, but only men of the people, a baker, a
blacksmith, some ex-soldiers; but by far the most extraordinary
characterisic is the presence, no longer of children, but of men and
women who declared themselves inspired, who fell into religious
ecstasies and roused in their comrades the most heroic bravery in battle
and at the stake.

The assassination of the abbe du Chayla marks the beginning of the war
of the Cevennes. The abbe, a veteran Catholic missionary from Siam, had
been appointed inspector of missions in the Cevennes. There he
introduced the "squeezers" (which resembled the Scottish "boot"), and
his systematic and refined cruelty at last broke the patience of his
victims. His murder, on the 23rd of July 1702, at Pon