hold of, and shot them on the spot, "to teach them," as he says
in his report, "not to choose a shelter which was not on the list of
those permitted to them."

The Catholics also of St. Florent, Senechas, Rousson, and other parishes,
becoming excited at seeing the flames which enveloped the houses of their
old enemies, joined together, and arming themselves with everything that
could be made to serve as an instrument of death, set out to hunt the
conscripts down; they carried off the flocks of Perolat, Fontareche, and
Pajolas, burned down a dozen houses at the Collet-de-Deze, and from there
went to the village of Brenoux, drunk with the lust of destruction.
There they massacred fifty-two persons, among them mothers with unborn
children; and with these babes, which they tore from them, impaled on
their pikes and halberts, they continued their march towards the villages
of St. Denis and Castagnols.

Very soon these volunteers organised themselves into companies, and
became known under the name of Cadets de la Croix, from a small white
cross which they wore on their coats; so the poor Huguenots had a new
species of enemy to contend with, much more bloodthirsty than the
dragoons and the miquelets; for while these latter simply obeyed orders
from Versailles, Nimes, or Montpellier, the former gratified a personal
hate--a hate which had come down to them from their fathers, and which
they would pass on to their children.

On the other hand, the young Huguenot leader, who every day gained more
influence over his soldiers, tried to make the dragoons and Cadets de la
Croix suffer in return everything they inflicted on the Huguenots, except
the murders. In the night from the 2nd to the 3rd October, about ten
o'clock, he came down into the plain and attacked Sommieres from two
different points, setting fire to the houses. The inhabitants seizing
their arms, made a sortie, but Cavalier charged them at the head of the
Cavalry and forced them to retreat. Thereupon the governor, whose
garrison was too small to leave the shelter of the walls, turned his guns
on them and fired, less in the hope of inflicting injury on them than in
that of being heard by the neighbouring garrisons.

The Camisards recognising this danger, retired, but not before they had
burnt down the hotels of the Cheval-Blanc, the Croix-d'Or, the
Grand-Louis, and the Luxembourg, as well as a great number of other
houses, and the church and the presbytery of Saint-A