Massacres of the South (1551-1815): Celebrated CrimesDumas, Alexandre
History
Massacres of the South (1551-1815): Celebrated Crimes
Dumas, Alexandre
Crime
“These wretches having forced us,” says she, “to walk into the forest
till we were at some distance from the high road, my poor mistress grew
so tired that she begged the man who walked beside her to allow her to
lean on his shoulder. He looking round and seeing that they had reached
a lonely spot, replied, ‘We need hardly go any farther,’ and made us sit
dawn on a plot of grass which was to be the scene of our martyrdom. My
poor mistress began to plead with the barbarians in the most touching
manner, and so sweetly that she would have softened the heart of a
demon. She offered them her purse, her gold waistband, and a fine
diamond which she drew from her finger; but nothing could move these
tigers, and one of them said, ‘I am going to kill all the Catholics at
once, and shall be gin with you.’ ‘What will you gain by my death?’
asked my mistress. ‘Spare my life.’—‘No; shut up!’ replied he. ‘You
shall die by my hand. Say your prayers.’ My good mistress threw herself
at once on her knees and prayed aloud that God would show mercy to her
and to her murderers, and while she was thus praying she received a
pistol-shot in her left breast, and fell; a second assassin cut her
across the face with his sword, and a third dropped a large stone on her
head, while the fourth killed the nurse with a shot from his pistol.
Whether it was that they had no more loaded firearms, or that they
wished to save their ammunition, they were satisfied with only giving me
several bayonet wounds. I pretended to be dead: they thought it was
really the case, and went away. Some time after, seeing that everything
had become quiet, and hearing no sound, I dragged myself, dying as I
was, to where my dear mistress lay, and called her. As it happened, she
was not quite dead, and she said in a faint voice, ‘Stay with me, Suzon,
till I die.’ She added, after a short pause, for she was hardly able to
speak, ‘I die for my religion, and I hope that God will have pity on me.
Tell my husband that I confide our little one to his care.’ Having said
this, she turned her thoughts from the world, praying to God in broken
and tender words, and drew her last breath as the night fell.”
In obedience to Cavalier’s orders, the four criminals were taken and
brought before him. He was then with his troops near Saint-Maurice de
Casevielle; he called a council of war, and having had the prisoners
tried for their atrocious deed, he summed up the evidence in as clear a
manner as any lawyer could have done, and called upon the judges to
pronounce sentence. All the judges agreed that the prisoners should be
put to death, but just as the sentence was made known one of the
assassins pushed aside the two men who guarded him, and jumping down a
rock, disappeared in the forest before any attempt could be made to stop
him. The three others were shot.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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