[Transcriber's note: Obvious printer's errors have been corrected, all
other inconsistencies are as in the original. The author's spelling
has been maintained.]
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 PÉCHELS................................ 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--BRIANÇON...................... 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 Péchels, 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 _résumé_ 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 BÉNOÎT: _Histoire de l'Édit de Nantes._ CHARLES COQUEREL:
_Histoire des Églises du Désert._ NAPOLEON PEYRAT: _Histoire des
Pasteurs du Désert._ ANTOINE COURT: _Histoire des Troubles de
Cevennes._ EDMUND HUGHES: _Histoire de la Restauration du
Protestantisme en France au xviii. Siècle._ A. BONNEMÈRE: _Histoire
des Camisardes._ ADOLPHE MICHEL: _Louvois et Les Protestantes._
ATHANASE COQUEREL FILS; _Les Forçats 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, Père 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 Funèbre du Chancelier
Letellier."]
Madame de Maintenon also received the praises of the Church. "All good
people," said the Abbé 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 Père 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 Sévigné, 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 Sévigné, "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 grâce_."
[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 Sévigné 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 Sévigné.
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 Abbé 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 Bruyère contributed a maxim in praise of the
Revocation. Quinault wrote a poem on the subject; and Madame
Deshoulières felt inspired to sing "The Destruction of Heresy." The
Abbé de Rancé 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 Père 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,
Fléchier, 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, Fléchier, 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.
Fénélon 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 Reynée, 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_ ("Églises du Désert," 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 Sévigné; "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.
