e Julien came to the conclusion that the
proper way was to put to the sword all the Protestants of the country
districts and burn all the villages. M. de Baville protested. "It is
not a question of exterminating these people," he said, "but of reducing
them, of forcing them to fidelity; the king must have industrious people
and flourishing districts preserved to him." The opinion of the generals
prevailed; the Cevenols were proclaimed outlaws, and the pope decreed a
crusade against them. The military and religious enthusiasm of the
Camisards went on increasing. Cavalier, young and enterprising, divided
his time between the boldest attempts at surprise and mystical
ecstasies, during which he singled out traitors who would have
assassinated him or sinners who were not worthy to take part in the
Lord's Supper. The king's troops ravaged the country; the Camisards, by
way of reprisal, burned the Catholic villages; everywhere the war was
becoming horrible. The peaceable inhabitants, Catholic or Protestant,
were incessantly changing from wrath to terror. Cavalier, naturally
sensible and humane, sometimes sank into despondency. He would fling
himself on his knees, crying, Lord, turn aside the king from following
the counsels of the wicked!" and then he would set off again upon a new
expedition. The struggle had been going on for two years, and Languedoc
was a scene of fire and bloodshed. Marshal Montrevel had gained great
advantages when the king ordered Villars to put an end to the revolt.
"I made up my mind," writes Villars, in his Memoires, "to try
everything, to employ all sorts of ways except that of ruining one of
the finest provinces in the kingdom, and that, if I could bring back the
offenders without punishing them, I should preserve the best soldiers
there are in the kingdom. They are, said I to myself, Frenchmen, very
brave and very strong, three qualities to be considered." "I shall
always," he adds, "have two ears for two sides."

"We have to do here with a very extraordinary people," wrote the marshal
to Chamillard, soon after his arrival; "it is a people unlike anything I
ever knew--all alive, turbulent, hasty, susceptible of light as well as
deep impressions, tenacious in its opinions. Add thereto zeal for
religion, which is as ardent amongst heretics as Catholics, and you will
no longer be surprised that we should be often very much embarrassed.
There are three sorts of Camisards: the first, with whom