The stables, dog-kennels, sheepfolds, commons, and lodgings for labourers and farmers, formed the enclosure of an immense court, planted with two rows of sycamores. This court was reached by a drawbridge over a wide and deep ditch.
Every evening this bridge was removed, and a heavy door of oak, strongly supported on the inside, put the little colony in safely for the night.
Every window of these buildings opened upon the court, with the exception of a few dormer windows, solidly protected by iron grating, which looked out upon the plain.
Maison-Forte counted about two hundred persons among its dependents,--servants, farmers, labourers, and shepherds.
Among them were sixty men of from thirty to fifty years, accustomed to the use of arms during the civil wars in which the impetuous baron had taken part. Royalist and Catholic, Raimond V. had always mounted his horse when it was necessary to defend the ancient rights and possessions of Provence against governors or their deputies, for the kings of France were not kings of Provence, but counts.
The intendants of justice or presidents of courts, whose office it was to collect the taxes, and to announce to the assembled states the assessment of voluntary gifts which Provence owed to the sovereign, were almost always the first victims of these revolts against royal authority, made with the cry of “Long live the king!”
Under such circumstances Raimond V. was among the first to rebel. In the last rebellion of Cascaveoux,--so named from the word _cascavoeu_, the Provençal for little bell, which the insurgents fastened to the end of a leather strap, and rang as they cried, “Long live the king,”--none sounded the battle-cry, and shook his bell more violently, or made his dependents shake this signal of revolt, with more enthusiastic ardour than Raimond V.
In that, the baron showed himself the worthy son of his father, Raimond IV., one of the gentlemen most seriously compromised in the rebellion of the Razats, which name originated from the fact that the Provençals had been as spoiled of their possessions as if a razor had been employed. This rebellion broke out under Henry III., in 1578, and was suppressed with great difficulty by Marshal de Retz.