But the Camisard chief was well advised of their movements. To draw them away from his magazines, Cavalier marched boldly to the north, and slipping through between the advancing forces, he got into Broglie's rear, and set fire to two villages inhabited by Catholics. The three bodies at once directed themselves upon the burning villages; but when they reached them Cavalier had made his escape, and was nowhere to be heard of. For four days they hunted the country between the Garden and the Ceze, beating the woods and exploring the caves; and then they returned, harassed and vexed, to their respective quarters. While the Royalists were thus occupied, Cavalier fell upon a convoy of provisions which Colonel Marsilly was leading to the castle of Mendajols, scattered and killed the escort, and carried off the mules and their loads to the magazines at Bouquet. During the whole of the month of January, the Camisards, notwithstanding the inclemency of the weather, were constantly on the move, making their appearance in the most unexpected quarters; Roland descending from Mialet on Anduze, and rousing Broglie from his slumbers by a midnight fusillade; Castanet attacking St. André, and making a bonfire of the contents of the church; Joany disarming Genouillac; and Lafleur terrifying the villages of the Lozère almost to the gates of Mende. Although the winters in the South of France, along the shores of the Mediterranean, are comparatively mild and genial, it is very different in the mountain districts of the interior, where the snow lies thick upon the ground, and the rivers are bound up by frost. Cavalier, in his Memoirs, describes the straits to which his followers were reduced in that inclement season, being "destitute of houses or beds, victuals, bread, or money, and left to struggle with hunger, cold, snow, misery, and poverty."