crippled by the tortures to which they had been
subjected, that they could not stand. At sight of their sufferings the
fury of the assailants increased, and, running up the staircase, they
called out for the archpriest. "Burn the priest and the satellites of
Baal!" cried their leader; and heaping together the soldiers' straw
beds, the chairs, and other combustibles, they set the whole on fire.

Chayla, in the hope of escaping, jumped from a window into the garden,
and in the fall broke his leg. The peasants discovered him by the
light of the blazing dwelling. He called for mercy. "No," said
Seguier, "only such mercy as you have shown to others;" and he struck
him the first blow.

The others followed. "This for my father," said the next, "whom you
racked to death!"

"This for my brother," said another, "whom you sent to the galleys!"

"This for my mother, who died of grief!"

This for my sister, my relatives, my friends, in exile, in prison, in
misery!

And thus blow followed blow, fifty-two in all, half of which would
probably have been mortal, and the detested Chayla lay a bleeding mass
at their feet!

[Illustration: Map of the Country of the Cevennes.]

CHAPTER VI.

INSURRECTION OF THE CAMISARDS.

The poor peasants, wool-carders, and neatherds of the Cevennes, formed
only a small and insignificant section of the great body of men who
were about the same time engaged in different countries of Europe in
vindicating the cause of civil and religious liberty. For this cause,
a comparative handful of people in the Low Countries, occupying the
Dutch United Provinces, had banded themselves together to resist the
armies of Spain, then the most powerful monarchy in the world. The
struggle had also for some time been in progress in England and
Scotland, where it culminated in the Revolution of 1688; and it was
still raging in the Vaudois valleys of Piedmont.

The object contended for in all these cases was the same. It was the
vindication of human freedom against royal and sacerdotal despotism.
It could only have been the direst necessity that drove a poor,
scattered, unarmed peasantry, such as the people of the Cevennes, to
take up arms against so powerful a sovereign as Louis XIV. Their
passive resistance had lasted for fifteen long years, during which
many of them had seen their kindred racked, hanged, or sent to the
galleys; and at length their patience was exhausted, and the
inevitable outburst took p