him.

These measures had the desired effect, but they were terrible in their
results; they deprived the Camisards of shelter indeed, but they ruined
the province. M. de Baville, despite his well-known severity tried
remonstrances, but they were taken in bad part by M. de Montrevel, who
told the intendant to mind his own business, which was confined to civil
matters, and to leave military matters in his, M. de Montrevel's, hands;
whereupon the commandant joined M. de Julien, who was carrying on the
work of destruction with indefatigable vigour.

In spite of all the enthusiasm with which M. de Julien went to work to
accomplish his mission, and being a new convert, it was, of course, very
great. Material hindrances hampered him at every step. Almost all the
doomed houses were built on vaulted foundations, and were therefore
difficult to lay low; the distance of one house from another, too, their
almost inaccessible position, either on the peak of a high mountain or
in the bottom of a rocky valley, or buried in the depths of the forest
which hid then like a veil, made the difficulty still greater; whole
days were often lost by the workmen and militia in searching for the
dwellings they came to destroy.

The immense size of the parishes also caused delay: that of
Saint-Germain de Calberte, for instance, was nine leagues in
circumference, and contained a hundred and eleven hamlets, inhabited by
two hundred and seventy-five families, of which only nine were Catholic;
that of Saint-Etienne de Valfrancesque was of still greater extent,
and its population was a third larger, so that obstacles to the work
multiplied in a remarkable manner. For the first few days the soldiers
and workmen found food in and around the villages, but this was soon
at an end, and as they could hardly expect the peasants to keep up
the supply, and the provisions they had brought with them being also
exhausted, they were soon reduced to biscuit and water; and they were
not even able to make it into a warm mess by heating the water, as they
had no vessels; moreover, when their hard day's work was at an end, they
had but a handful of straw on which to lie. These privations, added
to their hard and laborious life, brought on an endemic fever, which
incapacitated for work many soldiers and labourers, numbers of whom had
to be dismissed. Very soon the unfortunate men, who were almost as much
to be pitied as those whom they were persecuting, waited no longer