It was fortified, but not in too serious or too aggressive a way. It was besieged, but always in a comparatively gentle manner, without unnecessary noise and battering of walls and doors and with casualties that may almost be called complimentary. One siege in November, 1589, is very fully described in the diary of a besieged resident, a certain Monsieur Rocomare. Mr. Kaye quotes this record at some length. The attacking general appears to have been wounded early in the fray and to have “fallen into convulsions.” “Whereby,” says M. Rocomare, “the whole camp was thrown into confusion.” The siege proceeded in spite of the general’s fit. When things were not going well with the town the people of Grasse proposed—as they always did—a treaty. It was accepted. By this agreement the men-at-arms of Grasse and as many townsfolk as wished were allowed to leave the city with the honours of war and with all their baggage. Unfortunately the attacking army, demoralised, it may be, by the sight of their general in convulsions, broke their compact, seized all the baggage and horses and killed no fewer than seventeen persons. The besiegers occupied the town and M. Rocomare had billeted upon him a cornet, six soldiers, ten serving men, some horses and a mule. This forced entertainment cost him 260 golden crowns; but, worst of all, the ungrateful cornet, on taking leave of his host, robbed him of his cattle and of “other things.” In the bitter religious wars of the time which rent and racked the whole adjacent country, Grasse took but little part. It was appropriately shocked at the spectacle of Christians fighting and then went on with its soap-making. The people of Grasse, however, had their local religious quarrels which seem to have been concerned not with matters of doctrine, but rather with questions of fees and emoluments and especially with burial fees. In these disputes over money “the clergy,” as Mr. Kaye remarks, “seemed strangely to have forgotten their high calling,” for they actually fought for the possession of coffins containing the dead, and there must have been regrettable scenes in the graveyard when the clerics and their subordinates were engaged in what was practically a tug-of-war over a coffin.