IV.
Poor mankind has no city which is not full of lamentable memories. The Protestants took this one in 1570 and butchered all the inhabitants. One of them had taken refuge in a tower whose only ascent was by a narrow staircase; they sent one of his friends, who called to him under pretext of a parley; no sooner had he put his head at the window than he was killed by an arquebusade. The peasants who came to give burial to the dead interred two thousand of them in the ditches. Five years after, the country was almost a desert.
Patience! the Catholics were no gentler than the Protestants; witness that siege of Rabastens, twelve miles distant from Tarbes.
“Suddenly,” says Montluc, “I saw that others besides our foot soldiers should have a hand here, and said to the nobility: ‘Gentlemen, my friends, follow boldly, and give, and be not wonder-struck; for we could not choose a more honorable death.’ And so we all marched with as good a will as ever I saw in my life to the assault, and I twice looked back; I saw that all were closed up so as to touch one another. I had caused three or four ladders to be carried to the brink of the moat, and as I turned backward to order them to bring up two ladders, a volley was given me in the face from the corner of a barricade which adjoined the tower. I was suddenly covered with blood, for I bled from the mouth, nose and eyes. Then almost all the soldiers, and nearly all the nobles too, began to be affrighted and would retreat. But I cried out to them, although I could scarcely speak for the quantity of blood which gushed from my mouth and nose: 'Where will you go? Will you be frightened on my account? Do not stir, and do not abandon the fight.’ And said to the nobles, ‘I am going to get my wounds dressed: let no one follow me, and avenge me as you love me.’ I took a nobleman by the hand, and so was led to my lodging, where I found a surgeon of M. de Goas’ regiment, named Maître Simon, who dressed my wound and pulled out the bones from both cheeks with his two fingers, so large were the holes, and cut off much flesh from my face, which was covered with wounds.
“Here now is M. de Madaillan, my lieutenant, who was at my side when I went to the charge, and M. de Goas on the other, who was come to see if I were dead, and said to me: ‘Rejoice, monsieur, take courage, we are inside. There are the soldiers with hands that kill everybody; be assured then that we will avenge your wound.’ Then I said to him: ‘I praise God, because I see that victory is ours before I die. At present I feel no concern at dying. I beg you will go back, and show me all the affection you have borne me, and take care that no one escapes unkilled.
“And immediately he went away, and even my servants all went; so that there remained along with me only two pages, and the advocate de Las and the surgeon. They wanted to save the minister and the captain of the garrison, named Ladous, so as to have them hung before my quarters. But the soldiers had nearly killed them themselves, and took them away from those who held them and tore them into a thousand pieces. The soldiers made fifty or sixty who had withdrawn into the great tower, leap from the top into the moat, and these were drowned. It turns out that two who had hidden themselves were saved. There was a certain prisoner who wanted to give four thousand crowns. But never a man would hear of any ransom, and most of the women were killed.”
With such fits of madness how has the human race managed to endure? “In vain you drain it,” says Mephistopheles, “the fresh spring of living blood forever reappears.”
