All over Languedoc, at Angouleme, and at Bordeaux, frightful massacres of Jews took place. The excuse alleged for them was, that the plunder of the Jews was necessary to the ‘armies of the Lord,’ in order to equip them properly for the recovery of Palestine. But, terrible as were their sufferings from the violence of the fanatics, what ensued was even more full of horror. The outbreak was followed, as might have been anticipated, by an epidemic pestilence—the natural result of the scarcity of wholesome food and the corruption of so many human carcases. But the people, possessed as they were by the worst form of religious mania, were easily persuaded by their leaders that the malady was caused by the poisoning of wells and rivers, which again was the work of the Jews. The Sieur de Parthenay wrote word to the king that ‘a great leper, seized on his land, had confessed to him that he had received from a rich Jew a consignment of drugs, which were to be enclosed in bags and thrown into the wells.’[133] The king returned in alarm from Poitou, which he had been visiting, and ordered that all lepers should be arrested and put to the question—that is, examined by torture. This mode of inquiry elicited the usual results. The unhappy sufferers in their agony confessed everything of which they had been suspected, however monstrous or incredible it might be. It appeared that there had been a conspiracy between the infidel kings of Tunis and Granada, the Jews, and the lepers, Satan himself presiding at the conference. Woe and misery were to be wrought on the Christians by the poisoning of the water which they drank. The lepers were straightway ordered to be burned, pregnant women alone being spared, and they only until the time of their delivery. In the instance of the Jews not even this mercy seems to have been shown: they were burned without distinction. At Chignon a great trench was dug, fires were kindled in it, and 160 Jews burned alive—men and women together. Many women, with their children in their arms, voluntarily threw themselves into the flames to escape baptism. In the royal prison at Vitry forty Jews, who were persuaded that no mercy would be shown them, resolved to die by their own hands rather than by those of the uncircumcised. They therefore fixed upon one of their own number, an aged man greatly honoured and beloved, and requested him to become their executioner. He consented to undertake the office, with the help of a youth whom he chose for the purpose. When all but these two had been slain, the old man ordered the youth to kill him also. He was obeyed; but the young man, lacking the resolution to take his own life, attempted to escape from the prison, when he was taken prisoner, and confessed what had taken place.