to be
sent away, but deserted in numbers.

M. de Julien soon saw that all his efforts would end in failure if he
could not gain the king's consent to a slight change in the original
plan. He therefore wrote to Versailles, and represented to the king how
long the work would take if the means employed were only iron tools and
the human hand, instead of fire, the only true instrument employed by
Heaven in its vengeance. He quoted in support of his petition the case
of Sodom and Gomorrah--those cities accursed of the Lord. Louis XIV,
impressed by the truth of this comparison, sent him back a messenger
post-haste authorising him to employ the suggested means.

"At once," says Pere Louvreloeil, "the storm burst, and soon of all the
happy homesteads nothing was left: the hamlets, with their barns and
outhouses, the isolated farmhouses, the single huts and cottages, every
species of building in short, disappeared before the swift advancing
flames as wild flowers, weeds, and roots fall before the ploughshare."

This destruction was accompanied by horrible cruelty. For instance,
twenty-five inhabitants of a certain village took refuge in a chateau;
the number consisted of children and very old people, and they were all
that was left of the entire population. Palmerolle, in command of the
miquelets, hearing of this, hastened thither, seized the first eight
he could lay hold of, and shot them on the spot, "to teach them," as he
says in his report, "not to choose a shelter which was not on the list
of those permitted to them."

The Catholics also of St. Florent, Senechas, Rousson, and other
parishes, becoming excited at seeing the flames which enveloped the
houses of their old enemies, joined together, and arming themselves with
everything that could be made to serve as an instrument of death, set
out to hunt the conscripts down; they carried off the flocks of
Perolat, Fontareche, and Pajolas, burned down a dozen houses at the
Collet-de-Deze, and from there went to the village of Brenoux, drunk
with the lust of destruction. There they massacred fifty-two persons,
among them mothers with unborn children; and with these babes, which
they tore from them, impaled on their pikes and halberts, they continued
their march towards the villages of St. Denis and Castagnols.

Very soon these volunteers organised themselves into companies, and
became known under the name of Cadets de la Croix, from a small white
cross which they wore on th