ks), opened the grave, took out
the corpse, sawed the head from the body, and prepared to commit
further outrages, when the police interfered, and buried the body
again, in consideration of the large sum that had been paid to the
authorities for its interment.

The populace were always wild for an exhibition of cruelty. In
Provence, a Protestant named Montague died, and was secretly interred.
The Catholics having discovered the place where he was buried
determined to disinter him. The grave was opened, and the corpse taken
out. A cord was attached to the neck, and the body was hauled through
the village to the music of a tambourine and flageolet. At every step
it was kicked or mauled by the crowd who accompanied it. Under the
kicks the corpse burst. The furious brutes then took out the entrails
and attached them to poles, going through the village crying, "Who
wants preachings? Who wants preachings?"[66]

[Footnote 66: Antoine Court, "Memoire Historique," 140.]

To such a pitch of brutality had the kings of France and their
instigators, the Jesuits--who, since the Revocation of the Edict, had
nearly the whole education of the country in their hands--reduced the
people; from whom they were themselves, however, to suffer almost an
equal amount of indignity.

In the midst of these hangings and cruelties, the bishops again
complained bitterly of the tolerance granted to the Huguenots. M. de
Montclus, Bishop of Alais, urged "that the true cause of all the evils
that afflict the country was the relaxation of the laws against heresy
by the magistrates, that they gave themselves no trouble to persecute
the Protestants, and that their further emigration from the kingdom
was no more to be feared than formerly." It was, they alleged, a great
danger to the country that there should be in it two millions of men
allowed to live without church and outside the law.[67]

[Footnote 67: See "Memorial of General Assembly of Clergy to
the King," in _Collection des proces-verbaux_, 345.]

The afflicted Church at this time had many misfortunes to contend
with. In 1748, the noble, self-denying, indefatigable Claris died--one
of the few Protestant pastors who died in his bed. In 1750, the
eloquent young preacher, Francois Benezet,[68] was taken and hanged at
Montpellier. Meetings in the Desert were more vigorously attacked and
dispersed, and when surrounded by the soldiers, most persons were
shot; the others we