s of a great elm growing in the court of the parliament
house.[1130] The miscreants that voluntarily assumed the functions of
executioners were in this case drawn in great part from the more unruly
class of the law students of the university.[1131] It is needless to add
that here, as elsewhere, the opportunity for plunder was by no means
neglected.

[Sidenote: At Bordeaux.]

The procedure in Bordeaux was so extraordinary, and is so authentically
related in a letter of a prominent judicial officer who was present, as
well as in the records of the Parliament of Guyenne, that the story of its
massacre must be added to the notices already given. At first the city was
quiet, and the friends of order congratulated themselves that their
efforts had been successful in removing the stigma which previous
transactions had affixed to its escutcheon. Meantime this policy, united
to the fear of a fate similar to that which had befallen their
fellow-believers elsewhere, is said to have led to a great number of
conversions to the Roman Catholic Church.[1132] But there were those who
were unwilling that their prey should so easily escape them. On the fifth
of September, M. de Montferrand, Governor of Bordeaux, affecting to have
information of a general plot on the part of the Huguenots of the city,
had sought and obtained permission of the parliament to introduce three
hundred soldiers from abroad. He had thereupon forbidden the celebration
of Protestant worship, hitherto held at a distance of three leagues from
Bordeaux, on the plain between the Garonne and the Jalle.[1133] Meantime
the churches resounded with the violent denunciations of a famous
preacher, Friar Edmond Auger or Augier, "a great scourge for heresy," as
his partisans styled him. He exhorted his hearers to imitate the example
of Paris, and accused the royal officers of indolence and pusillanimity.
At this juncture the governor received a visit from Monsieur de Montpezat,
son-in-law of Villars, the newly appointed admiral. What the latter told
him is unknown. But, on the third of October, Montferrand having given out
that he had received from the king a roll of names of forty of the chief
men of the place, whom he was commissioned to put to death without judge
or trial, set about his bloody work. Persistently refusing to exhibit his
warrant, for three days the governor butchered the citizens at will.[1134]
One member of parliament, against whom he bore a personal grudge,