Laporte was at last tracked by his indefatigable enemy, Captain Poul, who burned to wipe out the disgrace which he conceived himself to have suffered at Champ-Domergue. Information was conveyed to him that Laporte and his band were in the neighbourhood of Molezon on the western Gardon, and that they intended to hold a field-meeting there on Sunday, the 22nd of October.
Poul made his dispositions accordingly. Dividing his force into two bodies, he fell upon the insurgents impetuously from two sides, taking them completely by surprise. They hastily put themselves in order of battle, but their muskets, wet with rain, would not fire, and Laporte hastened with his men to seek the shelter of a cliff near at hand. While in the act of springing from one rock to another, he was seen to stagger and fall. He had been shot dead by a musket bullet, and his career was thus brought to a sudden close. His followers at once fled in all directions.
Poul cut off Laporte's head, as well as the heads of the other Camisards who had been killed, and sent them in two baskets to Count Broglie. Next day the heads were exposed on the bridge of Anduze; the day after on the castle wall of St. Hypolite; after which these ghastly trophies of Poul's victory were sent to Montpellier to be permanently exposed on the Peyrou.
Such was the end of Laporte, the second leader of the Camisards. Seguier, the first, had been chief for only six days; Laporte, the second, for only about two months. Again Baville supposed the pacification of the Cevennes to be complete. He imagined that Poul, in cutting off Laporte's head, had decapitated the insurrection. But the Camisard ranks had never been so full as now, swelled as they were by the persecutions of the Royalists, who, by demolishing the homes of the peasantry, had in a measure forced them into the arms of the insurgents. Nor were they ever better supplied with leaders, even though Laporte had fallen. No sooner did his death become known, than the "Children of God" held a solemn assembly in the mountains, at which Roland, Castanet, Salomon, Abraham, and young Cavalier were present; and after lamenting the death of their chief, they with one accord elected Laporte's nephew, Roland, as his successor.
A few words as to the associates of Roland, whose family and origin have already been described. André Castanet of Massavaque, in the Upper Cevennes, had been a goatherd in his youth, after which he worked at his father's trade of a wool-carder. An avowed Huguenot, he was, shortly after the peace of Ryswick, hunted out of the country because of his attending the meetings in the Desert; but in 1700 he returned to preach and to prophesy, acting also as a forest-ranger in the Aigoal Mountains. Of all the chiefs he was the greatest controversialist, and in his capacity of preacher he distinguished himself from his companions by wearing a wig. There must have been something comical in his appearance, for Brueys describes him as a little, squat, bandy-legged man, presenting "the figure of a little bear." But it was an enemy who drew the picture.
Next there was Salomon Conderc, also a wool-carder, a native of the hamlet of Mazelrode, south of the mountain of Bougès. For twenty years the Condercs, father and son, had been zealous worshippers in the Desert—Salomon having acted by turns as Bible-reader, precentor, preacher, and prophet. We have already referred to the gift of prophesying. All the leaders of the Camisards were prophets. Elie Marion, in his "Théâtre Sacré de Cevennes," thus describes the influence of the prophets on the Camisard War:—
"We were without strength and without counsel," says he; "but our inspirations were our succour and our support. They elected our leaders, and conducted them; they were our military discipline. It was they who raised us, even weakness itself, to put a strong bridle upon an army of more than twenty thousand picked soldiers. It was they who banished sorrow from our hearts in the midst of the greatest peril, as well as in the deserts and the mountain fastnesses, when cold and famine oppressed us. Our heaviest crosses were but lightsome burdens, for this intimate communion that God allowed us to have with Him bore up and consoled us; it was our safety and our happiness."
Many of the Condercs had suffered for their faith. The archpriest Chayla had persecuted them grievously. One of their sisters was seized by the soldiery and carried off to be immured in a convent at Mende, but was rescued on the way by Salomon and his brother Jacques. Of the two, Salomon, though deformed, had the greatest gift in prophesying, and hence the choice of him as a leader.
Abraham Mazel belonged to the same hamlet as Conderc. They were both of the same age—about twenty-five—of the same trade, and they were as inseparable as brothers. They had both been engaged with Seguier's band in the midnight attack on Pont-de-Montvert, and were alike committed to the desperate enterprise they had taken in hand. The tribe of Mazel abounds in the Cevennes, and they had already given many martyrs to the cause. Some emigrated to America, some were sent to the galleys; Oliver Mazel, the preacher, was hanged at Montpellier in 1690, Jacques Mazel was a refugee in London in 1701, and in all the combats of the Cevennes there were Mazels leading as well as following.