The Huguenots in France
by Samuel Smiles · English · Gutenberg #26524 · 939,476 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Huguenots in France
Author: Samuel Smiles
Release date: September 4, 2008 [eBook #26524]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26524
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HUGUENOTS IN FRANCE ***
Produced by Eric Hutton, Christine P. Travers and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
[Transcriber's note: Obvious printer's errors have been corrected, all
other inconsistencies are as in the original. The author's spelling
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THE HUGUENOTS IN FRANCE
By Dr. SAMUEL SMILES
Author of "Self Help"
LONDON
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS, LIMITED
BROADWAY HOUSE, LUDGATE HILL
MDCCCCIII
LONDON AND COUNTY PRINTING WORKS,
BAZAAR BUILDINGS, LONDON, W.C.
CONTENTS.
THE HUGUENOTS IN FRANCE AFTER THE REVOCATION OF THE EDICT OF NANTES.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. REVOCATION OF THE EDICT OF NANTES........................... 1
II. EFFECTS OF THE REVOCATION--CHURCH IN THE DESERT............ 12
III. CLAUDE BROUSSON, THE HUGUENOT ADVOCATE..................... 30
IV. CLAUDE BROUSSON, PASTOR AND MARTYR......................... 50
V. OUTBREAK IN LANGUEDOC...................................... 75
VI. INSURRECTION OF THE CAMISARDS.............................. 99
VII. EXPLOITS OF CAVALIER...................................... 130
VIII. END OF THE CAMISARD INSURRECTION.......................... 166
IX. GALLEY-SLAVES FOR THE FAITH............................... 190
X. ANTOINE COURT............................................. 205
XI. REORGANIZATION OF THE CHURCH IN THE DESERT................ 218
XII. THE CHURCH IN THE DESERT--PAUL RABAUT..................... 235
XIII. END OF THE PERSECUTIONS--THE FRENCH REVOLUTION............ 253
MEMOIRS OF DISTINGUISHED HUGUENOT REFUGEES.
I. STORY OF SAMUEL DE PECHELS................................ 285
II. CAPTAIN RAPIN, AUTHOR OF THE "HISTORY OF ENGLAND"......... 316
III. CAPTAIN RIOU, R.N......................................... 368
A VISIT TO THE COUNTRY OF THE VAUDOIS.
I. INTRODUCTORY--EARLY PERSECUTIONS OF THE VAUDOIS........... 383
II. THE VALLEY OF THE ROMANCHE--BRIANCON...................... 401
III. VAL LOUISE--HISTORY OF FELIX NEFF......................... 420
IV. THE VAUDOIS MOUNTAIN-REFUGE OF DORMILHOUSE................ 437
V. GUILLESTRE AND THE VALLEY OF QUEYRAS...................... 455
VI. THE VALLEY OF THE PELICE -- LA TOUR -- ANGROGNA -- THE
PRA DE TOUR............................................... 472
VII. THE GLORIOUS RETURN: AN EPISODE IN THE HISTORY OF THE
ITALIAN VAUDOIS........................................... 493
MAPS.
PAGE
THE COUNTRY OF THE CEVENNES...................................... 98
"THE COUNTRY OF FELIX NEFF" (Dauphiny).......................... 382
THE VALLEY OF LUSERNE........................................... 472
PREFACE.
In preparing this edition for the press, I have ventured to add three
short memoirs of distinguished Huguenot Refugees and their
descendants.
Though the greatest number of Huguenots banished from France at the
Revocation of the Edict of Nantes were merchants and manufacturers,
who transferred their skill and arts to England, which was not then a
manufacturing country; a large number of nobles and gentry emigrated
to this and other countries, leaving their possessions to be
confiscated by the French king.
The greater number of the nobles entered the armies of the countries
in which they took refuge. In Holland, they joined the army of the
Prince of Orange, afterwards William III., King of England. After
driving the armies of Louis XIV. out of Ireland, they met the French
at Ramilies, Blenheim, and Malplacquet, and other battles in the Low
Countries. A Huguenot engineer directed the operations at the siege of
Namur, which ended in its capture. Another conducted the siege of
Lille, which was also taken.
But perhaps the greatest number of Huguenot nobles entered the
Prussian service. Their descendants revisited France on more than one
occasion. They overran the northern and eastern parts of France in
1814 and 1815; and last of all they vanquished the descendants of
their former persecutors at Sedan in 1870. Sedan was, prior to the
Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the renowned seat of Protestant
learning; while now it is known as the scene of the greatest military
catastrophe which has occurred in modern history.
The Prime Minister of France, M. Jules Simon, not long ago recorded
the fateful effects of Louis XIV.'s religious intolerance. In
discussing the perpetual ecclesiastical questions which still disturb
France, he recalled the fact that not less than eighty of the German
staff in the late war were representatives of Protestant families,
driven from France by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.
The first of the appended memoirs is that of Samuel de Pechels, a
noble of Languedoc, who, after enduring great privations, reached
England through Jamaica, and served as a lieutenant in Ireland under
William III. Many of his descendants have been distinguished soldiers
in the service of England. The second is Captain Rapin, who served
faithfully in Ireland, and was called away to be tutor to the young
Duke of Portland. He afterwards spent his time at Wesel on the Rhine,
where he wrote his "History of England." The third is Captain Riou,
"the gallant and the good," who was killed at the battle of
Copenhagen. These memoirs might be multiplied to any extent; but those
given are enough to show the good work which the Huguenots and their
descendants have done in the service of England.
INTRODUCTION.
Six years since, I published a book entitled _The Huguenots: their
Settlements, Churches, and Industries, in England and Ireland_. Its
object was to give an account of the causes which led to the large
migrations of foreign Protestants from Flanders and France into
England, and to describe their effects upon English industry as well
as English history.
It was necessary to give a brief _resume_ of the history of the
Reformation in France down to the dispersion of the Huguenots, and the
suppression of the Protestant religion by Louis XIV. under the terms
of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.
Under that Act, the profession of Protestantism was proclaimed to be
illegal, and subject to the severest penalties. Hence, many of the
French Protestants who refused to be "converted," and had the means of
emigrating, were under the necessity of leaving France and
endeavouring to find personal freedom and religious liberty elsewhere.
The refugees found protection in various countries. The principal
portion of the emigrants from Languedoc and the south-eastern
provinces of France crossed the frontier into Switzerland, and settled
there, or afterwards proceeded into the states of Prussia, Holland,
and Denmark, as well as into England and Ireland. The chief number of
emigrants from the northern and western seaboard provinces of France,
emigrated directly into England, Ireland, America, and the Cape of
Good Hope. In my previous work, I endeavoured to give as accurate a
description as was possible of the emigrants who settled in England
and Ireland, to which, the American editor of the work (the Hon. G. P.
Disosway) has added an account of those who settled in the United
States of America.
But besides the Huguenots who contrived to escape from Franco during
the dragonnades which preceded and the persecutions which followed the
Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, there was still a very large number
of Huguenots remaining in France who had not the means wherewith to
fly from their country. These were the poorer people, the peasants,
the small farmers, the small manufacturers, many of whom were spoiled
of their goods for the very purpose of preventing them from
emigrating. They were consequently under the necessity of remaining in
their native country, whether they changed their religion by force or
not. It is to give an account of these people, as a supplement to my
former book, that the present work is written.
It is impossible to fix precisely the number of the Huguenots who
left France to avoid the cruelties of Louis XIV., as well as of those
who perforce remained to endure them. It shakes one's faith in history
to observe the contradictory statements published with regard to
French political or religious facts, even of recent date. A general
impression has long prevailed that there was a Massacre of St.
Bartholemew in Paris in the year 1572; but even that has recently been
denied, or softened down into a mere political squabble. It is not,
however, possible to deny the fact that there was a Revocation of the
Edict of Nantes in 1685, though it has been vindicated as a noble act
of legislation, worthy even of the reputation and character of Louis
the Great.
No two writers agree as to the number of French citizens who were
driven from their country by the Revocation. A learned Roman Catholic,
Mr. Charles Butler, states that only 50,000 persons "retired" from
France; whereas M. Capefigue, equally opposed to the Reformation, who
consulted the population tables of the period (although the intendants
made their returns as small as possible in order to avoid the reproach
of negligence), calculates the emigration at 230,000 souls, namely,
1,580 ministers, 2,300 elders, 15,000 gentlemen, the remainder
consisting almost entirely of traders and artisans.
These returns, quoted by M. Capefigue, were made only a few years
after the Revocation, although the emigration continued without
intermission for many years later. M. Charles Coquerel says that
whatever horror may be felt for the Massacre of St. Bartholomew of
1572, the persecutions which preceded and followed the Act of
Revocation in 1685, "kept France under a perpetual St. Bartholomew for
about sixty years." During that time it is believed that more than
1,000,000 Frenchmen either left the kingdom, or were killed,
imprisoned, or sent to the galleys in their efforts to escape.
The Intendant of Saintonge, a King's officer, not likely to exaggerate
the number of emigrants, reported in 1698, long before the emigration
had ceased, that his province had lost 100,000 Reformers. Languedoc
suffered far more; whilst Boulainvilliers reports that besides the
emigrants who succeeded in making their escape, the province lost not
fewer than 100,000 persons by premature death, the sword,
strangulation, and the wheel.
The number of French emigrants who resorted to England may be inferred
from the fact that at the beginning of last century there were not
fewer than _thirty-five_ French Protestant churches in London alone,
at a time when the population of the metropolis was not one-fourth of
what it is now; while there were other large French settlements at
Canterbury, Norwich, Southampton, Bristol, Exeter, &c., as well as at
Dublin, Lisburn, Portarlington, and other towns in Ireland.
Then, with respect to the much larger number of Protestants who
remained in France after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, there
is the same difference of opinion. A deputation of Huguenot pastors
and elders, who waited upon the Duc de Noailles in 1682 informed him
that there were then 1,800,000 Protestant _families_ in France. Thirty
years after that date, Louis XIV. proclaimed that there were no
Protestants whatever in France; that Protestantism had been entirely
suppressed, and that any one found professing that faith must be
considered as a "relapsed heretic," and sentenced to imprisonment, the
galleys, or the other punishments to which Protestants were then
subject.
After an interval of about seventy-five years, during which
Protestantism (though suppressed by the law) contrived to lead a sort
of underground life--the Protestants meeting by night, and sometimes
by day, in caves, valleys, moors, woods, old quarries, hollow beds of
rivers, or, as they themselves called it, "in the Desert"--they at
length contrived to lift their heads into the light of day, and then
Rabaut St. Etienne stood up in the Constituent Assembly at Paris, in
1787, and claimed the rights of his Protestant fellow-countrymen--the
rights of "2,000,000 useful citizens." Louis XVI. granted them an
Edict of Tolerance, about a hundred years after Louis XIV. had revoked
the Edict of Nantes; but the measure proved too late for the King, and
too late for France, which had already been sacrificed to the
intolerance of Louis XIV. and his Jesuit advisers.
After all the sufferings of France--after the cruelties to which her
people have been subjected by the tyranny of her monarchs and the
intolerance of her priests,--it is doubtful whether she has yet learnt
wisdom from her experience and trials. France was brought to ruin a
century ago by the Jesuits who held the entire education of the
country in their hands. They have again recovered their ground, and
the Congreganistes are now what the Jesuits were before. The
Sans-Culottes of 1793 were the pupils of the priests; so were the
Communists of 1871.[1] M. Edgar Quinet has recently said to his
countrymen: "The Jesuitical and clerical spirit which has sneaked in
among you and all your affairs has ruined you. It has corrupted the
spring of life; it has delivered you over to the enemy.... Is this to
last for ever? For heaven's sake spare us at least the sight of a
Jesuits' Republic as the coronation of our century."
[Footnote 1: M. Simiot's speech before the National Assembly,
16th March, 1873.]
In the midst of these prophecies of ruin, we have M. Veuillot frankly
avowing his Ultramontane policy in the _Univers_. He is quite willing
to go back to the old burnings, hangings, and quarterings, to prevent
any freedom of opinion about religious matters. "For my part," he
says, "I frankly avow my regret not only that John Huss was not burnt
sooner, but that Luther was not burnt too. And I regret further that
there has not been some prince sufficiently pious and politic to have
made a crusade against the Protestants."
M. Veuillot is perhaps entitled to some respect for boldly speaking
out what he means and thinks. There are many amongst ourselves who
mean the same thing, without having the courage to say so--who hate
the Reformation quite as much as M. Veuillot does, and would like to
see the principles of free examination and individual liberty torn up
root and branch.
With respect to the proposed crusade against Protestantism, it will be
seen from the following work what the "pious and politic" Louis XIV.
attempted, and how very inefficient his measures eventually proved in
putting down Protestantism, or in extending Catholicism. Louis XIV.
found it easier to make martyrs than apostates; and discovered that
hanging, banishment, the galleys, and the sword were not amongst the
most successful of "converters."
The history of the Huguenots during the time of their submergence as
an "underground church" is scarcely treated in the general histories
of France. Courtly writers blot them out of history as Louis XIV.
desired to blot them out of France. Most histories of France published
in England contain little notice of them. Those who desire to pursue
the subject further, will obtain abundant information, more
particularly from the following works:--
ELIE BENOIT: _Histoire de l'Edit de Nantes._ CHARLES COQUEREL:
_Histoire des Eglises du Desert._ NAPOLEON PEYRAT: _Histoire des
Pasteurs du Desert._ ANTOINE COURT: _Histoire des Troubles de
Cevennes._ EDMUND HUGHES: _Histoire de la Restauration du
Protestantisme en France au xviii. Siecle._ A. BONNEMERE: _Histoire
des Camisardes._ ADOLPHE MICHEL: _Louvois et Les Protestantes._
ATHANASE COQUEREL FILS; _Les Forcats pour La Foi, &c., &c._
It remains to be added that part of this work--viz., the "Wars of the
Camisards," and the "Journey in the Country of the Vaudois"--originally
appeared in _Good Words_.
S.S.
LONDON, _October_, 1873.
THE HUGUENOTS IN FRANCE.
CHAPTER I.
REVOCATION OF THE EDICT OF NANTES.
The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes was signed by Louis XIV. of
France, on the 18th of October, 1685, and published four days
afterwards.
Although the Revocation was the personal act of the King, it was
nevertheless a popular measure, approved by the Catholic Church of
France, and by the great body of the French people.
The King had solemnly sworn, at the beginning of his reign, to
maintain, the tolerating Edict of Henry IV.--the Huguenots being
amongst the most industrious, enterprising, and loyal of his subjects.
But the advocacy of the King's then Catholic mistress, Madame de
Maintenon, and of his Jesuit Confessor, Pere la Chaise, overcame his
scruples, and the deed of Revocation of the Edict was at length signed
and published.
The aged Chancellor, Le Tellier, was so overjoyed at the measure, that
on affixing the great seal of France to the deed, he exclaimed, in the
words of Simeon, "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace,
for mine eyes have seen the salvation."
Three months later, the great Bossuet, the eagle of Meaux, preached
the funeral sermon of Le Tellier; in the course of which he testified
to the immense joy of the Church at the Revocation of the Edict. "Let
us," said he, "expand our hearts in praises of the piety of Louis. Let
our acclamations ascend to heaven, and let us say to this new
Constantine, this new Theodosius, this new Marcian, this new
Charlemagne, what the thirty-six fathers formerly said in the Council
of Chalcedon: 'You have affirmed the faith, you have exterminated the
heretics; it is a work worthy of your reign, whose proper character it
is. Thanks to you, heresy is no more. God alone can have worked this
marvel. King of heaven, preserve the King of earth: it is the prayer
of the Church, it is the prayer of the Bishops.'"[2]
[Footnote 2: Bossuet, "Oraison Funebre du Chancelier
Letellier."]
Madame de Maintenon also received the praises of the Church. "All good
people," said the Abbe de Choisy, "the Pope, the bishops, and all the
clergy, rejoice at the victory of Madame de Maintenon." Madame enjoyed
the surname of Director of the Affairs of the Clergy; and it was said
by the ladies of St. Cyr (an institution founded by her), that "the
cardinals and the bishops knew no other way of approaching the King
save through her."
It is generally believed that her price for obtaining the King's
consent to the Act of Revocation, was the withdrawal by the clergy of
their opposition to her marriage with the King; and that the two were
privately united by the Archbishop of Paris at Versailles, a few days
after, in the presence of Pere la Chaise and two more witnesses. But
Louis XIV. never publicly recognised De Maintenon as his wife--never
rescued her from the ignominious position in which she originally
stood related to him.
People at court all spoke with immense praises of the King's
intentions with respect to destroying the Huguenots. "Killing them
off" was a matter of badinage with the courtiers. Madame de Maintenon
wrote to the Duc de Noailles, "The soldiers are killing numbers of the
fanatics--they hope soon to free Languedoc of them."
That picquante letter-writer, Madame de Sevigne, often referred to the
Huguenots. She seems to have classed them with criminals or wild
beasts. When residing in Low Brittany during a revolt against the
Gabelle, a friend wrote to her, "How dull you must be!" "No," replied
Madame de Sevigne, "we are not so dull--hanging is quite a refreshment
to me! They have just taken twenty-four or thirty of these men, and
are going to throw them off."
A few days after the Edict had been revoked, she wrote to her cousin
Bussy, at Paris: "You have doubtless seen the Edict by which the King
revokes that of Nantes. There is nothing so fine as that which it
contains, and never has any King done, or ever will do, a more
memorable act." Bussy replied to her: "I immensely admire the conduct
of the King in destroying the Huguenots. The wars which have been
waged against them, and the St. Bartholomew, have given some
reputation to the sect. His Majesty has gradually undermined it; and
the edict he has just published, maintained by the dragoons and by
Bourdaloue,[3] will soon give them the _coup de grace_."
[Footnote 3: Bourdaloue had just been sent from the Jesuit
Church of St. Louis at Paris, to Montpellier, to aid the
dragoons in converting the Protestants, and bringing them
back to the Church.]
In a future letter to Count Bussy, Madame de Sevigne informed him of
"a dreadfully fatiguing journey which her son-in-law M. de Grignan had
made in the mountains of Dauphiny, to pursue and punish the miserable
Huguenots, who issued from their holes, and vanished like ghosts to
avoid extermination."
De Baville, however, the Lieutenant of Languedoc, kept her in good
heart. In one of his letters, he said, "I have this morning condemned
seventy-six of these wretches (Huguenots), and sent them to the
galleys." All this was very pleasant to Madame de Sevigne.
Madame de Scuderi, also, more moderately rejoiced in the Act of
Revocation. "The King," she wrote to Bussy, "has worked great marvels
against the Huguenots; and the authority which he has employed to
unite them to the Church will be most salutary to themselves and to
their children, who will be educated in the purity of the faith; all
this will bring upon him the benedictions of Heaven."
Even the French Academy, though originally founded by a Huguenot,
publicly approved the deed of Revocation. In a discourse uttered
before it, the Abbe Tallemand exclaimed, when speaking of the Huguenot
temple at Charenton, which had just been destroyed by the mob, "Happy
ruins, the finest trophy France ever beheld!" La Fontaine described
heresy as now "reduced to the last gasp." Thomas Corneille also
eulogized the zeal of the King in "throttling the Reformation."
Barbier D'Aucourt heedlessly, but truly, compared the emigration of
the Protestants "to the departure of the Israelites from Egypt." The
Academy afterwards proposed, as the subject of a poem, the Revocation
of the Edict of Nantes, and Fontenelle had the fortune, good or bad,
of winning the prize.
The philosophic La Bruyere contributed a maxim in praise of the
Revocation. Quinault wrote a poem on the subject; and Madame
Deshoulieres felt inspired to sing "The Destruction of Heresy." The
Abbe de Rance spoke of the whole affair as a prodigy: "The Temple of
Charenton destroyed, and no exercise of Protestantism, within the
kingdom; it is a kind of miracle, such as we had never hoped to have
seen in our day."
The Revocation was popular with the lower class, who went about
sacking and pulling down the Protestant churches. They also tracked
the Huguenots and their pastors, where they found them evading or
breaking the Edict of Revocation; thus earning the praises of the
Church and the fines offered by the King for their apprehension. The
provosts and sheriffs of Paris represented the popular feeling, by
erecting a brazen statue of the King who had rooted out heresy; and
they struck and distributed medals in honour of the great event.
The Revocation was also popular with the dragoons. In order to
"convert" the Protestants, the dragoons were unduly billeted upon
them. As both officers and soldiers were then very badly paid, they
were thereby enabled to live at free quarters. They treated everything
in the houses they occupied as if it were their own, and an assignment
of billets was little loss than the consignment of the premises to the
military, to use for their own purposes, during the time they occupied
them.[4]
[Footnote 4: Sir John Reresby's Travels and Memoirs.]
The Revocation was also approved by those who wished to buy land
cheap. As the Huguenots were prevented holding their estates unless
they conformed to the Catholic religion, and as many estates were
accordingly confiscated and sold, land speculators, as well as grand
seigneurs who wished to increase their estates, were constantly on the
look-out for good bargains. Even before the Revocation, when the
Huguenots were selling their land in order to leave the country,
Madame de Maintenon wrote to her nephew, for whom she had obtained
from the King a grant of 800,000 francs, "I beg of you carefully to
use the money you are about to receive. Estates in Poitou may be got
for nothing; the desolation of the Huguenots will drive them to sell
more. You may easily acquire extensive possessions in Poitou."
The Revocation was especially gratifying to the French Catholic
Church. The Pope, of course, approved of it. _Te Deums_ were sung at
Rome in thanksgiving for the forced conversion of the Huguenots. Pope
Innocent XI. sent a brief to Louis XIV., in which he promised him the
unanimous praises of the Church, "Amongst all the proofs," said he,
"which your Majesty has given of natural piety, not the least
brilliant is the zeal, truly worthy of the most Christian King, which
has induced you to revoke all the ordinances issued in favour of the
heretics of your kingdom."[5]
[Footnote 5: Pope Innocent XI.'s Letter of November 13th,
1685.]
The Jesuits were especially elated by the Revocation. It had been
brought about by the intrigues of their party, acting on the King's
mind through Madame de Maintenon and Pere la Chaise. It enabled them
to fill their schools and nunneries with the children of Protestants,
who were compelled by law to pay for their education by Jesuit
priests. To furnish the required accommodation, nearly the whole of
the Protestant temples that had not been pulled down were made over
to the Jesuits, to be converted into monastic schools and nunneries.
Even Bossuet, the "last father of the Church," shared in the spoils of
the Huguenots. A few days after the Edict had been revoked, Bossuet
applied for the materials of the temples of Nauteuil and Morcerf,
situated in his diocese; and his Majesty ordered that they should be
granted to him.[6]
[Footnote 6: "Louvois et les Protestants," par Adolphe
Michel, p. 286.]
Now that Protestantism had been put down, and the officers of Louis
announced from all parts of the kingdom that the Huguenots were
becoming converted by thousands, there was nothing but a clear course
before the Jesuits in France. For their religion was now the favoured
religion of the State.
It is true there were the Jansenists--declared to be heretical by the
Popes, and distinguished for their opposition to the doctrines and
moral teaching of the Jesuits--who were suffering from a persecution
which then drove some of the members of Port Royal into exile, and
eventually destroyed them. But even the Jansenists approved the
persecution of the Protestants. The great Arnault, their most
illustrious interpreter, though in exile in the Low Countries,
declared that though the means which Louis XIV. had employed had been
"rather violent, they had in nowise been unjust."
But Protestantism being declared destroyed, and Jansenism being in
disgrace, there was virtually no legal religion in France but
one--that of the Roman Catholic Church. Atheism, it is true, was
tolerated, but then Atheism was not a religion. The Atheists did not,
like the Protestants, set up rival churches, or appoint rival
ministers, and seek to draw people to their assemblies. The Atheists,
though they tacitly approved the religion of the King, had no
opposition to offer to it--only neglect, and perhaps concealed
contempt.
Hence it followed that the Court and the clergy had far more
toleration for Atheism than for either Protestantism or Jansenism. It
is authentically related that Louis XIV. on one occasion objected to
the appointment of a representative on a foreign mission on account of
the person being supposed to be a Jansenist; but on its being
discovered that the nominee was only an Atheist, the objection was at
once withdrawn.[7]
[Footnote 7: _Quarterly Review._]
At the time of the Revocation, when the King and the Catholic Church
were resolved to tolerate no religion other than itself, the Church
had never seemed so powerful in France. It had a strong hold upon the
minds of the people. It was powerful in its leaders and its great
preachers; in fact, France has never, either before or since,
exhibited such an array of preaching genius as Bossuet, Bourdaloue,
Flechier, and Massillon.
Yet the uncontrolled and enormously increased power conferred upon the
French Church at that time, most probably proved its greatest
calamity. Less than a hundred years after the Revocation, the Church
had lost its influence over the people, and was despised. The Deists
and Atheists, sprung from the Church's bosom, were in the ascendant;
and Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, and Mirabeau, were regarded as
greater men than either Bossuet, Bourdaloue, Flechier, or Massillon.
Not one of the clergy we have named, powerful orators though they
were, ever ventured to call in question the cruelties with which the
King sought to compel the Protestants to embrace the dogmas of their
Church. There were no doubt many Catholics who deplored the force
practised on the Huguenots; but they were greatly in the minority,
and had no power to make their opposition felt. Some of them
considered it an impious sacrilege to compel the Protestants to take
the Catholic sacrament--to force them to accept the host, which
Catholics believed to be the veritable body of Christ, but which the
Huguenots could only accept as bread, over which some function had
been performed by the priests, in whose miraculous power of conversion
they did not believe.
Fenelon took this view of the forcible course employed by the Jesuits;
but he was in disgrace as a Jansenist, and what he wrote on the
subject remained for a long time unknown, and was only first published
in 1825. The Duc de Saint-Simon, also a Jansenist, took the same view,
which he embodied in his "Memoirs;" but these were kept secret by his
family, and were not published for nearly a century after his death.
Thus the Catholic Church remained triumphant. The Revocation was
apparently approved by all, excepting the Huguenots. The King was
flattered by the perpetual conversions reported to be going on
throughout the country--five thousand persons in one place, ten
thousand in another, who had abjured and taken the communion--at once,
and sometimes "instantly."
"The King," says Saint-Simon, "congratulated himself on his power and
his piety. He believed himself to have renewed the days of the
preaching of the Apostles, and attributed to himself all the honour.
The Bishops wrote panegyrics of him; the Jesuits made the pulpits
resound with his praises.... He swallowed their poison in deep
draughts."[8]
[Footnote 8: "Memoirs of the Duke of Saint-Simon," translated
by Bayle St. John, vol. III. p 250.]
Louis XIV. lived for thirty years after the Edict of Nantes had been
revoked. He had therefore the fullest opportunity of observing the
results of the policy he had pursued. He died in the hands of the
Jesuits, his body covered with relics of the true cross. Madame de
Maintenon, the "famous and fatal witch," as Saint-Simon called her,
abandoned him at last; and the King died, lamented by no one.
He had banished, or destroyed, during-his reign, about a million of
his subjects, and those who remained did not respect him. Many
regarded him as a self-conceited tyrant, who sought to save his own
soul by inflicting penance on the backs of others. He loaded his
kingdom with debt, and overwhelmed his people with taxes. He destroyed
the industry of France, which had been mainly supported by the
Huguenots. Towards the end of his life he became generally hated; and
while his heart was conveyed to the Grand Jesuits, his body, which was
buried at St. Denis, was hurried to the grave accompanied by the
execrations of the people.
Yet the Church remained faithful to him to the last. The great
Massillon preached his funeral sermon; though the message was draped
in the livery of the Court. "How far," said he, "did Louis XIV. carry
his zeal for the Church, that virtue of sovereigns who have received
power and the sword only that they may be props of the altar and
defenders of its doctrine! Specious reasons of State! In vain did you
oppose to Louis the timid views of human wisdom, the body of the
monarchy enfeebled by the flight of so many citizens, the course of
trade slackened, either by the deprivation of their industry, or by
the furtive removal of their wealth! Dangers fortify his zeal. The
work of God fears not man. He believes even that he strengthens his
throne by overthrowing that of error. The profane temples are
destroyed, the pulpits of seduction are cast down. The prophets of
falsehood are torn from their flocks. At the first blow dealt to it by
Louis, heresy falls, disappears, and is reduced either to hide itself
in the obscurity whence it issued, or to cross the seas, and to bear
with it into foreign lands its false gods, its bitterness, and its
rage."[9]
[Footnote 9: Funeral Oration on Louis XIV.]
Whatever may have been the temper which the Huguenots displayed when
they were driven from France by persecution, they certainly carried
with them something far more valuable than rage. They carried with
them their virtue, piety, industry, and valour, which proved the
source of wealth, spirit, freedom, and character, in all those
countries--Holland, Prussia, England, and America--in which these
noble exiles took refuge.
We shall next see whether the Huguenots had any occasion for
entertaining the "rage" which the great Massillon attributed to them.
CHAPTER II.
EFFECTS OF THE REVOCATION.
The Revocation struck with civil death the entire Protestant
population of France. All the liberty of conscience which they had
enjoyed under the Edict of Nantes, was swept away by the act of the
King. They were deprived of every right and privilege; their social
life was destroyed; their callings were proscribed; their property was
liable to be confiscated at any moment; and they were subjected to
mean, detestable, and outrageous cruelties.
From the day of the Revocation, the relation of Louis XIV. to his
Huguenot subjects was that of the Tyrant and his Victims. The only
resource which remained to the latter was that of flying from their
native country; and an immense number of persons took the opportunity
of escaping from France.
The Edict of Revocation proclaimed that the Huguenot subjects of
France must thenceforward be of "the King's religion;" and the order
was promulgated throughout the kingdom. The Prime Minister, Louvois,
wrote to the provincial governors, "His Majesty desires that the
severest rigour shall be shown to those who will not conform to His
Religion, and those who seek the foolish glory of wishing to be the
last, must be pushed to the utmost extremity."
The Huguenots were forbidden, under the penalty of death, to worship
publicly after their own religious forms. They were also forbidden,
under the penalty of being sent to the galleys for life, to worship
privately in their own homes. If they were overheard singing their
favourite psalms, they were liable to fine, imprisonment, or the
galleys. They were compelled to hang out flags from their houses on
the days of Catholic processions; but they were forbidden, under a
heavy penalty, to look out of their windows when the Corpus Domini was
borne along the streets.
The Huguenots were rigidly forbidden to instruct their children in
their own faith. They were commanded to send them to the priest to be
baptized and brought up in the Roman Catholic faith, under the penalty
of five hundred livres fine in each case. The boys were educated in
Jesuit schools, the girls in nunneries, the parents being compelled to
pay the required expenses; and where the parents were too poor to pay,
the children were at once transferred to the general hospitals. A
decree of the King, published in December, 1685, ordered that every
child of _five years_ and upwards was to be taken possession of by the
authorities, and removed from its Protestant parents. This decree
often proved a sentence of death, not only to the child, but to its
parents.
The whole of the Protestant temples throughout France were subject to
demolition. The expelled pastors were compelled to evacuate the
country within fifteen days. If, in the meantime, they were found
performing their functions, they were liable to be sent to the galleys
for life. If they undertook to marry Protestants, the marriages were
declared illegal, and the children bastards. If, after the expiry of
the fifteen days, they were found lingering in France, the pastors
were then liable to the penalty of death.
Protestants could neither be born, nor live, nor die, without state
and priestly interference. Protestant _sages-femmes_ were not
permitted to exercise their functions; Protestant doctors were
prohibited from practising; Protestant surgeons and apothecaries were
suppressed; Protestant advocates, notaries, and lawyers were
interdicted; Protestants could not teach, and all their schools,
public and private, were put down. Protestants were no longer employed
by the Government in affairs of finance, as collectors of taxes, or
even as labourers on the public roads, or in any other office. Even
Protestant grocers were forbidden to exercise their calling.
There must be no Protestant librarians, booksellers, or printers.
There was, indeed, a general raid upon Protestant literature all over
France. All Bibles, Testaments, and books of religious instruction,
were collected and publicly burnt. There were bonfires in almost every
town. At Metz, it occupied a whole day to burn the Protestant books
which had been seized, handed over to the clergy, and condemned to be
destroyed.
Protestants were even forbidden to hire out horses, and Protestant
grooms were forbidden to give riding lessons. Protestant domestics
were forbidden to hire themselves as servants, and Protestant
mistresses were forbidden to hire them under heavy penalties. If they
engaged Protestant servants, they were liable to be sent to the
galleys for life. They were even prevented employing "new converts."
Artisans were forbidden to work without certificates that their
religion was Catholic. Protestant apprenticeships were suppressed.
Protestant washerwomen were excluded from their washing-places on the
river. In fact, there was scarcely a degradation that could be
invented, or an insult that could be perpetrated, that was not
practised upon those poor Huguenots who refused to be of "the King's
religion."
Even when Protestants were about to take refuge in death, their
troubles were not over. The priests had the power of forcing their way
into the dying man's house, where they presented themselves at his
bedside, and offered him conversion and the viaticum. If the dying man
refused these, he was liable to be seized after death, dragged from
the house, pulled along the streets naked, and buried in a ditch, or
thrown upon a dunghill.[10]
[Footnote 10: Such was, in fact, the end of a man so
distinguished as M. Paul Chenevix, Councillor of the Court of
Metz, who died in 1686, the year after the Revocation.
Although of the age of eighty, and so illustrious for his
learning, his dead body was dragged along the streets on a
hurdle and thrown upon a dunghill. See "Huguenot Refugees and
their Descendants," under the name _Chenevix_. The present
Archbishop of Dublin is descended from his brother Philip
Chenevix, who settled in England shortly after the
Revocation.]
For several years before the Revocation, while the persecutions of the
Huguenots had been increasing, many had realised their means, and fled
abroad into Switzerland, Germany, Holland, and England. But after the
Revocation, emigration from France was strictly forbidden, under
penalty of confiscation of the whole goods and property of the
emigrant. Any person found attempting to leave the country, was liable
to the seizure of all that belonged to him, and to perpetual
imprisonment at the galleys; one half the amount realised by the sale
of the property being paid to the informers, who thus became the most
active agents of the Government. The Act also ordered that all landed
proprietors who had left France before the Revocation, should return
within four months, under penalty of confiscation of all their
property.
Amongst those of the King's subjects who were the most ready to obey
his orders were some of the old Huguenot noble families, such as the
members of the houses of Bouillon, Coligny, Rohan, Tremouille, Sully,
and La Force. These great vassals, whom a turbulent feudalism had
probably in the first instance induced to embrace Protestantism, were
now found ready to change their profession of religion in servile
obedience to the monarch.
The lesser nobility were more faithful and consistent. Many of them
abandoned their estates and fled across the frontier, rather than live
a daily lie to God by forswearing the religion of their conscience.
Others of this class, on whom religion sat more lightly, as the only
means of saving their property from confiscation, pretended to be
converted to Roman Catholicism; though, we shall find, that these "new
converts," as they were called, were treated with as much suspicion on
the one side as they were regarded with contempt on the other.
There were also the Huguenot manufacturers, merchants, and employers of
labour, of whom a large number closed their workshops and factories,
sold off their goods, converted everything into cash, at whatever
sacrifice, and fled across the frontier into Switzerland--either
settling there, or passing through it on their way to Germany, Holland,
or England.
It was necessary to stop this emigration, which was rapidly
diminishing the population, and steadily impoverishing the country. It
was indeed a terrible thing for Frenchmen, to tear themselves away
from their country--Frenchmen, who have always clung so close to
their soil that they have rarely been able to form colonies of
emigration elsewhere--it was breaking so many living fibres to leave
France, to quit the homes of their fathers, their firesides, their
kin, and their race. Yet, in a multitude of cases, they were compelled
to tear themselves by the roots out of the France they so loved.
Yet it was so very easy for them to remain. The King merely required
them to be "converted." He held that loyalty required them to be of
"his religion." On the 19th of October, 1685, the day after he had
signed the Act of Revocation, La Reynee, lieutenant of the police of
Paris, issued a notice to the Huguenot tradespeople and
working-classes, requiring them to be converted instantly. Many of
them were terrified, and conformed accordingly. Next day, another
notice was issued to the Huguenot bourgeois, requiring them to
assemble on the following day for the purpose of publicly making a
declaration of their conversion.
The result of those measures was to make hypocrites rather than
believers, and they took effect upon the weakest and least-principled
persons. The strongest, most independent, and high-minded of the
Huguenots, who would _not_ be hypocrites, resolved passively to resist
them, and if they could not be allowed to exercise freedom of
conscience in their own country, they determined to seek it elsewhere.
Hence the large increase in the emigration from all parts of France
immediately after the Act of Revocation had been proclaimed.[11] All
the roads leading to the frontier or the sea-coast streamed with
fugitives. They went in various forms and guises--sometimes in bodies
of armed men, at other times in solitary parties, travelling at night
and sleeping in the woods by day. They went as beggars, travelling
merchants, sellers of beads and chaplets, gipsies, soldiers,
shepherds, women with their faces dyed and sometimes dressed in men's
clothes, and in all manner of disguises.
[Footnote 11: It is believed that 400,000 emigrants left
France through religious persecution during the twenty years
previous to the Revocation, and that 600,000 escaped during
the twenty years after that event. M. Charles Coquerel
estimates the number of Protestants in France at that time to
have been two millions of _men_ ("Eglises du Desert," i. 497)
The number of Protestant pastors was about one thousand--of
whom six hundred went into exile, one hundred were executed
or sent to the galleys, and the rest are supposed to have
accepted pensions as "new converts."]
To prevent this extensive emigration, more violent measures were
adopted. Every road out of France was posted with guards. The towns,
highways, bridges, and ferries, were all watched; and heavy rewards
were promised to those who would stop and bring back the fugitives.
Many were taken, loaded with irons, and dispatched by the most public
roads through France--as a sight to be seen by other Protestants--to
the galleys at Marseilles, Brest, and other ports. As they went along
they were subject to every sort of indignity in the towns and villages
through which they passed. They were hooted, stoned, spit upon, and
loaded with insult.
Many others went by sea, in French as well as in foreign ships. Though
the sailors of France were prohibited the exercise of the reformed
religion, under the penalty of fines, corporal punishment, and seizure
of the vessels where the worship was allowed, yet many of the
emigrants contrived to get away by the help of French ship captains,
masters of sloops, fishing-boats, and coast pilots--who most probably
sympathized with the views of those who wished to fly their country
rather than become hypocrites and forswear their religion. A large
number of emigrants, who went hurriedly off to sea in little boats,
must have been drowned, as they were never afterwards heard of.
There were also many English ships that appeared off the coast to take
the flying Huguenots away by night. They also escaped in foreign ships
taking in their cargoes in the western harbours. They got cooped up in
casks or wine barraques, with holes for breathing places; others
contrived to get surreptitiously into the hold, and stowed themselves
away among the goods. When it became known to the Government that many
Protestants were escaping in this way, provision was made to meet the
case; and a Royal Order was issued that, before any ship was allowed
to set sail for a foreign port, the hold should be fumigated with
deadly gas, so that any hidden Huguenot who could not otherwise be
detected, might thus be suffocated![12]
[Footnote 12: We refer to "The Huguenots: their Settlements,
Churches, and Industries in England and Ireland," where a
great many incidents are given relative to the escape of
refugees by land and sea, which need not here be repeated.]
In the meantime, however, numerous efforts were being made to convert
the Huguenots. The King, his ministers, the dragoons, the bishops, and
clergy used all due diligence. "Everybody is now missionary," said the
fascinating Madame de Sevigne; "each has his mission--above all the
magistrates and governors of provinces, _helped by the dragoons_. It
is the grandest and finest thing that has ever been imagined and
executed."[13]
[Footnote 13: Letter to the President de Moulceau, November
24th, 1685.]
The conversions effected by the dragoons were much more sudden than
those effected by the priests. Sometimes a hundred or more persons
were converted by a single troop within an hour. In this way Murillac
converted thousands of persons in a week. The regiment of Ashfeld
converted the whole province of Poitou in a month.
De Noailles was very successful in his conversions. He converted
Nismes in twenty-four hours; the day after he converted Montpellier;
and he promised in a few weeks to deliver all Lower Languedoc from the
leprosy of heresy. In one of his dispatches soon after the Revocation,
he boasted that he had converted 350 nobility and gentry, 54
ministers, and 25,000 individuals of various classes.
The quickness of the conversions effected by the dragoons is easily to
be accounted for. The principal cause was the free quartering of
soldiers in the houses of the Protestants. The soldiers knew what was
the object for which they were thus quartered. They lived freely in
all ways. They drank, swore, shouted, beat the heretics, insulted
their women, and subjected them to every imaginable outrage and
insult.
One of their methods of making converts was borrowed from the
persecutions of the Vaudois. It consisted in forcing the feet of the
intended converts into boots full of boiling grease, or they would
hang them up by the feet, sometimes forgetting to cut them down until
they were dead. They would also force them to drink water perpetually,
or make them sit under a slow dripping upon their heads until they
died of madness. Sometimes they placed burning coals in their hands,
or used an instrument of torture resembling that known in Scotland as
the thumbscrews.[14] Many of their attempts at conversion were
accompanied by details too hideous to be recorded.
[Footnote 14: Thumbscrews were used in the reign of James II.
Louis and James borrowed from each other the means of
converting heretics; but whether the origin of the thumbscrew
be French or Scotch is not known.]
Of those who would not be converted, the prisons were kept full. They
were kept there without the usual allowance of straw, and almost
without food. In winter they had no fire, and at night no lamp. Though
ill, they had no doctors. Besides the gaoler, their only visitors were
priests and monks, entreating them to make abjuration. Of course many
died in prison--feeble women, and aged and infirm men. In the society
of obscene criminals, with whom many were imprisoned, they prayed for
speedy deliverance by death, and death often came to their help.
More agreeable, but still more insulting, methods of conversion were
also attempted. Louis tried to bribe the pastors by offering them an
increase of annual pay beyond their former stipends. If there were a
Protestant judge or advocate, Louvois at once endeavoured to bribe him
over. For instance, there was a heretical syndic of Strasbourg, to
whom Louvois wrote, "Will you be converted? I will give you 6,000
livres of pension.--Will you not? I will dismiss you."
Of course many of the efforts made to convert the Huguenots proved
successful. The orders of the Prime Minister, the free quarters
afforded to the dragoons, the preachings and threatenings of the
clergy, all contributed to terrify the Protestants. The fear of being
sent to the galleys for life--the threat of losing the whole of one's
goods and property--the alarm of seeing one's household broken up, the
children seized by the priests and sent to the nearest monkery or
nunnery for maintenance and education--all these considerations
doubtless had their effect in increasing the number of conversions.
Persecution is not easy to bear. To have all the powers and
authorities employed against one's life, interests, and faith, is
what few can persistently oppose. And torture, whether it be slow or
sudden, is what many persons, by reason of their physical capacity,
have not the power to resist. Even the slow torment of dragoons
quartered in the houses of the heretics--their noise and shoutings,
their drinking and roistering, the insults and outrages they were
allowed to practise--was sufficient to compel many at once to declare
themselves to be converted.
Indeed, pain is, of all things, one of the most terrible of
converters. One of the prisoners condemned to the galleys, when he saw
the tortures which the victims about him had to endure by night and by
day, said that sufferings such as these were "enough to make one
conform to Buddhism or Mahommedanism as well as to Popery"; and
doubtless it was force and suffering which converted the Huguenots,
far more than love of the King or love of the Pope.
By all these means--forcible, threatening, insulting, and
bribing--employed for the conversion of the Huguenots, the Catholics
boasted that in the space of three months they had received an
accession of five hundred thousand new converts to the Church of Rome.
But the "new converts" did not gain much by their change. They were
forced to attend mass, but remained suspected. Even the dragoons who
converted them, called them dastards and deniers of their faith. They
tried, if they could, to avoid confession, but confess they must.
There was the fine, confiscation of goods, and imprisonment at the
priest's back.
Places were set apart for them in the churches, where they were penned
up like lepers. A person was stationed at the door with a roll of
their names, to which they were obliged to answer. During the service,
the most prominent among them were made to carry the lights, the holy
water, the incense, and such things, which to Huguenots were an
abomination. They were also required to partake of the Host, which
Protestants regarded as an awful mockery of the glorious Godhead.
The Duc de Saint-Simon, in his memoirs, after referring to the unmanly
cruelties practised by Louis XIV. on the Huguenots, "without the
slightest pretext or necessity," characterizes this forced
participation in the Eucharist as sacrilegious and blasphemous folly,
notwithstanding that nearly all the bishops lent themselves to the
practice. "From simulated abjuration," he says, "they [the Huguenots]
are dragged to endorse what they do not believe in, and to receive the
divine body of the Saint of saints whilst remaining persuaded that
they are only eating bread which they ought to abhor. Such is the
general abomination born of flattery and cruelty. From torture to
abjuration, and from that to the communion, there were only
twenty-four hours' distance; and the executioners were the conductors
of the converts, and their witnesses. Those who in the end appeared to
have become reconciled, when more at leisure did not fail, by their
flight or their behaviour, to contradict their pretended
conversion."[15]
[Footnote 15: "Memoirs of the Duke of Saint-Simon," Bayle St.
John's Translation, iii. 259.]
Indeed, many of the new converts, finding life in France to be all but
intolerable, determined to follow the example of the Huguenots who had
already fled, and took the first opportunity of disposing of their
goods and leaving the country. One of the first things they did on
reaching a foreign soil, was to attend a congregation of their
brethren, and make "reconnaisances," or acknowledgment of their
repentance for having attended mass and pretended to be converted to
the Roman Catholic Church.[16] At one of the sittings of the
Threadneedle Street Huguenot Church in London, held in May, 1687--two
years after the Revocation--not fewer than 497 members were again
received into the Church which, by force, they had pretended to
abandon.
[Footnote 16: See "The Huguenots: their Settlements, &c., in
England and Ireland," chap. xvi.]
Not many pastors abjured. A few who yielded in the first instance
through terror and stupor, almost invariably returned to their ancient
faith. They were offered considerable pensions if they would conform
and become Catholics. The King promised to augment their income by
one-third, and if they became advocates or doctors in law, to dispense
with their three years' study, and with the right of diploma.
At length, most of the pastors had left the country. About seven
hundred had gone into Switzerland, Holland, Prussia, England, and
elsewhere. A few remained going about to meetings of the peasantry, at
the daily risk of death; for every pastor taken was hung. A reward of
5,500 livres was promised to whoever should take a pastor, or cause
him to be taken. The punishment of death was also pronounced against
all persons who should be discovered attending such meetings.
Nevertheless, meetings of the Protestants continued to be held, with
pastors or without. They were, for the most part, held at night,
amidst the ruins of their pulled-down temples. But this exposed them
to great danger, for spies were on the alert to inform upon them and
have them apprehended.
At length they selected more sheltered places in remote quarters,
where they met for prayer and praise, often resorting thither from
great distances. They were, however, often surprised, cut to pieces by
the dragoons, who hung part of the prisoners on the neighbouring
trees, and took the others to prison, from whence they were sent to
the galleys, or hung on the nearest public gibbet.
Fulcran Rey was one of the most celebrated of the early victims. He
was a native of Nismes, twenty-four years old. He had just completed
his theological studies; but there were neither synods to receive him
to pastoral ordination, nor temples for him to preach in. The only
reward he could earn by proceeding on his mission was death, yet he
determined to preach. The first assemblies he joined were in the
neighbourhood of Nismes, where his addresses were interrupted by
assaults of the dragoons. The dangers to his co-religionaries were too
great in the neighbourhood of this populous town; and he next went to
Castres and the Vaunage; after which he accepted an invitation to
proceed into the less populous districts of the Cevennes.
He felt the presentiment of death upon him in accepting the
invitation; but he went, leaving behind him a letter to his father,
saying that he was willing, if necessary, to give his life for the
cause of truth. "Oh! what happiness it would give me," he said, "if I
might be found amongst the number of those whom the Lord has reserved
to announce his praise and to die for his cause!"
His apostolate was short but glorious. He went from village to village
in the Cevennes, collected the old worshippers together, prayed and
preached to them, encouraging all to suffer in the name of Christ. He
remained at this work for about six weeks, when a spy who accompanied
him--one whom he had regarded as sincere a Huguenot as himself--informed
against him for the royal reward, and delivered him over to the
dragoons.
Rey was at first thrown into prison at Anduze, when, after a brief
examination by the local judge, he was entrusted to thirty soldiers,
to be conveyed to Alais. There he was subjected to further
examination, avowing that he had preached wherever he had found
faithful people ready to hear him. At Nismes, he was told that he had
broken the law, in preaching contrary to the King's will. "I obey the
law of the King of kings," he replied; "it is right that I should obey
God rather than man. Do with me what you will; I am ready to die."
The priests, the judges, and other persons of influence endeavoured to
induce him to change his opinions. Promises of great favours were
offered him if he would abjure; and when the intendant Baville
informed him of the frightful death before him if he refused, he
replied, "My life is not of value to me, provided I gain Christ." He
remained firm. He was ordered to be put to the torture. He was still
unshaken. Then he was delivered over to the executioner. "I am
treated," he said, "more mildly than my Saviour."
On his way to the place of execution, two monks walked by his side to
induce him to relent, and to help him to die. "Let me alone," he said,
"you annoy me with your consolations." On coming in sight of the
gallows at Beaucaire, he cried, "Courage, courage! the end of my
journey is at hand. I see before me the ladder which leads to
heaven."
The monks wished to mount the ladder with him. "Return," said he, "I
have no need of your help. I have assistance enough from God to take
the last step of my journey." When he reached the upper platform, he
was about, before dying, to make public his confession of faith. But
the authorities had arranged beforehand that this should be prevented.
When he opened his mouth, a roll of military drums muffled his voice.
His radiant look and gestures spoke for him. A few minutes more, and
he was dead; and when the paleness of death spread over his face, it
still bore the reflex of joy and peace in which he had expired. "There
is a veritable martyr," said many even of the Catholics who were
witnesses of his death.
It was thought that the public hanging of a pastor would put a stop to
all further ministrations among the Huguenots. But the sight of the
bodies of their brethren hung on the nearest trees, and the heads of
their pastors rolling on the scaffold, did not deter them from
continuing to hold religious meetings in solitary places, more
especially in Languedoc, Viverais, and the provinces in the south-east
of France.
Between the year 1686, when Fulcran Rey was hanged at Beaucaire, and
the year 1698, when Claude Brousson was hanged at Montpellier, not
fewer than seventeen pastors were publicly executed; namely, three at
Nismes, two at St. Hippolyte and Marsillargues in the Cevennes, and
twelve on the Peyrou at Montpellier--the public place on which
Protestant Christians in the South of France were then principally
executed.
There has been some discussion lately as to the massacre of the
Huguenots about a century before this period. It has been held that
the St. Bartholomew Massacre was only a political squabble, begun by
the Huguenots, in which they got the worst of it. The number of
persons killed on the occasion has been reduced to a very small
number. It has been doubted whether the Pope had anything to do with
the medal struck at Rome, bearing the motto _Ugonottorum Strages_
("Massacre of the Huguenots"), with the Pope's head on one side, and
an angel on the other pursuing and slaying a band of flying heretics.
Whatever may be said of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, there can be
no mistake about the persecutions which preceded and followed the
Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. They were continued for more than
half a century, and had the effect of driving from France about a
million of the best, most vigorous, and industrious of Frenchmen. In
the single province of Languedoc, not less than a hundred thousand
persons (according to Boulainvilliers) were destroyed by premature
death, one-tenth of whom perished by fire, strangulation, or the
wheel.
It could not be said that Louis XIV. and the priests were destroying
France and tearing its flesh, and that Frenchmen did not know it. The
proclamations, edicts and laws published against the Huguenots were
known to all Frenchmen. Benoit[17] gives a list of three hundred and
thirty-three issued by Louis XIV. during the ten years subsequent to
the Revocation, and they were continued, as we shall find, during the
succeeding reign.
[Footnote 17: "Histoire de l'Edit de Nantes," par Elie
Benoit.]
"We have," says M. Charles Coquerel, "a horror of St. Bartholomew!
Will foreigners believe it, that France observed a code of laws framed
in the same infernal spirit, which maintained _a perpetual St.
Bartholomew's day in this country for about sixty years_! If they
cannot call us the most barbarous of people, their judgment will be
well founded in pronouncing us the most inconsistent."[18]
[Footnote 18: "Histoire des Eglises du Desert," par Charles
Coquerel, i. 498.]
M. De Felice, however, will not believe that the Revocation of the
Edict of Nantes was popular in France. He takes a much more patriotic
view of the French people. He cannot believe them to have been
wilfully guilty of the barbarities which the French Government
committed upon the Huguenots. It was the King, the priests, and the
courtiers only! But he forgets that these upper barbarians were
supported by the soldiers and the people everywhere. He adds, however,
that if the Revocation _were_ popular, "it would be the most
overwhelming accusation against the Church of Rome, that it had thus
educated and fashioned France."[19] There is, however, no doubt
whatever that the Jesuits, during the long period that they had the
exclusive education of the country in their hands, _did_ thus fashion
France; for, in 1793, the people educated by them treated King,
Jesuits, priests, and aristocracy, in precisely the same manner that
they had treated the Huguenots about a century before.
[Footnote 19: De Felice's "History of the Protestants of
France," book iii. sect. 17.]
CHAPTER III.
CLAUDE BROUSSON, THE HUGUENOT ADVOCATE.
To give an account in detail of the varieties of cruelty inflicted on
the Huguenots, and of the agonies to which they were subjected for
many years before and after the passing of the Act of Revocation,
would occupy too much space, besides being tedious through the mere
repetition of like horrors. But in order to condense such an account,
we think it will be more interesting if we endeavour to give a brief
history of the state of France at that time, in connection with the
biography of one of the most celebrated Huguenots of his period, both
in his life, his piety, his trials, and his endurance--that of Claude
Brousson, the advocate, the pastor, and the martyr of Languedoc.
Claude Brousson was born at Nismes in 1647. He was designed by his
parents for the profession of the law, and prosecuted his studies at
the college of his native town, where he graduated as Doctor of Laws.
He commenced his professional career about the time when Louis XIV.
began to issue his oppressive edicts against the Huguenots. Protestant
advocates were not yet forbidden to practise, but they already
laboured under many disabilities. He continued, however, for some time
to exercise his profession, with much ability, at Castres,
Castelnaudry, and Toulouse. He was frequently employed in defending
Protestant pastors, and in contesting the measures for suppressing
their congregations and levelling their churches under existing
edicts, some time before the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes had
been finally resolved upon.
Thus, in 1682, he was engaged in disputing the process instituted
against the ministers and elders of the church at Nismes, with the
view of obtaining an order for the demolition of the remaining
Protestant temple of that city.[20] The pretext for suppressing this
church was, that a servant girl from the country, being a Catholic,
had attended worship and received the sacrament from the hands of M.
Peyrol, one of the ministers.
[Footnote 20: John Locke passed through Nismes about this
time. "The Protestants at Nismes," he said, "have now but one
temple, the other being pulled down by the King's order about
four years since. The Protestants had built themselves an
hospital for the sick, but that is taken from them; a chamber
in it is left for the sick, but never used, because the
priests trouble them when there. Notwithstanding these
discouragements [this was in 1676, _before_ the Revocation],
I do not find many go over; one of them told me, when I asked
them the question, that the Papists did nothing but by force
or by money."--KING'S _Life of Locke_, i. 100.]
Brousson defended the case, observing, at the conclusion of his
speech, that the number of Protestants was very great at Nismes; that
the ministers could not be personally acquainted with all the people,
and especially with occasional visitors and strangers; that the
ministers were quite unacquainted with the girl, or that she professed
the Roman Catholic religion: "facts which rendered it probable that
she was sent to the temple for the purpose of furnishing an occasion
for the prosecution." Sentence was for the present suspended.
Another process was instituted during the same year for the
suppression of the Protestant church at Uzes, and another for the
demolition of the large Protestant temple at Montpellier. The pretext
for destroying the latter was of a singular character.
A Protestant pastor, M. Paulet, had been bribed into embracing the
Roman Catholic religion, in reward for which he was appointed
counsellor to the Presidial Court of Montpellier. But his wife and one
of his daughters refused to apostatize with him. The daughter, though
only between ten and eleven years old, was sent to a convent at
Teirargues, where, after enduring considerable persecution, she
persisted in her steadfastness, and was released after a twelvemonth's
confinement. Five years later she was again seized and sent to another
convent; but, continuing immovable against the entreaties and threats
of the abbess and confessor, she was again set at liberty.
An apostate priest, however, who had many years before renounced the
Protestant faith, and become director and confessor of the nuns at
Teirargues, forged two documents; the one to show that while at the
convent, Mdlle. Paulet had consented to embrace the Catholic religion,
and the other containing her formal abjuration. It was alleged that
her abjuration had been signified to Isaac Dubourdieu, of Montpellier,
one of the most distinguished pastors of the French Church; but that,
nevertheless, he had admitted her to the sacrament. This, if true, was
contrary to law; upon which the Catholic clergy laid information
against the pastor and the young lady before the Parliament of
Toulouse, when they obtained sentence of imprisonment against the
former, and the penance of _amende honorable_ against the latter.
The demolition of temples was the usual consequence of convictions
like these. The Duc de Noailles, lieutenant-general of the province,
entered the city on the 16th of October, 1682, accompanied by a strong
military force; and at a sitting of the Assembly of the States which
shortly followed, the question of demolishing the Protestant temple at
Montpellier was brought under consideration. Four of the Protestant
pastors and several of the elders had before waited upon De Noailles
to claim a respite until they should have submitted their cause to the
King in Council.
The request having been refused, one of the deputation protested
against the illegality of the proceedings, and had the temerity to ask
his excellency whether he was aware that there were eighteen hundred
thousand Protestant families in France? Upon which the Duke, turning
to the officer of his guard, said, "Whilst we wait to see what will
become of these eighteen hundred thousand Protestant families, will
you please conduct these gentlemen to the citadel?"[21]
[Footnote 21: When released from prison, Gaultier escaped to
Berlin and became minister of a large Protestant congregation
there. Isaac Dubourdieu escaped to England, and was appointed
one of the ministers of the Savoy Church in London.]
The great temple of Montpellier was destroyed immediately on receipt
of the King's royal mandate. It required the destruction of the place
within twenty-four hours; "but you will give me pleasure," added the
King, in a letter to De Noailles, "if you accomplish it in two."
It was, perhaps, scarcely necessary, after the temple had been
destroyed, to make any effort to justify these high-handed
proceedings. But Mdlle. Paulet, on whose pretended conversion to
Catholicism the proceedings had been instituted, was now requested to
admit the authenticity of the documents. She was still imprisoned in
Toulouse; and although entreated and threatened by turns to admit
their truth, she steadfastly denied their genuineness, and asking for
a pen, she wrote under each of them, "I affirm that the above
signature was not written by my hand.--Isabeau de Paulet."
Of course the documents were forged; but they had answered their
purpose. The Protestant temple of Montpellier lay in ruins, and
Isabeau de Paulet was recommitted to prison. On hearing of this
incident, Brousson remarked, "This is what is called instituting a
process against persons _after_ they have been condemned"--a sort of
"Jedwood justice."
The repetition of these cases of persecution--the demolition of their
churches, and the suppression of their worship--led the Protestants of
the Cevennes, Viverais, and Dauphiny to combine for the purpose of
endeavouring to stem the torrent of injustice. With this object, a
meeting of twenty-eight deputies took place in the house of Brousson,
at Toulouse, in the month of May, 1683. As the Assembly of the States
were about to take steps to demolish the Protestant temple at
Montauban and other towns in the south, and as Brousson was the
well-known advocate of the persecuted, the deputies were able to meet
at his house to conduct their deliberations, without exciting the
jealousy of the priests and the vigilance of the police.
What the meeting of Protestant deputies recommended to their brethren
was embodied in a measure, which was afterwards known as "The
Project." The chief objects of the project were to exhort the
Protestant people to sincere conversion, and the exhibition of the
good life which such conversion implies; constant prayer to the Holy
Spirit to enable them to remain steadfast in their profession and in
the reading and meditation of the Scriptures; encouragements to them
to hold together as congregations for the purpose of united worship;
"submitting themselves unto the common instructions and to the yoke of
Christ, in all places wheresoever He shall have established the true
discipline, although the edicts of earthly magistrates be contrary
thereto."
At the same time, Brousson drew up a petition to the Sovereign, humbly
requesting him to grant permission to the Huguenots to worship God in
peace after their consciences, copies of which were sent to Louvois
and the other ministers of State. On this and other petitions,
Brousson observes, "Surely all the world and posterity will be
surprised, that so many respectful petitions, so many complaints of
injuries, and so many solid reasons urged for their removal, produced
no good result whatever in favour of the Protestants."
The members of the churches which had been interdicted, and whose
temples had been demolished, were accordingly invited to assemble in
private, in the neighbouring fields or woods--not in public places,
nor around the ruins of their ancient temples--for the purpose of
worshipping God, exciting each other to piety by prayer and singing,
receiving instruction, and celebrating the Lord's Supper.
Various meetings were accordingly held, in the following month of
July, in the Cevennes and Viverais. At St. Hypolite, where the temple
of the Protestants had been destroyed, about four thousand persons met
in a field near the town, when the minister preached to them from the
text--"Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God
the things which are God's." The meeting was conducted with the utmost
solemnity; and a Catholic priest who was present, on giving
information to the Bishop of Nismes of the transaction, admitted that
the preacher had advanced nothing but what the bishop himself might
have spoken.
The dragoons were at once sent to St. Hypolite to put an end to these
meetings, and to "convert" the Protestants. The town was almost wholly
Protestant. The troops were quartered in numbers in every house; and
the people soon became "new converts."
The losses sustained by the inhabitants of the Cevennes from this
forced quartering of the troops upon them--and Anduze, Sauve, St.
Germain, Vigan, and Ganges were as full of them as St. Hypolite--may
be inferred from the items charged upon the inhabitants of St.
Hypolite alone[22]:--
To the regiment of Montpezat, for a billet for
sixty-five days 50,000 livres.
To the three companies of Red Dragoons,
for ninety-five days 30,000 "
To three companies of Villeneuve's Dragoons,
for thirty days 6,000 "
To three companies of the Blue Dragoons of
Languedoc, for three months and nine days 37,000 "
To a company of Cravates (troopers) for
fourteen days 1,400 "
To the transport of three hundred and nine
companies of cavalry and infantry 10,000 "
To provisions for the troops 60,000 "
To damage sustained by the destruction done
by the soldiers, of furniture, and losses
by the seizure of property, &c. 50,000 "
----------
Total 244,400
[Footnote 22: Claude Brousson, "Apologie du Projet des
Reformes."]
Meetings of the persecuted were also held, under the terms of "The
Project," in Viverais and Dauphiny. These meetings having been
repeated for several weeks, the priests of the respective districts
called upon their bishops for help to put down this heretical display.
The Bishop of Valence (Daniel de Cosmac) accordingly informed them
that he had taken the necessary steps, and that he had been apprised
that twenty thousand soldiers were now on their march to the South to
put down the Protestant movement.
On their arrival, the troops were scattered over the country, to watch
and suppress any meetings that might be held. The first took place on
the 8th of August, at Chateaudouble, a manufacturing village in Drome.
The assembly was surprised by a troop of dragoons; but most of the
congregation contrived to escape. Those who were taken were hung upon
the nearest trees.
Another meeting was held about a fortnight later at Bezaudun, which
was attended by many persons from Bourdeaux, a village about half a
league distant. While the meeting was at prayer, intelligence was
brought that the dragoons had entered Bourdeaux, and that it was a
scene of general pillage. The Bourdeaux villagers at once set out for
the protection of their families. The troopers met them, and suddenly
fell upon them. A few of the villagers were armed, but the principal
part defended themselves with stones. Of course they were overpowered;
many were killed by the sword, and those taken prisoners were
immediately hanged.
A few, who took to flight, sheltered themselves in a barn, where the
soldiers found them, set fire to the place, and murdered them as they
endeavoured to escape from the flames. One young man was taken
prisoner, David Chamier,[23] son of an advocate, and related to some
of the most eminent Protestants in France. He was taken to the
neighbouring town of Montelimar, and, after a summary trial, he was
condemned to be broken to death upon the wheel. The sentence was
executed before his father's door; but the young man bore his
frightful tortures with astonishing courage.
[Footnote 23: The grandfather of this Chamier drew up for
Henry IV. the celebrated Edict of Nantes. The greater number
of the Chamiers left France. Several were ministers in London
and Maryland, U.S. Captain Chamier is descended from the
family.]
The contumacious attitude of the Protestants after so many reports had
reached Louis XIV. of their entire "conversion," induced him to take
more active measures for their suppression. He appointed Marshal
Saint-Ruth commander of the district--a man who was a stranger to
mercy, who breathed only carnage, and who, because of his ferocity,
was known as "The Scourge of the Heretics."
Daniel de Cosmac, Bishop of Valence, had now the help of Saint-Ruth
and his twenty thousand troops. The instructions Saint-Ruth received
from Louvois were these: "Amnesty has no longer any place for the
Viverais, who continue in rebellion after having been informed of the
King's gracious designs. In one word, you are to cause such a
desolation in that country that its example may restrain all other
Huguenots, and may teach them how dangerous it is to rebel against the
King."
This was a work quite congenial to Saint-Ruth[24]--rushing about the
country, scourging, slaughtering, laying waste, and suppressing the
assemblies--his soldiers rushing upon their victims with cries of
"Death or the Mass!"
[Footnote 24: Saint-Ruth was afterwards, in 1691, sent to
Ireland to take the command of the army fighting for James
II. against William III. There, Saint-Ruth had soldiers, many
of them Huguenots banished from France, to contend with; and
he was accordingly somewhat less successful than in Viverais,
where his opponents were mostly peasants and workmen, armed
(where armed at all) with stones picked from the roads.
Saint-Ruth and his garrison were driven from Athlone, where a
Huguenot soldier was the first to mount the breach. The army
of William III., though eight thousand fewer in number,
followed Saint-Ruth and his Irish army to the field of
Aughrim. His host was there drawn up in an almost impregnable
position--along the heights of Kilcommeden, with the Castle
of Aughrim on his left wing, a deep bog on his right, and
another bog of about two miles extending along the front, and
apparently completely protecting the Irish encampment.
Nevertheless, the English and Huguenot army under Ginckle,
bravely attacked it, forced the pass to the camp, and routed
the army of Saint-Ruth, who himself was killed by a
cannon-ball. The principal share of this victory was
attributed to the gallant conduct of the three regiments of
Huguenot horse, under the command of the Marquess de Ruvigny
(himself a banished Huguenot nobleman) who, in consequence of
his services, was raised to the Irish peerage, under the
title of Earl of Galway.]
Tracking the Protestants in this way was like "a hunt in a great
enclosure." When the soldiers found a meeting of the people going on,
they shot them down at once, though unarmed. If they were unable to
fly, they met death upon their knees. Antoine Court recounts meetings
in which as many as between three and four hundred persons, old men,
women, and children, were shot dead on the spot.
De Cosmac, the bishop, was very active in the midst of these
massacres. When he went out to convert the people, he first began by
sending out Saint-Ruth with the dragoons. Afterwards he himself
followed to give instructions for their "conversion," partly through
favours, partly by money. "My efforts," he himself admitted, "were not
always without success; yet I must avow that the fear of the dragoons,
and of their being quartered in the houses of the heretics,
contributed much more to their conversion than anything that I did."
The same course was followed throughout the Cevennes. It would be a
simple record of cruelty to describe in detail the military
proceedings there: the dispersion of meetings; the hanging of persons
found attending them; the breaking upon the wheel of the pastors
captured, amidst horrible tortures; the destruction of dwellings and
of the household goods which they contained. But let us take the
single instance of Homel, formerly pastor of the church at Soyon.
Homel was taken prisoner, and found guilty of preaching to his flock
after his temple had been destroyed. For this offence he was sentenced
to be broken to death upon the wheel. To receive this punishment he
was conducted to Tournon, in Viverais, where the Jesuits had a
college. He first received forty blows of the iron bar, after which he
was left to languish with his bones broken, for forty hours, until he
died. During his torments, he said: "I count myself happy that I can
die in my Master's service. What! did my glorious Redeemer descend
from heaven and suffer an ignominious death for my salvation, and
shall I, to prolong a miserable life, deny my blessed Saviour and
abandon his people?" While his bones were being broken on the wheel,
he said to his wife: "Farewell, once more, my beloved spouse! Though
you witness my bones broken to shivers, yet is my soul filled with
inexpressible joy." After life was finally extinct, his heart was
taken to Chalencon to be publicly exhibited, and his body was exposed
in like manner at Beauchatel.
De Noailles, the governor, when referring in one of his dispatches to
the heroism displayed by the tortured prisoners, said: "These wretches
go to the wheel with the firm assurance of dying martyrs, and ask no
other favour than that of dying quickly. They request pardon of the
soldiers, but there is not one of them that will ask pardon of the
King."
To return to Claude Brousson. After his eloquent defence of the
Huguenots of Montauban--the result of which, of course, was that the
church was ordered to be demolished--and the institution of processes
for the demolition of fourteen more Protestant temples, Brousson at
last became aware that the fury of the Catholics and the King was not
to be satisfied until they had utterly crushed the religion which he
served.
Brousson was repeatedly offered the office of counsellor of
Parliament, equivalent to the office of judge, if he would prove an
apostate; but the conscience of Brousson was not one that could be
bought. He also found that his office of defender of the doomed
Huguenots could not be maintained without personal danger, whilst (as
events proved) his defence was of no avail to them; and he resolved,
with much regret, to give up his profession for a time, and retire for
safety and rest to his native town of Nismes.
He resided there, however, only about four months. Saint-Ruth and De
Noailles were now overawing Upper Languedoc with their troops. The
Protestants of Nismes had taken no part in "The Project;" their
remaining temple was still open. But they got up a respectful petition
to the King, imploring his consideration of their case. Roman
Catholics and Protestants, they said, had so many interests in common,
that the ruin of the one must have the effect of ruining the
other,--the flourishing manufactures of the province, which were
mostly followed by the Protestants, being now rapidly proceeding to
ruin. They, therefore, implored his Majesty to grant them permission
to prosecute their employments unmolested on account of their
religious profession; and lastly, they conjured the King, by his
piety, by his paternal clemency, and by every law of equity, to grant
them freedom of religious worship.
It was of no use. The hearts of the King, his clergy, and his
ministers, were all hardened against them. A copy of the above
petition was presented by two ministers of Nismes and several
influential gentlemen of Lower Languedoc to the Duke de Noailles, the
governor of the province. He treated the deputation with contempt, and
their petition with scorn. Writing to Louvois, the King's prime
minister, De Noailles said: "Astonished at the effrontery of these
wretched persons, I did not hesitate to send them all prisoners to the
Citadel of St. Esprit (in the Cevennes), telling them that if there
had been _petites maisons_[25] enough in Languedoc I should not have
sent them there."
[Footnote 25: The prisons of Languedoc were already crowded
with Protestants, and hundreds had been sent to the galleys
at Marseilles.]
Nismes was now placed under the same ban as Vivarais, and denounced as
"insurrectionary." To quell the pretended revolt, as well as to
capture certain persons who were supposed to have been accessory to
the framing of the petition, a detachment of four hundred dragoons was
ordered into the place. One of those to be apprehended was Claude
Brousson. Hundreds of persons knew of his abode in the city, but
notwithstanding the public proclamation (which he himself heard from
the window of the house where he was staying), and the reward offered
for his apprehension, no one attempted to betray him.
After remaining in the city for three days, he adopted a disguised
dress, passed out of the Crown Gate, and in the course of a few days
found a safe retreat in Switzerland.
Peyrol and Icard, two of the Protestant ministers whom the dragoons
were ordered to apprehend, also escaped into Switzerland, Peyrol
settling at Lausanne, and Icard becoming the minister of a Huguenot
church in Holland. But although the ministers had escaped, all the
property they had left behind them was confiscated to the Crown.
Hideous effigies of them were prepared and hung on gibbets in the
market-place of Nismes by the public executioner, the magistrates and
dragoons attending the sham proceeding with the usual ceremony.
At Lausanne, where Claude Brousson settled for a time, he first
attempted to occupy himself as a lawyer; but this he shortly gave up
to devote himself to the help of the persecuted Huguenots. Like Jurieu
and others in Holland, who flooded Europe with accounts of the hideous
cruelties of Louis XIV. and his myrmidons the clergy and dragoons, he
composed and published a work, addressed to the Roman Catholic party
as well as to the Protestants of all countries, entitled, "The State
of the Reformed Church of France." He afterwards composed a series of
letters specially addressed to the Roman Catholic clergy of France.
But expostulation was of no use. With each succeeding year the
persecution became more bitter, until at length, in 1685, the Edict
was revoked. In September of that year Brousson learnt that the
Protestant church of his native city had been suppressed, and their
temple given over to a society of female converters; that the wives
and daughters of the Protestants who refused to abjure their faith had
been seized and imprisoned in nunneries and religious seminaries; and
that three hundred of their husbands and fathers were chained together
and sent off in one day for confinement in the galleys at Marseilles.
The number of Huguenots resorting to Switzerland being so great,[26]
and they often came so destitute, that a committee was formed at
Lausanne to assist the emigrants, and facilitate their settlement in
the canton, or enable them to proceed elsewhere. Brousson was from the
first an energetic member of this committee. Part of their work was to
visit the Protestant states of the north, and find out places to which
the emigrants might be forwarded, as well as to collect subscriptions
for their conveyance.
[Footnote 26: Within about three weeks no fewer than
seventeen thousand five hundred French emigrants passed into
Lausanne. Two hundred Protestant ministers fled to
Switzerland, the greater number of whom settled in Lausanne,
until they could journey elsewhere.]
In November 1685, a month after the Revocation, Brousson and La Porte
set out for Berlin with this object. La Porte was one of the ministers
of the Cevennes, who had fled before a sentence of death pronounced
against him for having been concerned in "The Project." At Berlin they
were received very cordially by the Elector of Brandenburg, who had
already given great assistance to the Huguenot emigrants, and
expressed himself as willing to do all that he could for their
protection. Brousson and La Porte here met the Rev. David Ancillon,
who had been for thirty-three years pastor at Metz,[27] and was now
pastor of the Elector at Berlin; Gaultier, banished from Montpellier;
and Abbadie, banished from Saumur--all ministers of the Huguenot
Church there; with a large number of banished ministers and emigrant
Protestants from all the provinces of France.
[Footnote 27: Ancillon was an eminently learned man. His
library was one of the choicest that had ever been collected,
and on his expulsion from Metz it was pillaged by the
Jesuits. Metz, now part of German Lorraine, was probably not
so ferociously dragooned as other places. Yet the inhabitants
were under the apprehension that the massacre of St.
Bartholomew was about to be repeated upon them on Christmas
Day, 1685, the soldiers of the garrison having been kept
under arms all night. The Protestant churches were all pulled
down, the ministers were expelled, and many of their people
followed them into Germany. There were numerous Protestant
soldiers in the Metz garrison, and the order of the King was
that, like the rest of his subjects, they should become
converted. Many of the officers resigned and entered the
service of William of Orange, and many of the soldiers
deserted. The bribe offered for the conversion of privates
was as follows: Common soldiers and dragoons, two pistoles
per head; troopers, three pistoles per head. The Protestants
of Alsace were differently treated. They constituted a
majority of the population; Alsace and Strasbourg having only
recently been seized by Louis XIV. It was therefore necessary
to be cautious in that quarter; for violence would speedily
have raised a revolution in the province which would have
driven them over to Germany, whose language they spoke.
Louvois could therefore only proceed by bribing; and he was
successful in buying over some of the most popular and
influential men.]
The Elector suggested to Brousson that while at Berlin he should
compose a summary account of the condition of the French Protestants,
such as should excite the interest and evoke the help of the
Protestant rulers and people of the northern States. This was done by
Brousson, and the volume was published, entitled "Letters of the
Protestants of France who have abandoned all for the cause of the
Gospel, to other Protestants; with a particular Letter addressed to
Protestant Kings, Electors, Rulers, and Magistrates." The Elector
circulated this volume, accompanying it with a letter written in his
name, to all the princes of the Continent professing the Augsburg
Confession; and it was thus mainly owing to the Elector's intercession
that the Huguenots obtained the privilege of establishing
congregations in several of the states of Germany, as well as in
Sweden and Denmark.
Brousson remained nearly five months at Berlin, after which he
departed for Holland to note the progress of the emigration in that
country, and there he met a large number of his countrymen. Nearly two
hundred and fifty Huguenot ministers had taken refuge in Holland;
there were many merchants and manufacturers who had set up their
branches of industry in the country; and there were many soldiers who
had entered the service of William of Orange. While in Holland,
Brousson resided principally with his brother, a banished Huguenot,
who had settled at Amsterdam as a merchant.
Having accomplished all that he could for his Huguenot brethren in
exile, Brousson returned to Lausanne, where he continued his former
labours. He bethought him very much of the Protestants still remaining
in France, wandering like sheep without shepherds, deprived of
guidance, books, and worship--the prey of ravenous wolves,--and it
occurred to him whether the Protestant pastors had done right in
leaving their flocks, even though by so doing they had secured the
safety of their own lives. Accordingly, in 1686, he wrote and
published a "Letter to the Pastors of France at present in Protestant
States, concerning the Desolation of their own Churches, and their own
Exile."
In this letter he says:--"If, instead of retiring before your
persecutors, you had remained in the country; if you had taken refuge
in forests and caverns; if you had gone from place to place, risking
your lives to instruct and rally the people, until the first shock of
the enemy was past; and had you even courageously exposed yourselves
to martyrdom--as in fact those have done who have endeavoured to
perform your duties in your absence--perhaps the examples of
constancy, or zeal, or of piety you had discovered, might have
animated your flocks, revived their courage, and arrested the fury of
your enemies." He accordingly exhorted the Protestant ministers who
had left France to return to their flocks at all hazards.
This advice, if acted on, was virtually condemning the pastors to
death. Brousson was not a pastor. Would _he_ like to return to France
at the daily risk of the rack and the gibbet? The Protestant ministers
in exile defended themselves. Benoit, then residing in Germany,
replied in a "History and Apology for the Retreat of the Pastors."
Another, who did not give his name, treated Brousson's censure as that
of a fanatic, who meddled with matters beyond his vocation. "You who
condemn the pastors for not returning to France at the risk of their
lives," said he, "_why do you not first return to France yourself?_"
Brousson was as brave as his words. He was not a pastor, but he might
return to the deserted flocks, and encourage and comfort them. He
could no longer be happy in his exile at Lausanne. He heard by night
the groans of the prisoners in the Tower of Constance, and the noise
of the chains borne by the galley slaves at Toulon and Marseilles. He
reproached himself as if it were a crime with the repose which he
enjoyed. Life became insupportable to him and he fell ill. His health
was even despaired of; but one day he suddenly rose up and said to his
wife, "I must set out; I will go to console, to relieve, to strengthen
my brethren, groaning under their oppressions."
His wife threw herself at his feet. "Thou wouldst go to certain
death," she said; "think of me and thy little children." She implored
him again and again to remain. He loved his wife and children, but he
thought a higher duty called him away from them. When his friends told
him that he would be taken prisoner and hung, he said, "When God
permits his servants to die for the Gospel, they preach louder from
the grave than they did during life." He remained unshaken. He would
go to the help of the oppressed with the love of a brother, the faith
of an apostle, and the courage of a martyr.
Brousson knew the danger of the office he was about to undertake.
There had, as we have seen, been numerous attempts made to gather the
Protestant people together, and to administer consolation to them by
public prayers and preaching. The persons who conducted these services
were not regular pastors, but only private members of their former
churches. Some of them were very young men, and they were nearly all
uneducated as regards clerical instruction. One of the most successful
was Isaac Vidal, a lame young man, a mechanic of Colognac, near St.
Hypolite, in the Cevennes. His self-imposed ministrations were
attended by large numbers of people. He preached for only six months
and then died--a natural death, for nearly all who followed him were
first tortured and then hung.
We have already referred to Fulcran Rey, who preached for about nine
months, and was then executed. In the same year were executed
Meyrueis, by trade a wool-carder, and Rocher, who had been a reader in
one of the Protestant churches. Emanuel Dalgues, a respectable
inhabitant of Salle, in the Cevennes, also received the crown of
martyrdom. Ever since the Revocation of the Edict, he had proclaimed
the Gospel o'er hill and dale, in woods and caverns, to assemblies of
the people wherever he could collect them. He was executed in 1687.
Three other persons--Gransille, Mercier, and Esclopier--who devoted
themselves to preaching, were transported as slaves to America; and
David Mazel, a boy twelve years of age, who had a wonderful memory,
and preached sermons which he had learned by heart, was transported,
with his father and other frequenters of the assemblies, to the
Carribee Islands.
At length Brousson collected about him a number of Huguenots willing
to return with him into France, in order to collect the Protestant
people together again, to pray with them, and even to preach to them
if the opportunity occurred. Brousson's companions were these: Francis
Vivens, formerly a schoolmaster in the Cevennes; Anthony Bertezene, a
carpenter, brother of a preacher who had recently been condemned to
death; and seven other persons named Papus, La Pierre, Serein,
Dombres, Poutant, Boisson, and M. de Bruc, an aged minister, who had
been formerly pastor of one of the churches in the Cevennes. They
prepared to enter France in four distinct companies, in the month of
July, 1689.
CHAPTER IV.
CLAUDE BROUSSON, PASTOR AND MARTYR.
Brousson left Lausanne on the 22nd of July, accompanied by his dear
friend, the Rev. M. de Bruc. The other members of the party had
preceded them, crossing the frontier at different places. They all
arrived in safety at their destination, which was in the mountain
district of the Cevennes. They resorted to the neighbourhood of the
Aigoual, the centre of a very inaccessible region--wild, cold, but
full of recesses for hiding and worship. It was also a district
surrounded by villages, the inhabitants of which were for the most
part Protestant.
The party soon became diminished in number. The old pastor, De Bruc,
found himself unequal to the fatigue and privations attending the
work. He was ill and unable to travel, and was accordingly advised by
his companions to quit the service and withdraw from the country.
Persecution also destroyed some of them. When it became known that
assemblies for religious observances were again on foot, an increased
force of soldiers was sent into the district, and a high price was set
on the heads of all the preachers that could be apprehended. The
soldiers scoured the country, and, helped by the paid spies, they
shortly succeeded in apprehending Boisson and Dombres, at St. Paul's,
north of Anduze, in the Cevennes. They were both executed at Nismes,
being first subjected to torture on the rack, by which their limbs
were entirely dislocated. They were then conveyed to the place of
execution, praying and singing psalms on the way, and finished their
course with courage and joy.
When Brousson first went into the Cevennes, he did not undertake to
preach to the people. He was too modest to assume the position of a
pastor; he merely undertook, as occasion required, to read the
Scriptures in Protestant families and in small companies, making his
remarks and exhortations thereupon. He also transcribed portions of
his own meditations on the Scriptures, and gave them away for
distribution from hand to hand amongst the people.
When it was found that his instructions were much appreciated, and
that numbers of people assembled to hear him read and exhort, he was
strongly urged to undertake the office of public instructor amongst
them, especially as their ministers were being constantly diminished
by execution.
He had been about five months in the Cevennes, and was detained by a
fall of snow on one of the mountains, where his abode was a sheepcote,
when the proposal that he should become a preacher was first made to
him. Vivens was one of those who most strongly supported the appeal
made to Brousson. He spent many hours in private prayer, seeking the
approval of God for the course he was about to undertake. Vivens also
prayed in the several assemblies that Brousson might be confirmed, and
that God would be pleased to pour upon him his Holy Spirit, and
strengthen him so that he might become a faithful and successful
labourer in this great calling.
Brousson at length consented, believing that duty and conscience alike
called upon him to give the best of his help to the oppressed and
persecuted Protestants of the mountains. "Brethren," he said to them,
when they called upon him to administer to them the Holy Sacrament of
the Eucharist--"Brethren, I look above you, and hear the most High God
calling me through your mouths to this most responsible and sacred
office; and I dare not be disobedient to his heavenly call. By the
grace of God I will comply with your pious desires; dedicate and
devote myself to the work of the ministry, and spend the remainder of
my life in unwearied pains and endeavours for promoting God's glory,
and the consolation of precious souls."
Brousson received his call to the ministry in the Cevennes amidst the
sound of musketry and grapeshot which spread death among the ranks of
his brethren. He was continuously tracked by the spies of the Jesuits,
who sought his apprehension and death; and he was hunted from place to
place by the troops of the King, who followed him in his wanderings
into the most wild and inaccessible places.
The perilous character of his new profession was exhibited only a few
days after his ordination, by the apprehension of Olivier Souverain at
St. Jean de Gardonenque, for preaching the Gospel to the assemblies.
He was at once conducted to Montpellier and executed on the 15th of
January, 1690.
During the same year, Dumas, another preacher in the Cevennes, was
apprehended and fastened by the troopers across a horse in order to be
carried to Montpellier. His bowels were so injured and his body so
crushed by this horrible method of conveyance, that Dumas died before
he was half way to the customary place of martyrdom.
Then followed the execution of David Quoite, a wandering and hunted
pastor in the Cevennes for several years. He was broken on the wheel
at Montpellier, and then hanged. "The punishment," said Louvreleuil,
his tormentor, "which broke his bones, did not break his hardened
heart: he died in his heresy." After Quoite, M. Bonnemere, a native of
the same city, was also tortured and executed in like manner on the
Peyrou.
All these persons were taken, executed, destroyed, or imprisoned,
during the first year that Brousson commenced his perilous ministry in
the Cevennes.
About the same time three women, who had gone about instructing the
families of the destitute Protestants, reading the Scriptures and
praying with them, were apprehended by Baville, the King's intendant,
and punished. Isabeau Redothiere, eighteen years of age, and Marie
Lintarde, about a year younger, both the daughters of peasants, were
taken before Baville at Nismes.
"What! are you one of the preachers, forsooth?" said he to Redothiere.
"Sir," she replied, "I have exhorted my brethren to be mindful of
their duty towards God, and when occasion offered, I have sought God
in prayer for them; and, if your lordship calls that preaching, I have
been a preacher." "But," said the Intendant, "you know that the King
has forbidden this." "Yes, my lord," she replied, "I know it very
well, but the King of kings, the God of heaven and earth, He hath
commanded it." "You deserve death," replied Baville.
But the Intendant awarded her a severer fate. She was condemned to be
imprisoned for life in the Tower of Constance, a place echoing with
the groans of women, most of whom were in chains, perpetually
imprisoned there for worshipping God according to conscience.
Lintarde was in like manner condemned to imprisonment for life in the
castle of Sommieres, and it is believed she died there. Nothing,
however, is known of the time when she died. When a woman was taken
and imprisoned in one of the King's torture-houses, she was given up
by her friends as lost.
A third woman, taken at the same time, was more mercifully dealt with.
Anne Montjoye was found assisting at one of the secret assemblies. She
was solicited in vain to abjure her faith, and being condemned to
death, was publicly executed.
Shortly after his ordination, Brousson descended from the Upper
Cevennes, where the hunt for Protestants was becoming very hot, into
the adjacent valleys and plains. There it was necessary for him to be
exceedingly cautious. The number of dragoons in Languedoc had been
increased so as to enable them regularly to patrol the entire
province, and a price had been set upon Brousson's head, which was
calculated to quicken their search for the flying pastor.
Brousson was usually kept informed by his Huguenot friends of the
direction taken by the dragoons in their patrols, and hasty assemblies
were summoned in their absence. The meetings were held in some secret
place--some cavern or recess in the rocks. Often they were held at
night, when a few lanterns were hung on the adjacent trees to give
light. Sentinels were set in the neighbourhood, and all the adjoining
roads were watched. After the meeting was over the assemblage
dispersed in different directions, and Brousson immediately left for
another district, travelling mostly by night, so as to avoid
detection. In this manner he usually presided at three or four
assemblies each week, besides two on the Sabbath day--one early in the
morning and another at night.
At one of his meetings, held at Boucoiran on the Gardon, about half
way between Nismes and Anduze, a Protestant nobleman--a _nouveau
convertis_, who had abjured his religion to retain his estates--was
present, and stood near the preacher during the service. One of the
Government spies was present, and gave information. The name of the
Protestant nobleman was not known. But the Intendant, to strike terror
into others, seized six of the principal landed proprietors in the
neighbourhood--though some of them had never attended any of the
assemblies since the Revocation--and sent two of them to the galleys,
and the four others to imprisonment for life at Lyons, besides
confiscating the estates of the whole to the Crown.
Brousson now felt that he was bringing his friends into very great
trouble, and, out of consideration for them, he began to think of
again leaving France. The dragoons were practising much cruelty on the
Protestant population, being quartered in their houses, and at liberty
to plunder and extort money to any extent. They were also incessantly
on the look out for the assemblies, being often led by mounted priests
and spies to places where they had been informed that meetings were
about to be held. Their principal object, besides hanging the persons
found attending, was to seize the preachers, more especially Brousson
and Vivens, believing that the country would be more effectually
"converted," provided they could be seized and got out of the way.
Brousson, knowing that he might be seized and taken prisoner at any
moment, had long considered whether he ought to resist the attempts
made to capture him. He had at first carried a sword, but at length
ceased to wear it, being resolved entirely to cast himself on
Providence; and he also instructed all who resorted to his meetings to
come to them unarmed.
In this respect Brousson differed from Vivens, who thought it right to
resist force by force; and in the event of any attempt being made to
capture him, he considered it expedient to be constantly provided with
arms. Yet he had only once occasion to use them, and it was the first
and last time. The reward of ten thousand livres being now offered for
the apprehension of Brousson and Vivens, or five thousand for either,
an active search was made throughout the province. At length the
Government found themselves on the track of Vivens. One of his known
followers, Valderon, having been apprehended and put upon the rack,
was driven by torture to reveal his place of concealment. A party of
soldiers went in pursuit, and found Vivens with three other persons,
concealed in a cave in the neighbourhood of Alais.
Vivens was engaged in prayer when the soldiers came upon him. His hand
was on his gun in a moment. When asked to surrender he replied with a
shot, not knowing the number of his opponents. He followed up with two
other shots, killing a man each time, and then exposing himself, he
was struck by a volley, and fell dead. The three other persons in the
cave being in a position to hold the soldiers at defiance for some
time, were promised their lives if they would surrender. They did so,
and with the utter want of truth, loyalty, and manliness that
characterized the persecutors, the promise was belied, and the three
prisoners were hanged, a few days after, at Alais. Vivens' body was
taken to the same place. The Intendant sat in judgment upon it, and
condemned it to be drawn through the streets upon a hurdle and then
burnt to ashes.
Brousson was becoming exhausted by the fatigues and privations he had
encountered during his two years' wanderings and preachings in the
Cevennes; and he not only desired to give the people a relaxation from
their persecution, but to give himself some absolutely necessary rest.
He accordingly proceeded to Nismes, his birthplace, where many people
knew him; and where, if they betrayed him, they might easily have
earned five thousand livres. But so much faith was kept by the
Protestants amongst one another, that Brousson felt that his life was
quite as safe amongst his townspeople as it had been during the last
two years amongst the mountaineers of the Cevennes.
It soon became known to the priests, and then to the Intendant, that
Brousson was resident in concealment at Nismes; and great efforts were
accordingly made for his apprehension. During the search, a letter of
Brousson's was found in the possession of M. Guion, an aged minister,
who had returned from Switzerland to resume his ministry, according as
he might find it practicable. The result of this discovery was, that
Guion was apprehended, taken before the Intendant, condemned to be
executed, and sent to Montpellier, where he gave up his life at
seventy years old--the drums beating, as usual, that nobody might hear
his last words. The house in which Guion had been taken at Nismes was
ordered to be razed to the ground, in punishment of the owner who had
given him shelter.
After spending about a month at Nismes, Brousson was urged by his
friends to quit the city. He accordingly succeeded in passing through
the gates, and went to resume his former work. His first assembly was
held in a commodious place on the Gardon, between Valence, Brignon,
and St. Maurice, about ten miles distant from Nismes. Although he had
requested that only the Protestants in the immediate neighbourhood
should attend the meeting, so as not to excite the apprehensions of
the authorities, yet a multitude of persons came from Uzes and Nismes,
augmented by accessions from upwards of thirty villages. The service
was commenced about ten o'clock, and was not completed until midnight.
The concourse of persons from all quarters had been so great that the
soldiers could not fail to be informed of it. Accordingly they rode
towards the place of assemblage late at night, but they did not arrive
until the meeting had been dissolved. One troop of soldiers took
ambush in a wood through which the worshippers would return on their
way back to Uzes. The command had been given to "draw blood from the
conventicles." On the approach of the people the soldiers fired, and
killed and wounded several. About forty others wore taken prisoners.
The men were sent to the galleys for life, and the women were thrown
into gaol at Carcassone--the Tower of Constance being then too full of
prisoners.
After this event, the Government became more anxious in their desire
to capture Brousson. They published far and wide their renewed offer
of reward for his apprehension. They sent six fresh companies of
soldiers specially to track him, and examine the woods and search the
caves between Uzes and Alais. But Brousson's friends took care to
advise him of the approach of danger, and he sped away to take shelter
in another quarter. The soldiers were, however, close upon his heels;
and one morning, in attempting to enter a village for the purpose of
drying himself--having been exposed to the winter's rain and cold all
night--he suddenly came upon a detachment of soldiers! He avoided them
by taking shelter in a thicket, and while there, he observed another
detachment pass in file, close to where he was concealed. The soldiers
were divided into four parties, and sent out to search in different
directions, one of them proceeding to search every house in the
village into which Brousson had just been about to enter.
The next assembly was held at Sommieres, about eight miles west of
Nismes. The soldiers were too late to disperse the meeting, but they
watched some of the people on their return. One of these, an old
woman, who had been observed to leave the place, was shot on entering
her cottage; and the soldier, observing that she was attempting to
rise, raised the butt end of his gun and brained her on the spot.
The hunted pastors of the Cevennes were falling off one by one.
Bernard Saint Paul, a young man, who had for some time exercised the
office of preacher, was executed in 1692. One of the brothers Du Plans
was executed in the same year, having been offered his life if he
would conform to the Catholic religion. In the following year Paul
Colognac was executed, after being broken to death on the wheel at
Masselargais, near to which he had held his last assembly. His arms,
thighs, legs, and feet were severally broken with the iron bar some
hours before the _coup de grace_, or deathblow, was inflicted.
Colognac endured his sufferings with heroic fortitude. He was only
twenty-four. He had commenced to preach at twenty, and laboured at the
work for only four years.
Brousson's health was fast giving way. Every place that he frequented
was closely watched, so that he had often to spend the night under the
hollow of a rock, or under the shelter of a wood, exposed to rain and
snow,--and sometimes he had even to contend with a wolf for the
shelter of a cave. Often he was almost perishing for want of food; and
often he found himself nearly ready to die for want of rest. And yet,
even in the midst of his greatest perils, his constant thought was of
the people committed to him, and for whose eternal happiness he
continued to work.
As he could not visit all who wished to hear him, he wrote out sermons
that might be read to them. His friend Henry Poutant, one of those who
originally accompanied him from Switzerland and had not yet been taken
prisoner by the soldiers, went about holding meetings for prayer, and
reading to the people the sermons prepared for them by Brousson.
For the purpose of writing out his sermons, Brousson carried about
with him a small board, which he called his "Wilderness Table." With
this placed upon his knees, he wrote the sermons, for the most part in
woods and caves. He copied out seventeen of these sermons, which he
sent to Louis XIV., to show him that what "he preached in the deserts
contained nothing but the pure word of God, and that he only exhorted
the people to obey God and to give glory to Him."
The sermons were afterwards published at Amsterdam, in 1695, under
the title of "The Mystic Manna of the Desert." One would have expected
that, under the bitter persecutions which Brousson had suffered during
so many years, they would have been full of denunciation; on the
contrary, they were only full of love. His words were only burning
when he censured his hearers for not remaining faithful to their
Church and to their God.
At length, the fury of Brousson's enemies so increased, and his health
was so much impaired, that he again thought of leaving France. His
lungs were so much injured by constant exposure to cold, and his voice
had become so much impaired, that he could not preach. He also heard
that his family, whom he had left at Lausanne, required his
assistance. His only son was growing up, and needed education. Perhaps
Brousson had too long neglected those of his own household; though he
had every confidence in the prudence and thoughtfulness of his wife.
Accordingly, about the end of 1693, Brousson made arrangements for
leaving the Cevennes. He set out in the beginning of December, and
arrived at Lausanne about a fortnight later, having been engaged on
his extraordinary mission of duty and peril for four years and five
months. He was received like one rescued from the dead. His health was
so injured, that his wife could scarcely recognise her husband in that
wan, wasted, and weatherbeaten creature who stood before her. In fact,
he was a perfect wreck.
He remained about fifteen months in Switzerland, during which he
preached in the Huguenots' church; wrote out many of his pastoral
letters and sermons; and, when his health had become restored, he
again proceeded on his travels into foreign countries. He first went
into Holland. He had scarcely arrived there, when intelligence reached
him from Montpellier of the execution, after barbarous torments, of
his friend Papus,--one of those who had accompanied him into the
Cevennes to preach the Gospel some six years before. There were now
very few of the original company left.
On hearing of the martyrdom of Papus, Brousson, in a pastoral letter
which he addressed to his followers, said: "He must have died some
day; and as he could not have prolonged his life beyond the term
appointed, how could his end have been more happy and more glorious?
His constancy, his sweetness of temper, his patience, his humility,
his faith, his hope, and his piety, affected even his judges and the
false pastors who endeavoured to seduce him, as also the soldiers and
all that witnessed his execution. He could not have preached better
than he did by his martyrdom; and I doubt not that his death, will
produce abundance of fruit."
While in Holland, Brousson took the opportunity of having his sermons
and many of his pastoral letters printed at Amsterdam; after which he
proceeded to make a visit to his banished Huguenot friends in England.
He also wished to ascertain from personal inquiry the advisability of
forwarding an increased number of French emigrants--then resident in
Switzerland--for settlement in this country. In London, he met many of
his friends from the South of France--for there were settled there as
ministers, Graverol of Nismes, Satur of Montauban, four ministers from
Montpellier for whom he had pleaded in the courts at Toulouse--the two
Dubourdieus and the two Berthaus--fathers and sons. There were also La
Coux from Castres, De Joux from Lyons, Roussillon from Montredon,
Mestayer from St. Quentin, all settled in London as ministers of
Huguenot churches.
After staying in England for only about a month, Brousson was suddenly
recalled to Holland to assume the office to which he was appointed
without solicitation, of preacher to the Walloon church at the Hague.
Though his office was easy--for he had several colleagues to assist
him in the duties--and the salary was abundant for his purposes, while
he was living in the society of his wife and family--Brousson
nevertheless very soon began to be ill at ease. He still thought of
the abandoned Huguenots "in the Desert"; without teachers, without
pastors, without spiritual help of any kind. When he had undertaken
the work of the ministry, he had vowed that he would devote his time
and talents to the support and help of the afflicted Church; and now
he was living at ease in a foreign country, far removed from those to
whom he considered his services belonged. These thoughts were
constantly recurring and pressing upon his mind; and at length he
ceased to have any rest or satisfaction in his new position.
Accordingly, after only about four months' connection with the Church
at the Hague, Brousson decided to relinquish the charge, and to devote
himself to the service of the oppressed and afflicted members of his
native Church in France. The Dutch Government, however, having been
informed of his perilous and self-sacrificing intention, agreed to
continue his salary as a pastor of the Walloon Church, and to pay it
to his wife, who henceforth abode at the Hague.
Brousson determined to enter France from the north, and to visit
districts that were entirely new to him. For this purpose he put
himself in charge of a guide. At that time, while the Protestants
were flying from France, as they continued to do for many years, there
were numerous persons who acted as guides for those not only flying
from, but entering the country. Those who guided Protestant pastors on
their concealed visits to France, were men of great zeal and
courage--known to be faithful and self-denying--and thoroughly
acquainted with the country. They knew all the woods, and fords, and
caves, and places of natural shelter along the route. They made the
itinerary of the mountains and precipices, of the byways and deserts,
their study. They also knew of the dwellings of the faithful in the
towns and villages where Huguenots might find relief and shelter for
the night. They studied the disguises to be assumed, and were prepared
with a stock of phrases and answers adapted for every class of
inquiries.
The guide employed by Brousson was one James Bruman--an old Huguenot
merchant, banished at the Revocation, and now employed in escorting
Huguenot preachers back to France, and escorting flying Huguenot men,
women, and children from it.[28] The pastor and his guide started
about the end of August, 1695. They proceeded by way of Liege; and
travelling south, they crossed the forest of Ardennes, and entered
France near Sedan.
[Footnote 28: Many of these extraordinary escapes are given
in the author's "Huguenots: their Settlements, Churches, and
Industries, in England and Ireland."]
Sedan, recently the scene of one of the greatest calamities that has
ever befallen France, was, about two centuries ago, a very prosperous
place. It was the seat of a great amount of Protestant learning and
Protestant industry. One of the four principal Huguenot academies of
France was situated in that town. It was suppressed in 1681, shortly
before the Revocation, and its professors, Bayle, Abbadie, Basnage,
Brazy, and Jurieu, expelled the country. The academy buildings
themselves had been given over to the Jesuits--the sworn enemies of
the Huguenots.
At the same time, Sedan had been the seat of great woollen
manufactures, originally founded by Flemish Protestant families, and
for the manufacture of arms, implements of husbandry, and all kinds of
steel and iron articles.[29] At the Revocation, the Protestants packed
up their tools and property, suddenly escaped across the frontier,
near which they were, and went and established themselves in the Low
Countries, where they might pursue their industries in safety. Sedan
was ruined, and remained so until our own day, when it has begun to
experience a little prosperity from the tourists desirous of seeing
the place where the great French Army surrendered.
[Footnote 29: There were from eighty to ninety establishments
for the manufacture of broadcloth in Sedan, giving employment
to more than two thousand persons. These, together with the
iron and steel manufactures, were entirely ruined at the
Revocation, when the whole of the Protestant mechanics went
into exile, and settled for the most part in Holland and
England.]
When Brousson visited the place, the remaining Protestants resided
chiefly in the suburban villages of Givonne and Daigny. He visited
them in their families, and also held several private meetings, after
which he was induced to preach in a secluded place near Sedan at
night.
This assembly, however, was reported to the authorities, who
immediately proceeded to make search for the heretic preacher. A party
of soldiers, informed by the spies, next morning invested the house in
which Brousson slept. They first apprehended Bruman, the guide, and
thought that in him they had secured the pastor. They next rummaged
the house, in order to find the preacher's books. But Brousson,
hearing them coming in, hid himself behind the door, which, being
small, hardly concealed his person.
After setting a guard all round the house, ransacking every room in
it, and turning everything upside down, they left it; but two of the
children, seeing Brousson's feet under the door, one of them ran after
the officer of the party, and exclaimed to him, pointing back, "Here,
sir, here!" But the officer, not understanding what the child meant,
went away with his soldiers, and Brousson's life was, for the time,
saved.
The same evening, Brousson changed his disguise to that of a
wool-comber, and carrying a parcel on his shoulder, he set out on the
same evening with another guide. He visited many places in which
Protestants were to be found--in Champagne, Picardy, Normandy,
Nevernois, and Burgundy. He also visited several of his friends in the
neighbourhood of Paris.
We have not many details of his perils and experiences during his
journey. But the following passage is extracted from a letter
addressed by him to a friend in Holland: "I assure you that in every
place through which I passed, I witnessed the poor people truly
repenting their fault (_i.e._ of having gone to Mass), weeping day and
night, and imploring the grace and consolations of the Gospel in their
distress. Their persecutors daily oppress them, and burden them with
taxes and imposts; but the more discerning of the Roman Catholics
acknowledge that the cruelties and injustice done towards so many
innocent persons, draw down misery and distress upon the kingdom. And
truly it is to be apprehended that God will abandon its inhabitants to
their wickedness, that he may afterwards pour down his most terrible
judgments upon that ungrateful and vaunting country, which has
rejected his truth and despised the day of visitation."
During the twelve months that Brousson was occupied with his perilous
journey through France, two more of his friends in the Cevennes
suffered martyrdom--La Porte on the 7th of February, 1696, and Henri
Guerin on the 22nd of June following. Both were broken alive on the
wheel before receiving the _coup de grace_.
Towards the close of the year, Brousson arrived at Basle, from whence
he proceeded to visit his friends throughout the cantons of
Switzerland, and then he returned to Holland by way of the Rhine, to
rejoin his family at the Hague.
At that time, the representatives of the Allies were meeting at
Ryswick the representatives of Louis XIV., who was desirous of peace.
Brousson and the French refugee ministers resident in Holland
endeavoured to bring the persecutions of the French Protestants under
the notice of the Conference. But Louis XIV. would not brook this
interference. He proposed going on dealing with the heretics in his
own way. "I do not pretend," he said, "to prescribe to William III.
rules about his subjects, and I expect the same liberty as to my own."
Finding it impossible to obtain redress for his fellow-countrymen
under the treaty of Ryswick, which was shortly after concluded,
Brousson at length prepared to make his third journey into France in
the month of August 1697. He set out greatly to the regret of his
wife, who feared it might be his last journey, as indeed it proved to
be. In a letter which he wrote to console her, from some remote place
where he was snowed up about the middle of the following December, he
said: "I cannot at present enter into the details of the work the
Lord has given me grace to labour in; but it is the source of much
consolation to a large number of his poor people. It will be expedient
that you do not mention where I am, lest I should be traced. It may be
that I cannot for some time write to you; but I walk under the conduct
of my God, and I repeat that I would not for millions of money that
the Lord should refuse me the grace which renders it imperative for me
to labour as I now do in His work."[30]
[Footnote 30: The following was the portraiture of Brousson,
issued to the spies and police: "Brousson is of middle
stature, and rather spare, aged forty to forty-two, nose
large, complexion dark, hair black, hands well formed."]
When the snow had melted sufficiently to enable Brousson to escape
from the district of Dauphiny, near the High Alps, where he had been
concealed, he made his way across the country to the Viverais, where
he laboured for some time. Here he heard of the martyrdom of the third
of the brothers Du Plans, broken on the wheel and executed like the
others on the Peyrou at Montpellier.
During the next nine months, Brousson laboured in the north-eastern
provinces of Languedoc (more particularly in the Cevennes and
Viverais), Orange, and Dauphiny. He excited so much interest amongst
the Protestants, who resorted from a great distance to attend his
assemblies, that the spies (who were usually pretended Protestants)
soon knew of his presence in the neighbourhood, and information was at
once forwarded to the Intendant or his officers.
Persecution was growing very bitter about this time. By orders of the
bishops the Protestants were led by force to Mass before the dragoons
with drawn swords, and the shops of merchants who refused to go to
Mass regularly were ordered to be closed. Their houses were also
filled with soldiers. "The soldiers or militia," said Brousson to a
friend in Holland, "frequently commit horrible ravages, breaking open
the cabinets, removing every article that is saleable, which are often
purchased by the priests at insignificant prices; the rest they burn
and break up, after which the soldiers are removed; and when the
sufferers think themselves restored to peace, fresh billets are
ordered upon them. Many are consequently induced to go to Mass with
weeping and lamentation, but a great number remain inflexible, and
others fly the kingdom."
When it became known that Brousson, in the course of his journeyings,
had arrived, about the end of August, 1698, in the neighbourhood of
Nismes, Baville was greatly mortified; and he at once offered a reward
of six hundred louis d'or for his head. Brousson nevertheless entered
Nismes, and found refuge amongst his friends. He had, however, the
imprudence to post there a petition to the King, signed by his own
hand, which had the effect of at once setting the spies upon his
track. Leaving the city itself, he took refuge in a house not far from
it, whither the spies contrived to trace him, and gave the requisite
information to the Intendant. The house was soon after surrounded by
soldiers, and was itself entered and completely searched.
Brousson's host had only had time to make him descend into a well,
which had a niche in the bottom in which he could conceal himself. The
soldiers looked down the well a dozen times, but could see nothing.
Brousson was not in the house; he was not in the chimneys; he was not
in the outhouses. He _must_ be in the well! A soldier went down the
well to make a personal examination. He was let down close to the
surface of the water, and felt all about. There was nothing! Feeling
awfully cold, and wishing to be taken out, he called to his friends,
"There is nothing here, pull me up." He was pulled up accordingly, and
Brousson was again saved.
The country about Nismes being beset with spies to track the
Protestants and prevent their meetings, Brousson determined to go
westward and visit the scattered people in Rouerge, Pays de Foix, and
Bigorre, proceeding as far as Bearn, where a remnant of Huguenots
still lingered, notwithstanding the repeated dragooning to which the
district had been subjected. It was at Oberon that he fell into the
hands of a spy, who bore the same name as a Protestant friend to whom
his letter was addressed. Information was given to the authorities,
and Brousson was arrested. He made no resistance, and answered at once
to his name.
When the Judas who had betrayed him went to M. Penon, the intendant of
the province, to demand the reward set upon Brousson's head, the
Intendant replied with indignation, "Wretch! don't you blush to look
upon the man in whose blood you traffic? Begone! I cannot bear your
presence!"
Brousson was sent to Pau, where he was imprisoned in the castle of
Foix, at one time the centre of the Reformation movement in the South
of France--where Calvin had preached, where Jeanne d'Albret had lived,
and where Henry IV. had been born.
From Pau, Brousson was sent to Montpellier, escorted by dragoons. At
Toulouse the party took passage by the canal of Languedoc, which had
then been shortly open. At Somail, during the night, Brousson saw that
all the soldiers were asleep. He had but to step on shore to regain
his liberty; but he had promised to the Intendant of Bearn, who had
allowed him to go unfettered, that he would not attempt to escape. At
Agade there was a detachment of a hundred soldiers, ready to convey
the prisoner to Baville, Intendant of Languedoc. He was imprisoned in
the citadel of Montpellier, on the 30th October, 1698.
Baville, who knew much of the character of Brousson--his peacefulness,
his piety, his self-sacrifice, and his noble magnanimity--is said to
have observed on one occasion, "I would not for a world have to judge
that man." And yet the time had now arrived when Brousson was to be
judged and condemned by Baville and the Presidial Court. The trial was
a farce, because it had been predetermined that Brousson should die.
He was charged with preaching in France contrary to the King's
prohibition. This he admitted; but when asked to whom he had
administered the Sacrament, he positively refused to disclose, because
he was neither a traitor nor informer to accuse his brethren. He was
also charged with having conspired to introduce a foreign army into
France under the command of Marshal Schomberg. This he declared to be
absolutely false, for he had throughout his career been a man of
peace, and sought to bring back Christ's followers by peaceful means
only.
His defence was of no avail. He was condemned to be racked, then to be
broken on the wheel, and afterwards to be executed. He received the
sentence without a shudder. He was tied on the rack, but when he
refused to accuse his brethren he was released from it. Attempts were
made by several priests and friars to add him to the number of "new
converts," but these were altogether fruitless. All that remained was
to execute him finally on the public place of execution--the Peyrou.
The Peyrou is the pride of modern Montpellier. It is the favourite
promenade of the place, and is one of the finest in Europe. It
consists of a broad platform elevated high above the rest of the town,
and commanding extensive views of the surrounding country. In clear
weather, Mont Ventoux, one of the Alpine summits, may be seen across
the broad valley of the Rhone on the east, and the peak of Mont
Canizou in the Pyrenees on the west. Northward stretches the mountain
range of the Cevennes, the bold Pic de Saint-Loup the advanced
sentinel of the group; while in the south the prospect is bounded by
the blue line of the Mediterranean.
The Peyrou is now pleasantly laid out in terraced walks and shady
groves, with gay parterres of flowers--the upper platform being
surrounded with a handsome stone balustrade. An equestrian statue of
Louis XIV. occupies the centre of the area; and a triumphal arch
stands at the entrance to the promenade, erected to commemorate the
"glories" of the same monarch, more particularly the Revocation by him
of the Edict of Nantes--one of the entablatures of the arch displaying
a hideous figure, intended to represent a Huguenot, lying trampled
under foot of the "Most Christian King."
The Peyrou was thus laid out and ornamented in the reign of his
successor, Louis XV., "the Well-beloved," during which the same policy
for which Louis XIV. was here glorified by an equestrian statue and a
triumphal arch continued to be persevered in--of imprisoning,
banishing, hanging, or sending to the galleys such of the citizens of
France as were not of "the King's religion."
But during the reign of Louis XIV. himself, the Peyrou was anything
but a pleasure-ground. It was the infamous place of the city--the
_place de Greve_--a desert, barren, blasted table-land, where
sometimes half-a-dozen decaying corpses might be seen swinging from
the gibbets on which they had been hung. It was specially reserved,
because of its infamy, for the execution of heretics against Rome; and
here, accordingly, hundreds of Huguenot martyrs--whom power, honour,
and wealth failed to bribe or to convert--were called upon to seal
their faith with their blood.
Brousson was executed at this place on the 4th of November, 1698. It
was towards evening, while the sun was slowly sinking behind the
western mountains, that an immense multitude assembled on the Peyrou
to witness the martyrdom of the devoted pastor. Not fewer than twenty
thousand persons were there, including the principal nobility of the
city and province, besides many inhabitants of the adjoining mountain
district of the Cevennes, some of whom had come from a great distance
to be present. In the centre of the plateau, near where the equestrian
statue of the great King now stands, was a scaffold, strongly
surrounded by troops to keep off the crowd. Two battalions, drawn up
in two lines facing each other, formed an avenue of bayonets between
the citadel, near at hand, and the place of execution.
A commotion stirred the throng; and the object of the breathless
interest excited shortly appeared in the person of a middle-sized,
middle-aged man, spare, grave, and dignified in appearance, dressed in
the ordinary garb of a pastor, who walked slowly towards the
scaffold, engaged in earnest prayer, his eyes and hands lifted towards
heaven. On mounting the platform, he stood forward to say a few last
words to the people, and give to many of his friends, whom he knew to
be in the crowd, his parting benediction. But his voice was instantly
stifled by the roll of twenty drums, which continued to beat a quick
march until the hideous ceremony was over, and the martyr, Claude
Brousson, had ceased to live.[31]
[Footnote 31: The only favour which Brousson's judges showed
him at death was as regarded the manner of carrying his
sentence into execution. He was condemned to be broken alive
on the wheel, and then strangled; whereas by special favour
the sentence was commuted into strangulation first and the
breaking of his bones afterwards. So that while Brousson's
impassive body remained with his persecutors to be broken,
his pure unconquered spirit mounted in triumph towards
heaven.]
Strange are the vicissitudes of human affairs! Not a hundred years
passed after this event, before the great grandson of the monarch, at
whose instance Brousson had laid down his life, appeared upon a
scaffold in the Place Louis XIV. in Paris, and implored permission to
say his few last words to the people. In vain! His voice was drowned
by the drums of Santerre!
CHAPTER V.
OUTBREAK IN LANGUEDOC.
Although the arbitrary measures of the King were felt all over France,
they nowhere excited more dismay and consternation than in the
province of Languedoc. This province had always been inhabited by a
spirited and energetic people, born lovers of liberty. They were among
the earliest to call in question the despotic authority over mind and
conscience claimed by the see of Rome. The country is sown with the
ashes of martyrs. Long before the execution of Brousson, the Peyrou at
Montpellier had been the Calvary of the South of France.
As early as the twelfth century, the Albigenses, who inhabited the
district, excited the wrath of the Popes. Simple, sincere believers in
the Divine providence, they rejected Rome, and took their stand upon
the individual responsibility of man to God. Count de Foix said to the
legate of Innocent III.: "As to my religion, the Pope has nothing to
do with it. Every man's conscience must be free. My father has always
recommended to me this liberty, and I am content to die for it."
A crusade was waged against the Albigenses, which lasted for a period
of about sixty years. Armies were concentrated upon Languedoc, and
after great slaughter the heretics were supposed to be exterminated.
But enough of the people survived to perpetuate the love of liberty in
their descendants, who continued to exercise a degree of independence
in matters of religion and politics almost unknown in other parts of
France. Languedoc was the principal stronghold of the Huguenots in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; and when, in 1685, Louis XIV.
revoked the Edict of Nantes, which interdicted freedom of worship
under penalty of confiscation, banishment, and death, it is not
surprising that such a policy should have occasioned widespread
consternation, if not hostility and open resistance.
At the period of the Revocation there were, according to the Intendant
of the province, not fewer than 250,000 Protestants in Languedoc, and
these formed the most skilled, industrious, enterprising, and wealthy
portion of the community. They were the best farmers, vine-dressers,
manufacturers, and traders. The valley of Vaunage, lying to the
westward of Nismes, was one of the richest and most highly cultivated
parts of France. It contained more than sixty temples, its population
being almost exclusively Protestant; and it was known as "The Little
Canaan," abounding as it did in corn, and wine, and oil.
The greater part of the commerce of the South of France was conducted
by the Protestant merchants of Nismes, of whom the Intendant wrote to
the King in 1699, "If they are still bad Catholics, at any rate they
have not ceased to be very good traders."
The Marquis d'Aguesseau bore similar testimony to the intelligent
industry of the Huguenot population. "By an unfortunate fatality,"
said he, "in nearly every kind of art the most skilful workmen, as
well as the richest merchants, belong to the pretended reformed
religion."
The Marquis, who governed Languedoc for many years, was further of
opinion that the intelligence of the Protestants was in a great
measure due to the instructions of their pastors. "It is certain,"
said he, "that one of the things which holds the Huguenots to their
religion is the amount of information which they receive from their
instructors, and which it is not thought necessary to give in ours.
The Huguenots _will_ be instructed, and it is a general complaint
amongst the new converts not to find in our religion the same mental
and moral discipline they find in their own."
Baville, the intendant, made an observation to a similar effect in a
confidential communication which he made to the authorities at Paris
in 1697, in which he boasted that the Protestants had now all been
converted, and that there were 198,483 new converts in Languedoc.
"Generally speaking," he said, "the new converts are much better off,
being more laborious and industrious than the old Catholics of the
province. The new converts must not be regarded as Catholics; they
almost all preserve in their heart their attachment to their former
religion. They may confess and communicate as much as you will,
because they are menaced and forced to do so by the secular power. But
this only leads to sacrilege. To gain them, _their hearts must be
won_. It is there that religion resides, and it can only be solely
established by effecting that conquest."
From the number, as well as the wealth and education, of the
Protestants of Languedoc, it is reasonable to suppose that the
emigration from this quarter of France should have been very
considerable during the persecutions which followed the Revocation. Of
course nearly all the pastors fled, death being their punishment if
they remained in France. Hence many of the most celebrated French
preachers in Holland, Germany, and England were pastors banished from
Languedoc. Claude and Saurin both belonged to the province; and among
the London preachers were the Dubourdieus, the Bertheaus, Graverol,
and Pegorier.
It is also interesting to find how many of the distinguished Huguenots
who settled in England came from Languedoc. The Romillys and Layards
came from Montpellier; the Saurins from Nismes; the Gaussens from
Lunel; and the Bosanquets from Caila;[32] besides the Auriols,
Arnauds, Pechels, De Beauvoirs, Durands, Portals, Boileaus, D'Albiacs,
D'Oliers, Rious, and Vignoles, all of whom belonged to the Huguenot
landed gentry of Languedoc, who fled and sacrificed everything rather
than conform to the religion of Louis XIV.
[Footnote 32: There are still Gaussens at St. Mamert, in the
department of Gard; and some of the Bosanquet family must
have remained on their estates or returned to Protestantism,
as we find a Bosanquet of Caila broken alive at Nismes,
because of his religion, on the 7th September, 1702, after
which his corpse was publicly exposed on the Montpellier high
road.]
When Brousson was executed at Montpellier, it was believed that
Protestantism was finally dead. At all events, it was supposed that
those of the Protestants who remained, without becoming converted,
were at length reduced to utter powerlessness. It was not believed
that the smouldering ashes contained any sparks that might yet be
fanned into flames. The Huguenot landed proprietors, the principal
manufacturers, the best of the artisans, had left for other countries.
Protestantism was now entirely without leaders. The very existence of
Protestantism in any form was denied by the law; and it might perhaps
reasonably have been expected that, being thus crushed out of sight,
it would die.
But there still remained another important and vital element--the
common people--the peasants, the small farmers, the artisans, and
labouring classes--persons of slender means, for the most part too
poor to emigrate, and who remained, as it were, rooted to the soil on
which they had been born. This was especially the case in the
Cevennes, where, in many of the communes, almost the entire
inhabitants were Protestants; in others, they formed a large
proportion of the population; while in all the larger towns and
villages they were very numerous, as well as widely spread over the
whole province.
* * * * *
The mountainous district of the Cevennes is the most rugged, broken,
and elevated region in the South of France. It fills the department of
Lozere, as well as the greater part of Gard and Herault. The principal
mountain-chain, about a hundred leagues in length, runs from
north-east to south-west, and may almost be said to unite the Alps
with the Pyrenees. From the centre of France the surface rises with a
gradual slope, forming an inclined plane, which reaches its greatest
height in the Cevennic chain, several of the summits of which are
about five thousand five hundred feet above the sea level. Its
connection with the Alpine range is, however, broken abruptly by the
deep valley of the Rhone, running nearly due north and south.
The whole of this mountain district maybe regarded as a triangular
plateau rising gradually from the northwest, and tilted up at its
south-eastern angle. It is composed for the most part of granite,
overlapped by strata belonging to the Jurassic-system; and in many
places, especially in Auvergne, the granitic rocks have been burst
through by volcanoes, long since extinct, which rise like enormous
protuberances from the higher parts of the platform. Towards the
southern border of the district, the limestone strata overlapping the
granite assume a remarkable development, exhibiting a series of
flat-topped hills bounded by perpendicular cliffs some six or eight
hundred feet high.
"These plateaux," says Mr. Scrope, in his interesting account of the
geology of Central France, "are called 'causses' in the provincial
dialect, and they have a singularly dreary and desert aspect from the
monotony of their form and their barren and rocky character. The
valleys which separate them are rarely of considerable width. Winding,
narrow, and all but impassable cliff-like glens predominate, giving to
the Cevennes that peculiarly intricate character which enabled its
Protestant inhabitants, in the beginning of the last century, to offer
so stubborn and gallant a resistance to the atrocious persecutions of
Louis XIV."
Such being the character of this mountain district--rocky, elevated,
and sterile--the people inhabiting it, though exceedingly industrious,
are for the most very poor. Sheep-farming is the principal occupation
of the people of the hill country; and in the summer season, when the
lower districts are parched with drought, tens of thousands of sheep
may be seen covering the roads leading to the Upper Cevennes, whither
they are driven for pasture. There is a comparatively small breadth of
arable land in the district. The mountains in many places contain only
soil enough to grow juniper-bushes. There is very little verdure to
relieve the eye--few turf-clad slopes or earth-covered ledges to
repay the tillage of the farmer. Even the mountains of lower elevation
are for the most part stony deserts. Chestnut-trees, it is true, grow
luxuriantly in the sheltered places, and occasionally scanty crops of
rye on the lower mountain-sides. Mulberry-trees also thrive in the
valleys, their leaves being used for the feeding of silkworms, the
rearing of which forms one of the principal industries of the
district.
Even in the immediate neighbourhood of Nismes--a rich and beautiful
town, abounding in Roman remains, which exhibit ample evidences of its
ancient grandeur--the country is arid, stony, and barren-looking,
though here the vine, the olive, and the fig-tree, wherever there is
soil enough, grow luxuriantly in the open air. Indeed, the country
very much resembles in its character the land of Judea, being rocky,
parched, and in many places waste, though in others abounding in corn
and wine and oil. In the interior parts of the district the scenery is
wild and grand, especially in the valleys lying under the lofty
mountain of Lozere. But the rocks and stones are everywhere in the
ascendant.
A few years ago we visited the district; and while proceeding in the
old-fashioned diligence which runs between Alais and Florac--for the
district is altogether beyond the reach of railways--a French
contractor, accompanying a band of Italian miners, whom he was taking
into the mountains to search for minerals, pointing to the sterile
rocks, exclaimed to us, "Messieurs, behold the very poorest district
in France! It contains nothing but juniper-bushes! As for its
agriculture, it produces nothing; manufactures, nothing; commerce,
nothing! _Rien, rien, rien!_"
The observation of this French _entrepreneur_ reminds us of an
anecdote that Telford, the Scotch engineer, used to relate of a
countryman with reference to his appreciation of Scotch mountain
beauty. An English artist, enraptured by the scenery of Ben MacDhui,
was expatiating on its magnificence, and appealed to the native guide
for confirmation of his news. "I dinna ken aboot the scenery," replied
the man, "but there's plenty o' big rocks and stanes; an' the kintra's
awfu' puir." The same observation might doubtless apply to the
Cevennes. Yet, though the people may be poor, they are not miserable
or destitute, for they are all well-clad and respectable-looking
peasants, and there is not a beggar to be seen in the district.
But the one country, as the other, grows strong and brave men. These
barren mountain districts of the Cevennes have bred a race of heroes;
and the men are as simple and kind as they are brave. Hospitality is a
characteristic of the people, which never fails to strike the visitor
accustomed to the exactions which are so common along the hackneyed
tourist routes.
As in other parts of France, the peasantry here are laborious almost
to excess. Robust and hardy, they are distinguished for their
perseverance against the obstacles which nature constantly opposes to
them. Out-door industry being suspended in winter, during which they
are shut up in their cabins for nearly six months by the ice and snow,
they occupy themselves in preparing their wool for manufacture into
cloth. The women card, the children spin, the men weave; and each
cottage is a little manufactory of drugget and serge, which is taken
to market in spring, and sold in the low-country towns. Such was the
industry of the Cevennes nearly two hundred years since, and such it
remains to the present day.
The people are of a contented nature, and bear their poverty with
cheerfulness and even dignity. While they partake of the ardour and
strong temper which characterize the inhabitants of the South of
France, they are probably, on the whole, more grave and staid than
Frenchmen generally, and are thought to be more urbane and
intelligent; and though they are unmanageable by force, they are
remarkably accessible to kindness and moral suasion.
Such, in a few words, are the more prominent characteristics of the
country and people of the Cevennes.
* * * * *
When the popular worship of the mountain district of Languedoc--in
which the Protestants constituted the majority of the population--was
suppressed, great dismay fell upon the people; but they made no signs
of resistance to the royal authority. For a time they remained
comparatively passive, and it was at first thought they were
indifferent. Their astonished enemies derisively spoke of them as
displaying "the patience of a Huguenot,"--the words having passed into
a proverb.
But their persecutors did not know the stuff of which these
mountaineers were made. They had seen their temples demolished one
after another, and their pastors banished, leaving them "like poor
starved sheep looking for the pasture of life." Next they heard that
such of their pastors as had been apprehended for venturing to
minister to them in "the Desert" had been taken to Nismes and
Montpellier and hanged. Then they began to feel excited and indignant.
For they could not shake off their own belief and embrace another
man's, even though that man was their king. If Louis XIV. had ordered
them to believe that two and two make six, they could not possibly
believe, though they might pretend to do so, that it made any other
number than four. And so it was with the King's order to them to
profess a faith which they could not bring their minds to believe in.
These poor people entertained the conviction that they possessed
certain paramount rights as men. Of these they held the right of
conscience to be one of the principal. They were willing to give unto
Caesar the things that were Caesar's; but they could not give him those
which belonged unto God. And if they were forced to make a choice,
then they must rather disobey their King than the King of kings.
Though deprived of their leaders and pastors, the dispossessed
Huguenots emerged by degrees from their obscurity, and began to
recognise each other openly. If their temples were destroyed, there
remained the woods and fields and mountain pastures, where they might
still meet and worship God, even though it were in defiance of the
law. Having taken counsel together, they resolved "not to forsake the
assembling of themselves together;" and they proceeded, in all the
Protestant districts in the South of France--in Viverais, Dauphiny,
and the Cevennes--to hold meetings of the people, mostly by night, for
worship--in woods, in caves, in rocky gorges, and in hollows of the
hills. Then began those famous assemblies of "the Desert," which were
the nightmare of Louvois and the horror of Louis XIV.
When it came to the knowledge of the authorities that such meetings
were being held, large bodies of troops were sent into the southern
provinces, with orders to disperse them and apprehend the ringleaders.
These orders were carried out with much barbarity. Amongst various
assemblies which were discovered and attacked in the Cevennes, were
those of Auduze and Vigan, where the soldiers fell upon the
defenceless people, put the greater number to the sword, and hanged
upon the nearest trees those who did not succeed in making their
escape.
The authorities waited to see the effect of these "vigorous measures;"
but they were egregiously disappointed. The meetings in the Desert
went on as before, and even increased in number. Then milder means
were tried. Other meetings were attacked in like manner, and the
people found attending them taken prisoners. They were then threatened
with death unless they became converted, and promised to attend Mass.
They declared that they preferred death. A passion for martyrdom even
seemed to be spreading amongst the infatuated people!
Then the peasantry began secretly to take up arms for their defence.
They had thus far been passive in their resistance, and were content
to brave death provided they could but worship together. At length
they felt themselves driven in their despair to resist force by
force--acting, however, in the first place, entirely on the
defensive--"leaving the issue," to use the words of one of their
solemn declarations, "to the providence of God."
They began--these poor labourers, herdsmen, and wool-carders--by
instituting a common fund for the purpose of helping their distressed
brethren in surrounding districts. They then invited such as were
disposed to join them to form themselves into companies, so as to be
prepared to come together and give their assistance as occasion
required. When meetings in the Desert were held, it became the duty of
these enrolled men to post themselves as sentinels on the surrounding
heights, and give notice of the approach of their enemies. They also
constituted a sort of voluntary police for their respective districts,
taking notice of the changes of the royal troops, and dispatching
information by trusty emissaries, intimating the direction of their
march.
The Intendant, Baville, wrote to Louvois, minister of Louis XIV.
during the persecutions, expressing his surprise and alarm at the
apparent evidences of organization amongst the peasantry. "I have just
learned," said he in one letter,[33] "that last Sunday there was an
assembly of nearly four hundred men, many of them armed, at the foot
of the mountain of Lozere. I had thought," he added, "that the great
lesson taught them at Vigan and Anduze would have restored
tranquillity to the Cevennes, at least for a time. But, on the
contrary, the severity of the measures heretofore adopted seems only
to have had the effect of exasperating and hardening them in their
iniquitous courses."
[Footnote 33: October 20, 1686.]
* * * * *
As the massacres had failed, the question next arose whether the
inhabitants might not be driven into exile, and the country entirely
cleared of them. "They pretend," said Louvois, "to meet in 'the
Desert;' why not take them at their word, and make the Cevennes
_really_ a Desert?" But there were difficulties in the way of
executing this plan. In the first place, the Protestants of Languedoc
were a quarter of a million in number. And, besides, if they were
driven out of it, what would become of the industry and the wealth of
this great province--what of the King's taxes?
The Duke de Noailles advised that it would be necessary to proceed
with some caution in the matter. "If his Majesty," he wrote to
Baville, "thinks there is no other remedy than changing the whole
people of the Cevennes, it would be better to begin by expelling those
who are not engaged in commerce, who inhabit inaccessible mountain
districts, where the severity of the climate and the poverty of the
soil render them rude and barbarous, as in the case of those people
who recently met at the foot of the Lozere. Should the King consent to
this course, it will be necessary to send here at least four
additional battalions of foot to execute his orders."[34]
[Footnote 34: Noailles to Baville, 29th October, 1686.]
An attempt was made to carry out this measure of deportation of the
people, but totally failed. With the aid of spies, stimulated by high
rewards, numerous meetings in the Desert were fallen upon by the
troops, and those who were not hanged were transported--some to Italy,
some to Switzerland, and some to America. But transportation had no
terrors for the people, and the meetings continued to be held as
before.
Baville then determined to occupy the entire province with troops, and
to carry out a general disarmament of the population. Eight
regiments of regular infantry were sent into the Cevennes, and fifty
regiments of militia were raised throughout the province, forming
together an army of some forty thousand men. Strong military posts
were established in the mountains, and new forts and barracks were
erected at Alais, Anduze, St. Hyppolyte, and Nismes. The
mountain-roads being almost impassable, many of them mere mule paths,
Baville had more than a hundred new high-roads and branch-roads
constructed and made practicable for the passage of troops and
transport of cannon.
By these means the whole country became strongly occupied, but still
the meetings in the Desert went on. The peasantry continued to brave
all risks--of exile, the galleys, the rack, and the gibbet--and
persevered in their assemblies, until the very ferocity of their
persecutors became wearied. The people would not be converted either
by the dragoons or the priests who were stationed amongst them. In the
dead of the night they would sally forth to their meetings in the
hills; though their mountains were not too steep, their valleys not
too secluded, their denies not too impenetrable to protect them from
pursuit and attack, for they were liable at any moment to be fallen
upon and put to the sword.
The darkness, the dangers, the awe and mystery attending these
midnight meetings invested them with an extraordinary degree of
interest and even fascination. It is not surprising that under such
circumstances the devotion of these poor people should have run into
fanaticism and superstition. Singing the psalms of Marot by night,
under the shadow of echoing rocks, they fancied they heard the sounds
of heavenly voices filling the air. At other times they would meet
amidst the ruins of their fallen sanctuaries, and mysterious sounds of
sobbing and wailing and groaning would seem as if to rise from the
tombs of their fathers.
* * * * *
Under these distressing circumstances--in the midst of poverty,
suffering, and terror--a sort of religious hysteria suddenly developed
itself amongst the people, breaking out and spreading like many other
forms of disease, and displaying itself chiefly in the most persecuted
quarters of Dauphiny, Viverais, and the Cevennes. The people had lost
their pastors; they had not the guidance of sober and intelligent
persons; and they were left merely to pray and to suffer. The terrible
raid of the priests against the Protestant books had even deprived
most of the Huguenots of their Bibles and psalm-books, so that they
were in a great measure left to profit by their own light, such as it
was.
The disease to which we refer, had often before been experienced,
under different forms, amongst uneducated people when afflicted by
terror and excitement; such, for instance, as the Brotherhood of the
Flagellants, which followed the attack of the plague in the Middle
Ages; the Dancing Mania, which followed upon the Black Death; the
Child's Pilgrimages, the Convulsionaires, the Revival epilepsies and
swoons, which have so often accompanied fits of religious devotion
worked up into frenzy; these diseases being merely the result of
excitement of the senses, which convulse the mind and powerfully
affect the whole nervous system.
The "prophetic malady," as we may call it, which suddenly broke out
amongst the poor Huguenots, began with epileptic convulsions. They
fell to the ground senseless, foamed at the mouth, sobbed, and
eventually revived so far as to be able to speak and "prophesy," like
a mesmerised person in a state of _clairvoyance_. The disease spread
rapidly by the influence of morbid sympathy, which, under the peculiar
circumstances we have described, exercises an amazing power over human
minds. Those who spoke with power were considered "inspired." They
prayed and preached ecstatically, the most inspired of the whole being
women, boys, and even children.
One of the first "prophets" who appeared was Isabel Vincent, a young
shepherdess of Crest, in Dauphiny, who could neither read nor write.
Her usual speech was the patois of her country, but when she became
inspired she spoke perfectly, and, according to Michelet, with great
eloquence. "She chanted," he says, "at first the Commandments, then a
psalm, in a low and fascinating voice. She meditated a moment, then
began the lamentation of the Church, tortured, exiled, at the galleys,
in the dungeons: for all those evils she blamed our sins only, and
called all to penitence. Then, starting anew, she spoke angelically of
the Divine goodness."
Boucher, the intendant of the province, had her apprehended and
examined. She would not renounce. "You may take my life," she said,
"but God will raise up others to speak better things than I have
done." She was at last imprisoned at Grenoble, and afterwards in the
Tower of Constance.
As Isabel Vincent had predicted, many prophets followed in her steps,
but they did not prophesy as divinely as she. They denounced "Woe,
woe" upon their persecutors. They reviled Babylon as the oppressor of
the House of Israel. They preached the most violent declamations
against Rome, drawn from the most lugubrious of the prophets, and
stirred the minds of their hearers into the most furious indignation.
The rapidity with which the contagion of convulsive prophesying spread
was extraordinary. The adherents were all of the poorer classes, who
read nothing but the Bible, and had it nearly by heart. It spread from
Dauphiny to Viverais, and from thence into the Cevennes. "I have
seen," said Marshal Villars, "things that I could never have believed
if they had not passed under my own eyes--an entire city, in which all
the women and girls, without exception, appeared possessed by the
devil; they quaked and prophesied publicly in the streets."[35]
[Footnote 35: "Vie du Marechal de Villars," i. 125.]
Flottard says there were eight thousand persons in one province who
had inspiration. All were not, however, equally inspired. There were
four degrees of ecstasy: first, the being called; next, the
inspiration; then, the prophesy; and, lastly, the gift, which was the
inspiration in the highest degree.
All this may appear ludicrous to some. And yet the school of credulity
is a very wide one. Even in these enlightened times in which we live,
we hear of tables turning, spelling out words, and "prophesying" in
their own way. There are even philosophers, men of science, and
literati who believe in spiritualists that rise on sofas and float
about in the air, who project themselves suddenly out of one window
and enter by another, and do many other remarkable things. And though
our spiritual table-rapping and floating about may seem to be of no
possible use, the "prophesying" of the Camisards was all but essential
to the existence of the movement in which they were engaged.
The population became intensely excited by the prevalence of this
enthusiasm or fanaticism. "When a Huguenot assembly," says Brueys,
"was appointed, even before daybreak, from all the hamlets round, the
men, women, boys, girls, and even infants, came in crowds, hurrying
from their huts, pierced through the woods, leapt over the rocks, and
flew to the place of appointment."[36]
[Footnote 36: Brueys, "Histoire du Fanaticisme de Notre
Temps."]
Mere force was of no avail against people who supposed themselves to
be under supernatural influences. The meetings in the Desert,
accordingly, were attended with increased and increasing fascination,
and Baville, who had reported to the King the entire pacification and
conversion of Languedoc, to his dismay found the whole province
bursting with excitement, which a spark at any moment might fire into
frenzy. And that spark was shortly afterwards supplied by the
archpriest Chayla, director of missions at Pont-de-Montvert.
Although it was known that many of the peasantry attended the meetings
armed, there had as yet been no open outbreak against the royal
authority in the Cevennes. At Cheilaret, in the Vivarais, there had
been an encounter between the troops and the peasantry; but the people
were speedily dispersed, leaving three hundred dead and fifty wounded
on the field.
The Intendant Baville, after thus pacifying the Vivarais, was
proceeding on his way back to Montpellier, escorted by some companies
of dragoons and militia, passing through the Cevennes by one of the
new roads he had caused to be constructed along the valley of the
Tarn, by Pont-de-Montvert to Florac. What was his surprise, on passing
through the village of Pont-de-Montvert, to hear the roll of a drum,
and shortly after to perceive a column of rustics, some three or four
hundred in number, advancing as if to give him battle. Baville at once
drew up his troops and charged the column, which broke and fled into
an adjoining wood. Some were killed and others taken prisoners, who
were hanged next day at St. Jean-du-Gard. A reward of five hundred
louis d'or was advertised for the leader, who was shortly after
tracked to his hiding-place in a cavern situated between Anduze and
Alais, and was there shot, but not until after he had killed three
soldiers with his fusil.
After this event persecution was redoubled throughout the Cevennes.
The militia ran night and day after the meetings in the Desert. All
persons found attending them, who could be captured, were either
killed on the spot or hanged. Two companies of militia were quartered
in Pont-de-Montvert at the expense of the inhabitants; and they acted
under the direction of the archpriest Du Chayla. This priest, who was
a native of the district, had been for some time settled as a
missionary in Siam engaged in the conversion of Buddhists, and on his
return to France he was appointed to undertake the conversion of the
people of the Cevennes to the faith of Rome.
* * * * *
The village of Pont-de-Montvert is situated in the hollow of a deep
valley formed by the mountain of Lozere on the north, and of Bouges on
the south, at the point at which two streams, descending from their
respective summits, flow into the Tarn. The village is separated by
these streams into three little hamlets, which are joined together by
the bridge which gives its name to the place. The addition of "Mont
Vert," however, is a misnomer; for though seated at the foot of a
steep mountain, it is not green, but sterile, rocky, and verdureless.
The village is best reached from Florac, from which it is about twenty
miles distant. The valley runs east and west, and is traversed by a
tolerably good road, which at the lower part follows the windings of
the Tarn, and higher up runs in and out along the mountain ledges, at
every turn presenting new views of the bold, grand, and picturesque
scenery which characterizes the wilder parts of the Cevennes. Along
this route the old mule-road is still discernible in some places--a
difficult, rugged, mountain path, which must have kept the district
sealed up during the greater part of the year, until Baville
constructed the new road for the purpose of opening up the country for
the easier passage of troops and munitions of war.
A few poor hamlets occur at intervals along the road, sometimes
perched on apparently inaccessible rocks, and at the lower part of the
valley an occasional chateau is to be seen, as at Miral, picturesquely
situated on a height. But the country is too poor by nature--the
breadth of land in the bottom of the ravine being too narrow and that
on the mountain ledges too stony and sterile--ever to have enabled it
to maintain a considerable population. On all sides little is to be
seen but rocky mountain sides, stony and precipitous, with bold
mountain peaks extending beyond them far away in the distance.
Pont-de-Montvert is the centre of a series of hamlets, the inhabitants
of which were in former times almost exclusively Protestant, as they
are now; and where meetings in the Desert were of the most frequent
occurrence. Strong detachments of troops were accordingly stationed
there and at Florac for the purpose of preventing the meetings and
overawing the population. Besides soldiers, the authorities also
established missions throughout the Cevennes, and the principal
inspector of these missions was the archpriest Chayla. The house in
which he resided at Pont-de-Montvert is still pointed out. It is
situated near the north end of the bridge over the Tarn; but though
the lower part of the building remains as it was in his time, the
upper portion has been for the most part rebuilt.
Chayla was a man of great force of character--zealous, laborious, and
indefatigable--but pitiless, relentless, and cruel. He had no bowels
of compassion. He was deaf to all appeals for mercy. With him the
penalty of non-belief in the faith of Rome was imprisonment, torture,
death. Eight young priests lived with him, whose labours he directed;
and great was his annoyance to find that the people would not attend
his ministrations, but continued to flock after their own
prophet-preachers in the Desert.
Moral means having failed, he next tried physical. He converted the
arched cellars of his dwelling into dungeons, where he shut up those
guilty of contumacy; and day by day he put them to torture. It seems
like a satire on religion to say that, in his attempt to convert
souls, this vehement missionary made it one of his principal studies
to find out what amount of agony the bodies of those who differed from
him would bear short of actual death. He put hot coals into their
hands, which they were then made to clench; wrapped round their
fingers cotton steeped in oil, which was then set on fire; besides
practising upon them the more ordinary and commonplace tortures. No
wonder that the archpriest came to be detested by the inhabitants of
Pont-de-Montvert.
At length, a number of people in the district, in order to get beyond
reach of Chayla's cruelty, determined to emigrate from France and take
refuge in Geneva. They assembled one morning secretly, a cavalcade of
men and women, and set out under the direction of a guide who knew the
mountain paths towards the east. When they had travelled a few hours,
they fell into an ambuscade of militia, and were marched back to the
archpriest's quarters at Pont-de-Montvert. The women were sent to
Mende to be immured in convents, and the men were imprisoned in the
archpriest's dungeons. The parents of some of the captives ran to
throw themselves at his feet, and implored mercy for their sons; but
Chayla was inexorable. He declared harshly that the prisoners must
suffer according to the law--that the fugitives must go the galleys,
and their guide to the gibbet.
On the following Sunday, the 23rd of July, 1702, one of the preaching
prophets, Pierre Seguier of Magistavols, a hamlet lying to the south
of Pont-de-Montvert, preached to an assembly on the neighbouring
mountain of Bouges; and there he declared that the Lord had ordered
him to take up arms to deliver the captives and exterminate the
archpriest of Moloch. Another and another preacher followed in the
same strain, the excited assembly encouraging them by their cries, and
calling upon them to execute God's vengeance on the persecutors of
God's people.
That same night Seguier and his companions went round amongst the
neighbouring hamlets to summon an assemblage of their sworn followers
for the evening of the following day. They met punctually in the
Altefage Wood, and under the shadow of three gigantic beech trees, the
trunks of which were standing but a few years ago, they solemnly swore
to deliver their companions and destroy the archpriest.
When night fell, a band of fifty determined men marched down the
mountain towards the bridge, led by Seguier. Twenty of them were armed
with guns and pistols. The rest carried scythes and hatchets. As they
approached the village, they sang Marot's version of the
seventy-fourth Psalm. The archpriest heard the unwonted sound as they
came marching along. Thinking it was a nocturnal assembly, he cried to
his soldiers, "Run and see what this means." But the doors of the
house were already invested by the mountaineers, who shouted out for
"The prisoners! the prisoners!" "Back, Huguenot canaille!" cried
Chayla from the window. But they only shouted the louder for "The
prisoners!"
The archpriest then directed the militia to fire, and one of the
peasants fell dead. Infuriated, they seized the trunk of a tree, and
using it as a battering-ram, at once broke in the door. They next
proceeded to force the entrance to the dungeon, in which they
succeeded, and called upon the prisoners to come forth. But some of
them were so crippled by the tortures to which they had been
subjected, that they could not stand. At sight of their sufferings the
fury of the assailants increased, and, running up the staircase, they
called out for the archpriest. "Burn the priest and the satellites of
Baal!" cried their leader; and heaping together the soldiers' straw
beds, the chairs, and other combustibles, they set the whole on fire.
Chayla, in the hope of escaping, jumped from a window into the garden,
and in the fall broke his leg. The peasants discovered him by the
light of the blazing dwelling. He called for mercy. "No," said
Seguier, "only such mercy as you have shown to others;" and he struck
him the first blow.
The others followed. "This for my father," said the next, "whom you
racked to death!"
"This for my brother," said another, "whom you sent to the galleys!"
"This for my mother, who died of grief!"
This for my sister, my relatives, my friends, in exile, in prison, in
misery!
And thus blow followed blow, fifty-two in all, half of which would
probably have been mortal, and the detested Chayla lay a bleeding mass
at their feet!
[Illustration: Map of the Country of the Cevennes.]
CHAPTER VI.
INSURRECTION OF THE CAMISARDS.
The poor peasants, wool-carders, and neatherds of the Cevennes, formed
only a small and insignificant section of the great body of men who
were about the same time engaged in different countries of Europe in
vindicating the cause of civil and religious liberty. For this cause,
a comparative handful of people in the Low Countries, occupying the
Dutch United Provinces, had banded themselves together to resist the
armies of Spain, then the most powerful monarchy in the world. The
struggle had also for some time been in progress in England and
Scotland, where it culminated in the Revolution of 1688; and it was
still raging in the Vaudois valleys of Piedmont.
The object contended for in all these cases was the same. It was the
vindication of human freedom against royal and sacerdotal despotism.
It could only have been the direst necessity that drove a poor,
scattered, unarmed peasantry, such as the people of the Cevennes, to
take up arms against so powerful a sovereign as Louis XIV. Their
passive resistance had lasted for fifteen long years, during which
many of them had seen their kindred racked, hanged, or sent to the
galleys; and at length their patience was exhausted, and the
inevitable outburst took place. Yet they were at any moment ready to
lay down their arms and return to their allegiance, provided only a
reasonable degree of liberty of worship were assured to them. This,
however, their misguided and bigoted monarch, would not tolerate; for
he had sworn that no persons were to be suffered in his dominions save
those who were of "the King's religion."
The circumstances accompanying the outbreak of the Protestant
peasantry in the Cevennes in many respects resembled those which
attended the rising of the Scotch Covenanters in 1679. Both were
occasioned by the persistent attempts of men in power to enforce a
particular form of religion at the point of the sword. The resisters
of the policy were in both cases Calvinists;[37] and they were alike
indomitable and obstinate in their assertion of the rights of
conscience. They held that religion was a matter between man and his
God, and not between man and his sovereign or the Pope. The peasantry
in both cases persevered in their own form of worship. In Languedoc,
the mountaineers of the Cevennes held their assemblies in "The
Desert;" and in Scotland, the "hill-folk" of the West held their
meetings on the muirs. In the one country as in the other, the
monarchy sent out soldiers as their missionaries--Louis XIV. employing
the dragoons of Louvois and Baville, and Charles II. those of
Claverhouse and Dalzell. These failing, new instruments of torture
were invented for their "conversion." But the people, in both cases,
continued alike stubborn in their adherence to their own simple and,
as some thought, uncouth form of faith.
[Footnote 37: Whether it be that Calvinism is eclectic as
regards races and individuals, or that it has (as is most
probably the case) a powerful formative influence upon
individual character, certain it is that the Calvinists of
all countries have presented the strongest possible
resemblance to each other--the Calvinists of Geneva and
Holland, the Huguenots of France, the Covenanters of
Scotland, and the Puritans of Old and New England, seeming,
as it were, to be but members of the same family. It is
curious to speculate on the influence which the religion of
Calvin--himself a Frenchman--might have exercised on the
history of France, as well as on the individual character of
Frenchmen, had the balance of forces carried the nation
bodily over to Protestantism (as was very nearly the case)
towards the end of the sixteenth century. Heinrich Heine has
expressed the opinion that the western races contain a large
proportion of men for whom the moral principle of Judaism has
a strong elective affinity; and in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, the Old Testament certainly seems to
have exercised a much more powerful influence on the minds of
religious reformers than the New. "The Jews," says Heine,
"were the Germans of the East, and nowadays the Protestants
in German countries (England, Scotland, America, Germany,
Holland) are nothing more nor less than ancient Oriental
Jews."]
The French Calvinist peasantry, like the Scotch, were great in their
preachers and their prophets. Both devoted themselves with enthusiasm
to psalmody, insomuch that "psalm-singers" was their nickname in both
countries. The one had their Clement Marot by heart, the other their
Sternhold and Hopkins. Huguenot prisoners in chains sang psalms in
their dungeons, galley slaves sang them as they plied at the oar,
fugitives in the halting-places of their flight, the condemned as they
marched to the gallows, and the Camisards as they rushed into battle.
It was said of the Covenanters that "they lived praying and preaching,
and they died praying and fighting;" and the same might have been said
of the Huguenot peasantry of the Cevennes.
The immediate cause of the outbreak of the insurrection in both
countries was also similar. In the one case, it was the cruelty of the
archpriest Chayla, the inventor of a new machine of torture called
"the Squeezers,"[38] and in the other the cruelty of Archbishop
Sharpe, the inventor of that horrible instrument called "the Iron
Boot," that excited the fury of the people; and the murder of the one
by Seguier and his band at Pont-de-Montvert, as of the other by
Balfour of Burley and his companions on Magus Muir, proved the signal
for a general insurrection of the peasantry in both countries. Both
acts were of like atrocity; but they corresponded in character with
the cruelties which had provoked them. Insurrections, like
revolutions, are not made of rose-water. In such cases, action and
reaction are equal; the violence of the oppressors usually finding its
counterpart in the violence of the oppressed.
[Footnote 38: The instrument is thus described by Cavalier,
in his "Memoirs of the Wars of the Cevennes," London, 1726:
"This inhuman man had invented a rack (more cruel, if it be
possible, than that usually made use of) to torment these
poor unfortunate gentlemen and ladies; which was a beam he
caused to be split in two, with vices at each end. Every
morning he would send for these poor people, in order to
examine them, and if they refused to confess what he desired,
he caused their legs to be put in the slit of the beam, and
there squeezed them till the bones cracked," &c., &c. (p.
35).]
The insurrection of the French peasantry proved by far the most
determined and protracted of the two; arising probably from the more
difficult character of the mountain districts which they occupied and
the quicker military instincts of the people, as well as because
several of their early leaders and organizers were veteran soldiers
who had served in many campaigns. The Scotch insurgents were
suppressed by the English army under the Duke of Monmouth in less than
two months after the original outbreak, though their cause eventually
triumphed in the Revolution of 1688; whereas the peasantry of the
Cevennes, though deprived of all extraneous help, continued to
maintain a heroic struggle for several years, but were under the
necessity of at last succumbing to the overpowering military force of
Louis XIV., after which the Huguenots of France continued to be
stamped out of sight, and apparently out of existence, for nearly a
century.
* * * * *
In the preceding chapter, we left the archpriest Chayla a corpse at
the feet of his murderers. Several of the soldiers found in the
chateau were also killed, as well as the cook and house-steward, who
had helped to torture the prisoners. But one of the domestics, and a
soldier, who had treated them with kindness, were, at their
intercession, pardoned and set at liberty. The corpses were brought
together in the garden, and Seguier and his companions, kneeling round
them--a grim and ghastly sight--sang psalms until daybreak, the
uncouth harmony mingling with the crackling of the flames of the
dwelling overhead, and the sullen roar of the river rushing under the
neighbouring bridge.
When the grey of morning appeared, the men rose from their knees,
emerged from the garden, crossed the bridge, and marched up the main
street of the village. The inhabitants had barricaded themselves in
their houses, being in a state of great fear lest they should be
implicated in the murder of the archpriest. But Seguier and his
followers made no further halt in Pont-de-Montvert, but passed along,
still singing psalms, towards the hamlet of Frugeres, a little further
up the valley of the Tarn.
Seguier has been characterised as "the Danton of the Cevennes." This
fierce and iron-willed man was of great stature--bony and
dark-visaged, without upper teeth, his hair hanging loose over his
shoulders--and of a wild and mystic appearance, occasioned probably by
the fits of ecstasy to which he was subject, and the wandering life he
had for so many years led as a prophet-preacher in the Desert. This
terrible man had resolved upon a general massacre of the priests, and
he now threw himself upon Frugeres for the purpose of carrying out the
enterprise begun by him at Pont-de-Montvert. The cure of the hamlet,
who had already heard of Chayla's murder, fled from his house at sound
of the approaching psalm-singers, and took refuge in an adjoining
rye-field. He was speedily tracked thither, and brought down by a
musket-ball; and a list of twenty of his parishioners, whom he had
denounced to the archpriest, was found under his cassock.
From Frugeres the prophet and his band marched on to St. Maurice de
Ventalong, so called because of the winds which at certain seasons
blow so furiously along the narrow valley in which it is situated; but
the prior of the convent, having been warned of the outbreak, had
already mounted his horse and taken to flight. Here Seguier was
informed of the approach of a body of militia who were on his trail;
but he avoided them by taking refuge on a neighbouring mountain-side,
where he spent the night with his companions in a thicket.
Next morning, at daybreak, he descended the mountain, crossed the
track of his pursuers, and directed himself upon St. Andre de Lanceze.
The whole country was by this time in a state of alarm; and the cure
of the place, being on the outlook, mounted the clock-tower and rang
the tocsin. But his parishioners having joined the insurgents, the
cure was pursued, captured in the belfry, and thrown from its highest
window. The insurgents then proceeded to gut the church, pull down the
crosses, and destroy all the emblems of Romanism on which they could
lay their hands.
Seguier and his band next hurried across the mountains towards the
south, having learnt that the cures of the neighbourhood had assembled
at St. Germain to assist at the obsequies of the archpriest Chayla,
whose body had been brought thither from Pont-de-Montvert on the
morning after his murder. When Seguier was informed that the town and
country militia were in force in the place, he turned aside and went
in another direction. The cures, however, having heard that Seguier
was in the neighbourhood, fled panic-stricken, some to the chateau of
Portes, others to St. Andre, while a number of them did not halt until
they had found shelter within the walls of Alais, some twenty miles
distant.
Thus four days passed. On the fifth night Seguier appeared before the
chateau of Ladeveze, and demanded the arms which had been deposited
there at the time of the disarmament of the peasantry. The owner
replied by a volley of musketry, which killed and wounded several of
the insurgents, at the same time ringing the alarm-bell. Seguier,
furious at this resistance, at once burst open the gates, and ordered
a general massacre of the household. This accomplished, he ransacked
the place of its arms and ammunition, and before leaving set the
castle on fire, the flames throwing a lurid glare over the surrounding
country. Seguier's band then descended the mountain on which the
chateau is situated, and made for the north in the direction of
Cassagnas, arriving at the elevated plateau of Font-Morte a little
before daybreak.
In the meantime, Baville, the intendant of the province, was hastening
to Pont-de-Montvert to put down the insurrection and avenge the death
of the archpriest. The whole country was roused. Troops were
dispatched in hot haste from Alais; the militia were assembled from
all quarters and marched upon the disturbed district. The force was
placed under the orders of Captain Poul, an old soldier of fortune,
who had distinguished himself in the German wars, and in the recent
crusade against the Italian Vaudois. It was because of the individual
prowess which Captain Poul had displayed in his last campaign, that,
at the peace of Ryswick, Baville requested that he should be attached
to the army of Languedoc, and employed in putting down the insurgents
of the Cevennes.
Captain Poul was hastening with his troops to Florac when, having been
informed of the direction in which Seguier and his band had gone, he
turned aside at Barre, and after about an hour's march eastward, he
came up with them at Font-Morte. They suddenly started up from amongst
the broom where they had lain down to sleep, and, firing off their
guns upon the advancing host, without offering any further resistance,
fled in all directions. Poul and his men spurred after them, cutting
down the fugitives. Coming up with Seguier, who was vainly trying to
rally his men, Poul took him prisoner with several others, and they
were forthwith chained and marched to Florac. As they proceeded along
the road, Poul said to Seguier, "Well, wretch! now I have got you, how
do you expect to be treated after the crimes you have committed?" "As
I would myself have treated you, had I taken you prisoner," was the
reply.
Seguier stood before his judges calm and fearless. "What is your
name?" he was asked. "Pierre Seguier." "Why do they call you Esprit?"
"Because the Spirit of God is in me." "Your abode?" "In the Desert,
and shortly in heaven." "Ask pardon of the King!" "We have no other
King but the Eternal." "Have you no feeling of remorse for your
crimes?" "My soul is as a garden full of shady groves and of peaceful
fountains."
Seguier was condemned to have his hands cut off at the wrist, and he
burnt alive at Pont-de-Montvert. Nouvel, another of the prisoners, was
broken alive at Ladeveze, and Bonnet, a third, was hanged at St.
Andre. They all suffered without flinching. Seguier's last words,
spoken amidst the flames, were, "Brethren, wait, and hope in the
Eternal. The desolate Carmel shall yet revive, and the solitary
Lebanon shall blossom as the rose!" Thus perished the grim,
unflinching prophet of Magistavols, the terrible avenger of the
cruelties of Chayla, the earliest leader in the insurrection of the
Camisards!
It is not exactly known how or when the insurgents were first called
Camisards. They called themselves by no other name than "The Children of
God" (_Enfants de Dieu_); but their enemies variously nicknamed them
"The Barbets," "The Vagabonds," "The Assemblers," "The Psalm-singers,"
"The Fanatics," and lastly, "The Camisards." This name is said to have
been given them because of the common blouse or camisole which they
wore--their only uniform. Others say that it arose from their wearing a
white shirt, or camise, over their dress, to enable them to distinguish
each other in their night attacks; and that this was not the case, is
partly countenanced by the fact that in the course of the insurrection a
body of peasant royalists took the field, who designated themselves the
"_White_ Camisards," in contradistinction from the others. Others say
the word is derived from _camis_, signifying a roadrunner. But whatever
the origin of the word may be, the Camisards was the name most commonly
applied to the insurgents, and by which they continue to be known in
local history.
* * * * *
Captain Poul vigorously followed up the blow delivered at Font-Morte.
He apprehended all suspected persons in the Upper Cevennes, and sent
them before the judges at Florac. Unable to capture the insurgents who
had escaped, he seized their parents, their relations, and families,
and these were condemned to various punishments. But what had become
of the insurgents themsel
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