young man, whiles a baker and whiles a shepherd, who was born in
the neighborhood of Anduze, and whose name has remained famous.
John Cavalier was barely eighteen when M. de Baville launched his
brother-in-law, the Count of Broglie, with a few troops upon the
revolted Cevenols. The Catholic peasants called them Camisards, the
origin of which name has never been clearly ascertained. M. de Broglie
was beaten; the insurrection, which was entirely confined to the
populace, disappeared all at once in the woods and rocks of the country,
to burst once more unexpectedly upon the troops of the king. The great
name of Lamoignon shielded Baville; Chamillard had for a long while
concealed from Louis XIV. the rising in the Cevennes. He never did know
all its gravity. "It is useless," said Madame de Maintenon, "for the
king to trouble himself with all the circumstances of this war; it would
not cure the mischief, and would do him much." "Take care," wrote
Chamillard to Baville, on superseding the Count of Broglie by Marshal
Montrevel, "not to give this business the appearance of a serious war."
The rumor of the insurrection in Languedoc, however, began to spread in
Europe. Conflagrations, murders, executions in cold blood or in the
heat of passion, crimes on the part of the insurgents, as well as
cruelties on the part of judges and generals, succeeded one another
uninterruptedly, without the military authorities being able to crush a
revolt that it was impossible to put down by terror or punishments. "I
take it for a fact," said a letter to Chamillard from M. de Julien, an
able captain of irregulars, lately sent into Languedoc to aid the Count
of Broglie, "that there are not in this district forty who are real
converts, and are not entirely on the side of the Camisards. I include
in that number females as well as males, and the mothers and daughters
would give the more striking proofs of their fury if they had the
strength of the men. . . . I will say but one word more, which is,
that the children who were in their cradles at the time of the general
conversions, as well as those who were four or five years old, are now
more Huguenot than the fathers; nobody, however, has set eyes upon any
minister; how, then, comes it that they are so Huguenot? Because the
fathers and mothers brought them up in those sentiments all the time
they were going to mass. You may rely upon it that this will continue
for many generations." M. d