supplication to Heaven; at that instant a volley was fired, two bullets
struck him, and he fell head foremost down the precipice.

When the dragoons reached the foot of the rock, they found him dead. As
they knew he was the chief of the rebels, his body was searched: sixty
Louis was found in his pockets, and a sacred chalice which he was in the
habit of using as an ordinary drinking-cup. Poul cut off his head and
the heads of twelve other Reformers found dead on the field of battle,
and enclosing them in a wicker basket, sent them to M. Just de Baville.

The Reformers soon recovered from this defeat and death, joined all their
forces into one body, and placed Roland at their head in the place of
Laporte. Roland chose a young man called Couderc de Mazel-Rozade, who
had assumed the name of Lafleur, as his lieutenant, and the rebel forces
were not only quickly reorganised, but made complete by the addition of a
hundred men raised by the new lieutenant, and soon gave a sign that they
were again on the war-path by burning down the churches of Bousquet,
Cassagnas, and Prunet.

Then first it was that the consuls of Mende began to realise that it was
no longer an insurrection they had on hand but a war, and Mende being the
capital of Gevaudan and liable to be attacked at any moment, they set
themselves to bring into repair their counterscarps, ravelins, bastions,
gates, portcullises, moats, walls, turrets, ramparts, parapets,
watchtowers, and the gear of their cannon, and having laid in a stock of
firearms, powder and ball, they formed eight companies each fifty strong,
composed of townsmen, and a further band of one hundred and fifty
peasants drawn from the neighbouring country. Lastly, the States of the
province sent an envoy to the king, praying him graciously to take
measures to check the plague of heresy which was spreading from day to