Starting from Saintes with 3000 men, chiefly cavalry, and unencumbered with baggage, he crossed the Dordogne, and pushing through Guienne, Rouergue and Quercy, he passed the Lot below Cadenac. Halting for two days at Montauban, he was there joined by Montgomery and 2000 veterans from Bearn. This nobleman had been engaged in putting down an insurrection of the Catholics in that province, which he did with savage harshness. Orthez was stormed, and so many of the inhabitants were put to death without distinction of age or sex, that the river Gave was dammed up by the number of bodies thrown into it. The monasteries and nunneries were burned, not one inmate escaping--the total slaughter being estimated at 3000. When the citadel was taken, every ecclesiastic who was proved to have borne arms--and the proof was none of the strictest--was bound hand and foot, and tossed over the bridge into the river. From Montauban Coligny marched up the Garonne to Toulouse, where he avenged the cruelties that had been inflicted on Rapin, the bearer of the king’s dispatch announcing the peace of 1568. Advancing still nearer to the Mediterranean, he placed his army in winter-quarters round Narbonne. Let us take advantage of this interval of repose to see what had been doing in other parts of France. A certain Captain Blosset, who held a small castle at Regeane in the diocese of Auxerre, was besieged by the Catholics of the neighborhood and forced to surrender. He contrived to make his escape, but all the garrison were cruelly murdered. One of these, Cœur de Roy by name, was taken to Auxerre, stripped, killed, and cut in pieces. His heart was torn out of his body, and slices of it were offered for sale. Some were such brutes (says the historian) as to set them on the fire and eat them half-roasted. “And these are the pious Christian duties,” he adds, “which we are taught by these troubles!” This was in June: in August (1569) the houses in which 200 Huguenots had been shut up at Orleans were set on fire by the mob, who drove back such as endeavored to escape from the flames. “A part of them,” says a contemporary, “were seen clasping their hands in the fire and calling upon the name of the Lord.” Some jumped out of the windows and were immediately “bludgeoned” by the people in the street. Others were shot like game. Some women also were killed, who, heedless of the sacking of their houses, were lamenting the deaths of their husbands, brothers, and others, whom they saw so pitilessly burned. It is pleasanter to read of Marie de Barbançon, a widow lady, who gave an asylum in her castle of Bonegon to the fugitive Protestants. The little fortress, which was defended by 50 men only, was attacked by a force of 3000 horse and foot provided with artillery. They battered the walls for fifteen days, but the brave woman still held out, and would not surrender until all of her little garrison were killed or wounded.[442] Nismes was captured in a singular manner.