I write as someone who witnessed the civil war, that impious and unhappy enterprise undertaken by the Huguenots against the town of Toulouse, from which, by divine Providence, the victorious Catholics have been saved. I say unhappy because this monster of a heresy set out, in a flash like an unexpected storm, to overturn the State of this kingdom, which had flourished within the faith of the Catholic religion these past 1,600 years, and thus to violate its renown throughout the universe. It is a hideous and detestable monster, nourished and suckled, engendered even, by the ambition and avarice of its miscreant perpetrators who, without any vestige of religion, secretely plotted the entire overthrow of the human race. Then, their plot being discovered, they set out to work out their furious designs throughout the provinces of France, amongst whom the conflict seems to have been nowhere more bloody, nor so bitter, than in Toulouse . . .
In this holy war about a hundred catholics were put to death in the city of Toulouse and more than 200 heretics [protestants]. As many and more houses were burnt, belonging either to catholics or heretics. Amongst the heretics, about 300 were pillaged and and infinite number of books were torn up and burnt to cinders, the majority of which was disapproved of literature, but mixed up amongst good books, which we would need to keep. Over and above this was the ransack, destruction and burning of churches, at a cost of over 20,000 écus. There was also an inestimable public loss and damage to private individuals, the arts and sciences being silenced, the schools and university being closed, trade and craft disrupted and all the nerves of state cut in two. God and his grace had preserved for us, however, the sovereign good of religion. The remaining belongings of the convent at St Pantaléon were assigned to the Society of Jesus, which had been chased out of Pamiers, and its chapel was subsequently put into the hands of the confraternity of the Holy Cross, the black penitents of Toulouse.
And this huge mass of woodwork, the building which we have already mentioned as being constructed by the false gospellers in the form of a tripod, was burnt to the ground on the orders of the sieur de Montluc, so that there should be no trace of the condemned construction.
The common opinion is that throughout this sedition, three to four thousand people died on both sides.
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