The municipality, informed of these circumstances, entreated the cure to abstain from celebrating the mass the next day, as he had announced; and he complied with their wishes.  The multitude, not informed of this, filled the church, and clamoured for the priest and the promised Te Deum.  The gentry of the neighbourhood, the aristocracy of Caen, the clients and numerous domestics of the leading families in the neighbourhood, had arms under their clothes.  They insulted the grenadiers; an officer of the national guard reprimanded them.  “You come to seek what you shall get,” replied the aristocrats:  “we are the stronger, and will drive you from the church.”  At these words some young men rushed on the national guards to disarm them:  a struggle ensued, bayonets glittered, pistol shots resounded in the cathedral, and they made a charge, sword in hand.  Companies of chasseurs and grenadiers entered the church, cleared it, and followed the crowd, step by step, who fired again upon them when in the street.  Some killed and others wounded, were the sad results of the day.  Tranquillity seemed restored.  Eighty-two persons were arrested, and on one of them was found a pretended plan of counter-revolution, the signal for which was to be given on the following Monday.  These documents were forwarded to Paris.  The nonjuring priests were suspended from the celebration of the holy mysteries in the churches of Caen until the decision of the National Assembly.  The Assembly heard with indignation the recital of these troubles, occasioned by the enemies of the constitution, and the adherents of fanaticism and the aristocracy.  “The only part we have to take,” said Cambon, “is to convoke the high national court, and send the accused before it.”  They deferred pronouncing on this proposition until the moment when they should be in possession of all the papers relative to the troubles in Caen.

Gensonne detailed the particulars of similar disturbances in La Vendee:  the mountains of the south, La Lozere, l’Herault, l’Ardeche, which were but ill repressed by the recent dispersion of the camp of Jales, the first act of the counter-revolutionary army, were now greatly agitated by the two-fold impulse of their priests and gentry.  The plains, furnished with streams, roads, towns, and easily kept down by the central force, submitted without resistance to the contre-coups of Paris.  The mountains preserve their customs longer, and resist the influence of new ideas as to a conquest by armed strangers.  It seems as though the appearance of these natural ramparts gave their inhabitants confidence in their strength, and a solid conviction of the unchangeableness of things, which prevents them from being so easily carried away by the rapid currents of alteration.