does it pervert the affections, and darken the human understanding! De Montfort fell at Toulouse; for count Raymond's submissions purchased him no peace, either in his states, for which other claimants were ready, nor in his conscience, which was divided between devotion to his church and regard for his people. He was forced to arms again, and recovered his capital. De Montfort besieged it, and was hearing mass, when news was brought to him of a sally of the garrison. He wished to wait, for it was the moment of the elevation of the host, but, unable to refrain, he exclaimed aloud, "Lord, let thy servant depart in peace!" and rushed forth to head his army. A stone, cast from the wall, it is believed by a woman's hand, struck him on the head, and killed the ferocious warrior, and scourge of the Albigenses. A.D. 1218. Raymond's death soon followed. He was one who halted between two opinions. In his last days, he made himself a monk, and kissed with devotion the mantle of his order as he died. Yet he was excommunicated, and his body denied burial. The pope himself departed from the world about the same time; but his successor trod in his steps against the heretics of the south of France. Simon de Montfort had acquired the territories of young Raymond, and, so long as they were in his possession, they would be kept free from what was called the Albigensian heresy. While he lived, the whole south of France fre quently either streamed in blood, or glowed with fire. "For twenty years, were continually seen massacres and tortures. Religion was overthrown, knowledge extinguished, and humanity trampled under foot." Pope Honorius III. invited the French king, Louis VIII., to take arms against the still existing Albigenses and Provençals; Louis obeyed, and besieged Avignon, which was defended by the young count of Toulouse, earl Raymond's son. Disease in the French army cut off numbers, but the pope's legate, demanding a conference, contrived to give admission to the troops, who took the city by surprise. After the capture, likewise, of Toulouse, Raymond could no longer make head against his enemies; from the time of his submission, the subjugation of heresy, so called, in Languedoc and Provence, may be dated. On the death of Raymond, Languedoc, once a separate sovereignty, was united to the kingdom of France, under the reign of Louis IX., called St. Louis, A.D. 1249. In 1245, Provence had passed into the possession of the cruel Charles of Anjou. Thus the sovereign families disappeared in the south of France; and the Provençals, and all who spoke their language, became subject to a rival nation, which they had always regarded with the most violent aversion. "In their servitude, a few plaintive songs of grief were heard; but the muses fled from a soil polluted with carnage." Civilisation, learning, gaiety, and song, fled from the once happy and polite Provence. But where fled they who had cultivated in peace a higher science? who had, in simplicity, after the manner which men called heresy, worshipped the God of their fathers? Poets, romancers, historians, deplore the fate of the troubadours and knights of Provence; few follow forth the escaped of Israel, who wandered away to some mountain refuge, where, in the shadow of the lonely hills, they could serve God in secret :— "For the strength of the hills we bless thee, Thou hast made thy children mighty, By the touch of the mountain sod; In these hills, the remnant of the pious Albigenses, when their defenders, their nobles, and princes, were no more, sought a refuge; and there, for the space of two hundred and fifty years, we shall find them continuing to carry on the unbroken line of Protestantism in France: a band, indeed, reserved as sheep appointed to the slaughter; often sought out by the inquisitorial eye of bigotry, and made known by one of those cruel massacres of the Vaudois, with which the world is too familiarly acquainted. By this term, Vaudois, they became generally known, being blended with the Protestant dwellers in the valleys of Piedmont; and as such we pursue their history no further. Though sheltered in the mountains of Provence and Dauphiné, Protestantism was effect ually silenced in the south of France by the invention of the monk Dominic, the inquisition, established at Toulouse for that purpose, A.D. 1221. There, until the ravages of the French revolution, was still to be seen the cell which Dominic-strangely denominated saint-inhabited, when he came to inspect this first germ of that horrible plant, which, in its maturity, cast the gloom of its deadly shadow over the liberties, consciences, and lives of men. CHAPTER II. LOUIS XII. 1497-1515. Up to the time of Louis XII., the reign which immediately preceded the end of the great reformation, Protestants still existed in France, though all other titles were then merged in the general one of Vaudois. The mountains of the beautiful province of Dauphiné had cherished the descendants of the Protestants of Languedoc and Provence, and in the mountain region of the latter once devastated land, they had found a retired, but not always secure, asylum. There, mingled with the Vaudois, the escaped fugitives of Lyons and its vicinity, they passed under the same title, as they had maintained the same faith. They were ready to hail a new generation of Protestants. No sooner did the news of the reformation, or rather of the revived doctrines of the gospel, contended for in Paris by a doctor and student of theology, reach to these mountain-dwellings, than many a Protestant voice broke forth to |