Various meetings were accordingly held, in the following month of July, in the Cevennes and Viverais. At St. Hypolite, where the temple of the Protestants had been destroyed, about four thousand persons met in a field near the town, when the minister preached to them from the text--"Render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's, and unto God the things which are God's." The meeting was conducted with the utmost solemnity; and a Catholic priest who was present, on giving information to the Bishop of Nismes of the transaction, admitted that the preacher had advanced nothing but what the bishop himself might have spoken. The dragoons were at once sent to St. Hypolite to put an end to these meetings, and to "convert" the Protestants. The town was almost wholly Protestant. The troops were quartered in numbers in every house; and the people soon became "new converts." The losses sustained by the inhabitants of the Cevennes from this forced quartering of the troops upon them--and Anduze, Sauvé, St. Germain, Vigan, and Ganges were as full of them as St. Hypolite--may be inferred from the items charged upon the inhabitants of St. Hypolite alone[22]:-- To the regiment of Montpezat, for a billet for sixty-five days 50,000 livres. To the three companies of Red Dragoons, for ninety-five days 30,000 " To three companies of Villeneuve's Dragoons, for thirty days 6,000 " To three companies of the Blue Dragoons of Languedoc, for three months and nine days 37,000 " To a company of Cravates (troopers) for fourteen days 1,400 " To the transport of three hundred and nine companies of cavalry and infantry 10,000 " To provisions for the troops 60,000 " To damage sustained by the destruction done by the soldiers, of furniture, and losses by the seizure of property, &c. 50,000 " ---------- Total 244,400 [Footnote 22: Claude Brousson, "Apologie du Projet des Réformés."] Meetings of the persecuted were also held, under the terms of "The Project," in Viverais and Dauphiny. These meetings having been repeated for several weeks, the priests of the respective districts called upon their bishops for help to put down this heretical display. The Bishop of Valence (Daniel de Cosmac) accordingly informed them that he had taken the necessary steps, and that he had been apprised that twenty thousand soldiers were now on their march to the South to put down the Protestant movement.