The city of Toulouse was notorious for the ferocity of its population--a character which it has preserved nearly to our own day. At this time the Protestant inhabitants were estimated at 20,000 souls--a manifest exaggeration, although it was one of the most populous cities of France. Their number was certainly numerous enough to ensure a certain amount of toleration, and matters went on quietly until the Pacification of Amboise. When the Parliament of Toulouse received the edict, with instructions to see it properly observed, they protested and sent a deputation to the king, praying him, in case the edict could not be altered, “to permit them to sell their property and go elsewhere, preferring to lose their goods, and even their lives, rather than their faith.” Their petition had received no answer, when in the month of April (1562) a disturbance occurred at a funeral. Some lives were lost and the murderers were punished. The excited Protestants immediately rose and seized the gates and the Hôtel-de-Ville; and the parliament, determined to crush the insurrection at any cost, called upon the populace to arm in the defense of religion and order. They rushed like beasts of prey upon their victims; they filled the prisons, tossed Huguenots alive out of the windows of their houses, threw them into the Garonne, and if the poor wretches tried to crawl out of the water, they were beaten down with stones and staves. In May the two parties came to an arrangement by which the Huguenots agreed to leave the city in a body; but they were not to escape so easily. The Catholic peasants of the neighborhood waylaid the smaller and unarmed bodies, and killed between 3000 and 4000 of them. Thrice the king granted an amnesty to the Protestant citizens; thrice the parliament refused to register it, and continued their vindictive measures.[346] On the other side of France a similar voluntary expatriation occurred. The inhabitants of Sisteron left their city. For twenty-two days a crowd of both sexes and all ages wandered through the wild inhospitable country of the Upper Durance, passing the night in remote and desert valleys. Many perished by the swords of the Catholics; many died of hunger and exhaustion; the remainder at last entered the friendly walls of Grenoble, singing psalms of deliverance.