s, and Marseilles were
commanded, under severe penalties, to join the expedition;[488] and some
companies of veteran troops, which happened to be on their way from
Piedmont to the scene of the English war, were impressed into the
service by D'Oppede, in the king's name.[489]

[Sidenote: Villages burned and their inhabitants butchered.]

On the thirteenth of April, the commissioners, leaving Aix, proceeded to
Pertuis, on the northern bank of the Durance. Thence, following the
course of the river, they reached Cadenet. Here they were joined by the
Baron d'Oppede, his sons-in-law, De Pouriez and De Lauris, and a
considerable force of men. A deliberation having been held, on the
sixteenth, Poulain, to whom the chief command had been assigned by
D'Oppede, directed his course northward, and burned Cabrierette, Peypin,
La Motte and Saint-Martin, villages built on the lands of De Cental, a
Roman Catholic nobleman, at this time a minor. The wretched inhabitants,
who had not until the very last moment credited the strange story of the
disaster in reserve for them, hurriedly fled on the approach of the
soldiery, some to the woods, others to Merindol. Unable to defend them
against a force so greatly superior in number and equipment, a part of
the men are said to have left their wives, old men, and children in
their forest retreat, confident that if discovered, feminine weakness
and the helplessness of infancy or of extreme old age would secure
better terms for them than could be hoped for in case of a brave, but
ineffectual defence by unarmed men.[490] It was a confidence misplaced.
Unresisting, gray-headed men were despatched with the sword, while the
women were reserved for the grossest outrage, or suffered the mutilation
of their breasts, or, if with child, were butchered with their unborn
offspring. Of all the property spared them by previous oppressors,
nothing was left to sustain the miserable survivors. For weeks they
wandered homeless and penniless in the vicinity of their once
flourishing settlements; and there one might not unfrequently see the
infant lying on the road-side, by the corpse of the mother dead of
hunger and exposure. For even the ordinary charity of the humane had
been checked by an order of D'Oppede, savagely forbidding that shelter
or food be afforded to heretics, on pain of the halter.[491]

Lourmarin, Villelaure, and Treizemines were next burned on the way to
Merindol. On the opposite side of the Duran