r provisional _sequestration_."

The fugitives had sufficient inducements to return to their hearths,
without the fear of sequestration. They were more anxious to embrace
their fathers, mothers, wives, and children, and to resume their
ordinary occupations, than M. Bernis could be to insure their return.
But thus denouncing men as criminals who fled for safety from the sabres
of assassins, was adding oil to the fire of persecution. Trestaillon,
one of the chiefs of the brigands, was dressed in complete uniform and
epaulettes which he had stolen; he wore a sabre at his side, pistols in
his belt, a cockade of white and green, and a sash of the same colours
on his arm. He had under him, Truphemy, Servan, Aime, and many other
desperate characters. Some time after this M. Bernis ordered all parties
and individuals, armed or unarmed, to abstain from searching houses,
without either an order, or the presence of an officer. On suspicion of
arms being concealed, the commandant of the town was ordered to furnish
a patrol to make search and seizure; and all persons carrying arms in
the streets, without being on service, were to be arrested. Trestaillon,
however, who still carried arms, was not arrested till some months
after, and then not by these authorities, but by General La Garde, who
was afterwards assassinated by one of his comrades. On this occasion it
was remarked, that "the system of specious and deceptive proclamations
was perfectly understood, and had long been practised in Languedoc; it
was _not too late_ to persecute the protestants simply for their
religion. Even in the good times of Louis XIV. there was public opinion
enough in Europe to make that arch tyrant have recourse to the meanest
stratagems." The following single specimen of the plan pursued by the
authors of the Dragonades may serve as a key to all the plausible
proclamations which, in 1815, covered the perpetration of the most
deliberate and extensive crimes:--

_Letters from Louvois to Marillac._

"The king rejoices to learn from your letters, that there are so many
conversions in your department; and he desires that you would continue
your efforts, and employ the same means that have been hitherto so
successful. His majesty has ordered me to send a regiment of cavalry,
the greatest part of which he wishes to be quartered upon the
protestants, but he does not think it _prudent_ that they should be all
lodged with them; that is to say, of twenty-six ma