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Updated: June 17, 2025
Out of an upper window Du Chayla and his men lowered themselves into the garden by means of knotted sheets; some escaped across the river under the bullets of the insurgents; but the archpriest himself fell, broke his thigh, and could only crawl into the hedge. What were his reflections as this second martyrdom drew near?
Our heaviest crosses were but lightsome burdens, for this intimate communion that God allowed us to have with Him bore up and consoled us; it was our safety and our happiness." Many of the Condercs had suffered for their faith. The archpriest Chayla had persecuted them grievously.
And that spark was shortly afterwards supplied by the archpriest Chayla, director of missions at Pont-de-Montvert. Although it was known that many of the peasantry attended the meetings armed, there had as yet been no open outbreak against the royal authority in the Cevennes.
The arch-priest of the Cevennes, Abbe du Chayla, a tyrannical and cruel man, had undertaken a mission at the head of the Capuchins. His house was crammed with condemned Protestants; the breath of revolt passed over the mountains on the night of July 27, 1702, the castle of the arch-priest was surrounded by Huguenots in arms, who demanded the surrender of the prisoners. Du Chayla refused.
Chayla, in the hope of escaping, jumped from a window into the garden, and in the fall broke his leg. The peasants discovered him by the light of the blazing dwelling. He called for mercy. "No," said Seguier, "only such mercy as you have shown to others;" and he struck him the first blow. The others followed. "This for my father," said the next, "whom you racked to death!"
After this event persecution was redoubled throughout the Cevennes. The militia ran night and day after the meetings in the Desert. All persons found attending them, who could be captured, were either killed on the spot or hanged. Two companies of militia were quartered in Pont-de-Montvert at the expense of the inhabitants; and they acted under the direction of the archpriest Du Chayla.
While foreign war was introducing bankruptcy to the treasury of France, civil war was also desolating the kingdom. The sufferings of the Protestants equaled any thing which had been witnessed in the days of pagan persecution. The most ferocious of all these men, who were breathing out threatenings and slaughter, was the Abbé de Chayla.
But the doors of the house were already invested by the mountaineers, who shouted out for "The prisoners! the prisoners!" "Back, Huguenot canaille!" cried Chayla from the window. But they only shouted the louder for "The prisoners!" The archpriest then directed the militia to fire, and one of the peasants fell dead.
It was here that poor Du Chayla, the Christian martyr, kept his library and held a court of missionaries; here he had built his tomb, thinking to lie among a grateful population whom he had redeemed from error; and hither on the morrow of his death they brought the body, pierced with two- and-fifty wounds, to be interred. Clad in his priestly robes, he was laid out in state in the church.
"And so, father, you are of opinion that if I stamp out heresy in this fashion I shall assure my own salvation in the next world?" he asked. "You will have merited a reward." "And you think so too, Monsieur Bishop?" "Assuredly, sire." "And you. Abbe du Chayla?"
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