Montluc was sent to Guienne by the queen-mother to restore order there; but nearly everywhere he laid the blame on the Protestants.

His Memoires prove that he harried them without any form of justice.

"At Sauveterre," says he, "I caught five or six, all of whom I had hanged without expense of paper or ink, and without giving them a hearing, for those gentry are regular Chrysostoms (_parlent d'or_)." "I was informed that at Gironde there were sixty or eighty Huguenots belonging to them of La Reole, who had retreated thither; the which were all taken, and I had them hanged to the pillars of the market-place without further ceremony.

One hanged has more effect than a hundred slain." When Montluc took Monsegur, "the massacre lasted for ten hours or more," says he, "because search was made for them in the houses; the dead were counted and found to be more than seven hundred." [_Memoires de Montluc,_ t.ii.

pp.