the inhabitants and the rebel garrison together, and hung as many as were involved in the insurrection. "What a lamentable scene it was," wrote a contemporary author; "poor women weeping, tearing their hair, pleading for the lives of their husbands, their brothers, and their friends; but Mgr. de Saint Nectaire would not so much as vouchsafe them a look."
Then, with the bodies dangling from the gibbets, he had an altar erected in the public square and a Mass sung, whilst his pikemen prodded the Calvinists at the proper moment to oblige them to cross themselves and to kneel.
The Bishop returned to Le Puy highly elated at his success, but his elation was damped on his arrival by hearing that in the meantime the Huguenots had captured his castle at Espaly, at the very door of Le Puy, and were menacing the capital. He made his way in with all speed, and despatched a courier to the Baron de S. Vidal to come to his aid.
Espaly was then a walled town at the foot of a trap dyke that shoots above the Borne, and on which stood a castle, the summer residence of the bishops.
The castle had been erected in the thirteenth century by William de la Roue, of whose misdeeds I have already told. It was completed by Jean de Bourbon (1443-85). The part taken by this prelate in the League of the Public Good brought on Espaly the horrors of a siege. But it suffered especially in the Wars of Religion. Within thirty years it was taken and retaken by Huguenots and Catholics eight times.
The story of the last siege is sufficiently curious to be told.
In 1574, Vidal Guyard, a hatmaker of Le Puy, placed
