Massacres of the South (1551-1815): Celebrated CrimesDumas, Alexandre
History
Massacres of the South (1551-1815): Celebrated Crimes
Dumas, Alexandre
Crime
Unfortunately for the Catholic party, Dupre and Lieutaud, to whom this
letter was entrusted for delivery, and for whom passports were made out
as being employed on business connected with the king and the State,
were arrested at Vehaud, and their despatches laid before the Electoral
Assembly. Many other letters of the same kind were also intercepted, and
the red-tufts went about the town saying that the Catholics of Nimes
were being massacred.
The priest of Courbessac, among others, was shown a letter saying that a
Capuchin monk had been murdered, and that the Catholics were in need of
help. The agents who brought this letter to him wanted him to put his
name to it that they might show it everywhere, but were met by a
positive refusal.
At Bouillargues and Manduel the tocsin was sounded: the two villages
joined forces, and with weapons in their hands marched along the road
from Beaucaire to Nimes. At the bridge of Quart the villagers of
Redressan and Marguerite joined them. Thus reinforced, they were able to
bar the way to all who passed and subject them to examination; if a man
could show he was a Catholic, he was allowed to proceed, but the
Protestants were murdered then and there. We may remind our readers that
the “Cadets de la Croix” pursued the same method in 1704.
Meantime Descombiez, Froment, and Folacher remained masters of the
ramparts and the tower, and when very early one morning their forces
were augmented by the insurgents from the villages (about two hundred
men), they took advantage of their strength to force a way into the
house of a certain Therond, from which it was easy to effect an entrance
to the Jacobin monastery, and from there to the tower adjoining, so that
their line now extended from the gate at the bridge of Calquieres to
that at the end of College Street. From daylight to dusk all the
patriots who came within range were fired at whether they were armed or
not.
On the 14th June, at four o’clock in the morning, that part of the
legion which was against the Catholics gathered together in the square
of the Esplanade, where they were joined by the patriots from the
adjacent towns and villages, who came in in small parties till they
formed quite an army. At five A.M. M. de St. Pons, knowing that the
windows of the Capuchin monastery commanded the position taken up by the
patriots, went there with a company and searched the house thoroughly,
and also the Amphitheatre, but found nothing suspicious in either.
Immediately after, news was heard of the massacres that had taken place
during the night.
The country-house belonging to M. and Mme. Noguies had been broken into,
the furniture destroyed, the owners killed in their beds, and an old man
of seventy who lived with them cut to pieces with a scythe.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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