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D'Oppede defended himself with fanatical pride, saying that he only executed the king's orders, like Saul, whom God commanded to exterminate the Amalekites. He had the Duke of Guise to protect him; and he was sent back to discharge the duties of his office. All the resources of French civil jurisdiction appeared to be insufficient against the Reformers.
The duty of assisting justice was assigned to Baron d'Oppede; and from the 7th to the 25th of April, 1545, two columns of troops, under the orders, respectively, of Oppede himself and Baron de la Garde, ravaged with fire and sword the three districts of Merindol, Cabrieres, and La Coste, which were peopled chiefly by Vaudians.
But some months later the peace of Crespy was made; and Francis I. felt no longer the same solicitude about humoring the Protestants of Switzerland and Germany. Baron d'Oppede zealously resumed his work against the Vaudians; he accused them of intriguing; with foreign Reformers, and of designing to raise fifteen thousand men to surprise Marseilles and form Provence into a republic.
In 1550, the massacre of the Vaudians was still in such lively and odious remembrance that a noble lady of Provence, Madame de Cental, did not hesitate to present a complaint, in the name of her despoiled, proscribed, and murdered vassals, against the Cardinal de Tournon, the Count de Grignan, and the Premier President Maynier d'Oppede, as having abused, for the purpose of getting authority for this massacre, the religious feelings of the king, who on his death-bed had testified his remorse for it.
A certain Baron d'Oppede, first president of the Parliament of Aix, had already set an example by killing 3,000 persons in the space of ten days, with refinements of cruelty, and destroying three cities and twenty-two villages. Montluc, a worthy forerunner of Carrier, had the Calvinists thrown living into the wells until these were full. The Protestants were no more humane.
In 1545 the Cardinal de Tournon and Baron d'Oppède, the first president of the Parliament of Aix, were moved to extirpate that plague-spot of Southern France, the Vaudois communities of Dauphiné, who went on still in their wickedness and heresy.
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