Meantime the work of persecution was thoroughly done. The houses were plundered and burned; the trees, whether intended for shade or for fruit, were cut down to the distance of two hundred paces from the place. The very site of Mérindol was levelled, and crowds of laborers industriously strove to destroy every trace of human habitation. Two hundred dwellings, the former abode of thrift and contentment, had disappeared from the earth, and their occupants wandered, poverty-stricken, to other regions.[493]
Treacherous capture of Cabrières.
Leaving the desolate spot, D'Oppède next presented himself, on the nineteenth of April, before the town of Cabrières. Behind some weak entrenchments a small body of brave men had posted themselves, determined to defend the lives and honor of their wives and children to their last drop of blood. D'Oppède hesitated to order an assault until a breach had first been made by cannon. Then the Waldenses were plied with solicitations to spare needless effusion of blood by voluntary surrender. They were offered immunity of life and property, and a judicial trial. When by these promises the assailants had, on the morrow, gained the interior of the works, they found them guarded by Étienne de Marroul and an insignificant force of sixty men, supported by a courageous band of about forty women. The remainder of the population, overcome by natural terror at the strange sight of war, had taken refuge—the men in the cellars of the castle, the women and children in the church.
Men butchered and women burned.
The slender garrison left their entrenchments without arms, trusting in the good faith of their enemies. It was a vain and delusive reliance. They had to do with men who held, and carried into practice, the doctrine that no faith is to be observed with heretics. Scarcely had the Waldenses placed themselves in their power, when twenty-five or more of their number were seized, and, being dragged to a meadow near by, were butchered in cold blood, in the presence of the Baron d'Oppède. The rest were taken to Aix and Marseilles. The women were treated with even greater cruelty. Having been thrust into a barn, they were there burned alive. When a soldier, more compassionate than his comrades, opened to them a way of escape, D'Oppède ordered them to be driven back at the point of the pike. Nor were those taken within the town more fortunate. The men, drawn from their subterranean retreats, were either killed on the spot, or bound in couples and hurried to the castle hall, where two captains stood ready to kill them as they successively arrived. It was, however, for the sacred precincts of the church that the crowning orgies of these bloody revels were reserved. The fitting actors were a motley rabble from the neighboring city of Avignon, who converted the place consecrated to the worship of the Almighty into a charnel-house, in which eight hundred bodies lay slain, without respect of age or sex.[494]
In the blood of a thousand human beings D'Oppède had washed out a fancied affront received at the hands of the inhabitants of Cabrières. The private rancor of a relative induced him to visit a similar revenge on La Coste, where a fresh field was opened for the perfidy, lust, and greed of the soldiery. The peasants were promised by their feudal lord perfect security, on condition that they brought their arms into the castle and broke down four portions of their wall. Too implicit reliance was placed in a nobleman's word, and the terms were accepted. But when D'Oppède arrived, a murderous work began. The suburbs were burned, the town was taken, the citizens for the most part were butchered, the married women and girls were alike surrendered to the brutality of the soldiers.[495]
The results.
For more than seven weeks the pillage continued.[496] Twenty-two towns and villages were utterly destroyed. The soldiers, glutted with blood and rapine, were withdrawn from the scene of their infamous excesses. Most of the Waldenses who had escaped sword, famine, and exposure, gradually returned to the familiar sites, and established themselves anew, maintaining their ancient faith.[497] But multitudes had perished of hunger,[498] while others, rejoicing that they had found abroad a toleration denied them at home, renounced their native land, and settled upon the territory generously conceded to them in Switzerland.[499] In one way or another, France had become poorer by the loss of several thousands persons of its most industrious class.[500]
The king led to give his approval.
The very agents in the massacre were appalled at the havoc they had made. Fearing, with reason, the punishment of their crime, if viewed in its proper light,[501] they endeavored to veil it with the forms of a judicial proceeding. A commission was appointed to try the heretics whom the sword had spared. A part were sentenced to the galleys, others to heavy fines. A few of the tenants of M. de Cental are said to have purchased reconciliation by abjuring their faith.[502] But, to conceal the truth still more effectually, President De la Fond was sent to Paris. He assured Francis that the sufferers had been guilty of the basest crimes, that they had been judicially tried and found guilty, and that their punishment was really below the desert of their offences.[503] Upon these representations, the king was induced—it was supposed by the solicitation of Cardinal Tournon—to grant letters (at Arques, on the eighteenth of August, 1545) approving the execution of the Waldenses, but recommending to mercy all that repented and abjured.[504]