Not content with these modes of torment, calumnious and inflamatory publications charged the protestants with raising the proscribed standard in the communes, and invoking the fallen Napoleon; and, of course, as unworthy the protection of the laws and the favour of the monarch.
Hundreds after this were dragged to prison without even so much as a _written order_; and though an official newspaper, bearing the title of the _Journal du Gard_, was set up for five months, while it was influenced by the prefect, the mayor, and other functionaries, the word _charter_ was never once used in it. One of the first numbers, on the contrary, represented the suffering protestants as "Crocodiles only weeping from rage and regret that they had no more victims to devour; as persons who had surpassed Danton, Marat, and Robespierre, in doing mischief: and as having prostituted their daughters to the garrison to gain it over to Napoleon." An extract from this article, stamped with the crown and the arms of the Bourbons, was hawked about the streets, and the vender was adorned with the medal of the police.
_Petition of the Protestant Refugees._
To these reproaches it is proper to oppose the petition which the Protestant Refugees in Paris presented to Louis XVIII. in behalf of their brethren at Nismes.
"We lay at your feet, sire, our acute sufferings. In your name our fellow-citizens are slaughtered, and their property laid waste. Misled peasants, in pretended obedience to your orders, had assembled at the command of a commissioner appointed by your august nephew. Although ready to attack us, they were received with the assurances of peace. On the 15th of July, 1815, we learnt your majesty's entrance into Paris, and the white flag immediately waved on our edifices. The public tranquility had not been disturbed, when armed peasants introduced themselves. The garrison capitulated, but were assailed on their departure, and almost totally massacred. Our national guard was disarmed, the city filled with strangers, and the houses of the principal inhabitants, professing the reformed religion, were attacked and plundered. We subjoin the list. Terror has driven from our city the most respectable inhabitants.
"Your majesty has been deceived if there has not been placed before you the picture of the horrors which make a desert of your good city of Nismes. Arrests and proscriptions are continually taking place, and difference of _religious_ opinions is the real and only cause. The calumniated protestants are the defenders of the throne. Your nephew has beheld our children under his banners; our fortunes have been placed in his hands. Attacked without reason, the protestants have not, even by a just resistance, afforded their enemies the fatal pretext for calumny. Save us, sire! extinguish the brand of civil war; a single act of your will would restore to political existence a city interesting for its population and its manufactures. Demand an account of their conduct from the chiefs who have brought our misfortunes upon us. We place before your eyes all the documents that have reached us. Fear paralizes the hearts, and stifles the complaints of our fellow-citizens. Placed in a more secure situation, we venture to raise our voice in their behalf," &c. &c.
_Monstrous outrage upon Females._
At Nismes it is well known that the women wash their clothes either at the fountains, or on the banks of streams. There is a large basin near the fountain, where numbers of women may be seen every day, kneeling at the edge of the water, and beating the clothes with heavy pieces of wood in the shape of battledoors. This spot became the scene of the most shameful and indecent practices. The catholic rabble turned the women's petticoats over their heads, and so fastened them as to continue their exposure, and their subjection to a newly invented species of chastisement; for nails being placed in the wood of the _battoirs_ in the form of _fleur-de-lis_, they beat them till the blood streamed from their bodies, and their cries rent the air. Often was death demanded as a commutation of this ignominious punishment, but refused with a malignant joy. To carry their outrage to the highest possible degree, several who were in a state of pregnancy were assailed in this manner. The scandalous nature of these outrages prevented many of the sufferers from making them public, and, especially, from relating the most aggravating circumstances. "I have seen," says M. Durand, "a catholic avocat, accompanying the assassins in the fauxbourg Bourgade, arm a battoir with sharp nails in the form of _fleur-de-lis_; I have seen them raise the garments of females, and apply, with heavy blows, to the bleeding body this _battoir_ or battledoor, to which they gave a name which my pen refuses to record. The cries of the sufferers--the streams of blood--the murmurs of indignation which were suppressed by fear--nothing could move them. The surgeons who attended on those women who are dead, can attest, by the marks of their wounds, the agonies which they must have endured, which, however horrible, is most strictly true."