Page:A book of the Cevennes (-1907-).djvu/88

50 Le Puy saw the formation of a remarkable confederacy that promised at first to achieve the liberation of the country from the scourge of the routiers.

These bands of lawless men, under captains of their own selection, overran the country, levying blackmail, and pretending that they were in the service of the English King; or, if it suited them better, in that of the King of France. They passed from one allegiance to the other indifferently. Actually they served neither one side nor the other, but themselves. The merchants were robbed, the farmers despoiled, towns plundered. Existence became intolerable. Castles were erected on the top of rocks accessible only by a goat-path, or by steps cut in the stone, and there nests were built by the robbers for themselves. In these strongholds the captains and their companies lived riotously with bold women, sometimes nuns, whom they had carried off. The routiers held churches in special aversion, and plundered them without scruple. At their orgies they drank out of chalices, and vested their harlots in the silks and velvets of ecclesiastical wardrobes.

Such was the condition of affairs when, in 1182, a carpenter of Le Puy, named Pierre Durand, announced that a paper had fluttered down to him from heaven bearing on it a likeness of the Blessed Virgin, and that he had been commanded to found a society to combat and extinguish the routiers. At first the Bishop of Le Puy looked coldly on the carpenter. But the man obtained adherents. The need of combination to rid the country of a general nuisance was so largely felt, that Durand readily obtained a hearing and enrolled followers. According to the Laon Chronicle, the carpenter was a tool in the hands of one of the canons,