continued.[496] Twenty-two towns
and villages were utterly destroyed. The soldiers, glutted with blood
and rapine, were withdrawn from the scene of their infamous excesses.
Most of the Waldenses who had escaped sword, famine, and exposure,
gradually returned to the familiar sites, and established themselves
anew, maintaining their ancient faith.[497] But multitudes had perished
of hunger,[498] while others, rejoicing that they had found abroad a
toleration denied them at home, renounced their native land, and settled
upon the territory generously conceded to them in Switzerland.[499] In
one way or another, France had become poorer by the loss of several
thousands persons of its most industrious class.[500]

[Sidenote: The king led to give his approval.]

The very agents in the massacre were appalled at the havoc they had
made. Fearing, with reason, the punishment of their crime, if viewed in
its proper light,[501] they endeavored to veil it with the forms of a
judicial proceeding. A commission was appointed to try the heretics whom
the sword had spared. A part were sentenced to the galleys, others to
heavy fines. A few of the tenants of M. de Cental are said to have
purchased reconciliation by abjuring their faith.[502] But, to conceal
the truth still more effectually, President De la Fond was sent to
Paris. He assured Francis that the sufferers had been guilty of the
basest crimes, that they had been judicially tried and found guilty, and
that their punishment was really below the desert of their
offences.[503] Upon these representations, the king was induced--it was
supposed by the solicitation of Cardinal Tournon--to grant letters (at
Arques, on the eighteenth of August, 1545) approving the execution of
the Waldenses, but recommending to mercy all that repented and
abjured.[504]

[Sidenote: An investigation subsequently ordered.]

Thus did the authors of so much human suffering escape merited
retribution at the hands of earthly justice during the brief remainder
of the reign of Francis the First. If, as some historians have asserted,
that monarch's eyes were at last opened to the enormities committed in
Provence, it was too late for him to do more than enjoin on his son and
successor a careful review of the entire proceedings.[505] After the
death of Francis an opportunity for obtaining redress seemed to offer.
Cardinal Tournon and Count De Grignan were in disgrace, and their places
in the royal favor were held