As the heathen party was the backbone of the rising, some 750 Protestant churches and Roman Catholic chapels were wrecked, 500 of these being connected with the London Missionary Society’s Mission. One poor Roman Catholic priest, and several Protestant pastors, preachers, and evangelists were murdered, while many had very narrow escapes. A few were able to ransom themselves. All Bibles, Testaments, and other religious books found in the churches or in the huts of the pastors or evangelists were burned, while bonfires were made of the pulpits and pews of the churches. The heathen cast in the teeth of their Christian captives, that their teachers had sneaked into the island under the guise of being teachers of a new religion, and through them the fatherland had been lost. ‘While we worshipped the gods of our forefathers,’ they said, ‘we had our fatherland, our own sovereign, and our own army; but you enraged the gods by forsaking them for the new religion, and praying to the white man’s ancestor, Jesus Christ, and now we have lost all.’ It was in vain for the Protestants to try to convince them that _their_ teachers had had nothing to do with the war or loss of the fatherland. As all the foreign teachers were white men and friends of each other, they were looked upon as equally guilty in the eyes of the heathen. ‘If the Protestant missionaries had not agreed to the war, and “piratical seizure” of the fatherland, why did they not appeal to their sovereign-lady to send her soldiers to help the Malagasy to drive back the invaders?’ Such was the argument of the heathen. In the light of such sentiments, how absurd the tales circulated in France, and accepted by thousands of the credulous there as true! The British missionaries were accused of instigating the rising, and the London Missionary Society of supplying arms and ammunition to the rebels! Many old scores were cleared off by malignant heathen and semi-heathen Malagasy during that reign of terror. Slaves who had been harshly and cruelly treated by their former masters took the opportunity of retaliating, and accused them of being connected with the rising; such people were at once arrested and shot. Debtors got rid of their creditors in the same way, while others cleared off many old grudges against Protestant pastors, preachers, evangelists, and even church members, by simply insinuating their suspicions to the officer of the _Poste_. After this these were marked men. Being found outside their huts or the village after dark, or returning from a visit, or from the market after dark, or some other trivial offence, was enough to stamp them as suspects, and they were arrested and shot. Arrested after dark, many of them were taken out and shot at daylight next morning, without the semblance of trial.