History of the Rise of the Huguenots, Vol. 2 — John Shaqi
History of the Rise of the Huguenots, Vol. 2Baird, Henry Martyn
History
History of the Rise of the Huguenots, Vol. 2
Baird, Henry Martyn
Huguenots
But the time for revenge soon came around. The barbarous warfare initiated
by the adherents of the triumvirate in Dauphiny and Provence bred or
brought forward a leader and soldiers who did not hesitate to repay
cruelty with cruelty. Francois de Beaumont, Baron des Adrets, was a
merciless general, who affected to believe that rigor and strict
retaliation were indispensable to remove the contempt in which the
Huguenots were held, and who knew how by bold movements to appear where
least expected, and by vigor to multiply the apparent size of his army.
Attached to the Reformation only from ambition, and breathing a spirit
far removed from the meekness of the Gospel, he soon awakened the horror
of his comrades in arms, and incurred the censure of Conde for his
barbarities; so that, within a few months, becoming disgusted with the
Huguenots, he went over to the papal side, and in the second civil war was
found fighting against his former associates.[102] Meantime, his brief
connection with the Huguenots was a blot upon their escutcheon all the
more noticeable because of the prevailing purity;[103] and the injury he
inflicted upon the cause of Protestantism far more than cancelled the
services he rendered at Lyons and elsewhere. At Pierrelate he permitted
his soldiers to take signal vengeance on the garrison for the recent
massacre. At Mornas the articles of the capitulation, by which the lives
of the besieged were guaranteed, were not observed; for the Protestant
soldiers from Orange, recognizing among them the perpetrators of the
crimes which had turned their homes into a howling desert, fell upon them
and were not--perhaps could not be--restrained by their leader.[104] The
fatal example of Orange was but too faithfully copied, and precipitating
the prisoners from the summit of a high rock became the favorite mode of
execution.[105] Only one of the unfortunates, who happened to break his
fall by catching hold of a wild fig-tree growing cut of the side of the
cliff, was spared by his enemies.[106] A number of the naked corpses were
afterward placed in an open boat without pilot or tiller, and suffered to
float down the Rhone with a banner on which were written these words: "O
men of Avignon! permit the bearers to pass, for they have paid the toll at
Mornas."[107]
[Sidenote: Blaise de Montluc.]
[Sidenote: Massacre at Toulouse.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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