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 Lozère. 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
Cæsar the things that were Cæsar'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 Lozère. 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 Lozère. 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 Maréchal 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 Lozère on the north, and of Bougès 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 château 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 Bougès; 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
château 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 Frugères, 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 Frugères for the purpose of carrying out the
enterprise begun by him at Pont-de-Montvert. The curé 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 Frugères 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. André de Lancèze.
The whole country was by this time in a state of alarm; and the curé
of the place, being on the outlook, mounted the clock-tower and rang
the tocsin. But his parishioners having joined the insurgents, the
curé 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 curés 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 curés, however, having heard that Seguier
was in the neighbourhood, fled panic-stricken, some to the château of
Portes, others to St. André, 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
château of Ladevèze, 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
château 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 Ladevèze, and Bonnet, a third, was hanged at St.
André. 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 themselves? Knowing that they had nothing but death
to expect, if taken, they hid themselves in caves known only to the
inhabitants of the district, and so secretly that Poul thought they
had succeeded in making their escape from France. The Intendant
Baville arrived at the same conclusion, and he congratulated himself
accordingly on the final suppression of the outbreak. Leaving sundry
detachments of troops posted in the principal villages, he returned to
Alais, and invited the fugitive priests at once to return to their
respective parishes.

After remaining in concealment for several days, the surviving
insurgents met one night to consult as to the steps they were to take,
with a view to their personal safety. They had by this time been
joined by several sympathizers, amongst others by three veteran
soldiers--Laporte, Espérandieu, and Rastelet--and by young Cavalier,
who had just returned from Geneva, where he had been in exile, and was
now ready to share in the dangers of his compatriots. The greater
number of those present were in favour of bidding a final adieu to
France, and escaping across the frontier into Switzerland, considering
that the chances of their offering any successful resistance to their
oppressors, were altogether hopeless. But against this craven course
Laporte raised his voice.

"Brethren," said he, "why depart into the land of the stranger? Have
we not a country of our own, the country of our fathers? It is, you
say, a country of slavery and death! Well! Free it! and deliver your
oppressed brethren. Never say, 'What can we do? we are few in number,
and without arms!' The God of armies shall be our strength. Let us
sing aloud the psalm of battles, and from the Lozère even to the sea
Israel will arise! As for arms, have we not our hatchets? These will
bring us muskets! Brethren, there is only one course worthy to be
pursued. It is to live for our country; and, if need be, to die for
it. Better die by the sword than by the rack or the gallows!"