sent the rest either to the galleys or to serve in the army. He announced that he would hold the parents responsible for their offspring who prophesied, and that they should be fined. Dragoons were quartered upon those who could not cure their children or prevent them from taking this epidemic. Things went so far that some parents denounced their own children so as to shelter themselves from these violent measures. They handed them over to the magistrates, and said, "There, take them, and do with them what you will; cure them if you can."
But the spirit of prophecy did not remain with the children, it communicated itself to their elders. Bâville had such arrested as he could lay hold on and hung or sent them to the galleys.
But in spite of these cruelties, or rather in consequence of them, the prophets multiplied more and more. The prospect of the gallows, the wheel, or the galleys only served to fire their zeal to madness.
The number and importance of the assemblies increased, and the Governor of Languedoc began to deal with hearers as he had with prophets. In October, 1701, he sent a company to disperse one of these meetings near Alais. Three of the audience, unable to escape in time, were broken on the wheel. But the most atrocious of these executions was that of Creux de Vaie, in the Vivarais. The massacre was so great that, beside the bodies left on the field, a boat and two wagons were laden with the wounded who were taken captive, and these were conveyed to Montpellier. Among them was a prophet with his four sons. The prophet was hung, one son died of his wounds in prison, three were sent to the galleys; and his house was torn
