The bishops of Provence, finding themselves unsupported in their system of persecution, commissioned three doctors of theology to convert the Vaudois; but, marvel of marvels! all three were themselves converted to the proscribed religion: “I am compelled to confess,” said one of these doctors, after his interrogatories to some catechumens, “that I have often been to the Sorbonne to hearken to the disputations of the theologians, and that I have not learned there so much as I have done from listening to these little children.” The rage of the priests was now at its height; and the chief president Chassanée being dead, they persuaded his successor, Jean Meynier, baron d’Oppède, to prosecute the heretics without mercy. Memorials were sent at the same time to the king, in which the Vaudois were accused of an intention to seize upon Marseilles, to form a sort of republican canton, in imitation of the Swiss. Francis did not become a dupe to this ridiculous fable; he knew very well that a few thousand poor peasants could not convert Provence into a republic. But he had just concluded a treaty with Charles V., through the mediation of Paul III., by which the two monarchs engaged themselves to exterminate heresy. This prince lay, moreover, dangerously ill, and the Cardinal de Tournon, seconded by several bishops, beseeched him, in the name of his eternal salvation, to revoke his letters of pardon. He thereupon wrote to the Parliament of Aix, on the 1st of January, 1545, to execute the decree pronounced against the Vaudois. The Baron d’Oppède, who appears to have imported into this horrible enterprise motives of jealousy and personal vengeance, collected bands of mercenaries, who had been accustomed in the Italian wars to the most frightful brigandage. He placed over them some officers of Provence, and took the field on the 2nd of April. Then began a horrible carnage. “They were no longer,” says an historian, “either gentlemen or soldiers: they were butchers.” The Vaudois were surprised and massacred, like the deer in a hunt; their houses were burned, their cornfields laid waste, trees uprooted, wells choked, bridges destroyed. All were put to the fire and the sword; and the peasants of the surrounding country, joining the executioners, completed the pillage of the miserable remnants of the devastation. Those of the Vaudois who could fly, wandered about the woods and mountains; but the weaker, the old men and children and women, were forced to stay, and were slain by the soldiery, after having satiated their brutal passions. At Mérindol there only remained one poor idiot, who had promised two crowns to a soldier for his ransom. D’Oppède purchased from his purse the fate of the unhappy wretch, and causing him to be tied to a tree, had him shot. Scarce a gentleman present could restrain his tears.