tnote 44: Cavalier's "Memoirs of the Wars of the
Cevennes," pp. 111-114.]

The campaign of 1703, the third year of the insurrection, began
unfavourably for the Camisards. The ill-success of Count Broglie as
commander of the royal forces in the Cevennes, determined Louis
XIV.--from whom the true state of affairs could no longer be
concealed--to supersede him by Marshal Montrevel, one of the ablest of
his generals. The army of Languedoc was again reinforced by ten
thousand of the best soldiers of France, drawn from the armies of
Germany and Italy. It now consisted of three regiments of dragoons and
twenty-four battalions of foot--of the Irish Brigade, the Miguelets,
and the Languedoc fusiliers--which, with the local militia,
constituted an effective force of not less than sixty thousand men!

Such was the irresistible army, commanded by a marshal of France,
three lieutenant-generals, three major-generals, and three
brigadier-generals, now stationed in Languedoc, to crush the peasant
insurrection. No wonder that the Camisard chiefs were alarmed when the
intelligence reached them of this formidable force having been set in
motion for their destruction.

The first thing they determined upon was to effect a powerful
diversion, and to extend, if possible, the area of the insurrection.
For this purpose, Cavalier, at the head of eight hundred men,
accompanied by thirty baggage mules, set out in the beginning of
February, with the object of raising the Viverais, the north-eastern
quarter of Languedoc, where the Camisards had numerous partizans. The
snow was lying thick upon the ground when they set out; but the little
army pushed northward, through Rochegude and Barjac. At the town of
Vagnas they found their way barred by a body of six hundred militia,
under the Count de Roure. These they attacked with great fury and
speedily put to flight.

But behind the Camisarde was a second and much stronger royalist
force, eighteen hundred men, under Brigadier Julien, who had hastened
up from Lussan upon Cavalier's track, and now hung upon his rear in
the forest of Vagnas. Next morning the Camisards accepted battle,
fought with their usual bravery, but having been trapped into an
ambuscade, they were overpowered by numbers, and at length broke and
fled in disorder, leaving behind them their mules, baggage, seven
drums, and a quantity of arms, with some two hundred dead and
wounded. Cavalier himself escaped with difficulty, and