On the thirteenth of April, the commissioners, leaving Aix, proceeded to Pertuis, on the northern bank of the Durance. Thence, following the course of the river, they reached Cadenet. Here they were joined by the Baron d'Oppède, his sons-in-law, De Pouriez and De Lauris, and a considerable force of men. A deliberation having been held, on the sixteenth, Poulain, to whom the chief command had been assigned by D'Oppède, directed his course northward, and burned Cabrièrette, Peypin, La Motte and Saint-Martin, villages built on the lands of De Cental, a Roman Catholic nobleman, at this time a minor. The wretched inhabitants, who had not until the very last moment credited the strange story of the disaster in reserve for them, hurriedly fled on the approach of the soldiery, some to the woods, others to Mérindol. Unable to defend them against a force so greatly superior in number and equipment, a part of the men are said to have left their wives, old men, and children in their forest retreat, confident that if discovered, feminine weakness and the helplessness of infancy or of extreme old age would secure better terms for them than could be hoped for in case of a brave, but ineffectual defence by unarmed men.[490] It was a confidence misplaced. Unresisting, gray-headed men were despatched with the sword, while the women were reserved for the grossest outrage, or suffered the mutilation of their breasts, or, if with child, were butchered with their unborn offspring. Of all the property spared them by previous oppressors, nothing was left to sustain the miserable survivors. For weeks they wandered homeless and penniless in the vicinity of their once flourishing settlements; and there one might not unfrequently see the infant lying on the road-side, by the corpse of the mother dead of hunger and exposure. For even the ordinary charity of the humane had been checked by an order of D'Oppède, savagely forbidding that shelter or food be afforded to heretics, on pain of the halter.[491] Lourmarin, Villelaure, and Treizemines were next burned on the way to Mérindol. On the opposite side of the Durance, La Rocque and St. Étienne de Janson suffered the same fate, at the hands of volunteers coming from Arles. Happily they were found deserted, the villagers having had timely notice of the approaching storm. [Sidenote: The destruction of Mérindol.]