Violence increased both in the cities and in the provinces. In the southeast Somarive committed great cruelties in Orange, killing men, women, and children wherever he went.[573] But the achievements of Montluc, “the true creator of the French infantry”[574] were the conspicuous feature of the war in the south. By his own confession this famous soldier “rather inclined to violence than to peace, and was more prone to fighting and cutting of throats than to making of speeches.”[575] The war in the southern provinces, it is plain, was one of both politics and religion. The practices of the Huguenots penetrated the whole administrative machinery. The sieur de Burie, king’s lieutenant in Guyenne, was old and overcautious, and not without suspicion of Calvinism,[576] while Duras, the Huguenot leader was so active that the crown had sent the veteran of the siege of Sienna into Guyenne in January, 1560, with a special commission.[577] The Huguenots tried to buy Montluc off through one of their captains formerly with him before Sienna, who came to him saying that the church at Nérac had made him their captain. Montluc’s reply nearly took the captain off his feet. “What the devil churches are those that make captains?” was his fierce question.[578] He speedily began to make his name formidable by hanging six Huguenots without process of law “which shook great fear into the whole party.” Montluc’s arrival was in the nick of time for the Catholics of the south. He thought that if the Huguenots had been more led by soldiers and not so “guided by ministers, they had not failed of carrying Bordeaux and Toulouse. But God preserved those two forts, the bulwarks of Guyenne, to save all the rest.” Montluc was everywhere at once, never resting long in any place, holding his foes in suspense everywhere, and not only was himself in continual motion, but also with letters and messages perpetually solicited and employed all the friends he had.[579] His troops were few in numbers and so ill-paid that he sometimes was reluctantly compelled to ransom his prisoners. “We were so few that we were not enough to kill them all,” he comments. “Had the King paid his companies I should not have suffered ransom to have been in use in this quarrel. It is not in this case as in a foreign war where men fight for love and honor. In a civil war we must either be master or man, being we live as it were, all under a roof.” He was as good as his word and “shook a great terror into the country everywhere.” When he appeared before Agen he “wondered that the people should be so damnably timorous and did not better defend their religion.” Instead “they no sooner heard my name but they fancied the rope already about their necks.” Yet terrible as the old war-dog was, he still waged war according to the rules of the game. He is outspoken in condemnation of the conduct of the Spanish companies sent by Philip II which joined him before Agen.[580] The importance of Montluc’s