The New Hampshire Gazette

Extract from Abbe Barruel's History of the French Clergy.

Soon after the national assembly, had decreed, that the Constitution of Avignon belonged to the French nation, an army of assassins, of whom one Jaurdan, surnamed the Cutthroat, was commander, took possession of the unfortunate city of Avignon. The churches were immediately pillaged ; the sacred vases profaned and carried off ; the altars levelled to the ground: The prisons were soon filled, and the unhappy victims were released only to suffer death. A deep pit was dug to receive their dead bodies. Six hundred of which were thrown into it, mangled and distorted, before ten o'clock the next day. Among them was Nolhock, a priest, in the eightieth year of his age. - He had been thirty years rector of Symphorien, a parish which he preferred to all others, and which he could not be prevailed on to quit for a more lucrative one, because he would not desert the poor. During his rectorship he had been the common father of his parishioners, the refuge of the indigent, the comforter of the afflicted, and the friend & counsellor of every honest man. When the hour of danger approached, his friends advised him to fly ; but no entreaties could prevail upon him to abandon his flock : " No," said the good old man, " I have watched over them in the halcyon days of peace, and shall I now leave them amidst storms and tempests, without a guide, without one to comfort them in their last dreary moments ?" Mr. Nolhock, who, 'till now, had been respected even by the cut throats, was sent to prison the evening before the execution. His appearance and his salutation, were those of a consoling angel: "I come, my children, to die with you." We shall soon appear in the presence of that God whom we serve, and who will not desert us in the hour of death." He fortified their drooping courage, administered the last consolatory pledges of his love, and the next day embraced and cheered each individual as he was called forth by the murderers. Two of these stood at the door, with a bar of iron in their hands, and as the prisoners advanced knocked them down : The bodies were then delivered over. to the other ruffians, who hacked and disfigured them with their sabres, before they threw them into the pit, that they might not afterwards be known by their friends and relations: When the cut throats were dispersed, every one was anxious to find the body of Mr: Nolhock: It was at last discovered by the cassock, and the crucifix which he wore on his breast. That breast had been pierced in fifty places, and the skull entirely mauled !