His presence there would seem to have been betrayed to the Duc de Villars. At midnight, when he and his companions were fast asleep, the sentinel on the tower-head suddenly heard amid the stillness of the hour the distant noise of horses approaching at a furious gallop, and gave the alarm just as a column of cavalry was entering the town.
Half-clad and half-armed, the Camisards rushed to the stables, and mounting their horses bare-backed, rode off without saddles, bits, or spurs; thus they were soon after taken in a deep hollow way, and compelled to halt and dismount. Planting his back against an aged olive tree, Roland made a desperate resistance, to every summons of 'Rendez vous! bas les armes coquin!' replying by a blow of his sword, or shots from his pistols, a row of which he carried in his girdle. He slew several dragoons, ere one by a musket-shot brought him down, by a mortal wound, on which his comrades threw themselves above his body, and were seized and bound.
On the 16th of August his body was dragged at the tail of a cart into Nismes and burnt, while five of his companions were broken alive on the wheel around his funeral pyre. Many Camisards perished thus here, the most memorable executions being those of Catenat and Ravenel, who were burned alive, almost within sight of the battle-field on which they had defeated the Comte de Broglie.
Jean Cavalier found himself almost alone now, yet his spirit did not quail.
Marshal Villars had now come to the conclusion that the warfare seemed likely to become interminable; that it was possible to harass the hardy mountaineers of the Cevennes, but not to conquer them. So resolute was the spirit of the Camisards, so impregnable their hilly fortresses, that all hope of ending the war so long as one was left alive, was relinquished by this able officer; and we are told that in the heart of Cavalier, who beheld the sufferings of the peasantry from incessant toil and famine, there rose a great longing for peace, if it were possible with safety and honour; and on ascertaining that 10,000 of the Huguenots were ready to lay down their arms and submit to the king, he consented to hold an amicable parley with any officer the latter might send.
Cavalier's first interview was with Lalande, who was sent by Marshal Villars. 'Lalande surveyed the worn garments and pale cheeks of the young hero, whose deeds had reached the ears and troubled the mind of Louis XIV., in the midst of his mighty foreign wars; he looked upon the bodyguard of the rebel chief, and saw there, too, signs of poverty and extreme physical suffering, and believed that he knew how to treat with men in such a condition.'
He proffered a large sum in gold, not a coin of which Cavalier would touch, though he allowed his followers to accept it for their starving wives and children; and he made preliminary arrangements with Lalande for a final interview with the Marechal Duc de Villars.
It was in the summer of 1704 that the latter, the renowned antagonist of Marlborough, entered the garden of the Recollets, at St. Cesaire, near Nismes, the site of which is now occupied by a theatre, to discuss peace and war with 'the Boy-General,' Jean Cavalier, who, resolved to produce all the effect he could, appeared on this occasion magnificently mounted, with a richly-laced coat, and a hat plumed with white feathers. Cavalier's young face looked sad, we are told, and the tone of his voice was melancholy, 'and Villars looked on him with a deep admiration and sympathy.'
On this occasion Cavalier's bodyguard was a mounted force of Camisards in white tunics.
The result of this memorable conference was, that the insurgents laid down their arms on the assurances of justice and tolerance in religion to the persecuted Protestants of the Cevennes, and flattering promises of reward and rank in the army of France to Jean Cavalier; but neither one nor the other was destined to be kept or fulfilled, and the Place de Boucarini, at Nismes, was soon deluged with the blood of all who fell into the hands of the Government. The Camisards now repudiated the treaty made by Cavalier, and, finding himself reviled by many of these on the one hand, and neglected by the Court on the other he became an exile, and entered the army of Queen Anne at the head of a regiment entirely formed of Huguenots.