bell for the fun of the thing, and when the vassals arrived, laughed at them for allowing themselves to be fooled from their beds. This prank cost the convent dear, for shortly after a Moorish corsair put into the bay, and the convent was attacked. The alarm bell was sounded in vain; no one answered the summons, and before morning the house was sacked, and the nuns had been carried away, to be sold as slaves in Africa.
A curious condition of affairs existed at Hyères during the troubles of the League.
The Count de Retz, Grand Marshal of France, was Governor of Provence, and the Count de Carces was its Grand Sénéchal. The jealousy of these two men gave birth to a deplorable rivalry, which placed each at the head of a different party. De Retz supported the Huguenots, and the Catholic party took Carces as its headpiece; and the factions called themselves, or were called, Razats and Carcists long after the men whose names they had adopted had disappeared from the scene.
The rancour of each party did not abate, even when plague devastated the province. Then confusion grew worse confounded when the League was formed, due to the death of the Duke of Anjou, brother of Henry III., which made Henry of Navarre, a Calvinist, heir to the throne. The most extreme Carcists, alarmed at the prospect of the succession falling to a Huguenot, formed the plan of inviting the Duke of Savoy to take Provence. The anarchy in the country became intolerable, and large bodies of peasants and mechanics armed and fell on the forces of Carcists and Razats indifferently, routed and butchered them.
In 1586 the town of Hyères was staunch in its
