n 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 to be sent away, but deserted in
numbers.

M. de Julien soon saw that all his efforts would end in failure if he
could not gain the king's consent to a slight change in the original
plan. He therefore wrote to Versailles, and represented to the king how
long the work would take if the means employed were only iron tools and
the human hand, instead of fire, the only true instrument employed by
Heaven in its vengeance. He quoted in support of his petition the case
of Sodom and Gomorrah--those cities accursed of the Lord. Louis XIV,
impressed by the truth of this comparison, sent him back a messenger
post-haste authorising him to employ the suggested means.

"At once," says Pere Louvreloeil, "the storm burst, and soon of all the
happy homesteads nothing was left: the hamlets, with their barns and
outhouses, the isolated farmhouses, the single huts and cottages, every
species of building in short, disappeared before the swift advancing
flames as wild flowers, weeds, and roots fall before the ploughshare."

This destruction was accompanied by horrible cruelty. For instance,
twenty-five inhabitants of a certain village took refuge in a chateau;
the number consisted of children and very old people, and they were all
that was left of the entire population. Palmerolle, in command of the
miquelets, hearing of this, hastened thither, seized the first eight he
could lay