by natural terror at the strange sight of war, had taken
refuge--the men in the cellars of the castle, the women and children in
the church.

[Sidenote: Men butchered and women burned.]

The slender garrison left their entrenchments without arms, trusting in
the good faith of their enemies. It was a vain and delusive reliance.
They had to do with men who held, and carried into practice, the
doctrine that no faith is to be observed with heretics. Scarcely had the
Waldenses placed themselves in their power, when twenty-five or more of
their number were seized, and, being dragged to a meadow near by, were
butchered in cold blood, in the presence of the Baron d'Oppede. The rest
were taken to Aix and Marseilles. The women were treated with even
greater cruelty. Having been thrust into a barn, they were there burned
alive. When a soldier, more compassionate than his comrades, opened to
them a way of escape, D'Oppede ordered them to be driven back at the
point of the pike. Nor were those taken within the town more fortunate.
The men, drawn from their subterranean retreats, were either killed on
the spot, or bound in couples and hurried to the castle hall, where two
captains stood ready to kill them as they successively arrived. It was,
however, for the sacred precincts of the church that the crowning orgies
of these bloody revels were reserved. The fitting actors were a motley
rabble from the neighboring city of Avignon, who converted the place
consecrated to the worship of the Almighty into a charnel-house, in
which eight hundred bodies lay slain, without respect of age or
sex.[494]

In the blood of a thousand human beings D'Oppede had washed out a
fancied affront received at the hands of the inhabitants of Cabrieres.
The private rancor of a relative induced him to visit a similar revenge
on La Coste, where a fresh field was opened for the perfidy, lust, and
greed of the soldiery. The peasants were promised by their feudal lord
perfect security, on condition that they brought their arms into the
castle and broke down four portions of their wall. Too implicit reliance
was placed in a nobleman's word, and the terms were accepted. But when
D'Oppede arrived, a murderous work began. The suburbs were burned, the
town was taken, the citizens for the most part were butchered, the
married women and girls were alike surrendered to the brutality of the
soldiers.[495]

[Sidenote: The results.]

For more than seven weeks the pillage