LIBRARY OF PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEM!NARY_ BX9454 .T9 1892 Tylor, Charles, 1816-1902. Huguenots in the seventeenth century : including the histo RY OF THE Edict of Nantes, from its ena CTMENT IN 1598 TO ITS REVOCATION IN 1685 / THE HUGUENOTS IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. LONDON : WEST, NKWMAN AND CO., PRINTERS, HATTON GARDEN, E.C ^Farshnilc of CHaiists in tlir M of Htboratton. CLAUSE I V. J',: tut e • :j<7j^ HOii.ti^t fi>,,.;L^>M _„,,^,,t. Jr/lTi>, /-C .7X-ai/; ,jc>T«>^ r^ltv^ ■•uiiv\-U-o7icnait cajJiiiic^iixK ciafcviir:-: / EiijoigiiOEs K toils Miiiistrcs de ladite E. P. E. qui iie voudioiit pas se com-ertir et embrasser la Ecligion Catholiqiie. Apostohque ct Honiamc, de sortir de uotre Eojaiime et Tcnes de notie obeissance, quinze jours apres la publication de notre present Edit, sans y ponvoir sejoui-nev au delii, ny pendant ledit terns de quinzaine faire aucun preche. exhortation, ny autre fonction. a peine des Galeres. 1- C LA U S E X. / .A: .^..'U .di*-»).>rrr-crfu.v I iiiint pniiuti^-ia^ufrxt'tn-!) i'iir'i'0 . ,y\^oy an Hi. C->-~- — iVnIlt ^-y-aitt: in»iiL>'fit>i.'/-|i<«t(jfM.!r- d minister who received them back being condemned to be mulcted of his whole jjroperty, and the temple where the ceremony was performed to be razed to the ground. A Protestant nobleman, named Duchail, wooed a Catholic lady, and to win her hand renounced his own faith. His infidelity sat heavy on his conscience, and he determined to make a public recantation. The rigorous laws against the Eelapsed, however, induced him to defer the act from time to time, until the year 1G73, when a severe illness brought him to the point. He did not recover. During the remainder of his days he was postered by the monks and priests. Death even did not deliver him. Having been too ill to be put on his trial during his lifetime, his body was dragged to the court, condemned, and only saved from being cast to the dogs by his mother-in-law, a Catholic, undertaking that it should not be buried in any cemetery, Protestant or Catholic. The minister who had received his confession was sent to prison. Duchail's wife, who had learnt the Reformed doctrine from her husband, and had inculcated it in her children, stood bravely by him, notwithstanding that a company of archers was quartered upon her. After his death, to retain possession of the children, she weakly promised to embrace the Romish faith and bring them up in the same. She broke her promise, made a secret abjuration, and went to La Eochelle to communicate.. This becoming known, the Jesuits took away her children; her mother by her will left her penniless ; and, betrayed by a servant, she was seized and cast into prison and her goods confiscated. Her friends contrived to obtain her release, and in 1681 she passed over into England with five of her children. At the same time another engine of coercion was set in motion against the Protestants. The genius of Colbert had given a new impetus to the French marine, and the so The Huguenots. king was in want of forcats (galley-slaves) to man the fleet. It was accordingly ordered that " sturdy beggars, infractors of the salt-laws, and malefactors over fifteen years of age," should be drafted to the ports to which the g:illeys belonged ; and to these were added (1662), " Hugue- nots who kept on their hats when the Host passed by." xin. LE GRAND MONAEQUE. In this year France would seem to have risen at a bound to an extraordinary degree of greatness. Two years of peace had brought back plenty ; the birth of the Dauphin had established the throne. The council was composed of ministers who saw that it was easier to make their fortune by servility and the orderly working of their departments, than by the intrigues to which they had been accustomed. Le Tellier and Colbert divided between them the king's confidence ; the latter by his sagacity and tried fidelity ; the former by his financial skill, by which the revenues of the Crown were prodigiously increased, and ample means supplied to gratify the ambition and luxurious magnificence of the monarch. The French, naturally loyal, learned now to count their servitude an honour, even though all ranks and orders of the people were humbled to the dust. The parliaments were made dependent on the royal will ; the provinces trembled at a word from an intendaut ; the royal orders were enforced with a summary vigour which left no time to remonstrate. The nation, in fine, found its prince so great, that it took his tyrannical rule as a thing of course, and obeyed his will without a murmur. In 1670 the king took up his abode at Versailles, in the magnificent palace built for him by his minister, Louvois. The Elector of Brandenburg. 31 ■" Paris, parliamentary, devout, satirical, fertile in cabals, had become insupportable to him. The very dress of the citizens was offensive ; they still wore the costume of Louis XIII., which had passed over to Puritan England, and which was a standing rebuke to the costume of the court, embellished with a hundred colours, tricked out with ribbons and lace, surmounted with a plumed hat, and grotesque with a lion's mane. At Versailles Louis lived like a solitary god, seen of men only on those days when he launched his thunderbolts." XIV. THE ELECTOR OF BRANDENBURG. It must not be supposed that the Protestant nations were indifferent to the wrongs of the Huguenots. In 1665, the Elector of Brandenburg (the Great Elector) wrote a letter to the king, interceding for his oppressed subjects. The king's answer was such as might have been expected : royal veracity and royal gratitude are not proverbial, least of all were they to be looked for from Louis. " Brother, I would not have discoursed the matter of which you have written to me with any other prince ; but the esteem I entertain for you induces me to say that some disaffected persons have spread abroad seditious pamphlets, as though the acts and edicts passed in favour of my subjects of the Pretended Reformed Religion by the kings, my prede- cessors, and confirmed by myself, were not kept ; which would have been contrary to my intentions : for I take care that they are maintained in all the privileges which have been granted to them. To this I am engaged, both by my royal word and in gratitude for their loyalty during the late troubles, in which they took up arms for my service, and successfully opposed the evil designs of a rebel faction." 32 The Huguenots. XV. CEAMPED AND FETTEKED. At the Assembly of the Clergy, in 1665-1666, the- Bishop of Uzes boasted that the Church had won triumphs in province after province, and that the Eeformed Eeligion, " that monster of heresy," was already in the throes of death. In effect, during the past four years, the Protestant worship had been sup- pressed in 227 places, notably in Poitou, the temples in most cases being demolished. In 1666, in order to drive the nail home, the Decrees and Orders in Council were collected and codified in a General Declaration, from which it is manifest that the Protestants were by this time fettered in every relation of life, — in the city and the State, in shop and market, in worship and Church disci- pline, in the school, and at the domestic hearth. Kestrictions in trade commenced with the guilds, not with the government; the women leading the way. So early as 1645, the Litujeres (women who dealt in ready-made clothes) in Paris decided that no Protestant sempstress should be admitted to contaminate their immaculate corporation. In 1665, the Eepasseiises {nonexs) adopted a similar resolution ; and when a Protestant woman, being refused admission into their guild, appealed to the parliament, the counter-plea that their society having been instituted by St. Louis, they could on no account admit heretics, was held to be a good and sufficient reason. In 1669, Protestant embroiderers were forbidden to talie Catholic apprentices ; and in 1672 the parliament of Rouen excluded the Eeformed from the trade of wool- combing. The printing of Protestant books without the royal sanction was now prohibited. Protestant schools were CramjJed and Fettered. 33 always a thorn in the eyes of the clergy; from this time none were to be permitted, except in places in which the Protestant worship was allowed, and nothing was to be taught in them but reading, writing, and arithmetic. The academies for the children of the nobility were closed, the object being to oblige the parents to send their sons to Ca-tholic ccUeges. The Protestants were compelled to observe the fete-days of the Church, and were not allowed to sell meat on fast-days. No minister was permitted to take Catholic boarders, or more than two Protestant. Professors were forbidden to style themselves doctors of divinity, and preachers to take any other title than ministers of the E. P. E. They were forbidden also to preach, or to wear the cassock or gown with sleeves, except in their own temples. When they went to the prison to comfort members of their own flock, they were to see them in private, and to speak only in a low voice. We have already spoken of the interdiction of Psalm-singing. It was now enacted that on days of public rejoicing, and at the execution of Protestant criminals, there should be no Psalm-singing, either by ministers or others ; and that when the Host should be carried before a temple during service, the singing should cease. The disturbance to the Catholic worship from the bells of the temples was a frequent source of complaint. Many a temple was pulled down merely because it stood too near to the church, so that the carillons were spoilt by its bells. These and many other infringements of their liberties, with frequent and high-handed acts of local violence, spread dismay through the Protestant community. Depu- ties sent up from the churches threw themselves at the king's feet. " In God's name. Sire," said their spokesman, Dubosc, "hearken to our groans. Have pity on so many of your poor subjects, who live only by their tears." The king's answer was, " I will think of it " [J'y peiiserai). The D 84 The Huguenots. result of the royal cogitations appeared in a fresh blow to the Edict of Nantes, namely, the suppression of two of the five Mi-party chambers (regarded by the Protestants as the pillars of their existence), Paris and Rouen, (The other three, Toulouse, Bordeaux, and Grenoble were abolished in 1679.) What Tyndal said of the people of England in his time might be apphed to the Huguenots, but in a far worse sense, ?■(■;., that they were "shorn, shaven, polled, scraped, pared." The last process which he enumerates, that of " flaying," was yet to come. Now commenced that great tide of emigration which lasted for many years, and by which France was deprived of the best and most industrious of her children, and England and the other Protestant countries were enriched at her expense in the arts, commerce, and moral worth. The loss was felt especially on the western coast, where the removal of the marme population was so serious a blow to the defence, as well as to the commerce of the country, that the king, in 1669, closed the ports, and forbad any of his subjects to leave the kingdom without his special permission. We may call to mind that the Huguenots in France at this period had fellow-suflferers in England and Scotland. In 1662, the Act of Uniformity was passed, by which dissenters from the State Church were grievously harassed, and in consequence of which 2000 Presbyterian and other ministers resigned their benefices. In 1666, the Covenanters of the West of Scotland, driven to desperation by Episcopal tyranny, took up arms, and were defeated by Dalziel at Bullion Green. The prisoners and the abettors of the insurrection were treated with merciless severity. Marie Alacoque. 35 XVI. THE WAR WITH HOLLAND, 1672—1678. The king hated the Dutch because they were republicans and plebeians, and more than all because they were Pro- testants. The old traditions of the League were strong in him ; he believed himself divinely called to fulfil its great object, viz., the complete extinction of the Protestant religion in Europe. When, in 1672, he declared war against Holland, and himself accompanied the immense army which was poured like a flood into that devoted country, he exclaimed, "This is a religious war!" In truth, the barbarity with which the French carried on the war entitled it to such a name. Louis's general. Marshal Luxembourg, gave his troops free-handed licence to plunder, ravish, and destroy, a licence of which, during seventeen months, in the province of Utrecht, they availed themselves to such purpose that the miserable inhabitants believed the end of the world was come. With equal fury the great Turenne overran Westphalia in 1673, and the Palatinate in 1675, giving up those fair and populous countries to the soldiery to pillage, burn, sack, and con- sume. The Prince Palatine, from his castle at Heidelberg, beheld at one time thirty-two towns and villages in flames. The war, which lasted six years, was concluded by the Treaty of Nimeguen, August 10, 1678. XVII. MARIE ALACOQUE, 1675. During the war the government pressure on the Pro- testants was somewhat relaxed ; but at the same time the popular hatred was embittered by the occurrence of one of 86 The Huguenots. those "miracles" which, from age to age, hke a flood,. have carried away the CathoHc mind. The Visitandists were nuns who watched for the coming of the Bridegroom, and who called themselves Daughters of the Heart of Jesus, One day, in 1675, a nun of Paray- le-Monial, named Marie Alacoque, received the expected visit, and was permitted to kiss the wounds of the Saviour's bleeding heart. She was twenty-seven years of age when this celestial grace was vouchsafed to her. In a transport of joy she told what had happened to her abbess, a crafty woman, Avho conceived the daring idea of a contract of marriage between the Saviour and Marie. The abbess, signed for the Saviour, the nun wrote her name in her own blood. Thenceforth she received monthly visits from the Bridegroom. The Jesuits declared : " This is the worship- of the true Bleeding Heart, of the flesh and blood of Jesus." " A new materialistic phase came over the Catholic world. A mystical jargon, produced by the ambiguity of the material heart and the moral, found its way every- where. In twenty-five or thirty years there sprang up 428 convents of the Sacred Heart. The word itself became a war-cry against Protestantism." Paray-le-Monial is a small town in the south-west corner of Burgundy (Saone et Loire), and is one of the cleanest. and neatest in France. The writer was there in 1886. The Chapel of the Visitation is a plain building, erected on the spot where Marie Alacoque is said to have received the Saviour's visits. Opposite to it are shops filled with num- berless trinkets of every description for the devotees of the Bleeding Heart. Before the chapel doors stood women offering for sale wax tapers, which they seemed to think it strange we did not provide ourselves with before entering the shrine. Daylight is excluded from the chapel, which is illumined by small lamps, of a beautiful crimson colour, suspended from the roof; but the light is so dim that it. PHisson's Chest. 37 took some little time to determine whether any other per- sons were present. There might be a score or so, scattered over as many forms on the two sides of the aisle. Against the walls are set long lines of banners, emblazoned with the Sacred Heart, a symbol which was everywhere to be seen. At the upper end was an altar, at which stood a priest, intoning the service in a deep mellow voice ; and, at intervals, from behind a screen, came the responses* soft and slow, sometimes scarcely audible, the cadences gently winding their seductive way into the charmed ear. When we left the town and went on to Macon we travelled with two decent country-women, who informed us they were going to Lourdes. This is a town in the Pyrenees, near Bagneres-de-Bigorre, sacred to the Virgin, and which, in our day, from the supposed miraculous virtue of its waters, has eclipsed Paray as a place of pilgrimage. Its name is familiar to English readers in connection with Henri Lasserre, the intrepid and picturesque translator of the Gospels into French, who is still waiting at the gates of the Vatican until the Pope shall be honest enough to redeem his promise and autho- rize the circulation of the version. These good women seemed to indulge the hope of finding at the new shrine a more plentiful supply of spiritual advantages than the older sanctuary could offer ; and with this object they had undertaken a journey half the entire length of France. They carried with them bread and wine to sustain them ■by the way. XVIII. PELISSON'S CHEST. As already observed, it was not expedient during the war with Holland to proceed to extremities against the Protestants; it was therefore resolved to try for a while 38 The Huguenots. milder but not less infamous means. Bribery on a small- scale bad been practised for many years; it was no\r proposed to apply it iu a wbolesale way. Accordingly, tbe revenues of two ricb abbeys, Citeaux and St. Germain des Pres, together with a third of the vacant bishoprics, were set apart for this object. The- sacred chest was committed to a new convert named Pelisson, who had been a prisoner in the Bastille four years, and had purchased his release by changing his religion."'' Pelisson dispensed the money to the bishops, who distributed it through their agents. The price of conversion varied according to the social position of the convert and the difSculties of the work. " The tariff," remarks Peyrat, " was not high, each soul costing on an average six livres, a Uttle less than the price of a pig." The bishops sent back long lists of conversions, but not sufficient to satisfy Pelisson. " Send, send," he wrote continually; "the money is here, — five, ten, fifteen, twenty thousand livres" ; and every three months he laid before Louis a schedule of the scandalous bargains.. " The golden doctrine of M. Pelisson," said the courtiers^ " is more convincing than the arguments of the Bishop of Meaux " (Bossuet). The Protestants called the chest Pandora's box ; Pelisson himself compared it to the barrel and cruse of the widow of Sarepta which never failed. Money bribes were only for the lower class ; the rich and the noble were angled for with a different bait. For the substantial burgess there was an office or a pension ; for the nobility, orders of merit and the royal smile ; for the Protestant ministers, Bossuet's scheme of reunion with the Catholic Church, which, however, when examined, was found to mean little else than complete submission. The converts sometimes found it necessary to take security * On his death-bed P6Hsson refused the ministry of the priest and died professing tlie rehgion whicli he had abjured, and which he had bribed so many to forsake. Bossuet and Jean Claude. 39 for their bargain, otherwise tliey ran the risk of getting nothing. An officer pleading his change of religion as a reason for his advancement, the Minister of State con- gratulated him on his happy reunion with the Church, but told him drily that royal favours were not for those who had been, but for those who were to be, converted. Although Pelisson's success appeared to be so great, it was less in reality than on paper. Not only were the quarterly returns exaggerated, but many of the ignorant people who signed their abjuration with a cross were quite unconscious of what they had done. XIX. BOSSUET AND JEAN CLAUDE, 1G78. In 1668 Bossuet published his famous Exposition de la Foi Catholique, a work which raised up many antagonists and gave him many conquests, the most illustrious of which was that of Marshal Turenne. It had long been a prime object with the court to win over to the Komisli faith the greatest general of his age. Mazarin had offered him one of his nieces with a rich dowry ; Louis XIV. attempted to bribe him with the governorship of Dauphine and the sword of the Constable of France. From all such glittering offers he turned magnanimously away. But the controversial writings of the Jansenist Arnauld against the Protestants, and still more Bossuet's eloquent Eayosition, staggered him ; and in 1GG8 he was privately admitted into the Catholic Church. As soon as the event was known, the papal world was in triumph. The king would have heaped honours upon him if he would have suffered it ; and the Pope offered to make him a cardinal. " Mon Dieu," replied the veteran marshal, "what should I do with that little cap and long tail?" 40 The Huguenots. Turenne's defection was a severe blow to his party ; he had been preceded by his brother, the Duke de Bouillon, and he was followed by his nephews, the Dukes of Duras and de Lorges, and by many others. Now, it was said, that Tureuue, so just, so wise, so weightily judicious, is gone, no one can remain without covering himself with ridicule. Nevertheless, not a few of the nobility, some even of high rank, still clung to the Protestant cause. One of the new converts, Turenne's niece. Mademoiselle Duras, prompted, says Peyrat, by feminine vanity rather than piety, aspired to signalize her conversion by a public disputation between Bossuet and the Protestant theologian, Jean Claude. The contest took place in Paris, March 1st, 1678, in presence of a select company. Catholic and Pro- testant. The question at issue (which was chosen by Bossuet and the lady) was the same as that which was debated between Cyprian and Novatian in the third cen- tury, and between Augustine and the Donatists in the fourth, viz., What is the Church ? The duel, which lasted five hours, was fought with singular vigour and dexterity, and, which is better, with uninterrupted courtesy and good temper. Bossuet took his stand on the infallibility of the Church as an incontestible axiom. Claude proposed that this fundamental dogma should itself be the subject of their examination. Bossuet refused, saying : — " We are both agreed that a true Church exists ; that the Holy Spirit dwells in it, and that in the revelation of the truth He makes use of two external means, the Church and Scripture." It is impossible here to follow out the dis- cussion. In the course of his argument Claude seems to have made an unguarded admission, of which his watchful adversary was not slow to take advantage. "Enough, Sir," exclaimed Bossuet, " there is then in your religion a point at which the Christian does not know whether the Gospel is truth or fable." At these words the company rose. National Decay. 41 Each of the combatants paid a high tribute to the skill and character of his adversary. Bossuet says of Claude : '*! had to do with a man who listened patiently, spoke with perspicuity and force, and knew how to push home a difficulty. He defended his cause with all possible skill, and so ingeniously that I feared for the hearers." Claude's appreciation of Bossuet was equally profound. "I shall always retain for him, not only the respect due to his rank, but the esteem and admiration claimed by his great gifts and talents. I recognize in him a quick and pene- trating spirit, a clear conception, a correct and easy expression, and a lofty integrity. He painted his prin- ciples in the strongest colours and maintained them with all possible force." Each party drew up a report of the disputation, and when Louis XIV. forbad Claude's to be printed, Bossuet interceded for him and obtained the royal permission. At this time the Scottish Covenanters again broke out into open revolt. Archbishop Sharpe was murdered May 3rd, 1679, and a month later, the royal troops under Claverhouse were defeated at Drumclog, a disaster which that commander, three weeks afterwards, avenged with merciless ferocity at the famous battle of Bothwell Bridge. XX. NATIONAL DECAY. The extraordinary prosperity of the country of which we spoke awhile ago lasted but a short season. Possibly it may have been as much in show as in reality ; but Louis's reckless and costly wars, and the prodigality with which the court was maintained, were enough to beggar any nation. When the campaigns were over and the winter set in, the continual marching of troops was a 42 TJie Huguenots. grievous burden upon the provinces. The victories of the sovereign were the misery ef the people. Whilst the king was winning laurels they were sinking into poverty and servitude. The court was the most brilliant and luxurious in Europe ; the ever-growing expenditure required to maintain the royal state and the royal mistresses and their families, forced Colbert continually to impose new taxes, which, as the clergy and nobility were, to a large degree, exempt, pressed more and more heavily on the industrial classes. Similar taxes in some other countries would have produced a revolt. The terrible salt tax was raised through farmers-general, who paid the king two millions of livi'es a year, and spent as much more upon revenue officers ; the consequence being that whereas the manu- facturer on the marshes near Aigues-Mortes sold the salt to the farmer-general at five sous the measure, the latter sold it again at sixteen livres. In some places the peasants could not eat their soup because they could not afford to buy salt to put into it. A picture of the poverty of the country at this time has been left us by the English philosopher, John Locke, who spent two or three years in France on account of his health :— " Montpellier, May 1, 1676. The rent of lands in France has fallen one-half in these few years by reason of the poverty of the people ; merchants and handi- craftsmen pay [in taxes] near half their gains. Noble- land pays nothing in Languedoc, in whose hands soever it may be ; in some other parts lands in the hands of the nobles pay nothing." At another time, travelling down the western side of the kingdom, he found many houses in the smaller towns fallen to decay, notwithstanding the country was entirely cultivated. The gentlemen's seats, which were numerous, also bore marks of decay. At Niort (August, 1678) the people complained bitterly of the quartering of troops. A poor bookseller's wife told the National Decay. 43 English traveller that during the previous winter, 1200 soldiers had been quartered in the town, of whom she and her husband had two for their share. For these they had to provide three meals of meat a day, besides a collation in the afternoon, all of which it was their interest to give, and a fifth meal too, if it was demanded, rather than dis- please their terrible guests. These two soldiers, during the two and a-half months they were in the house, cost their hosts 120 livres. As time went on things grew worse. Colbert had forced the country to an unnatural pitch of development, and its fall was rapid and hopeless. " The three fiscal terrors," says Michelet, who quotes a contemporary writer, Pesant de Boisguillebert, "the taxes, the excise, and the customs, were so many flaming swords. See there, marching through the villages, those wretched peasant-collectors who gather the taxes and are answerable for the amount. They go in bands for fear of being knocked down. But they can squeeze nothing out of nothing ; the deficit falls on themselves. The royal officer seizes their oxen; if these are not sufficient, he takes the cattle of the whole village ; after that he comes down upon the head-collectors themselves, who are cast into prison. The excise is a little worse. The clerks become dealers, and wage a relentless war against such of the merchants as buy their wine from the grower and not from them. Communica- tion is everywhere hindered. Goods imported from Japan only quadruple their value, whilst produce which passes from one province of France to another sells for twenty- four times its original price. Wine bought at Orleans for a sou fetches 24 at Kouen. Thus the revenue clerk is six times more to be dreaded than the pirate or the tempest. France is uprooting her vines; the people drink only •water." As the taxes of the excise destroyed internal in- dustry, so the customs ruined foreign commerce. In this 44 The Huguenots. way the nation, and even Colbert, became the slaves of financiers, farmers-general, contractors, who were more powerful than the king himself. As has been intimated, the money thus wrung from the oppressed people was lavished on the basest objects. The duty on tobacco was .given to Madame de Montespan to pay her debts at the gambling-table. " It was now," adds Michelet, " that the French people, over-worked and half starved, earned from the rest of Europe the epithet of niaigre, and became familiarly known to their neighbours across the Channel by the name of Monsieur Frog." XXI. UNDER THE HARROW. The temporary lull occasioned by the war with Holland was followed by a storm of increased violence. Liberty in trade and profession was now reduced within the narrowest limits. In 1680 Protestant women were forbidden to act as satje-femmcs, and the next year Catholics serving in that office were authorized to receive Protestant infants into the Romish Church by sprinkling, whenever they believed such infants were not likely to live. At the same time the magistrates were directed to visit sick Protestants and to enquire in which religion they wished to die. The parliament of Rouen, in registering this edict, ordered physicians attending on sick Protestants to inform the magistrates whenever they considered death as impend- ing. The magistrates abused their charge, and instead of putting the simple question to the dying persons, inveigled them by captious and embarrassing interrogations. Often the wife or the children were excluded from the room, and when the sick man became light-headed or unable to articulate, a proces- verbal to suit the case was prepared, Under the Harrow. 45 the room being guarded by Catholics so that the family should not enter. The priests often forced themselves into the sick chamber and usurped the functions of the magistrates. But as they were less respected than these, they got many rebuffs, and in retaliation filed informa- tions against those "who opposed them. January 26, 1681, the wife of Costils Brisset, a merchant,. being ill, fell into a lethargy. The cure of the parish and his vicar,* in spite of the courteous opposition of the husband, made their way to the bedside and admonished the sick woman to think of eternity. Unable to obtain any answer they left the house, but in the evening returned with a magistrate, who, taking it for granted that entrance would be denied him, ordered the shop-door to be broken open. The husband, to prevent such an out- rage, admitted them by a side door. Hereupon the 'magis- trate ordered the husband and daughters to quit the house,^ and when the former asked the reason of so strange a pro- ceeding, the judge drew up a charge against him of resist- ing the law. The next day the judge returned with some officers and other Catholics, made his way into the sick- room, and put the husband and daughters outside. A Catholic doctor declaring that the patient had revived for a short time and had called on the Virgin and St. Anne, the judge pronounced her a Catholic, and placed a guard of Catholic women over her. But the woman coming to herself denied that she had made any such confession, so that the vicar, who was prepared to administer extreme unction, was obliged to desist. Enraged at his failure, he exclaimed against the daughters, and raised a tumult which lasted till midnight. An information was laid against the family, who forwarded a counter-complaint to * In France the parish-priest is called cure ; and his curate, vicaire. 46 The Huguenots. Paris. The sick woman dying, the Catholics remained in possession of her body and the matter ended. The Reformed were forbidden to receive sick persons into their houses, and were ordered to send them to the hospitals. Protestant schools were still further restricted, and the masters prohibited from taking boarders. When they complained, they were told that no edict had ever granted them this permission. On an intendant returning this pitiful reply, the complainant rejoined that many liberties had been granted them of which, under various pretexts, they had been deprived, and that if they were also to be deprived of such as were not to be found in the edicts, it would only be necessary to forbid them to buy- bread of the baker, corn in the market and meat of the butcher, and they would all die of hunger. " At these words," adds Benoit, who was present, •' I saw the inten- dant blush and turn away in silence." The Protestant academies, so long renowned for learn- ing and piety, Chatillou, Sedan, Die, Saumur, Montauban, were suppressed, Sedan being given to the Jesuits. Trades- men and sailors of the Pieformed religion were now for- bidden to establish themselves abroad. Protestants were excluded from the offices of notary, usher and the like; and judges and advocates were forbidden to take Pro- testant clerks ; and a little later all Protestants employed in the royal palaces were dismissed. Lastly, in 1685, just before the Revocation, they were forbidden to act as apothecaries, surgeons or physicians, printers or book- binders, doctors of law or advocates. Worship was restricted to temples with the presence of the minister, under pain of corporal punishment ; and the parliament of Rouen forbad " Catholic school-boys, foot- men and others, incapable of arguing on religion, from attending the preaching of Protestants." The magis- trates' seats, fleur-dc-lys, and royal arms, with which the Under the Harrow. 47 temples had been ornamented, were at the same time removed. Ministers were forbidden to reside more than three years in one place, or within six leagues of any place where the Protestant worship had been interdicted. Attendance at marriages and baptisms was limited to twelve persons, who were forbidden to walk in procession. The registers were taken away and placed in the hands of the civil authorities. The provincial synods were sup- pressed. The last was held at Lisy, in the diocese of Meaux, in 1683. Allix, the pastor of Charenton, who presided, could not refrain from lamenting what seemed to him the approaching end of Protestantism. Tlie royal commissioner brutally interrupted him : "If you continue thus to censure the king's commands, I will, with my own hands, throw you down from the pulpit." There was still another edict by which a large number •of Protestant families were reduced to beggary. Notwith- standing national prejudice and even direct enactments, Colbert, who knew that the king could not be so well served as by his subjects of the Eeformed religion, had appointed them to many offices in the department of finance. Now, however, the tide became too strong even for this experienced and faithful minister, who for some time past had been falliug into disgrace ; and by a stroke of the pen Protestants were removed from all such offices. Colbert did not long survive the overthrow of his en- lightened policy. His opponents in the cabinet procured his removal in 1683, shortly after which he fell sick. During his illness the king sent him a letter. " I do not wish," said the dying minister, " to hear any more of the king ; let him only suffer me to die in peace " ; and then, the approach of death dissipating the illusions of time, he exclaimed with bitterness, almost in the words of Wolsey, "" Had I done for God what I have done for this man, I should have been saved ten times over, but now I know 48 The Huguenots. not what will become of me." So unpopular had this able- and brave minister become that the people, if they had been suffered, would have torn his body to pieces. XXII. THE KIDNAPPING OF CHILDEEN. But we have not yet related the worst. If there was one measure rather than another which carried dismay into the homes and bosoms of Protestants, it was the law providing for the conversion of their children. In every part of the country boys and girls were systematically kidnapped. Although the age of conversion was fixed at fourteen for boys and twelve for girls, it was no uncommon occurrence for infants of a more tender age to be carried oJGf to a convent, from whence, even if a magistrate's order was obtained for their restitution, the difficulties of recovery were almost insuperable. If these children in their prison- house did not yield to coaxing and promises, other measures, were resorted to, sometimes of a cruel and revolting character. In 1G63, complaints were sent up from all quarters against the conduct of the clergy in this matter, especially in the province of Normandy, where the parliament had reduced the legal age of conversion to eight and seven years respectively. These complaints happened to reach the king's ear just when he was mortally offended with the Pope ; and, in 1GG8, an Order in Council was issued, forbidding the removal of young children from their parents, and directing that such as were confined in convents should be restored. But the clergy were too sensible of the importance of gaining the children before parental influence had established itself, to give up the point. Jansenists and Jesuits alike rose against the Order ; The Kidnapiiing of Children. ' 49 and the spokesman of the clergy, the coadjutor of Aries, after the usual salutation of flattery of the monarch and the usual malediction of heresy, demanded the repeal of the obnoxious Order, declaring the limitation of age to be a matter in which it was the duty of the clergy to disobey his majesty. It was not, however, until 1681, that the Order was rescinded. The royal edict by which this was done, after setting forth " the great success of the spiritual inducements and reasonable methods which the king had employed to aid the divine motions in the hearts of his subjects of the K. P. E.," declared children of seven years to be capable of choice in the all-important matter of their salvation. From this time the abduction of young children went forward more openly, and on a more extensive scale. *• Words are wanting," says Benoit, " to describe the terror caused to the Protestants by this edict. Every pious father, and still more the mothers, tender and sensitive, felt as though they were stabbed to the heart, expecting every day to see their children torn from their arms. Who can imagine the feelings of a mother at seeing her daughters decoyed and carried off, to be enslaved by men and women whom she despised, and drilled into a religion which she abhorred ? The Huguenot family lived in a state of perpetual alarm : the caresses and gifts of Catholic friends were looked upon as so many snares ; and Catholic servants were regarded as the spies of the converters. The children were dazzled by the glitter of the State-worship, the lighted tapres, the images, the vestments. Any childish eagerness they manifested to see the Catholic spectacles was laid hold of as a divine call, the seed of piety. Too often the fears of the parents were realised. A Catholic neighbour, a nurse, still more an enemy, or a debtor who had been pressed to settle an account, gave information that a child had made the sign E 50 The Huguenots, of the cross, or had cried because it was not allowed to enter the church where the altar was lighted up, or, seeing the Host pass by, had called it ' Le bon Dieu.' Such testimony was received with seriousness by the judges ; and without affidavit or examination the children were handed over to the nuns. Courts of justice, too, acted on the maxim that in conversion from the Protestant to the Eomish Church, right motives were always present and good faith observed ; whereas in passing from the Catholic faith to the Eeformed, fraud was always to be presumed." So profound a grief was caused by the new law that the Protestant churches ordered a general fast, and Jean Claude petitioned the kiug against the intolerant edict. " Children of seven years," he said, " are incapable of a choice, which is the highest effort of the human mind ; " and he declared that "the Reformed would suffer all kinds of ill, even death itself, rather than be separated from their children at so tender an age." Louis refused to see the pastor of Charenton ; and the petition, which was presented through the deputy-general, Ruvigny, re- mained unnoticed. XXIII. MADAME DE MAINTENON. About the year 1G76, there entered on the stage a per- sonage of very remarkable character. In France, more than in auy other country, the secret springs of govern-- nicut have been worked by women; and of all those who, behind the throne, have wielded a power greater than that of the throne, the greatest has been Madame de Maintenon. Fraii(;oise D'Aubigno was the grand-daughter of Theodore Agrippa D'Aubigne, the celebrated Protestant historian and friend of Henry IV., and was born in Madame cle Mainte7ion. 51 1635. Her mother was a Catholic ; and her father made httle resistance to her being baptized in the Romish Cluucb. Nevertheless, the Protestant ideas, which were the heirloom of her family, remained with her until her seventeenth year, when through the influence of an adroit instructress in an Ursuline convent in Paris, she embraced the Romish faith. Shortly afterwards she married the cynic poet, Scarrou, who died in 1G60. Ten years later she consented to take charge of a royal infant, the child of Louis XIV. and his mistress, Madame de Montespan, which was conveyed to her lodgings with the utmost secrecy ; and afterwards all their children in succession were committed to her care. Louis himself paid her frequent visits, removed her in 1674 to the palace, and, on the fall of Madame de Montespan, created her Marchioness de Maintenou. The king found the society of the new favourite indis- pensable to him. She was possessed of extraordinary -qualities of disposition and intellect, which were set off by uncoil) moa personal beauty. Her resources were endless, her di.-cretion rare, and her conversation charming. The king found it more agreeable and soothing than anything -else in tiie world. " She has," says Madame de Caylus, •" taken the king into quite a new country, the region of friendship and conversation, without dissimulation and without restraint." To some extent she softened Louis's rugLjed nature. The queen, yielding to the loose code of morals which prevailed at the court, encouraged the intimacy. "The king," she said, "has never been so kind to me as since he listens to her. It is to her influence that I owe his affection." In the midst of his debaucheries and of his schemes for -aggrandising France and winning fresh laurels for himself, Louis SL-ems to have discovered that the pomp and pleasures of the world were empty, and that something better was 52 The Huguenots. needed to satisfy his soul. Madame de Maintenon under- took to supply the void. She wrote to the ladies of St. Cyr : " When I began to see that it would not perhaps be impossible to contribute to the king's salvation, I began also to be convinced that God had conducted me to the court for that purpose, and to this end I limited all my views." It might be too much to say that in thus taking upon her to direct the king's conscience she was acting- the hypocrite, but her love of power, the equivocal position she herself occupied, and the atmosphere in which she lived, forbid us to believe that her religious teaching was. anything better than sentimental and sterile. What her attitude was in regard to the grand project of expunging Calvinism from France has been sharply contested between Protestant and Catholic hisstoriaus. The former regard her as equally guilty with Le Tellier, Louvois, La Chaise, and the bishops ; the latter deny the chaige in toto. Until of later years the current of public opinion ran strong against. her : on the death of Louis XIV. a reaction from the adulation which the nation had lavished on him had set in ; the transactions of his reign were subjected to severe criticism ; and Madame de Maintenon was fixed upon as the secret spring from which so many evils had flowed.. Especially was she reproached with being one of the chief instigators of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The publication of her 'Letters' in 1752-1756, and of the ' Memoirs of the Duke de St. Simon ' soon after the Revolution, served to intensify this feeling. Now, however, the pendulum began to swing back again. St. Simon, it was notorious, habitually dipped his. pen in gall ; and if his facts were true, his portraits were too often distorted. Still less would the ' Letters ' bear scrutiny. Their history is curious. They were in the possession of Louis Racine, son of the poet, and were by him entrusted to La Beaumelle, a literary knight-errant Madame de Maintenon. 53 and a Protestant. La Beaumelle seized the occasion of rendering odious the persecution under Louis XIV., and especially the name of Madame de Maintenon, whom, like many others, he regarded as a prime instigator of it. In ■accordance with a practice not uncommon at that day, he had the meanness to "cook" the 'Letters,' altering, ■comhiniug, enlarging, and even fabricating some which bad no claim to existence beyond a phrase or a sentence. The fraud was more than suspected during La Beaumelle's lifetime ; but it was not until some five and twenty years ago that it was fully exposed. This was due to the discovery of the copy which had belonged to Louis Eacine, to which notes, indicating the authenticity or otherwise of the several ' Letters,' were appended in his own hand. 'Comparison with manuscript copies of the * Letters ' in family collections confirmed the accuracy of his annota- tions, and the certainty of La Beaumelle's fraud. Under these circumstances we have refrained from using the corre- spondence, unless when supported by other evidence than that of La Beaumelle's collection. If, therefore, the reader should miss some well-known sayings of the lady, he will understand the cause of the omission. But even if it cannot be shown that Madame de Maintenon joined in urging the king on in the fatal course •of persecution, neither is it proved that she used her vast influence to restrain him. Ambition was her ruling passion, and to have opposed the Jesuits and the clergy -on this point would have been the ruin of all her schemes. Once only is she said to have lifted a finger on behalf of the afflicted Protestants, her brethren after the flesh. At the Eevocation, when the last and most violent turn was 'being given to the screw, she is said to have made some remonstrance against the severity with which the Calvinists were treated. The king's reply was : " I fear the indulgence jou would ask proceeds only from a lingering affection for 54 The Huguenots. your old religion." "The king," observes Voltaire, "in the midst of his banquets, his conquests, and his mistresses^ had no time to waste on the trifling details of such- horrors." If, again, Madame de Maintenon did not actually insti- gate or promote the tyrannical decrees of the government, she at least busied herself with personal conversions. In her zeal to bring her Protestant relatives into the Church, she was not at all scrupulous as to the means she employed : seeing fraud and violence in operation all around her, she freely made use of the same. " She was," says Madame de Caylus, " supported in this object by all the weight of the royal authority." She had a near relative, M. de Villette, who had distinguished himself in the naval war with the Dutch, to whom she held out hoj)es of promotion if he would consent to renounce his religion. Finding him impracticable, she sent him on a distant service, and during his absence contrived, under a false pretence, tO' get possession of his little daughter. The child (afterwards Madame de Caylus) related the story when she was grown up : " At first I wept much, but the next day I found the royal Mass so charming that I consented to become a Catholic, on condition that I might hear it every day, and that I should not be whipped." When the father returned to France his grief and anger were extreme, and he gave vent to his emotion in a letter to Madame de Maintenon. She replied, April 15, 1681 : " Judge yourself, if, having used force to gain possession of your daughter, I am now going to be so foolish as to restore her. Eather give me the others for friendship's sake ; for, if God preserve the king's life, in twenty years' time there will not be a Huguenot left." In the case of another cousin, M. de St. Hermine, who withstood all her attempts to convert him, she proceeded so far as to shut him up in the Bastille ; and when intercession Madame de Maintenon. 55 Was made to her to release him, she wrote in reply : " His wife has not communicated ; it is her husband who hinders her ; I cannot endure such mock conversions. It does not suit me to set M. de St. Hermine at Hberty." As to her Cathohc relations, she was wilhng that they should take advantage of the calamities of the Huguenots. (We shall soon come to the events which laid Poitou open to the harpies). Sept. 27, 1681, she wrote to her brother: ♦' You cannot do better than buy an estate in Poitou or in the environs of Coignac ; they will soon be given away, in consequence of the flight of the Huguenots." In 1683 the queen died, and at the end of 1685, or in January, 1686, Madame de Maintenon became the wife of Louis XIV. The marriage was performed with the utmost secrecy. It took place at night, in a private apartment of Fontainebleau, the officiating priest being the cure of the parish. The new wife ardently desired that her rank should be acknowledged ; but the union was hateful to the ministers, and the king himself had no wish to make it public. It remained a secret of State until after his death. She had now reached the highest step to which, as a subject, she could aspire ; but rank and power did not bring happiness. She looked back with regret to the days of her youth, when, as she said, " Although I was poor I was contented and happy ; I was a stranger to chagrin and ennui ; I was free."' Watching one day the gold-fish in the royal gardens, swimming uneasily round and round in the marble basin, she sighed : — " They are like me ; they pine for their mud." Contemporary writers give us an insight into the royal cabinet, both when the king and the marchioness were alone, and when the minister was present. In June, 1680, Madame de Sevigne writes : " I hear that the con- versations of his majesty with Madame de Maintenon grow and flourish ; that they last from six o'clock till ten. 56 TJie Huguenots. His daughter-in-law, who sometimes pays them a short visit, finds them each in a great cliair, and when ber visit is over they resume the thread of their discourse. The lady is no longer approached except with fear and respect, and the ministers pay the same court to ber as other persons do to tliem." The scene in the royal chamber is thus drawn by St. Simon : — " The king and Madame de Maintenon occupied each an arm-chair with a table before them at the two chimney-corners ; she, on the side where the bed stood, the king, his chair hacked against the wall, on the side of the ante-chamber door, with two stools before his table, one for the minister who came to transact business, the other for the minister's bag. Madame de Maintenon read or worked tapestry, hearing all that passed, for the king and the minister conversed aloud. She seldom offered a word, more rarely one of any motnent ; but the king often asked her opinion, when she replied in measured terms. Seldom or never did she appear moved by anything, still less interested for anyone ; nevertheless the minister let nothing fall which came from her lips. If the king inclined to her opinion, the minister stopped there and went no further. If the king inclined to a different opinion, the minister tried to embarrass him, when the king would hesitate and ask Madame de Maintenon how the matter seemed to her. She would smile, profess her incapacity, utter sometimes one sentiment, sometimes another, then return to the minister's opinion, and in the end determine matters in such a way that three-fourths of all favours and pro- motions, and again three-fourths of the remaining fourth of all that was done by the ministers, was disposed of by her." The Dragonnade in Poitou. 57 XXIV. THE DRAGONNADE IN POITOU, 1681. The Peace of Nimeguen, as has been abeady said, left Louis free to devote himself to the conversion of his Protestant subjects. Three years after the treaty was -concluded, the Dragoiinades were put in motion. This was not altogether a new invention. Something like it had been employed against the Protestant inhabitants of Beam in the early part of the century ; and in 1661 the •city of Montauban was harried in this way four months. It was at the suggestion of Marillac, intendant of Poitou, that this terrible engine of arbitrary power was now •invoked to quicken the conversion of that province. This was more than four years before the revocation •of the Edict of Nantes, which act indeed, as we have all along seen, was not a single blow, but the culmination of a long series of measures for the extirpation of heresy. Louvois was delighted with the suggestion, and wrote back, March, 1681 : — " His majesty has learnt with great joy how large a number of Hagaenots continue to be con- verted in your department. It is his will that in the billeting of the army the greater number of horse- soldiers should be assigned to the Protestants. If in the assessment they are rated at ten, you must give them twenty." Marillac lost no time in letting loose on the Protestants all the troops at his disposal ; the soldiers rushed on their prey like a pack of furious wolves. Such a comparison is no exaggeration, as will be evident when we consider the character of the French soldier at this lime. The army had not long returned from Holland and the Rhine, where, as we have seen, they had been flushed with slaughter and surfeited with licence. Thus steeled in his 58 The Huguenots. nature and brutalized in Lis habits, the dragoon was the fittest tool in the world to be used by absolute power for- the coercion of men's consciences. " Between him and the Huguenot household on which he was quartered there was no sympathy. He hated their religion ; he could not understand their seriousness and gravity ; and he was determined to overcome what he took to be their pride and obstinacy. To them, on the other hand, he was the incarnation of horrors. The children fled from him ; the husband remained gloomy ; the wife and daughters, shocked by the noise, coarse behaviour and obscene songs, and choked by the fumes of tobacco, could with difficulty conceal their disgust. He used them as his slaves ; he treated them far worse than brute animals. The wife showed her horror of popery more than the husband ; she was the pillar of the family." The quartering of the soldiers in Poitou was effected in a loose and arbitrary manner, in some cases not even a billet being sent with them, only a verbal order. The intendant had a sergeant, whom he directed to go from house to house, bidding the dragoons live sumptuously ; and he charged the officers to cane such as spared the Huguenots, and to send their names to him. Nothing was good enough for these fellows ; they wasted the provisions and threw them away ; they washed their horses' feet in the wine ; and when they could not obtain what they wanted, they broke up and set fire to the furniture. Many Huguenots were beaten and dragged to prison, where, as the judges would order them no rations, the jailers refused to provide them with food, and they would have starved but for the charity of the towns- people. The priests urged on the soldiers : — " Courage, gentlemen, it is the king's will that these Huguenot dogs should be harried." "I pursue the Huguenots," wrote the cure of Soubise, " and they dare not utter a syllable;. The Dragonnade in Poitou. 5^ you take them by the bill like a snipe, and if they say a single word, you pack them off to Eochefort." The soldiers did the work of the priests. At Niort they stuck crucifixes into the muzzles of their guns and thrust them into the faces or chests of such as refused to kiss them. The women were not spared ; they seem indeed to have come in for the heavier share of suffering. A mother, with an infant at her breast, whose offence was that she had said that she would never go to Mass, was beaten, thrown down, and dragged by the neck, her tormentors paying no regard to the cries of the child. The husband of a young wife, endeavouring to shield her, was bound to the bed, and his wife insulted in his presence. Her cries brought her mother, on whom the wretches fell with such violence, that, supposing they had killed her, they took to their heels. It should here be said that, as if in mockery, it was forbidden to the soldiers to take life. Accordingly the offenders in this case were brought before the inten- dant ; he only laughed at the affair. Some dragoons, unable to induce a young woman to recant, made a fire of faggots and threatened to throw her upon it. Her cries brought her father and brother ; the soldiers took all three and cast them on the flames ; their clothes were burnt and their bodies scorched. Fire, indeed, seems to have been a favourite pastime. One poor fellow was held near a furnace until his sabots caught, when the fear of being slowly burnt to death wrung from him a promise to go to Mass. But as soon as he was released he retracted. Being taken back to the fire, he again gave way ; and this cruel game was repeated until the sufferer could hold out no longer. A householder named Pierre Bonneau had a captain and trumpeter quartered upon him, with their valets and three horses. On their departure they were succeeded by twenty-three dragoons, who, to find out where he kept his "60 The Huguenots. money, made liim stand before a large fire until he con- fessed. Tliese in turn were replaced by twelve others, who dragged the poor man by the hair to the grate, where they scorched him for twelve hours. Such acts exceeded even the measure of compulsion recognized by the governor, the Duke de Vreville, who, when a deputation from the Protestants waited on bim and asked what he was pleased to call violence, ■answered: — "When soldiers burn the feet of their hosts, I call it violence." Tiie duke's actions did not belie his words. Notwithstanding he professed to have brought a royal message that the king desired the conversion of the Huguenots sliould be effected without constraint or violence, he sent his guards to the town of Foussai, where they used such forcible arguments that in five days 800 of the Keformed made abjuration. At Vouille the cure dragged a Huguenot into his house, forced him down on his knees, and making him place his hands on a book, declared him to be a Catholic. It was in vain the Huguenot protested and carried his complaint before the intendant ; all the answer he received was that the testimony of his opponents was more worthy of belief than his. The soldiers meeting Protestant labourers on the road or at the plough, drove them into the churches, pricking them like oxen with their own goads, and when this was • not enough, riding over them. A complaint being made to the intendant that a child of eight years had been taken from the shop of his father, a locksmith, and bribed by the offer of a farthing to promise to become a Catholic, the intendant replied that he had him- self examined the child, who had assigned a good reason for his change of religion, viz., that what he saw and heard at church was much better than what he saw and The Dragonnade in Poitou. 61 heard at the preaching. The child's mother persisting in her refusal to part with him, was sent to prison. The reader may have heard of a singularly ingenious and diabolical method of torment invented at this time to subdue the Huguenot spirit. We mean depriving the victims of sleep. When other means of conversion failed, they were told that they would not be allowed to sleep any more until they abjured. Eelays of soldiers were provided, who relieved one another, and who, says Benoit, " by drums, cries, oaths, and violently breaking up the furniture, compelled the poor wretches to keep awake. If this was not enough, they pinched, pricked and jostled them, and even hung them up by cords." " The strongest men amongst the dragoons," says another witness, " took hold of them and walked them incessantly up and down, or tickled and tossed them to and fro, for hours and days together. When the sufferers grew so weary and faint as no longer to be able to stand, they laid them on a bed and continued to tickle them as before." " There were," adds BenoiL, " men who resisted this kind of torture twenty- four days ; others sank at the end of three or four." Many, however, yielded at once, or after a brief trial ; and many became imbecile or raving mad. Besides these violent means, others were employed to break the spirit of the Protestants. The assessment at which the Catholics were rated for the king and the municipality' was reduced, and the New Converts wholly exempted, whilst the taxes were doubled on the Pro- testants. Collectors who refused to lend themselves to this injustice were removed or imprisoned. The authorities were but too zealously supported by the Catholic inhabitants. When a temple was pulled down, the people piled up the doors, windows, chairs and benches, and crowning the stack with the Bible, set fire to 62 The Huguenots. it, dancing round with savage joy. They ploughed up the cemeteries and swept the bones into the river.* Petitions to the king were drawn up in every place, but neither sergeant nor judge could be found to make a proces-verbal. At length two Protestant noblemen suc- ■ceeded in obtaining an audience of Louvois at Fontaine- bleau. The minister received them at first in a jaunty manner, as though what they had to complain of was a trifle ; but when they showed him the gravity of the case, and offered their heads as a guarantee of the truth of their statements, he became more serious. They told him that although they could not recognize as judges the governor or the intend ant, yc^t to prove their confidence in the justice of their cause, they would accept the Bishop of Poitiers and the king's lieutenant of the province. They related a flagrant instance of cruelty which had just happened, and which appeared to make some impression on the minister, for he promised to speak to the king on their behalf. A few days afterwards, however, when the deputies returned to Fonlainebleau to hear his answer, he received them with effrontery, and said: — "Gentlemen, I blush for shame at having reported your complaint to the king, because his majesty assures me the statements you have made are a pure invention." The noblemen with- drew in silence, and the next morning were served with a royal order to depart from the town. The fact is Louvois had kept the king in entire ignorance of what was being perpetrated in his name. Being minister of war, he had the control of the marching and quartering of the troops, * In the like spirit were the abbeys and churches destroyed at the Eevolution. At the demolition of the splendid abbey of Cluny, when the last massive buttress hail been battered down, the people made a pile in the public square, of the painting's, statues of wood and carved work, and setting fire to it celebrated their triumph by dancing round with yells and shouting. The Dragonnade in Poitou, 63 and the orders he sent down emanated only from himself. It is difficult to conceive how such a state of secrecy could be maintained, for the court was full of lords, military officers, and ecclesiastics, who well knew what was going on, and amongst whom the actions and success of the booted missionaries in Poitou were a common topic of conversation, at table, on the promenades, in the galleries, and even in the ante-chamber. Nevertheless, they appear never to have been allowed to penetrate within the royal sanctum. To mislead the king, troops were sent into Dauphine and some other provinces, where they were kept under strict discipline, and he was made to believe that the same order was maintained in Poitou. To prevent further deputations to the court, Marillac now directed his violence against the Protestant nobility, sending dragoons to their mansions to practise pillage and debauchery. Many nobles and others prepared to quit the kingdom, upwards of 400 of whom were arrested : some of them were imprisoned at La Rochelle, where they were so starved and ill-treated that the Catholics were moved to tears and brought them food. But Marillac had over- acted his part. The court had been assured that only the indigent and worthless would flee ; and when it was found that the country was being drained of its strength, orders were sent down to release the prisoners and send home the fugitives. No fewer, it is said, than 3000 families quitted i^'rance in tlie course of this year, amongst whom were a targe number of sailors of the western ports, reckoned the best seamen in the kingdom. This was a loss which could iiijt be borne in silence ; and Marillac, accordingly, was r called from his intendaucy, and fell into disgrace. He might be seen hanging ab >ut the court, with his head . own and his hat over liis eyes, shunned by all except the Jesuits. Four years later, hou-ever, when the rest of the ngdom was treated like Poitou, this unscrupulous prefect 64 The Huguenots. became again a necessary man, and was appointed intendant of Rouen. The storm of persecution lasted from March to the end of September. It was not confined to Poitou, but extended into the adjoining provinces of Aunis and Saintnoge,. where the intendant of La Roclielle and the governor of Brouage rivalled Marillac in violence and cruelty. The outrages which have been related, with many others for which we have not space, produced a profound sensation in Protestant countries. England, Denmark, Prussia, and Holland held out a hand to the emigrants, offering them a safe asylum, with many civil immunities. In England, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Loudon were specially commissioned to provide for their spiritual and material wants. Sir George Wheler, who had travelled through France for the purpose of collecting reliable evidence, drew up a statement of the grievances of the Protestants, a copy of which he presented to every member of parliament. Along with other Englishmen, he saw that the extirpation of heresy in France was only the prelude to a second Armada, a new crusade for the extinction of the Protestant religion in Europe. The Eomish Church boasted that during this year, 1681,. in Poitou and the adjacent provinces, 83,000 converts had been gained from Calvinism. How many of tbese recanted is not stated, nor how many became a prey to remorse. Some took to their bed in anguish of spirit; some put an end to their own existence. " You might see them," saya Benoit, " fall down in the road, tear their hair, beat their breasts, and cry for mercy. When two of these wretched beings met at the foot of an image or in some act of Catholic devotion, they joined in sobs and bitter lamenta- tions. Hiisbands might be heard reproaching their wives,, and wives their hiisbands, as the authors of their common misery. And," he adds, " as soon as the persecution The Dragonnade in Poitou. 65 relaxed there were scarcely any who did not return to their ministers and protest against the violence by which they had been compelled to abjure." The hour of retribution for the enormities perpetrated in Poitou, and for the numberless acts of wanton cruelty which had preceded and which followed in other provinces, came at last. It was a saying of the heathen philosopher, Plutarch, " The mill of the gods grinds slow " ; and more than a century elapsed before the day of reckoning came. The religious fanaticism of the Kevocation, and the social fanaticism of the Kevolutiou, were a counterpart of each other ; they differed only in name. La Vendee and Nantes border on Poitou ; and in 1793, Carrier, a greater monster even than Marillac, was sent down from Paris to establish the Reign of Terror in that quarter. Supported by the sans-culottes of the city, he set to work on Vendeans,. royalists, and moderate republicans, first with the guillotine, then with musketry and artillery, and then, as these means were not rapid enough for him, he instituted the infamous noyades. He had the victims bound hand and foot, and forced on board barges with loose bottoms, called valve-boats [yaisseaux a soupape), from which they were dropped into the Loire ; and at last, as time was still lost in preparing the soupapes, men, women, and children were embarked on larger craft, driven over the sides of the vessel at the point of the bayonet, and shot down as they struggled in the water. This was accom- panied with revolting barbarities. Fifteen thousand persons^ of all ages, perished by the guillotine, the fusillades, and the noyades, or by cold and hunger, or the diseases engendered in the crowded prisons. These horrors lasted nearly four months. As in the seventeenth century, Louis XIV. and the Jesuits were ready to outrage all rights and perpetrate all enormities to render France Catholic ; so in the eighteenth century. Carrier said, on 66 '/'/<6 Huguenots. entering Nantes, " We will turn all France into a cemetery rather than fail to regenerate it in our own way." The internal state of this devoted province, during the dragonnade which we have been describing, will be best understood from the personal narrative of one who played a conspicuous part in the heroic resistance. XXV. JEAN MIGAULT.— PERILS IN THE CITY. Jean Migault was reader in the church of Moulle in Poiton, a few leagues from Niort ; he was also public notary of the town, and he kept a small school. The decree which deprived the Protestants of their employ- ments took away both his oiBce and his pupils, and compelled him, with his wife and eleven children, to remove to Mougon, another small town in the neighbour- bood, where the consistory offered him a slender pittance as reader and secretary. The cure of this place tried to deter him from settling there, telling him it would be at his peril if he came into his parish. Migault and his wife had for a long time anxiously watched the gathering of the dense clouds which now burst on every side. With a heavy heart he saw his Protestant neighbours, one after anotlier, give way before the storm, many at the mere rumour of the approach of the dragoons. Such, indeed, was the panic fear caused by this terrible cavalry, that it is said a single soldier riding into a town with some scraps of paper in his hand was sufficient to induce the first families in the place to abjure. There seems to have been a regular mode of procedure when a regiment entered a town. They began by de- manding for a superior officer fifteen francs a day ; for a lieutenant, nine ; for a private soldier, three. If these Perils in the City. 67 demands were not promptly complied with, they seized and sold the furniture, the cattle, and the implements of trade. In these sales regard was seldom paid to the real value of the articles ; they took whatever price was •offered ; if one thing did not bring enough money, they -sold more to make np the deficiency. Thus cruelly spoiled, those who would not apostatize were compelled to seek refuge in flight, which they were obliged to do under cover of darkness, and then had no resource but to wander in the woods without food and almost without clothing. There, mothers might be seen with their little ones, separated from theif husbands, driven wild by terror .and distress, and still flying when no longer pursued. Jean Migault and his wife, foreseeing the danger, sent away their children, and in trembling trust in divine help awaited the issue. On the 22nd of August, 1681, as the Protestants of Mougon were dispersing from their worsliip, they were alarmed by the appearance of a troop of cavalry, commanded by an officer notorious for his cruelty, who, -advancing at a gallop, posted his men in the temple-yard. Scarcely had the Migaults reached their house than a quarter-master rode up, and without alighting asked in an imperious tone whether they intended to turn Catholics. They assured him nothing should ever induce them to ■change their religion. He was presently succeeded by the commanding officer, who sternly demanded what sum they would give him per day during his stay in the place, giving them to understand that the more they gave him the fewer would be the soldiers quartered on them. They told him they had no money at all to give him. Eegardless of this assurance he proceeded to search the house. As soon as be had departed two soldiers presented themselves with their billets. Having stabled their horses they called for dinner, ordering as much as would have sufficed for twenty men. Whilst the food was being prepared two 68 The Huguenots. more arrived, and soon afterwards five others, who, pre- tending the hay was bad, abused their host with oaths and blasphemies. Then they all began to order luxuries, which it was impossible to obtain in that little town. Migault telling them that if they wanted such articles they must send to Niort, they gave him leave to go out and seek for a messenger. Being thus momentarily free, Jean went immediately next door, which was occupied by two Catholic ladies, the devoted friends of himself and his family, and between whose house and his own there was a secret communica- tion. Whilst he was enquiring of tbese ladies for some one to send to Niort, six soldiers rode up to the door and asked for Migault's house. The ladies pointed it out to. them, and then returning to their poor friend urged him to fly, as his only chance of safety, for they knew the cure would leave no means untried to accomplish his destruction.. They promised to take care of his wife, and even assured him tliat before the end of the day they would find means to withdraw her also from danger. Thus saying, one of them led him by a back street into a garden belonging to them, enclosed within high walls, where she left him, locking the door after her. Here he remained ' several hours, a prey to a thousand fears on account of his wife. He fancied he even heard her calling upon him to rescue her, gently reproaching him for having abandoned her at the time when she most needed his support. In truth, Madame Migault's sufferings were greater even than her husband's imagination had painted them. She was in a delicate state of body, not having recovered her strength since the birth of her infant, her twelfth child. But nothing could move the soldiers to pity. As soon as they suspected that Migault had given them the slip, they began to wreak their vengeance on his wife. "Weak as she was, and exhausted with cooking for and Perils in the City. 69 •attending on them, upon tlieir calling for more wine she had dragged herself to the cellar to fetch it. One of the soldiers now went in search of her, and, violently striking her, brought her back into the dining-room ; then, telling her that in her weak state she ought to keep as warm as possible, he set her in the chimney-corner, whilst his ■comrades heaped up the fire, feeding it with the articles of furniture which were in the room. This they did until the heat became so great as to oblige them to relieve one another every few minutes. *' But this admirable woman," says her husband, "knowing in whom she had believed, did not for an instant lose her tranquillity, but committed to her Saviour all that could disquiet or torment her." At length, overcome by her sufferings, she fainted, and became insensible. The good Catholic ladies had not been unmindful of their promise. They had let themselves into the house, and witnessed her torments, which they had made every •effort to avert and to mitigate. Throwing themselves at the feet of the officer, they besought him to release her, but in vain; the officer was as obdurate as his men. But 'God had provided a deliverer. A few days before, the cure had been called away, and his place supplied by his vicar. This good and merciful man was with a company of friends when he was informed of what was going on in Migault's house. He hastened to the place, and succeeded in rescuing the wife from the hands of her persecutors, but not until he had engaged to restore her to them if he could not, by argument, induce her to embrace the Catholic religion. Her charitable neighbours, who heard the engagement, were resolved to leave the vicar no opportunity of fulfilling it. They took their poor friend, more dead than alive, into another room, and, when he would have followed, told him that in the state in which she was it was absolutely necessary to leave her alone with them for a short time of 70 The Hiifnicnots. repose. Without losing a moment they hurried her through the secret door into their own dwelHng, and carrying her up into the garret hid her under a heap of hnen. Then returning to Migault's house they presented themselves calmly before the vicar, who demanded, " Where is my prisoner?" "She is safe from the hands of these monsters." " Ah, well," he replied, " may the Almighty grant to her and her husband His merciful protection ; " and without staying to speak again to the soldiers he left the house. It would be difficult to describe the rage of the dragoons when tliey found their victim had escaped. They examined every corner of the house, and then pro- ceeded next door, where they searched the very garret in which Madame Migault was hidden, all but the heap of linen under which she lay. The ladies hastened to let Migault know of his wife's safety, and directing him to take the least frequented road to the neighbouring forest, promised to bring her to him at nightfall. This they did ; and the two fugitives found refuge in a friendly chateau on the way to Niort. But they could not close their eyes the whole night ; every sound seemed to them the trampling of steeds, and every voice like the threats of soldiers seeking their destruction. Unable to feel secure so near to Mougon, they proceeded two leagues further to the house of another friend, where after some days, hearing that the dragoons had left the town, Migault's courageous wife ventured back to their desolate home ; and after a while, finding all quiet, they again took up their abode there, collected their children,. and began life afresh, sad, yet rejoicing. Only two weeks, however, had gone by when they heard that the troops had returned again to the adjoining parish of Thorigue. It was chiefly inhabited by Protestants^ who had stood their ground during the former tempest ; and the cure, as great a bigot as the priest of Mougon,. Perils in the City. 71 now instigated the soldiers to fresh acts of violence in order to break the spirit of the people. Very few, how- ever, apostatized, and the forest was again crowded with fugitives. This alarming news determined Jean Migault at once to seek safety in flight ; and on the last day of October he went into the country to borrow a horse on which to carry three of the younger children. Meanwhile, the cur6 of Mougon, being determined to destroy the Migaults and the other two Protestant families in his parish, who still stood out, sent to the commander of the troops in Thorigne to malie a sudden march into the place. Whilst Madame Migault was waiting her husband's return, she saw the soldiers enter at both the gates. Snatching up two of the three children she made her way through the private door into the adjoining house, where she found the good ladies as ready as ever to shelter htr. They hid her and her two children in a corn-loft. The soldiers, led by the cure, searched both dwellings, but without success. For some horns Madame Migault remained concealed in the loft, anxiously revolving the fate of her husband, and listening to the distant cries of the little boy she had left, which reached her through the party-wall, calling on her for help. By and bye his cries ceased. She afterwards learned that when he had for some time endured the harsh treatment of the soldiers, he contrived to slip out into the garden, where he was observed by a poor woman, who had the compassion to take him home. Madame Migault's mother, who also was in the house when the dragoons appeared, found refuge in a neighbouring dwelling, where she gathered up four others of the children, who were wandering in the streets. The soldiers sold the beds and such clothing as they did not want, and with the help of a carpenter, sent by the cure, destroyed all that remained of the furniture. 72 Tite Hiufuenots. broke down the cupboards, and demolished the doors and •windows, leaving the house a complete wreck. Madame Migault, through the wall, heard the work of destruction as it went on. In the course of the night, all being silent, she ventured to quit her hiding-place, and to betake herself to the good woman who was nursing her youngest child, then only twelve weeks old. She found the infant in a dying state. Unable to remain beside it, she took a last kiss, and hurried on to the Protestant minister, hopmg to hear tidings of her husband. It was late in the evening before Migault returned with the horse, and as he drew near his home he was met by an acquiiintance who informed him that the soldiers were searching for him. Dismounting, he proceeded on foot, and, favoured by the darkness, stole unobserved into the nurse's house. From her he learned that his wife had gone to the minister ; in his turn, taking a last kiss of his dying child, he hastened to join her. Some kind friends found for them their two eldest children and the little boy ; and with this portion of their family they set out for the chateau of Grand Breuil. The mother was mounted on the horse, carrying the youngest child in her arms ; two others were in panniers slung across the animal's back ; the two eldest walked with their father. The owner of the chateau was a Protestant lady, Madame de la Bessiere. She was absent, but as soon as she heard that Migault's family had taken refuge in her house she sent them the keys, and insisted on their using her corn and wine, and burning her wood. Here they had the supreme satisfaction of seeing all their children with the grandmother, again brought together in safety. Towards the end of the year the persecution slackened, and Jean Migault was free to leave the chateau and settle at another small town, Mauz6, where he resumed his The House of the New Catholics. 73 school ; " and where," he adds, "it pleased heaven to give «s the love of the inhabitants." XXVI. THE HOUSE OF THE NEW CATHOLICS. Meanwhile more secret and specious methods for bringing Ijack the lost children to the Mother Church were always in active operation. As already said, religious houses for the conversion of the Protestants wei:e founded at an €arly period of the century. In the houses intended for women, the following rules were laid down : — " Wives may be received without the consent of their husbands, children without that of their fathers, servants without that of their masters." " If the pupils commit a fault they are to be gently admonished ; if the fault is repeated they are to be reproved with charity ; if they persist in disobedience, the lady superior is to impose suitable penances ; if they are incorrigible their safety is to be provided for." In the Becjlemens de Visite is the following article: — "If it should happen that any insane persons should be found among the Neiv Catholics, we strictly forbid the sisters to have any intercourse with such, except by express command of the lady superior." It seems to have been no uncommon circumstance that the treatment to which the inmates were subjected should lead to insanity. Mademoiselle Des Forges, daughter of the king's maitre d'hotel, was taken to the House of the New Catholics in Paris. The harshness with which she was treated, the forced abstinence, the sleepless nights, which she endured at the hands of the sisters, soon deprived her of reason. After she became insane they made her sign a paper of abjuration, and she was dis- missed from the convent. Hardly had she returned to 74 TIte Huguenots. lier family, than she threw herself from the window of the third storey, and falling on the pavement was killed. The House of the New Catholics in Paris (in the quarter of the Palais Koyal) was the model institution for the kingdom. It had a dependence at Charenton, five miles distant. The two houses were under the direction of a lady superior and ten young ladies volunteers, most of them of noble families. It was endowed by Louis himself, who took a personal interest in keeping it supplied with inmates. The researches which have been made of late years in the archives of the government have brought to light strange revelations of the way in which the house was replenished. April 24, 1685, the Marquis de Seignelay, secretary of state, writes to the lieutenant of police : — " His majesty commands you to place in the New Catholics the infant children of the woman Rousseau. As to her children who are older, his majesty leaves it to you to take such means to convert them as you shall think proper." October 24th of the same year : — " His majesty commands you to send to Charenton, take Madeleine Risine, and place her in the New Catholics.'" Again, January 24, 1686: — "The king is aware that the wife of Trouillon, apothecary of Paris, is one of the most stubborn Huguenot women in his dominions, and as her conversion might be followed by that of her husband, his majesty commands you to arrest her and take her to the New Catholics." The king did not lose sight of these unhappy women after he had shut them up ; he manifested a personal interest in the progress of their individual conversion. January 27, 1686, the secretary of state wrote to La Mere Garnier, the lady superior : — " The king being in- formed that Madame Le Cocq receives all sorts of people to the hindrance of her conversion, his majesty desires you to inform her that it is his will that she should see The House of the New Catholics. 75 no one, and requests you will take care that this is attended to." Again, February 12th of the same year : — *' It is the king's will that none of the women or girls of the E. P. E. should receive any visits or even letters unless read by you beforehand." Five days later the secretary of state wrote again: — "His majesty being informed that some of the women refuse the instruction given them, commands you to warn them that such conduct is displeasing to his majesty and will compel him to take measures which will not be agreeable to them." These private mandates being insufficient, the king, on the 8th of April, issued a public ordinance : — " His majesty, wishing to enable women of the R. P. R. to be reunited to the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman religion, has given orders for receiving many of them into the House of the New Catholics in Paris, in which house his majesty is informed they are sufficiently instructed in the duties of the said religion. But finding there are some who refuse to hearken to the said instruction, and who still remain in a guilty obstinacy, his majesty commands the lady superior of the said house to warn such, and all others who shall be received into the house, that if within a fortnight they do not become reunited to the Church, they are to be reported, so that his majesty may see what is proper to be done with them." In 1686 the houses in Paris and Charenton contained together 224 pupils. Of these at least twenty-five made their abjuration under the hands of Fenelon, who was for many years superior of the convent. Sixty others proved refractory, forty-four appearing to have set themselves to weary out their persecutors. Sixteen of the sixty were removed to other convents, and nineteen consigned to fortresses; ten were expelled the kingdom. A lady named Paul, discharged from the house in May, 1686, was brought back in July. A second time discharged, no. 76 Tlie Huguenots. better converted than at first, she was again brought back (May, 1690) ; and as Fenelon refused to receive her the third time, she was sent to the castle of Loches, with its dungeons one below the other, "the cradle of the Plan - tagenets," where, at the end of three years of prison discipline, she once more signed her abjuration. Some of the pupils were wealthy, kept waiting-maids, and paid large sums for their entertainment. Such ladies were in request. La Mere Garnier writes to the secre- tary of state, praying him to send from the provincial convents some great ladies and noble damsels whose conversion was tardy, in order that she might expedite it. Such as were thought to be able, but did not keep up their payments, were reported to the court, and their names sent to the police, with notes such as these : — " Make her pay "; " Mademoiselle Moriset will pay when she receives her money from the canon of St. Germain- I'Auxerrois, who owes her between four and five thousand livres ; get the money from the canon." The poor were unwelcome. In 1686 only one-tenth of the whole number were received without payment. One of the laconic notes remitted to the police runs thus : — " Has nothing to pay with ; send her elsewhere." Two Turkish children of the ages of six and seven, who were admitted into the New Catholics, May, 1685, being without means of payment, the police, in February, 1687, received this memorandum : — " Send them to the Genei-al Hospital," a jail-infirmary, described by Michelet as " that vast lazar-house of 7000 souls, a gulf of diseases, vice, and licensed crime, — the Gomorrah of the dying." Fenelon, Superior of the New Catholics. 77 XXVII. FENELON, SUPERIOR OF THE NEW CATHOLICS. Fenelon, so well known as Archbisliop of Cambray, was in 1678 appointed superior of tlie House of the New Catholics. He was twenty-seven years of age. His gifts and character seemed to point him out as singularly fitted for such a post. To an intellect of the highest order he joined an uncommon suavity of manners and a deep experience in spiritual things. As soon as he entered the house he constituted himself the father, counsellor and friend, both of the sisters and of their pupils. To the latter he gave rules and catechisms, listened patiently to their doubts and objections, and consoled their troubled spirits. His rule was in striking contrast to the rough and harsh treatment which the Protestant women in many similar institutions received from their teachers and directors. In the list of the inmates of tbe house, in December, 1686, the following note stands opposite some of the names : — " These have been very harshly treated in the country ; their spirits are exasperated ; they need to be quieted." "Whether, in being removed to the New Catholics, . lacerated hearts were always in the way to be healed will appear very doubtful to those who have read the last chapter ; and, except by his own personal conduct, Fenelon seems to have done little to mitigate the cruelty inseparable from such an institution. With all his natural amiability and his rich spiritual experience, he suffered himself, alas ! to become a tool for accomplish- ing the purposes of the government. He possessed an inflexible will, and he regarded all toleration of heresy as a deadly sin. Instead of being in advance of his age, as- 78 The Hiuiuenuts. lias been usually supposed, lie was iii reality as bigoted as the Jesuits, or the bishops. He thus gives his opinion of the Eeformation : — "What do we see on all sides ? Au unbridled curiosity, a presumption which nothing can daunt, an incertitude which shakes the foundations of Christianity ; a tolerance which, under the cloak of peace, falls into incurable irreligion." Again, when he thinks of the infant daughters of Protestant parents, it is with the poignant lament that " children so tender, so innocent, should suck in poison with their mother's milk " ; audit is only through unquestioning confidence in the divine judgment, that he can endure to see in " the parents God has chosen for them, the very cause of their ruin." These were the principles on which he acted. In his approval of compulsion in the conversion of heretics, as being laudable, obligatory, indispensable, he does not come behind Augustine, whose treatment of the Donatists did so much to commit the Roman Church to that course of persecution in which she has ever since persisted. " Nothing,'' says Fenelou, " could be more cruel than a lax compassion which should tolerate contagion in the flock." "We must," he adds, quoting Augustine, "era- ploy a medicinal rigour, a terrible gentleness, and a severe charity. The vigilance of the sliepherds must destroy the wolves wherever they are found." He held fast these maxims to the end. Not long before he died he wiote : — "Observe, the Church never makes schism; iunovators desire to dwell in her communion, and she cuts them off; the separation conies from them, not from her ; they excommunicate themselves. It is their stubborn, incurable unteachableness that separates them.'"''' A sujiposed in- stance of his advocacy of better principles is often * He appUed these principles, not to the Protestants only, but to all whom he believed to be in error. He carried his intolerance ■of Lady Guion to the extremest limit. Fcnelon, Superior of tJie New Catholics. 79 referred to, viz., the charge to the Pretender, known by his adherents as James III. In writing to James, he is made to say: — " No human power can force the impene- trable intrenchments of the Hberty of the heart. Violence can only make hypocrites. When kings meddle with religion, they reduce it to slavery." But M. Douen has shown that the treatise in which these words are found, viz., the Supplement to The K.caniination of Cavscience on the Duties of Loyalty, was not written by Feuelon, but is from the pen of a biographer. Whilst then Feuelon's gilts and experience marked him out us singularly adapted for his delicate mission, it must not be overlooked that in accepting such an office he had made himself part of a vicious and iniquitous system, which no honest man could support with impunity. If those over whom he exercised the ir.agic of his intellectual superiority and his spiritual gifts had only been free to hear or to refuse as they listed, or to withdraw from his influence, the case would have been different. But behind the sweet instruction and genuine sympathy of the teacher there stood the barred door of the convent, the sharp penances, the harsh usage, and behind all these the dungeon, the General Hospital, exile. Those who are acquiinted with Feuelon's writings, who have had their spirits soothed and settled by his experience, and carried upwards on the wings of his devotion, will be startled thus to find that he was a persecutor. Bat history is full of such contradictions, and men are to be judged by the age in which they lived. The men who are before their age are few ; and it would have been more wonderful for an ecclesiastic under Louis XiV. to have held the prin- ciples of the nineteenth century, than for Feaelon, with all his piety, to have shown any toleration for heretics. Odious as the character of a persecutor is to us at this day, we must remember that the Archbishop of Cambray 80 The Huguenots. had for companions some of the brightest ornaments of the Church : Augustine, St. Bernard, Calvin, Sir Thomas. More. XXVIII. CLAUDE BROUSSON. From Paris the scene changes to Languedoc. Claude Brousson was born at Nimes, in 1647. His. parents, Protestants, committed his education to a tutor, who inspired him with generous sentiments, and set before him the Scripture worthies as examples for his imitation. He chose the profession of an advocate, which he practised with integrity and in a liberal spirit, taking no> fees from his poorer clients. At the same time be dili- gently attended to his religious duties as an elder in the Church. He entered the Mi-party chamber of Castres^ which was transferred in 1670 to Castelnaudary,* and in 1679 was incorporated with the parliament at Toulouse, or, in other words, suppressed.) Brousson followed th& retreating chamber, to plead before the parliament the- cause of his oppressed brethren. The position of a Protestant advocate at this time was not enviable. A con- temporary says : — " I was in Languedoc when the chamber of Castelnaudary was suppressed and the Huguenot advocates were ordered to go to Toulouse^ They were in a consternation not to be described, de- claring the king had sent them to slaughter. Two of * The motive was obvious. In Castres the Eeformecl were in a. majority ; in Castehiaudary their worsliip had been interdicted. t The French parliaments, of which there were ten, were not iegislative bodies, but superior tribunals. That of Toulouse consisted of four courts of judicature. One of these, the grand chamber, to- which the Protestant causes were now transferred, was composed of a first and four other presidents, twenty-four episcopal and other ecclesiastical dignitaries, and nineteen lay counsellors. Demolition of the Temple of Montpellier. 81 til em, in fact, coming one day out of the palace where the parliament was held, were hanged np in the palace com't without trial or any form of law." The efforts of the clergy were at this time especially directed against the Protestant temples, of which, from 1679 to 1683, one hundred were condemned by the parliament of Toulouse alone. In chis unequal straggle the Protestants had no outward help to depend upon but the eloquence of their advocates. Of these Brousson was the ablest and the most intrepid ; his boldness astonished even his clients. XXIX. DEMOLITION OF THE TEMPLE OF MONTPELLIEE, 1682. Montpellier was one of the strongholds of Calvinism, and in 1682 it was resolved that the temple in that city should be demolished. A pretext was easily found. Paulet, a Protestant minister, had abjured and had been rewarded with a pension, but his wife and his daughter Isabeau remained faithful to their profession. The daughter, a child of ten or eleven, was in con- sequence carried away to a convent at Teirargues, where means were used for her conversion. Being found in- tractable she was at the end of twelve months restored to lier mother. Five years afterwards another attempt was made to overcome her resolution, bat with no better success. This girl was selected as a convenient lever for the overthrow of the temple. The father confessor of the nuns at Teirargues, who had twice changed his religion, forged two documents, the one setting forth that when Isabeau was in his convent she had consented to return to the Church, the other a formal abjuration of Pro- testantism, both purporting to be signed by her own a 82 TJte Hufjuenots. Land. These were accompanied by an allegation that a Protestant pastor had admitted her to communion after being advised of her conversion. An information was filed against the pastor and the young lady ; they were tried, convicted, and sentenced to a severe penalty. The bishops were eager to proceed at once from the condemnation of the offenders to the destruction of the temple. But the parliament reserved this crowning act for i\n august event which was about to take place, viz., the assembly of the States of Languedoc. The Duke of Maine, an illegitimate son of Louis XIV., had been appointed governor of the province, but as he was a child, the Duke de Noailles, the lieutenant-general, was sent to open the states in his stead, with an especial charge to use diligence in the suppression of the Pro- testant religion. To mark the occasion, the entry of the duke into the city was celebrated with unusual pomp. One of the first acts of the states was to confirm the sentence of the parliament on Isabeau and the pastor, and to decree the destruction of the temple, with the pro- hibition of Protestant worship within the city. The Protestants appealed against this iniquitous decree, four of the ministers and several elders waiting upon De Noailles to obtain permission to continue their religious services until they should have submitted their cause to the king in council. The request was refused; upon which two of them remonstrated on the illegality of the proceedings, in which those most nearly interested had not been cited or heard in their defence, and indignantly asked whether his excellency was aware that there were eight hundred thousand Protestant families in the king- dom ? * The only reply the duke deigned to give to this question was to turn to the officer of his guards with the * This estimate is much too large. Demolition of the Temple of Montpellier. 83 words : " Whilst we Avait to see what will become of these -eight hundred thousand Protestant families, you will please conduct these two gentlemen to the citadel." One of the duke's attendants, either from pity or shame for his master's honour, interceded for them, and the order was changed into confinement to their own houses ; but the four ministers were sent to prison. The same day the duke and the intendant wrote to Versailles for a royal mandate for the execution of their decree. The Protestant consistory prepared a counter- petition, which they sent to the king by M. Planchet, a gentleman of Montpellier. The duke's courier arrived first, and when Planchet presented himself, and announced his errand, he was at once marched off to the Bastille. The royal mandate was as imperative as the most zealous prelate could desire, requiring the demolition of the temple within twenty-four hours, with a private message from the king to the duke : " And you will give me pleasure if you can accomplish it in two." On receiving the mandate, De Noailles sent for the consistory, and enquired whether their messenger had returned from Versailles and what orders he had brought. On their replying that he had not yet returned, the duke produced his own order and asked them whether they would them- selves undertake the work of demolition and so save the materials. Stupefied with so insulting a question, they •could scarcely stammer out that they desired to be spared the indignity. "In that case," said the duke, " I shall be happy to do it for you "; and he immediately gave orders to the city consuls* to despatch fifty or sixty masons to the temple. As soon as the duke was informed that the men had -arrived, he set forth, followed by his suite and a body- * The muuicipal officers were so called in some towns of France. 84 The Huguenots. guard. Alighting from his horse he entered the buildings and addressing himself to the masons who occupied the^ aisles, gave the command : " Courage, my friends, fear nothing ; put your hands to the work and labour hard. Vive le roi ! " At this signal they rushed to the pulpit and dragged it down before him. He then went out and re- mounted his horse, but waited to see the roof dismantled and to give orders to place sentinels round the building^ to prevent accidents from the falling materials. When the demolition was complete, a calvary was erected on the site. The states returned thanks to the king for his- grace in signing the mandate, and received for answer i **I can say that I only await from heaven a recompense- for my zeal for the good of religion." The great object of the prosecution being gained, it remained to justify the proceedings. False witnesses were brought forward to swear to Isabeau's handwriting ; but she proved that at the time when it was pretended she had signed the two documents, she had not learned to write, and asking for a pen she wrote under each of them r " I affirm that the above signature is not written by my hand." On the pretended evidence, however, the parlia- ment declared the young woman guilty of the crime of relapse, and condeunied her to the amende honoralAe (public penance), and banishment from the kingdom. But. her steadfastness had alarmed her judges, and they feared that once out of their power she might publish a narra- tive of her trial which would cover them with shame. They therefore obtained from the king an order to convert her sentence into perpetual imprisonment, that is to say, to substitute, contrary to all rules of justice, the heavier for the lighter penalty. Seeing that the poor girl staggered at the prospect of a life imprisonment in Hh loathsome dungeon, the priests followed up their advan- tage by lavishing caresses upon her with offers of money llie Temple of Montaiihan. 85 and of an advantageous marriage. Her resolution gave way ; she abjured, and at their instance signed a petition to the king, in which she confessed all she had hitherto ■denied and prayed for pardon. Hereupon the demolition of the temple in Montpellier was declared to be according to law. XXX. THE TEMPLE OF MONTAUBAN, 1683. The temple at Montpellier being demolished, it was Tesolved to proceed against the temple which still remained in Montauban. The Reformed Church of that city had been one of the most flourishing in the kingdom. Its Protestant inhahitants had shed their blood for their sovereign. But already their college had been transferred to the Jesuits, and the principal temple pulled down. The ■charges on which the proceedings were founded were false and of the most frivolous description ; nevertheless, the ministers and other oflScers were carried off to Toulouse, where the trial was to take place before the parliament. All the bishops and a multitude of priests were present, and the court was crowded. Brousson made a singularly skilful and eloquent defence, invalidating both the grounds of the prosecution and the character of the witnesses. Extraordinary as was his skill, his intrepidity was even greater. He finished his harangue with a masterly apology for the Reformation. The procurator-general, interrupting him, asked if he thought he was in a temple. "^'Yes, sir," he replied, "in the temple of Justice, where it is always permitted to speak the truth"; and he proceeded to demonstrate with the same freedom and cogency of argument, the purity and spirituality of the Protestant faith and the loyalty of its professors, the beauty of his countenance no doubt adding grace to his 86 The Httguenots. words. The court was agitated ; the bishops whispered! together in evident confusion. A CathoHc advocate rose and exclaimed : " It is in vain that we seek to close th& temples of the Huguenots whilst their doctrines are permitted to he preached in open parliament." The procurator-general, in his reply to Brousson, tauntingly said: "It must he acknowledged these are fine ideas, but the Pretended Keformed do not carry them into practice." When the trial was over he advanced towards Brousson, offering his hand and saying: "I do not despair of yet seeing you a good Catholic." " You see, sir," replied Brousson, "how I am beginning to be so." A Jesuit, who sat behind Brousson during his speech, was deeply impressed, and said to him in an earnest tone : " You have greatly edified me ; yes, sir, I have been greatly edified." And when the crowd issued from the palace,. Eoman Catholics were overheard saying to each other: ** We never thought their religion was such as we have heard to-day." Brousson's eloquence, however, could not save the temple. It was pulled down June, 1683, public worship within the city interdicted, and the ministers forbidden to exercise their vocation for all time to come. His defence had the effect, however, of mitigating the penalties usually inflicted. Brousson held instructions for the defence of fourteen temples against which proceedings had been taken. It had been customary to bring forward such cases one by one, in order not to alarm the Protestants. Brousson persuaded the deputies of the fourteen churches to demand that their causes should all be brought forward at one time, which being done, he demurred to the jurisdiction of the parliament in such matters, and appealed to the king. The prosecution was dismayed at this stroke of policy, and deliberated whether to arrest the audacious Brousson's Project of Passive Resistance. 87 advocate, or to buy him over with the offer of a seat in the parliament. But Brousson was equally proof against bribes or threats, and the matter was suffered to drop, the fourteen temples being allowed to stand until the Edict of Revocation was promulgated. XXXI. BROUSSON'S PROJECT OF PASSIVE RESISTANCE, 1G83. For some months past the churches of Languedoc and the neighbouring provinces, seeing the net drawn closer and closer round them, and that nothing but ultimate ruin was to be looked for, had resolved to strike a blow for liberty and life. They had for many years borne the weight of oppression with such unresisting submission that Huguenot patience had passed into a proverb. But the destruction of their temples, the banishment of their ministers, the intrusion of a Catholic commissioner into their synods, and innumerable other vexations, were too grievous any longer to be borne. Accordingly, in January, 1683, a secret conference was convened, consisting of deputies from Poitou, Languedoc, theVivarais, Dauphine, and the Cevennes ; and the better to elude suspicion, they met in the very Catholic city of Toulouse itself, and in the house of Brousson. A Project or Declaration was drawn up, consisting of eighteen articles, the purport of which was peaceable resistance to the royal authority in matters of religion. Brousson, who was the soul of the enterprise, set forth the grounds on which it was undertaken in the following words, written many years afterwards : — " I did not doubt that his majesty's wrath would at first blaze forth against those who resisted his will ; but I was convinced that as 88 '11 LC Huguenots. soon as teu or twenty persons bad suffered death and sealed their profession with their blood, the king would judge it improper to push the matter further for fear of producing a wide breach in bis kingdom." It was resolved in the articles of the Project that on a given day public worship should be resumed in all the interdicted temples, or, where these bad been demolished, in their immediate neighbourhood, and that new temples should be built where it should be judged proper. In the services, the Psahns were to be chanted on bended knee. A form of service was prescribed for those churches which bad been deprived of their pastors, and the pastors who remained were charged not to leave the kingdom without permission of the Cliurch. The day fixed for this bold demonstration was June 27tli, and a general fast, with prayer, was ordered in anticipation. These resolutions were sent round to all the churches. At the same time a memorial was forwarded to the government, which, besides the usual apology, or reasons for dissent from the Komish doctrine, contained a loyal and humble protestation of love and respect for the king, aud prayed that he would recall the declarations and edicts which had taken away fi'om the lieformed both their civil rights and the free exercise of their religion. "What," they asked, "is our situation? If we show the least resistance, we are treated as rebels ; if we obey, the king is deceived into the supposition that we are converted." Broussou, who saw that his presence at Toulouse could no longer be of service to his people, but that he might be of use to tliem at Nimes, removed thither in June, just before the demonstration took place. Failure of the Project. 89 XXXII. FAILUEE OF THE PEOJECT. The Protestants were greatly divided on this adventurous step. The more timid or moderate party, who were also the more numerous, when they received the Declaration, exclaimed : " It is too bold; such language could scarcely be uttered if we had two hundred strong places in our hands ; we shall be treated as rebels, and exterminated," The more confident and eager, on the contrary, who were known as " the Zealots," condemned the Declaration as too timid and moderiite. " Half measures in rebellion," said they, " are fatal : to arms, to arms ! " The effect of these divisions was to retard by some weeks the execution of the Project ; and when the time came there was no concert, some churches meeting on one day, some on another, and many not at all. In some places the meetings went off peacefully. At St. Hippolyte, 3000 persons assembled in a field, unarmed. The preacher took for his text the appropriate words, " Eender to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's," which he expounded so judiciously that the cure himself had nothing to object against the sermon. In other provinces, as Dauphine and the Vivarais, the meetings took place with a very different result. The Catholics, alarmed, declared that the Huguenots were in insurrection, and that the old wars of religion were return- ing, and they flew to arms. The Protestants were but too ready to accept the challenge, and made preparations for defence. D'Aguesseau, intendant of Languedoc, hastened into the Vivarais, and entreated the people to remain quiet, and to abstain from public worship in the forbidden places. His character and arguments prevailed for a 90 The Huguenots, time; but Louvois reproached bim for bis clemency to "those scoundrels;" and in the end he, too, was driven to adopt severe measures. In Danphiue no methods of conciliation were tried ; the infamous St. Euth was despatched with three regiments of horse to put down the meetings. At the village of Bourdeaux, near Die, the pastor was preaching in the temple on Sunday, when he was told the troops were approaching. He immediately left the jDulpit and placed himself at the head of bis people, who, in anticipation of an attack, had provided themselves with arms. They divided into two companies, which took different roads. The preacher, with a hundred and fifty men, was met by St. Euth, whom be hotly attacked. He was driven back, but entrenched himself behind the low wall of a vineyard, where he held the royal troops at bay for two hours. Most of the Protestants were slain ; but the warlike pastor and a score of followers effected their retreat to some farm- buildings, where they again made a courageous stand. The dragoons surrounded the barn nnd set fire to it; all the Huguenots perished, singing Psalms. The other division of the insurgents was easily overcome. St. Euth took sanguinary vengeance, compelling one of the peasants to be the executioner of his comrades, and torturing and putting to death such of the leaders as he could lay hands on. The court was alarmed at the news of the disturbance, and published an amnesty, from which, however, so many were excluded that it was little more than a mockery, and the executions went forward. A young advocate was broken on the wheel in front of his father's house. A citizen of Saillans, who had been present at a meeting, was tortured and hanged. Two young men of Dieu-le-fit, for the crime of being seen with guns beside a fountain, were put to death. A nobleman, of Moutelimar, was promised a pension if he would recant. Failure of the Project. 91. Being proof against this temptation, terror was resorted to, and lie was thrice brought out for execution ; but faith sustained him through all, and, like the rest, he suffered death with Christian fortitude. The effect of D'Aguesseau's influence on the inhabitants of the Vivarais was dissipated by the arrival of fugitives from Dauphine, and the momitaineers armed themselves. The Duke de Noailles hastened up, defeated the insurgents, and hanged the prisoners on the trees. Isaac Homel, minister of the village of Soyon, being proscribed, took to flight, accompanied by another preacher, who, like himself, had been distinguished by his opposition to popery. The latter was arrested, but unable to endure the refining fire, purchased his life by abjuring and by betraying Homel. Homel had not only warmly supported the Project, but had counselled the taking up of arms, and preached at interdicted places and armed meetings. In his enthusiasm he looked for a speedy interposition of the divine hand, which should be stretched forth and mira- culously deliver the Church out of her afflictions. He was seventy-two years of age, and his fate excited the pity even of those who condemned him. But a few years before some Jesuits had been put to death in England as traitors (in Titus Oates's plot), and now the members of that order in France clamoured for an exemplary punishment on Homel. He was broken alive on the wheel, his torments being prolonged by the clumsiness of the executioner. He died October 20, 1683. From the Vivarais the duke descended into the plain, where the excesses committed by his troops drove the Protestants, who had hitherto remained quiet, into pre- paration for resistance. Louvois sent down orders, October 3, " to quarter the soldiers on the malcontents throughout the province ; try the culprits ; raze the houses of those who were taken in arms, and of those whO' 92 The IltKjtieiiots. did not return to their homes; demohsh the temples; and inflict a terrifying desolation." St, Hippolyte, where the gathering held in pursuance of Brousson's Project had passed oft' so quietly, did not ■escape. On the arrival of the troops the old men, with the women and children, fled up the mountains, which half encircle the town, leaving behind the young and strong men to the number of six or seven hundred. These, cajoled by the promises of the royal officers, submitted; nevertheless, some of them were executed. One, to save his life, abjured ; but when another, who stood by with bound arms, reproached him for his cowardice, the poor fellow was so stung that he withdrew his recantation, ^nd he also suffered the penalty. Many other instances of cruelty, and of endurance by the people of these provinces, have been preserved. We give only two. The Marquis of La Tourette, having induced a man, named Romieu, to abjure under the threat of being put to death, Eomieu's wife was so indignant at her husband's weakness that she refused to see him. The marquis, in revenge, shut her up in a room of his chateau, declaring that if she did not follow her husband's example she should rot in prison. He took from her the child at her breast, and withheld from her every kind of comfort. In despair she tore up the sheets and curtains of her bed, tied them together, and let herself down by the window. But her weight was too great for the frail cord, and she fell on the rocky ground, where she lay bruised and motionless. Seeing she was still alive, the marquis sent her back to prison. The Marchioness Desportes, who had been a perse- cutor in her earlier life, had latterly behaved with more humanity ; but when she saw all around her emulous of ■effecting conversions, she too was eager to have a share Failure of the Project. 93' in the glorious work, wliicli would commend her at the same time to God and the king. In her chateau she kept a garrison of a hundred men, under the command of a captain, named St. Hilaire, a wretch exactly fitted to execute her plans. He seized the recusant peasants and carried them to the castle, where he tried, hy turns, the effect of promises, threats, insults, and ill-usage. When he could not succeed by any of these, he let them down by ropes to the bottom of an ancient roofless tower, where he kept them until they had given the desired promise, or had wearied him out. When he received from any of his. prisoners a promise to go to Mass, he compelled them to sign a declaration before a notary that they had made tlie change of their own free will. These and similar atrocities were prolonged through the winter, 1683-4, which was unusually severe. They long rankled in the memory of the people ; and the recollection of them, twenty years afterwards, fanned the flame of the revolt which is known as the Camisard War. At Nimes the moderate party drew up a memorial to the king ; and a deputation of noblemen, ministers, and others, waited on the Duke de Noailles to present him with a copy, October 15. He received them in the most super- cilious manner, ordered them to be searched, and f-ent them off to prison. He wrote to Louvois : " Astonished at the effrontery of these miserable creatures, I did not hesitate to send them all to the citadel of St. Esprit." The j)rovost would have thrust them into a filthy dungeon, but they sturdily refused to enter, protesting they would rather die than that the rights of men should be so violated in their persons. At the same time, to overawe the city of Nimes, and to get possession of certain disaffected persons, amongst whom was Brousson, the duke sent for a large detachment of dragoons. In order to take the victims by surprise, the '94 The Jluyueiiots. troops entered the city before daybreak, October 28, and, with drawn swords, went from bouse to house. Through the vigilance of their friends, however, they all received timely notice ; one, a minister, being saved by the gene- rosity of a priest, who hid him in his house. Brousson and another received a private intimation that they would not be meddled with if they would turn informers, which of course they refused to do. Having thus missed bis prey, De Noailles made a proclamation forbidding, under severe penalties, the harbouring of the proscribed persons. It is to the honour of tlie citizens that not a traitor was to be found. Brousson heard the proclamation as he stood near the window of a house in which he had taken refuge ; and during the night, through the partition which separated his room from that of his hosts, he heard the husband and wife in earnest consultation wdiat was to be done with him. Their first resolve was to deliver him up, but recoiling from so infamous an act they agreed to ask him to leave them as soon as possible.* The next evening, therefore, having disguised himself, he ventured into the streets, where he wandered two or three days and nights, anxiously watching for an opportunity to leave the city. Tracked, stopped, interrogated, and let go as by a miracle, he at last discovered an open sewer, near the Jesuits' college, into which he crept, and making his way through it to the city fosse outside the Porte des Carmes, succeeded in reaching the Cevennes. Travelling with all speed he ■arrived in Switzerland in November, and settled for a time at Lausanne. We shall meet with him again in the course of our history. The preacher who was saved by the priest, and a colleague who also escaped, were executed in efiigy. * Another version of the story is that the husband was for betraying him, but was withheld from his purpose by his more generous wife. Causes of the Failure. 95 Figures were dressed up to represent tliem, and a gibbet being erected in tlie market-place, they were hanged upon it by the public executioner, the magistrates and soldiers attending at the ceremony in their official costume. XXXIII. CAUSES OF THE FAILUKE. Brousson's Project of Passive Kesistance was a noble venture, but it was doomed to failure from the first. Even if the Huguenot camp had not been divided, and there had been a universal and simultaneous action, it could not possibly have succeeded. To lay his hand on his sword when threatened was instinctive in every Frenchman, Protestant as well as Catholic. The unresisting endurance, which had given rise to the proverb of Huguenot patience, had been the result of loyalty and prudence, rather than of religious principle. There may possibly have been many who held sacred Christ's commands on this point, ■but history is almost silent regarding them. We have met with one such instance only previous to the Revoca- tion. One of the most strenuous and courageous of the pastors, in his opposition to the iniquitous decrees of the government, was Jacques Fontaine, a native of Saintonge. In the fervour of his indignation at the sufferings of his brethren, he concluded that the only remedy was for the Protestants, as in times past, to take up arms in a body and fight for their liberty. This happened not long before the Act of Revocation. A special meeting of ministers and elders, to consider what course should be adopted, was held in the neighbourhood of Royan, to which, out of regard to the sufferings he had endured for conscience' sake, Fontaine, although not yet ordained, was invited. Except himself, all present, four and twenty in number. 96 The Huguenots. declared that the Gospel forbids violence, and does not permit, in the utmost extremity, any other alternative^ than flight. Fontaine energetically protested against, what he described as a mistaken and timid policy, and used all the arguments he could devise to rouse the spirit of the meeting. He was met only by a sharp rebuke, and the conference separated without coming to any decision. Unhappily, many of those who had counselled non-resist- ance gave way in the hour of trial, and were the first to abjure. The intendant of Kochefort warned the people to save themselves by changing their religion before the dragoons arrived. A general meeting of the Church was held at Eoyan on the occasion, at which Fontaine again pleaded earnestly for resistance, but with so little accept- ance that he was in danger of being informed against by his own people. In their reply to the intendant, the Pro- testants declared that whilst they would obey the king in all matters consistent with their duty to God, nothing- should induce them to deny their faith. "But," says Fontaine, "when the dragoons arrived they told a different story, the chief men amongst them turning out such arrant cowards that they trod one upon another in their struggle to get first into the church to make recantation." Whether the fear of death was too strong for these poor men, or, as may have been the case, the pacific doctrine they had vaunted went no deeper than their understanding and was not based on conviction, we cannot say. Brousson might have known that the trial to which he ■was exposing his people was too hard for them. He wore a sword himself;-'' he was aware how ready the moun- taineers, especially, wei'e to repel force by force. When the temple at Montauban was threatened with demolition, * In 1676, in Languedoc, the travellers whom Loclce met (mostly clad in purple cloaks) were all provided with pistols, even such as rode to their tields to overlook their labourers. ' Life,' I., 122. Causes of the Failure. 97 ten thousand Cevenols are said to have offered to come down to the rescue. It is true Brousson contemplated a purely passive resistance, but he did not take the necessary means to secure it ; not a word of admonition to the people to come unarmed to the meetings is contained in the Pro- ject. Could it be that Brousson had heard of the success with which the peaceable resistance of the Quakers in England, twenty years before, had been crowned, and that he looked for a similar result ? Charles II. 's Con- venticle Acts pressed heavily upon that people, especially in London, where their meetings were broken up, and fines, stripes, and the prison put in requisition. When locked out of their meeting-houses they met in the street, and when the buildings were demolished they held their worship on the ruins. In vain the musketeers dragged them away and beat them, and the troopers rode them down and all but killed them ; nothing could induce them either to defend themselves or to submit ; and the sohliers had to confess themselves beaten. Unarmed resistance, with trust in God, must always in the end be far stronger than any force of armed resistance. But the case of the English Quakers differs so widely from that of the French Huguenots, that it is difficult to draw a parallel between them. Amongst the former there were but few men of the sword, and these few early and thoroughly accepted the peaceable teaching of George Fox. As a Church, they had no antecedents such as the Calvinists had. They were all so imbued with Christ's doctrine of the forgiveness of in- juries and the ungodliness of war, that they were a whole society of peace-makers, and they needed no orders from head-quarters to abstain from resistance, nor any plan for concerted action. They were in no sense a political party. Although some, like Lilburne, may have preferred a> republic, and others, like Eobert Barclay, have mentally clung to James II. as their rightful sovereign, these H 98 TJlc Huguenots. predilections were all sunk in the absorbing work of directing men to Christ and building up His Church. Alike, under the parliament, Cromwell, Charles, James, or William, they were careful to eschew all political parties, and to approve themselves loyal subjects, obedient to every demand compatible with their duty to God. Unlike the Huguenots, too, they had lost no adherents through unfaithfulness. After "more than thirty years of suffer- ing, not a single Quaker had been induced by it to abandon his profession." But there is another difference in the circumstances of the two Churches which must not be overlooked. The persecution of the Quakers was cruel and infamous, but it was not to be compared with that of the Huguenots. The Church of England was intolerant, but its intolerance was mild compared with that of Rome. In England, too, there was a public opinion; in France, at that time, there was none. If the same enormities had been perpetrated here, there would have been another revolution. But although the weight of persecution under which the Huguenots groaned was grinding and crushing to the last degree, it was, as we shall abundantly see in the course of this history, not so heavy but that by the grace of God, men, women, and even children, were found to bear it. If the whole Protestant Church in France had been animated with the same spirit as the Quakers, may we not believe Brousson's prediction would have been accomplished, and the king's arm been paralysed? XXXIV. THE PEESECUTION IN SAINTONGE, 1683-5. The failure of Brousson's Project, and the events which followed in Languedoc and Dauphine, rendered the con- dition of the Protestants in other parts of France worse The Persecution in Saintonge. 99 if possible, than it was before. We must turn again to the maritime provinces between Nantes and Bordeaux, — Aunis (in which lay La Eochelle), Saintonge and Poitou. This territory had always been a stronghold of Calvinism : prior to the Kevocation, as we have seen, it suffered more than any other part of the kingdom. The storm burst forth again in the year 1683. A commission was sent into Saintonge to complete the demolition of the temples and the suppression of public worship. At the head of the commission was Du Viguier, a penniless gambler, who had already distinguished himself in the work of persecu- tion in the adjoining province of Perigord. Assisted by two Recollet monks whom he took with him, and by the cures and the civil authorities, he shut up the temples and threw the ministers into prison. As usual, the authorities were zealously seconded by the Catholic nobility. The Countess de Marsan, who owned the town of Pons, caused all who withstood her to be imprisoned, beaten, or other- wise maltreated. She shut up a man named Jacques Pascalet in her chateau, in a cell where no air came but through a hole at which the servants burnt damp hay and straw. Unable by this means to break his spirit, the servants whirled him round a table until he fell to the ground insensible ; when to bring him to himself they struck him on the elbows. This was repeated until death released him. The countess laid her. hands especially on the children, some of whom resisted her manfully. Peti- tions against her and Du Viguier were sent up to the king, -and although no answer was received, the court, consider- ing that matters had gone too far, sent secret orders to relax the persecution. Notwithstanding the many thousand conversions of which the government boasted in these three maritime provinces, this part of France was foremost both in con- ■stancy and zeal. The proportion of those who abjured 100 The Huguenots. "was smaller than in any other province ; and the faithful ■were distinguished by the sacrifices they made to attend public worship. Some travelled fifty or sixty leagues to hear a minister. The ministers, on their part, spared no labour in feeding the flock, holding themselves ready night and day to preach, teach, baptize, and administer the bread and wine. Their fidelity brought upon them a. double portion of suffering. XXXV. THE BELL OF LA KOCHELLE. Before the hurricane had spent itself. La Eochelle hadl once more to endure the blast. Finding the priestly con- verters could effect nothing, the intendant marched the troops into the city, 200 dragoons and 800 fusileers, and packed the four pastors off to the Bastille. To show their abhorrence of the Protestant worship, a farce was- enacted by the Catholic population. When the temple was demolished they passed judgment on the bell, as a principal offender. It was first flogged, then buried; after which, a sage-femmc and a nourrice being provided, it was disinterred, declared to be new-b.orn, and made to promise never again to do service for the heretics ; it was. then baptized and sold to the parish of St. Bartholomew. But when the governor demanded payment of the parish,. he was told that the bell had formerly been a Huguenot, but that it was now a New Convert, and that, in accordance with the law in favour of New Converts, it was entitled ta three years' credit in the payment of its debts. The Imprisonment of Jacques Fontaine, 101 XXXVI. THE IMPEISONMENT OF JACQUES FONTAINE. The state of affairs in these maritime provinces during the time of which we have been speaking, will be best understood from the personal narration of one of the sufferers. Of the multitude of such narratives to which "this eventful epoch gave birth, one of the earliest is that of Jacques Fontaine, the intrepid and martial preacher spoken of in a former section.* He was the son of one of those dignified and eloquent ministers who adorned the Protestant Church in the middle of the seventeenth century, and was born at Jenouille, in 1658. Jacques inherited his father's talents, and distinguished himself at school and at the college of Bordeaux, where he studied sixteen hours a day, Before he was old enough to enter the ministry the hand of per- secution was busy in Saintonge. In 1684, at the age of twenty-six, he took up his residence at the village of Vaux, where the temple had been levelled to the ground. Compassionating the forlorn condition of his neighbours, he invited them to join him in his family devotions. These meetings were of course conducted in secret, and many were the shifts employed to elude observation. They were not interfered with until Palm Sunday. Fontaine was absent at the time, having gone to keep the festival with some friends at a distance. His neighbours came to his house as usual. Finding he was not there they retired to a wood, where one of them, a mason, conducted the service. On the Thursday they assembled again to the number of seven or eight hundred, and on Easter Sunday as many as a thousand were present. They were betrayed by an attorney, a renegade * See ante, p. 95. 102 The Huguenots. Protestant : the mason was arrested and dragged tO' Saintes, a distance of fifteen miles, at a horse's tail. Th& poor fellow was so plied by the soldiers with threats and arguments that he recanted ; but presently afterwards, recovering himself, he was overcome with remorse and fell into despair. Fontaine, who had returned home, so prayed with, exhorted and comforted him, that in the end he abjured his abjuration. His example saved many others from a like fall. The next step on the part of the authorities was to get- possession of Fontaine. Being informed that the provost and his archers were on the road to Vaux, Fontaine sent round to warn the people in order that they might hide in the woods : he himself refused to flee, saying that if he were to do so he should be like the hireling who fled at the sight of the wolf. Preparing a bundle of clothing and other necessaries to take with him to the prison, he knelt down and prayed fervently for grace and strength ; he then went to bed, and slept soundly until he was awoke at daybreak by the provost and the archers knocking at the- door. Hearing his servants tell the soldiers that he was not in the house, he opened the window and called out that he should soon be ready to go with them. With him the soldiers carried off a ploughman. The party entered Saintes in the afternoon, where a crowd presently assem- bled, some leaping for joy, and crying out : " Hang them ! hang them ! " whilst others stood aloof and wept. Fontaine and the ploughman, who was in a state of terror,, were taken to the prison. Fontaine turned his imprisonment into an occasion of spreading the truth and glorifying God. " After supper," he says, " I accosted the jailer in a polite manner : ' Sir, I am subject to a great infirmity, in regard to which I hope you will deal kindly with me. I am so accustomed night and morning to pray aloud to God in my The Imprisonment of Jacques Fontaine. 103 family and wherever I am, that if I ever omit imploring divine help, I am all the day as peevish as a hermit ; in all other respects you will find me the most agreeable and most jovial guest you ever had. I wish, however, to show you all possible respect, and will not annoy you by praying in the common room, but shall be well contented with this little corner for my chapel.' The jailer replied : * You will not find me so black a devil as I am said to be ; but all your cant will not make me drop the keys out of my hand.' • Very well,' said I, ' I am delighted that we agree so well ; I leave you the keys of the gaol whilst I go and seek those of eternal happiness.' Thus saying, I fell on my knees in my corner, without calling any one to join me, but had not uttered three words before my companion, the ploughman, ran up and knelt beside me, and another Protestant prisoner was very glad to join us. The next morning I did the same, and so continued ten or twelve days, by which time the ploughman was so strengthened by my prayers, that the promises and threats by which he was tempted could make no im- pression on him. The jailer and his wife, who were accustomed to a very different kind of lodgers, were astonished to find that there were people in the world who counted it an honour to be prisoners, and could only suppose we were disordered in our intellects." "When Fontaine had been in prison about ten days, the provost and his archers set out again on their round to apprehend those who had been at the meetings. The more timid fled as before ; but Fontaine's example had so emboldened many, that more than 150 came to meet the provost, and presented themselves as ready to answer for their conduct. There was no room in the prison for so large a number, and the provost declared he would take only twenty, and that the rest might go their way. Hereupon there arose a generous strife as to who should 10^ The Huguenots. be of the number. The archers were amazed, and did their utmost to intimidate them, but their arguments and menaces were only like bellows to a flame ; the more violent their language, the more eager did the people show themselves to be taken like sheep for sacrifice. At length the provost decided to leave behind the most zealous, and to choose his twenty from those who kept in the background. But he gained nothing by this refine- ment of cruelty ; all were equally determined to suffer and to suffer manfully. The chosen twenty were leashed in couples like hunting dogs, and tied to the tails of the soldiers' horses. Everyone bade adieu to his wife and children in a firm voice ; the wives, too, saw their husbands led away without a tear. In the prison, at Saintes, they were visited by the Protestants of the town, who brought them bedding and food in abundance. When in the evening Fontaine went to prayer, they all knelt round him. Seeing that the bishop and his chaplain and attendants were itidefaiigable in their attempts at conversion, he introduced their arguments into his prayers, with a refutation of the same, so that the priests made no way with the prisoners. Foreseeing also that he himself would soon be removed as the obstacle to their conversion, he provided that when he was taken away, one of them should occupy his place, and so on so long as two should be left together. Being brought before the court, he was examined on the charges on which he had been put in prison, and also on having in the prison given offence to the Roman Catholics and prevented the conversion of the Protestants. France has always had a name for the impartial conduct of judicial trials, with a large liberty of speech to the accused ; and although the president of the court (the seneschal) used every effort to frustrate justice, he could not prevent Fontaine, who defended himself with singular The Imprisonment of Jacques Fontaine. 105 -coolness, firmness and skill, from confounding the wit- nesses one after another. Even the king's advocate, who had vehemently accused him, was moved by the words with which the prisoner concluded his defence : " I am ashamed to have to plead before Christians as the Christians formerly pleaded before pagans. Consult, I pray you, your own heart ; if God should send you some affliction, what would you think of a religion or of a man who should impute it to you as a crime to have cried to God out of the depth of your tribulation, and yet should urge you to embrace his religion ? " In spite of this appeal, and of law and justice, the seneschal ordered him to be taken to the Tower of Pons, -to a filthy dungeon already occupied by a murderer. When he heard the sentence, Fontaine replied: "It is in vain that you send me to a dungeon, to hinder me from praying to your Creator and mine, for if you could send me to hell I should expel the demons by my importunate • communion with God. The greater my affliction, the more earnest would be my supplications, and I should also pray for your soul, as Jesus Christ prayed for those who •crucified him, for I believe you would need it, because you, being my judge, are convinced of my innocence, and yet are more hostile than the king's advocate, who is my legal prosecutor." The seneschal replied coldly : " I thank you, but I desire none of your sermons." The next morning Fontaine was put into the tower. How long he might have remained there is uncertain, but owing to the importunity of a lady of rank, well acquainted with tlie seneschal, who represented to him the infamy of his conduct, Fontaine was released the same evening, and removed to the bell-tower of the town hall. Here he lay three months, the seneschal detaining him, as Felix did Paul, in the hope of extorting money from him. His legal adviser would often say, taking gold and silver coins 106 The Huguenots. from his pocket: " See; here is the key of your prison.' "I know it," rephed Fontaine; "but it is a key I will never make use of." His Protestant friends likewise begged him to let them arrange the matter with the seneschal, saying it should not cost him a penny. His answer was that if they did so, he should look upon them as his greatest enemies. In August, Fontaine was brought up again for trial. Amongst other questions he was asked if he was not aware that the king had issued a declaration forbidding conventicles. Hoping to protect, not himself only but his fellow-Protestants who were to be tried after him, he answered: "I have read and re-read the Declaration of his majesty forbidding all unlawful assemblies, and can find nothing which forbids meetings to worship God. It would be to cast an atrocious and indelible reproach on our very Christian king to suppose that he calls such meetings unlawful assemblies. I hope you have too much respect for the king, and are yourselves too much of good Christians, to call those assemblies unlawful to which no arms but the Old and New Testament are taken, at which nothing is debated but the ' salvation of souls, and no word uttered but in accordance with the Holy Scriptures; where prayer is made for the kingdom, the king and the royal family, and even for the conversion of those who persecute Christ's Church." Being urged on by the judges, who hoped to entrap him in some imprudent expressions, he proceeded to contrast the religious meetings of the Eeformed with the revels of the villagers on the green, and the balls and convivial parties of the rich in the city, accusing his judges of flagrant injustice in con- demning the one, whilst they permitted and indulged in the other, and warning them of the day of retribution at the hands of the Sovereign Judge. This denunciation irritated the seneschal, who, to give the counsellors some The Impi'isonment of Jacques Fontaine. 107 idea of what he called the prisoner's obstinacy, proceeded to put a question to him out of curiosity : "Do you believe that a private person, an artizan, for example, can under- stand Holy Scripture better than all the doctors and councils together ? " " Sir," replied Fontaine, " sup- posing this simple artizan should be endued with the Holy Spirit, and that all the doctors and councils should not be so endued (which I believe to be possible), then he will better understand the meaning of Scripture than they, because it is only the Spirit by whom the Scriptures were dictated who can give a true understanding of them. Our Lord Jesus Christ and his poor fishermen found themselves opposed to the whole body of the Scribes and Pharisees in Jerusalem, and according to your principles you would have been as forward to condemn Him as was Pilate. The same thing happened in the time of Calvin and Luther, who certainly better understood Holy Scripture than all the popes, cardinals, and councils." At these words the seneschal and council rose up, crying, " Jesu, Maria, what perversity ! " Fontaine was taken back to prison and condemned to pay a fine of 100 livres, and forbidden to exercise his ministry. The peasants were sentenced to do public penance, to be banished for six months, and to pay tines amounting to 3000 livres, besides 100 crowns to the judges. These fines were made both individual and collective, because Fontaine was the only person who was known to be in a condition to pay them. He laid down the 100 livres, and demanded his liberty ; but the seneschal refused to set him free. He appealed to the parliament of Guienne ; and thanks to the president's integrity, the sentence of the senechal was reversed ; Fontaine was set at liberty ; he even recovered the 100 livres ; but it required all his indomitable perse- verance to make the officers of the court put the righteous sentence into execution. They hated the Huguenots, and 108 The Huguenots. had opened tlieir mouths wide for a share of the spoil, so that the deputy-registrar, when at length he gave Fontaine the document which was to release him and his country- men from prison, and Fontaine asked if he was satisfied, growled out : " No, nor ever shall be, until I see you with a halter round your neck." This brings us to the fatal year 1685, of which Fontaine says : " There was now no longer preserved any semblance of justice ; it was the action of a victorious and lawless army taking possession of an enemy's country. Every dragoon was at once irresponsible judge and executioner." Fontaine afterwards escaped to England, where he married and lived many years. On the 6th of February, this year, our Charles II. died. He professed the Protestant religion, but at heart he was a papist. He entered the Komish Church, in Paris, during his exile ; and on his death-bed he sent for a Romish priest, who gave him absolution, the wafer, and extreme unction. Charles was dependent on the King of France ; the annual pension he received from Louis enabled him to reign for s-everal years without a parliament. He was suc- ceeded by his brother, James II., who openly professed the religion of Rome, and did all in his power to bring England again under the papal yoke. A few months after James's accession, the Duke of Monmouth made his unsuccessful attempt to gain possession of the throne. He was defeated at Sedge Moor, near Biidgewater. He himself was executed on Tower Hill, and his adherents were butchered and mutilated with a barbarity equal to that which was being exercised on the Huguenots in France. The Dragoons in Beam. 109" XXXVII. THE DKAGOONS IN BJ^AKN, 1685. The persecution which has just been related was not effected through the Dragonuades. Hitherto, with some occasional exceptions, that final and most convincing argument had been employed only in Poitou, viz., in 1681. Now, March, 1685, Louvois decided to apply it universally. There were at this time hostile relations between France and Spain, and a French army had been marched into Beam, where it awaited, or professed to await, an ulti- matum from Madrid. Foucault, intendant of Beam, was a man of learning, and in one of his circuits discovered in the abbey of Moissac, near Montauban, the lost manuscript of one of the early Christian authors, De Mortibas Per- secutorum (* Concerning the Deaths of the Persecutors '), attributed to Lactantius, and till then known only through Jerome's quotations. But the warning voice which speaks so loudly from that treatise could not reach the heart of the intendant. In his zeal for the extinction of heresy he rivalled Louvois and the Jesuits, and he declared he would not rest until all the king's subjects were of one religion. To enable him to accomplish this pious enterprise, 6000 volumes of Bossuet's controversial writings were sent down to him, and the army destined for Spain was placed at his disposal. By a recent Declaration the temples in the principality had been reduced to five, and these the parliament had rendered useless by the imprisonment or interdiction of their ministers. All at once the soldiers were let loose upon every town and village of the province to carry on their accustomed game in the houses upon which they were quartered, and by tricks and violence compel the 110 The Huguenots. people to attend Mass. The Protestant historian fills several pages with the excesses they committed, and the cruelties practised by the intendant and priests ; but the reader will weary of the continual repetition of these harrowing details. To Foucault belongs the unenviable reputation of bringing methods of torture to perfection. It was a study of the times to discover torments which should inflict the most exc|[uisite suffering without being mortal. Meanwhile the reports which were sent up by the intendant to Versailles speak of neither dragonnades nor violence. The conversions are represented as the fruit of divine grace. The success of Foucault's measures and the praises showered on him excited the emulation of his brother intendants ; they applied for the use in their respective provinces of the army of Beam. On July 31, Louvois wrote to the commander-in-chief, the Marquis de Boufflers, directing him to employ his troops during the rest of the year in reducing the number of the Protestants in the generalities of Bordeaux and Montauban.* They were to be billeted wholly on the Huguenots, and not to be removed until the mass of the inhabitants had abjured ; and when the work was accomplished in one place, they were to be withdrawn and quartered elsewhere. Louvois estimated the number of Protestants in the generality of Bordeaux at 150,000 ; and his instructions to the marshal were to reduce this number until the Catholics should everywhere be twice or thrice as numerous as the Pro- testants; "So that," wrote Louvois, referring to the Eevocation already resolved upon, "when his majesty shall no longer permit the exercise of this religion in his kingdom, there may be nothing to fear from the few who remain." * The generalities were fiscal divisions of the country. The Dragoons in Languedoc. Ill Accordingly the troops moved forward through Guienne and Perigord to Bordeaux, in a kind of triumphal progress. The pretended conversions took place with a rapidity which astonished even the court itself. Some made a feigned abjuration to secure time for flight ; others seem scarcely to have understood that they were abandoning their faith ; others, again, had no sooner taken the fatal step, than, tormented in their conscience, they returned back to their own faith, and with so much the greater fervency as having to expiate the crime of denying it. XXXVIII. THE DKAGOONS IN LANGUEDOC, 1685. From Bordeaux the intoxicated soldiery marched up the valley of the Garonne, and ascended its affluents, the Dordogne, the Lot and the Tarn, as well as along the course of the grand canal, which had been constructed by D'Aguesseau four years before. Wherever they came, the authorities, civil and ecclesiastical, assembled the Pro- testants in the public square, and declared to them the king's unalterable v/ill that they should become Cathohcs. Too many, alas ! terrified and stunned at the appearance •of the " booted missionaries " in their splendid uniforms, whose doings elsewhere had already filled them with dismay, hastened to declare themselves converted. A short formula was presented for their signature : "I firmly believe all that the Catholic, Apostolic and Eoman Church believes and professes. I most sincerely condemn and reject all the heresies that the said Church has condemned and rejected. So help me God and his holy .gospels." Those who could not write made the sign of the cross. Even this was not always required; the words, " I join the Church," or "Ave Maria," being in many cases 112 The Huguenots. deemed sufficient. Conversion offices were opened : when the proper forms ran short, the certificate which exempted the New Converts from the billet, written on the back of a playing card, was deemed sufficient, a token which the Protestants called the mark of the Beast. In reading the account of this wholesale apostacy, we- are forcibly reminded of what took place at Carthage in the Decian persecution. " Many," says Cyprian, "were conquered before the battle, prostrated before the attacks They did not even leave it to be said for them that they sacrificed unwillingly ; they ran to the market-place of their own accord." The parallel between the two events runs indeed very close. The names differ, but the object and the means are the same. The torments which the Huguenots sought to escape were as barbarous as those inflicted by the heathen. Louis is the emperor Decius ; Louvois and the ministry are the Eoman senate ; La Chaise and the Jesuits are the pagan priesthood. The victory, however, was not always won so easily. The small town of Bergerac, already illustrious for con- stancy in persecution, made an heroic resistance. Two troops of horse and thirty-two companies of foot being- brought in, Marshall Boufflers, the intendant, and the Bishops of Agen and Perigueaux, came together, and sending for 200 of the chief citizens, ordered them in the king's name to attend Mass. They replied that they were ready to obey the kmg in all things except in matters of conscience, but that in these they acknowledged no sovereign but God. Hereupon thirty-two additional companies of horse and foot were quartered upon them^ with orders to reduce them to reason. After a short interval they were sent for again to the town-hall, and again commanded to abjure. They replied, as before^ humbly and with tears, that what was required of them was the only thing they could not do; upon which the The Dragoons in Laiiguedoc. 113 number of companies was made up to a hundred, and the work of coercion prosecuted with redoubled rigour. " Seeing no other way of keeping soul and body together, or of being delivered from intolerable torments, the whole town, except a few who saved themselves by flight, at length gave way, and were driven to Mass." The same scenes were enacted in Montauban and many other towns. Early in September, Louvois sent word to his father, the chancellor Le Tellier, then aged and sick: " Sixty thousand conversions have been made in the generality of Bordeaux, and 20,000 in that of Montauban. By the end of the month, there will not remain in the former 10,000 Protestants." The same day he wrote to Boufflers : "The king has learnt with the greatest joy the surprising success which has attended the execution of his orders. His majesty trusts to you to send into Saintonge as many infantry, calvary and dragoons as you may deem neces- sary to accomplish the same work there. If the noblemen of the religion continue to stand out, you must quarter troops on such of them as are not at present serving in the army, but not on those of the highest rank, whom, however, you will warn that they in their turn will receive the soldiers, if they do not take advice and quit a religion which is displeasing to his majesty. If this is not sufficient, you will serve them with lettres de cachet, a number of which the king has directed M. de Chateau- neuf to send you in blank ; but this resource is to be used only with great discretion," To render the work of the dragoons more effective, Louvois again closed the frontiers. Every door of exit, whether by sea or land, being thus barred, the Protestants were in the condition of the wild animals of an Indian jungle, hemmed in on every side for a murderous and exterminating battue. By the end of September, the dragoons had arrived at I 114 The Huguenots. Montpellier, a city of 30,000 inhabitants, 8000 of whom were Protestants. The reports of the atrocities by which the march of the troops was accompanied, and of the con- version of city after city, had struck terror into all hearts ; and as soon as it was known that the dragoons were at the gates, a mass meeting was called to decide what was to be done. After some deliberation, it was resolved that the whole community should at once abjure. Accordingly the crowd rushed to the churches, presenting themselves in. such numbers that priests could not be found sufficient to give them absolution. The news flew to Versailles: " Montpellier has abjured en masse.''* An instance occurred in this city which is illustrative of the French character. M. de Fourques, a Protestant nobleman, went to the bishop's house and asked to speak with him. The bishop, who had company, sent word to him to come another day. But the nobleman returning for answer that he had come on a business of the king which would not suffer delay, the bishop came out, sup- posing that the nobleman had brought a command from his majesty. "I am come," said the nobleman, in a serious but ironical tone, " to tell you from the king that you have to receive my abjuration. Perhaps it would have been better if I had been instructed in your faith before professing it, but the king is quite willing to dispense with this." The bishop, who knew M. de Fourques as a man of good sense, and who understood the reproach which this raillery covered, replied with courtesy, but with some degree of confusion, that since he confessed he had need of instruction there was no haste, and he might take time to receive it. " That is not the king's will," replied the nobleman." " How," answered * On the fly-leaf of an old Bible this entry has been found : *' Sept. 29, the whole city of Montpellier turns Catholic." The Dragoons in Languedoc. 115 the bishop, " do you wish that I should receive you into our communion, at the very time when you affect to be ignorant of our doctrines ? It is not permitted to me to do such a thing." "Nevertheless it is what the king wills," replied the nobleman, " and you know that in this as in everything else, you are bound to obey his majesty." In vain the bishop strove to excuse himself, the nobleman continued to press his demand, and in the end the bishop was obliged to receive his abjuration without more ado. Troops had already been sent forward to Nimes, the ■chief Protestant city of the South. The Marquis de Montenegre, the king's lieutenant in Languedoc, followed on the 22nd of September. The next day he closed the temple. The last sermon was preached by Cheiron, one of the city pastors. He was a vehement and pathetic orator, and on this occasion is said to have surpassed himself. He exhorted the congregation to amendment of life and to perseverance in their resistance to popery. It was, he reminded them, the last time that he should ever address them. His sympathetic audience responded with tears and sobs. And when he asked what account they would have him render to God of their souls which had been committed to him, and whether they were resolved to remain faithful, he was interrupted by confused sounds of grief mingled by loud protestations that nothing should ever shake them in their allegiance to their Heavenly Bang. When, however, a few days afterwards, the soldiers were let loose upon the city, nearly the whole church gave way, and Cheiron among the first. The wretched man did more ; to prove the sincerity of his conversion, which was rewarded by honours and a civic office, he not only attended Mass, but even pursued the remnant of his flock which had not given in, with as much severity as any Old Catholic. He had a colleague named Paulham, who also abjured and was rewarded, Both were suspected of 116 The Huguenots. having maintained intelligence with the court at an earlier stage of the troubles. The Duke de Noailles arrived in Nimes early in October, ♦' The day after my arrival," he wrote to Louvois, " the chief notabilities of the city came to the church to make abjuration. There was afterwards some falling off, but matters have taken a good turn through the billetings I made upon the most obstinate." To such, indeed, no mercy was shown. The duke himself tells us that in two instances 100 soldiers were quartered on a single family ; and one who escaped, says : " The wives and daughters of such as stood out were sent to nunneries ; and on one day 300 of the men were marched off in chains to the galleys, at Marseilles." A few days later we find the duke at Florae, in the heart of the Cevennes, from whence he wrote: "Already more than a third part of the Gevaudan (a small province com- prising the western side of the mountains) is converted ; and if the king will have the benevolence to grant the con- verts some remission of the poll-tax, it will expedite the work," He adds : "In undertaking that the whole of these provinces shall be converted by the 25th of November, I have named too distant a date. I believe the work will be accomplished by the end of this month." At Alais there was an aged minister named Bouton, who had one of his sons for a colleague. Although he was. nearly eighty he was still full of ardour, and preached his last sermon, on Hebrews x. 35-39, with extraordinary power, the people often interrupting him with cries and tears. Kaising his hand towards heaven, he protested that he would persevere until death, and the people, like the congregation of Nimes under the preaching of Cheiron, caught the entbusiasm, and all did the same. The Duke de Noailles, believing these scenes to be concerted, sent dragoons to arrest Bouton. When the soldiers appeared The Midnight Hour. 117 at the door and demanded the pastor, his son, with filial self-sacrifice, presented himself in his stead, and was con- ducted to Montpellier. Here the mistake was discovered, but not until the father had had time to flee, and, traversing the Cevennes and Auvergne, to find a safe refuge in Switer- land. The son was released on condition of producing his father, or of again delivering himself up ; but when he found the old man was safe, he broke his parole, which ought to have been to him more sacred than life, made his escape and joined him. It was in the midst of these scenes, and whilst the dragoons were spread over the provinces of the south pursuing their merciless task, that the Edict of Nantes was revoked. XXXIX. THE MIDNIGHT HOUE. We have watched the shadows gradually deepen, and now the hour of midnight darkness has come. The Edict of Nantes had been, year by year, clipped and torn away until nothing remained but the seal and signature of its author, Henry IV. Now these were to be dishonoured and trampled upon. The clergy in their customary orations magnified the royal wisdom and zeal by which the Church was being restored to her pristine glory. The Bishop of Valence and the Coadjutor of Kouen, both of them sons of the great ■Colbert, designated the means the king had made use of as the gentlest and most worthy of the Gospel that had ever been employed. The former, a noted persecutor, declared that the king without violence had brought the pretended reformed religion to be abandoned by all reasonable per- sons. The coadjutor soared still higher, maintaining that it was by gaining the hearts of the heretics the king had 118 The Huguenots. vanquished their obstinacy, for they would scarcely have returned to the bosom of the Church unless the path had been " strewn with flowers." But whilst the incense of flattery kept the royal con- science in a state of torpor, the warning voice of truth once more reached the king's ear. The Marquis de Euvigny was deputy-general of the Eeformed Churches at the court of Versailles. In a conversation with our Bishop Burnet, he told him that knowing the king's bigotry and his gross ignorance of all matters pertaining to his Pro- testant subjects, and seeing that extreme measures were being precipitated, he begged an audience. It lasted several hours. The deputy-general gave the king an account of the numbers, industry, and wealth of the Protestants, and told him that if he supposed they would all turn Catholics he was greatly deceived. Many, he said, would leave the kingdom, and carry their wealth and industry abroad ; many would suffer ; others would be precipitated into desperate courses, and much blood would be shed. Louis appeared to listen attentively, but the marquis perceived that what he said made no real impression on the royal mind, for the king asked for no particulars or explanation, but let him go on to the end. In his reply Louis told him he took his freedom in good part, since it flowed from zeal for his service ; and he believed that what he was about to do might be to the material prejudice of his kingdom, although he did not think it would go to the shedding of blood. But whether it did so or not, he considered himself so absolutely bourjd to the conversion of all his subjects and the extirpation of heresy, that if the accomplishment of this object should require him with one hand to cut off the other, he would do it. Louvois had intended to defer the Act of Eevocation awhile longer, but the news of the rapid and wholesale conversion of the Protestants intoxicated the court, and The Midnight Hour. 119 he was forced to go forward. At a select council of con- science, to which two juris-consults and two theologians (supposed to be Harlay, Archbishop of Paris, and Bossuet) were summoned, it was decided : — First, that the king on every possible ground possessed the power to revoke the Edict of Nantes; and, secondly, that if his majesty possessed the legal power, it was his duty to exercise it for the sake of religion and for the good of his people. The dauphin, who was present, interposed, saying that the Huguenots had already taken alarm, and that, if such an Act should be passed, they might possibly fly to arms, and in any case a large number would emigrate, which would give a blow to commerce and agriculture, and cripple the State. The king replied that he had for a long time past foreseen and provided for all this, that nothing in the world would grieve him more than to shed a single drop of the blood of his subjects, but that he had armies and able generals, whom, if necessary, he would employ against rebels bent on their own destruction. As for motives of interest, he judged them unworthy of consideration com- pared with the advantages of a work which would restore splendour to religion, tranquillity to the State, and authority to the laws. It was unanimously concluded that the edict should be at once revoked. Accordingly, on the 17th of October, 1685, at Fontaine- bleau, the king put his hand to the Act of Eevocation, by which the Edict of Nantes, and also the Edict of Grace of 1629, were declared null and void ;* and the next day the great seal was affixed to the instrument by the Chancellor Le Tellier. According to law it required registration by the parliament of Paris, which body, however, being then * A representation of the event forms the frontispiece to this volume. The original plate is contained in the Dutch translation of Benoit's ' Histoire de I'Edit de Nantes,' which appeared at Amsterdam in 1696. 120 The Huguenots. in vacation, could not legally act. But no impediment was suffered to delay for a moment the launching of the thunder- bolt. All that was considered necessary was to insert in the clause of the edict, by which registration was ordered, the words, " even in vacation." The precipitancy with which the act was accomplished owed something to the impatience of the chancellor, who was near his end, and . panted to see the work completed. When he had placed the great seal under the king's signature, he broke forth in triumph in the words of the N^mc dimittis: "Now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation." He died twelve days afterwards. A mausoleum of black marble was erected to his memory, blazoned with his crest, singularly appropriate to the occasion, a dragon devouring a star. By the edict it was enacted : — That all the remaining temples of the R. P. R. should be forthwith demolished ; * That all ministers who refused to embrace the Catholic faith should depart the realm within two weeks, under pain of the galleys ; Rewards were offered to converted ministers ; All Reformed schools were to be closed ; All children of Protestant parents thenceforth to be born were to be baptized by the priest, and brought up in the Catholic religion ; All Protestants, other than the ministers, were forbidden to leave the country, under penalty of the gallows for men, of imprisonment and confiscation of goods for women. t • In 1660 the Protestants possessed 813 temples; between 1660 and 1685, 570 of these had been demolished or closed ; in 1685, 243 more were demolished. t The original document is in the Palais Soubise, Museum of the National Archives. It is engrossed on " eight pages of i^archment, about 13 inches by 9, now ivory-stained and shghtly wrinkled." The Church is crowning the king, who has his foot on a ^lobe ; his left hand holds a rudder, beneath which heresy, signified by the head of a Medusa, is being crushed. The legend runs : OB • VICIES CENTENA • MILL • CALVINIAN • AD • ECCLES • REVOCATA- D.C.LXXXV. For having brought back to the Church two millions of Calvmists. 1685. The Church, a cross in her ri^ht hand and an open book in her left, is trampling on heresy, signified by a man lying with his face downwards, in his hand an extinguished torch, and under it some torn books of the heretics. H^RESIS EXTINCTA. EDICTUM OCTOBEIS ■ M.D.C.LXXXV. Heresy extinguished. Edict of October, 1685. On the first steps of an altar on which the Host is elevated, the Church, under the figure of a woman in a robe adorned with fieurs- de-lis, is kneeling before the king, who holds out his sceptre to her. The legend is: SACK • EOMANa • EESTITUTA. The Sacraments of the Konian Church restored. This medal was struck at Kome. The Midnight Hour. 121 Medals were struck in honour of Louis, to commemorate the supposed extinction of heresy ; and a bronze statue set up, inscribed to " Louis the Great, always victorious, Defender of the Majesty of the Church and of Kings." On the pedestal was carved a bat, covering with its broad wings the writings of John Huss and Calvin. -'= The exultation of Le Tellier was echoed by the whole of Catholic France, but there was no response from Eome. The news of St. Bartholomew, more than a century before, had been celebrated in the Eternal City with a carnival of joy ; the Edict of Nantes had raised a yell of indignation ; but the pope was too deeply offended with Bossuet and the ■Gallican Church now to make any response, and the tidings of the Revocation were received in silence. In France it was not only the court and the clergy who raised the Te Deum, but all classes, — the academy, the coteries of wit and fashion, the devotees, the Jansenists. A prize was ■offered for a poem on the auspicious occurrence ; it was carried off by Fontenelle. In his funeral oration over Le Tellier, Bossuet (the ^' Eagle of Meaux)" stooped to glorify the act and the monarch: " Ye who compose the annals of the Church, take your sacred pens, facile instruments of a ready writer and a diligent hand, and hasten to place Louis beside Oonstantine and Theodosius. Let us pour out our hearts over his piety. Let us raise to heaven our acclamations and say to this new Constantine, this new Theodosius, this new Marcion, this new Charlemagne, the same that six hundred and thirty Fathers said at the council of Chalcedon formerly, ' You have established the faith ; you have exter- minated the heretics : this is the great work of your reign, it is its distinctive character. King of heaven, preserve the king of the earth : this is the prayer of the Churches ; it is the prayer of the Bishops.' " * In 1793 the statue was melted and cast into cannon. 122 The Huguenots. Madame de Sevigne, one of the most brilliant orna- ments of Louis's refgn, wrote to the Count Bussy- Eabutin, ten days after the signing of the act : " Father Bourdaloue is going, by command of the king, to preach at ^Montpellier and in those provinces where so many people have been converted without knowing why. He will teach it to them, and will make them good Catholics. The dragoons have been excellent missionaries hitherto ; the preachers who are now being sent will complete the work. You will no doubt have seen the edict by which the king has revoked that of Nantes. Nothing could be finer, and no king has ever done, or ever will do, anything more memorable." The count replied : "I admire the measures taken by the king to crush the Huguenots. The wars formerly waged against them, and the Saint Bar- tholomews, only multiplied and strengthened that sect. His majesty has now sapped it little by little, and the edict he has just issued, supported by the dragoons and the Boardaloues, is the covp de grace.'' Even the good Arnauld, the leader of the Jansensists, so well known in connection with Pascal and Port Eoyal, though he found the edict " a little violent," thought it " not at all unjust." Colbert, who died two years before the Eevocation, was unhappily one of those who could say with the Eoman poet: "I see the better course and approve it; but I follow the worse."* Seeing that Bossuet and Fenelon were employing their eloquence to the prejudice of the Huguenots, he said: "Gentlemen, this belongs to your Sorbonne conscience ; you have another conscience ; let that be heard, and you will speak a different language." Nevertheless Colbert took part in the measures which led to the Eevocation. Two men of note stood aloof from the herd, and condemned the act, Boisguillebert, whose trenchant * Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor. The Midnight Hour. 123 description of the national decay we quoted awhile back, and Vauban, the great military engineer of the age, who applied his genius to girdling France with impregnable fortresses. Vauban, in 1688, dared to propose the repeal of all the edicts of the previous nine years, the rebuilding of the temples, an amnesty for the fugitives, even for such as had taken arms against France in foreign regiments, and the release of the prisoners for conscience' sake from the jails and galleys. In a memorial which he presented to Louvois, he deplored the loss by emigration of 60,000 Frenchmen ; the ruin of commerce ; hostile navies re- cruited by 9000 of the best sailors in France ; and hostile armies by 600 officers and 12,000 veteran troops. " Per- secution," he wrote, " is the seed-bed of sects. After the massacre of St. Bartholomew, a fresh census of the Huguenots proved that their number had increased by 110,000. Compulsory conversion inspires a general horror of the clergy and the profanation of the sacrament. If you follow it out, the converts must either be exter- minated or thrust out as madmen. Execrable alternative ! at variance with every principle, civil, moral, or Christian ; fatal to religion itself! There is only one course open, at once charitable, expedient, politic, viz., to leave them un- molested ; and the prudence which knows when to with- draw and yield to events is a prime element in the art of governing." At first the Cardinal de Noailles was honest enough to raise his voice on behalf of the oppressed, but he after- wards joined the persecutors in order to cause it to be for- gotten that he was a Jansenist. A claim has been put in for another man of genius, the poet Eacine. It is founded on two lines in his Esther : — " On peut des plus grands rois surprendre la justice, Et le roi trop credule a sign6 cet edit." 124 The Huguenots. It is said that under the character of Haman he painted Louvois, and that in condemuing the decree of Ahasuerus, he aimed his shaft at the Edict of Kevocation. But it is not probable that Kacine would thus incur the risk of mortally offending the king, to say nothing of the minister. The drama was written at the express request of Louis and Madame de Maintenon, and was first acted (1689) by the ladies of St. Cyr, a celebrated house of education founded by the marchioness for daughters of the nobility. To the above may be added, but on a different ground, the intendant Lamoignon de Baville, styled King of Languedoc, who for so many years ruled that province with a rod of iron. He cared little for the religious question ; he was devoted to the authority of the king and the law. " I have," he said, " always condemned the Kevocation ; it was a gross blunder, and it has thrown the kingdom into a dangerous crisis ; but to return now on one's steps would be to plunge still lower into the abyss. We have no choice but to march on, finish up the conver- sions, close our hearts to pity and our lips to humanity, and save the State. Such is the supreme law." He could, however, give utterance to more enlightened senti- ments : "I have always looked upon it as a mistake to press them on the sacraments. We must approach their hearts ; it is there religion dwells. They require preachers, not Masses and ceremonies. Sermons, hymns and prayer ; these are their worship." PART III. — ♦ — FKOM THE KEVOCATION, 1685, TO THE END OF THE 17th CENTUKY. FKOM THE REVOCATION, 1685, TO THE END OF THE 17th CENTURY. I. HOW TO CONVERT THE NEW CONVERTS. The Act of Revocation was at once followed by a crowd of consequences. We begin with the instruction of the New Converts. As the natural result of the violent means which had been made use of, a very large proportion of the New Converts were utterly ignorant of the doctrines and practices of the Church which they had joined. It could not be otherwise. The priests were obnoxious to them, and they despised their teaching. As a class, indeed, the cures were notoriously illiterate and immoral. The Duke de Noailles, no friend to the Protestants, wrote, that when the pastors challenged the priests to public disputation, none were found learned enough to enter the lists. In the Cevennes, especially, that stronghold of Calvinism, he describes the clergy as leading vicious lives, hating the Huguenots, incompetent and indolent ; and says : "A cathedral, colleges, cures, communities, can barely furnish for the Cathohcs themselves one sermon in the month, "whilst the Calvinists, with only two or three preachers, enjoy one a day." D'Aguesseau gave a similar report ■of Poitou and Languedoc ; and Foucault, in Beam, 128 The Huguenots. deplored the scandalous lives of the clergy. The mis- sionaries, moreover, who had been sent out to instruct the New Converts, had shown themselves altogether unfit for the work. But it was not only ignorance of their doctrines on the part of the New Converts that grieved the thoughtful and devout amongst the Eoman Catholics. Having been gained over in profession only, not in heart, they partook hypocritically of the Church mysteries. They came to the altar and received the wafer into their mouths ; but they had no faith in the change which the Eomanists believe to be wrought by the offering of the priest. This was regarded by good Catholics as a profanation of all that was most sacred, and the protestations against it are couched in the strongest language. The Bishop of Saint- Pons wrote to the commandant of the troops in his- diocese : " You have, sir, too much intelligence not to know that you cannot with a safe conscience contribute in any degree to hasty confessions and communions. These are so many acts of sacrilege, fit to make one's hair stand on end, and enough to make one wish for the poor wretches who commit them, and the ministers who are the instruments of this abomination, that they should be cast headlong into the sea, as the Scripture says, ' with a mill- stone about their neck.' This universal disorder has obliged me to give instruction on the Eucharist, in order that there may be at least one witness in France that these impieties have not been the universal practice of our Church. Nevertheless, sir, I am aware it is your business to employ the royal troops to bring every one to the * table,' without distinction. But what is the conse- quence ? In some cases the impious who spit out the Eucharist and trample it under foot are put to death. Is not Jesus Christ more outraged when it is forced into the body of a notorious unbeliever or a miscreant, such as are How to Convert the New Converts. 129 many of those whom your soldiers bring up to com- munion ? This is the ' abomination of desolation,' and it is time that all good people should weep and prostrate themselves before the Divine Majesty, who is outraged by these infinite profanations." But these sentiments were by no means general. The opposite opinion is expressed by Godet, Bishop of Chartres, spiritual director of Madame de Maintenon : "People are afraid of making themselves accomplices in the sacri- legious acts of the Huguenots. Why did they not fear being accomplices in the lie which is uttered to the Holy Spirit when the Huguenots feign conversion ? They have very wisely risen above this fear ; for whilst requiring righteous acts from them, they have not held themselves responsible for the impious manner in which these were done. May we not now, for the same reason, cast aside all our scruples about compelling these people to frequent the sacraments ? " With Godet agreed the Jesuits, who declared that since every vestige of Calvinism must be efifaced from the land, it was necessary to put up with hypocrisy and sacrilege in a whole generation, in the hope that the next, having never had before its eyes any but the true worship, would lose the remembrance of the false. Various means were proposed to remedy this state of things. The Assembly of the Clergy, which separated a few weeks before the Kevocation, provided funds for fresh troops of missionaries to go through the country and instruct the converts ; and at the same time a large number of schools were opened. In 1686 the Bishop of Saintes stated the number of New CathoHcs in his vast diocese at 80,000, and claimed from the State 8800 livres for six mouths' maintenance of forty-eight missionaries whom he em- ployed to complete their conversion. But it was felt that this was not enough, and it was resolved, as we have K 130 The Huguenots. already learnt from Madame de Sevigne, to send down. into the provinces some of the most learned and eloquent preachers of the capital. Bourdaloue and Flechier were dispatched into Lauguedoc, and Fenelon into Saintonge. We have not much to say regarding the labours of the two former. Flechier wrote, October 28, 1685 : " I have been more than two months on the road on account of the matters of religion with which I have been occupied, all the nobility in the provinces through which I have passed desiring to be converted under my hands, and to confer with me, so that I have received on my journey more than yOO abjurations." He was rewarded for his services by the bishopric of Lavaur, and the next year by that of Nimes. On the only occasion on which we are able to follow Bourdaloue, he had no reason to boast of his success. " I had the curiosity," says a Protestant, " to hear him, and I remember his words to the New Converts : ' How wonder- ful to see you united again to the children of the true Church. How glorious for our invincible monarch to have subjected you to the faith. He has gained battles, and conquered cities and provinces ; but nothing sheds so much lustre on his reign as the victory over your souls.' *' Indeed," adds his hearer, "he had good reason to com- pare these pretended conversions to the king's military triumphs, for they were gained by the self-same means. He had the impudence," he continues, " to propose to confer with the newly converted on their doubts, an audacity which cost him many mortifications, for our people being better instructed than he supposed, he often found himself embroiled in a dispute without knowing how to disengage himself. A certain coppersmith, in particular, no scholar, but practised in controversy, handled the great preacher with wonderful dexterity, catching him in his own words, and confounding him before the whole assembly. Bourdaloue angrily demanded the man's name Fenelun, Missionary in Saintonge. 131 •and abode, and would have shut liim up in prison if be liad not made bis escape. A papist nobleman, wbo was present, said tbe New Catholics were not to be blamed, since they had only used the liberty Bourdaloue had .offered them. ' I do not complain,' replied the Jesuit, ' that they come to me to get information, but I will not suffer them to send me their ministers in disguise to trip me up.' His discomfiture so preyed upon him that it caused & violent spitting of blood, which gave him a pretext for breaking off the conferences." II. FENELON, MISSIONARY IN SAINTONGE, 1685-6. Some of Fenelon's letters from Saintonge have been preserved. They depict in strong colours the attitude and .agitation of the Protestant mind, and the insuperable difficulties of his undertaking. Before we accompany him, it may be well to revive our recollection of the condition in which this province was left prior to the Revocation.''- We may remember that the temples had been all closed. The last was that of Marennes ; it was shut up one Saturday night. The next morning the Protestants from many miles round, having no other place of worship to go to, assembled there in great numbers ; it was computed that there were nearly ten thousand round the doors. There were several marriages to be solemnized, and twenty-three infants to be baptized ; but as the house was locked the vast assembly were obUged to disperse, dejected and sorrowful. " Nothing was heard," says the historian, "but sighs and groans; they embraced one another with tears, clasping their -hands and raising their eyes to heaven." The infants * See page 99. 132 The Huguenots. had to be carried seven leagues further to be baptized ; and, from the severity of the weatlier, several died on the way. The minister, Louvois, who had estates in Saintonge, wrote in September to the Marquis de Boufflers : — " I want you to finish the work and clear the country of Pro- testants, especially my domain." But this was more easily said than done. In November the minister was. informed that there remained in four parishes of the diocese of La Rochelle 600 unconverted, who had left their homes and betaken themselves to the woods ; and in December the Bishop of La Rochelle reported 803 Huguenots as still remaining in twenty-eight of his parishes, and prayed Louvois to use means which should compel them to abjure. His request was granted ; the houses of such as had fled were razed to the ground ; and Louvois wrote : — •' There is no better method of convincing^ the Huguenots that the king will not have them in France than to make an example of those on my domain." Such was the condition of Saintonge and La Rochelle when Fenelon undertook to bring back the wanderers to the fold. Before entering on his mission, Fenelon, at the king's desire, was admitted to an audience. " It is well known," says his biographer, Bausset, " that the only request which he made was that all the troops and every appear- ance of military coercion should be removed from the places to which he was to be sent on this ministry of peace and charity. The king, although he expressed some fear for Fenelon's personal safety from the turbulent character of the Protestants, at once promised to grant his request." But the conditions were not observed on the part of the king, the troops not being withdrawn until two months after Fenelon's arrival. Nor, according to our ideas, did the missionary act in accordance with the principles on Fenelon, Missionary in Saintonge. 133 which he set out. It was the case of the House of the New Cathohcs in Paris over again. Fenelon undertook the office of instructor and reconciler, in the honest belief that the Calvinists were in danger of eternal perdition ; but he had to give in his account not to God only, but to the king, and was thus in the condition of those who would, at the same time, serve two masters. The Eomish missionaries in France looked on themselves as a part of the adminis- tration, bound to watch over and protect the interests of the State, and Fenelon, whilst he professed to have sheathed the sword, held it uplifted ready to smite at a moment's notice. Moreover, he found the Protestants in a state of agitation, for which he was unprepared. He took with him five abbes of note, and a staff of Jesuits. They came to Saintonge about the end of the year (1685). On his arrival, Fenelon made such concessions as he •could. He suppressed, in the public worship, the Ave- Marias and other prayers especially offensive to the Protestants, an indulgence which seems to have given umbrage to the court, for he found it necessary to explain ^nd defend himself. The following passages are from his letters : — " La Tremblade, February 7, 1686. To the Marquis de .Seignelay, secretary of state. Sir, — I hasten to report to you the evil disposition in which I have found the inhabitants of this place. Letters, written to them from Holland, promise an advantageous settlement in that country, and exemption from taxes for at least seven years.* I take the liberty to represent to you that in my opinion the guard along the coast, where they might em- bark, should be increased ; also that the royal authority must not be relaxed in anything ; for our arrival in this * From England, also, letters were circulated holding out great advantages to such as should wish to settle in Carolina. 134 The Huguenots. country, combined with rumours of war which come con- tinually from Holland, make these people believe that we fear them, and are humouring them. They persuade themselves that there will soon be a great change, aud that the war-like preparations of the Dutch are destined for their deliverance. But whilst authority must be main- tained inflexible to curb these spirits, whom the least slackness makes insolent, it is important to make their life in France as easy as possible, so as to lessen the desire to leave the country. The Protestants confess we have proved that, according to the Scriptures, they ought to submit to the Church ; and they offer to the Catholic doctrines no objections which we have not shown to be mifounded. When we left Marennes they were evidently more deeply impressed than they dared to acknowledge. They were so afflicted that I could not refuse to leave with them some of our gentlemen, and to promise we would all return. If these good beginnings are sustained by our preachers, they will soon become sound Catholics. The Jesuit fathers are the only persons capable of doing this work, for they are respected both for their knowledge- and their virtue." February 26. To the same. " Before leaving the three fathers of Marennes, I tried to persuade them that they ought to act as intercessors and advisers of the people in all things relating to the royal authority. It is this which will most effectually eradicate heresy. With this object, I have taken care to let many small favours which we obtained for the inhabitants pass through their hands, making the people suppose they owed them to their solicitation. The people are in a violent agitation ; they perceive a force in our religion and a weakness in their own which strikes them with dismay. Their conscience is turned quite upside down, and the most reasonable see plainly whither all this is tending ; but party prejudices^ Fenelon, Missionary in Saintonge. 135 false shame, habit, and the letters from Holland, hold them in suspense, and, as it were, render them beside themselves. They are poor ; the trade in salt, their only resource, is almost annihilated. If the religious question is aggravated by famine, no barrier will be able to keep them here. The corn you have sent from the royal bounty seems to have touched their hearts. It would be easy to make them all confess and communicate ; but of what service would it be to make those confess who do not yet acknowledge the true Church or her power to remit sins ; or how can we give Christ to those who do not believe they receive Him ? Where there are both missionaries and troops, the New Converts flock to the communion. I forgot to tell you, sir, that a plentiful supply of books will be necessary, especially of the New Testament and translations of the Mass with expla- nations." The foregoing are from Fenelon's official correspon- dence. In a letter to one of his lady friends he speaks more freely of the resident Jesuits : — " To Madame de Beauvilliers. The Huguenots seem to be affected by our instructions even to tears. They say : ' We would willingly listen to you, but you are here only for a while. When you are gone we shall be at the mercy of the monks, who preach to us only of indulgences and brotherhoods.' Here (continues Fenelon), there are only three sorts of priests : the secular, the Jesuits, and the Eecollets. The KecoUets are despised and hated, especially by the Huguenots, whom they have taken every opportunity to inform against. The Jesuits of Marennes are four mules, who when they speak to the New Converts, speak, as to this world, only of fines and the prison, and, as to the other, only of the devil and hell. We have had in- finite difficulty to hinder these good fathers from breaking out against our gentleness, because by it their harshness 136 The Huguenots. was made more odious. After all, however, they are the best of the lot. As for the cures, they have no talent for speaking, which brings great reproach on the Church, for the Huguenots have been accustomed to ministers, who have comforted and exhorted them with the affecting words of Holy Scripture." In the same letter Fenelon tells us how he himself imparted religious instruction, an art in which he had no equal : " We try in our sermons to avoid anything which may stir up controversy. We bring forward proofs in the form of simple explanations, and in a manner likely to touch the heart. We manage to intro- duce all that is necessary to make true Catholics, whilst appearing to aim only at making good Christians. Never- theless we have great difficulty in attracting the terrified creatures. Everywhere we meet with an incredible attach- ment to heresy. The more impression any one of our preachers makes upon them, the less inclination do they show to hear him again. Their pet proverb is : ' Fly from the voice of the enchanter.'" March 8, Fenelon wrote again to De Seignelay : " The hard and uuteachable nature of the Huguenots requires a rigorous and ever watchful authority. We need nob harm them, but they must see a hand always upUfted ready to strike if they resist. Good schools for both sexes must be opened as soon as possible ; and all parents must be com- pelled to send their children to them. The New Testament must be spread broadcast, printed in large characters, for they cannot read the small type. If we take away their own translation without giving them ours they will say (as their ministers have told them) that we keep the Bible from them for fear they should find in it a condem- nation of our superstitions and idolatries. Lastly, sir, if to these helps there is joined an unslumbering vigilance to prevent emigration, and rigour in punishing it, nothing further will be needful but to let the people find as much Fenelon, Missionary to Saintonge. 137 •comfort in remaining in the country as peril in leaving it." It may be recollected that Madame de Maintenon had set her mind on the conversion of her relative, M. de St. Hermine and his family, who resided at Rochefort, iu the neighbourhood of Fenelon's mission. To please the great lady, as his admiring biographer tells us, Fenelon took up the matter. He writes : "I have had seven or eight long conversations with M. de Sainte-Hermine at Eochefort, where I went to visit him. He understands well what is said to him ; he has nothing to answer ; but he makes no move. The Abbe de Langeron and I have acted a vigorous controversy in his presence, I playing the part of Protestant, and making use of the most specious arguments of the ministers. M. de Sainte-Hermine thoroughly perceived the weakness of my reasons, what- ever turn I gave to them ; those of the abbe, on the ■contrary, seemed to him conclusive ; sometimes he himself even offered apposite objections ; but he is not shaken, at least not outwardly. I suspect he is clinging to his religion from secret family motives." The same day Fenelon wrote to Bossuet: "Our converts are going on a little better, but the progress is very slow ; it is no small matter to change the opinions of a whole people. What difficulties the apostles must have found in •changing the face of the world. The ill-converted Hugue- nots are attached to their religion to a horrible extreme of stubbornness, but as soon as the severity of the penalty comes in, all their strength forsakes them. In- stead of being, like the martyrs, humble, docile, intrepid and incapable of dissimulation, these people are cowardly in the presence of force, stubborn against the truth, and ready for all kinds of hypocrisy. If one wished to make them abjure Christianity and embrace the Koran, one would only have to show them the dragoons. If they can 138 The Huguenots. ut keep their nightly meetings and hold out against nstruction, they think they have done enough." Fenelon had good reason to complain of the nightly assemblies. The exiled pastors wrote to their congrega- tions in France in terms of strong rebuke and admonition; and their letters, which were read at the meetings held under cover of darkness, for exhortation, prayer, and communion, produced a powerful effect. It was like Penelope's web ; what was wrought by Fenelon and his staff in the day was unravelled at night. We have only room for a few sentences from these letters : — " To our brethren who groan in the Captivity in Babylon, for whom we desire peace and mercy from God. We are grieved to hear of your weakness, in yielding to temptation. Consider what account you will give to Him who has commanded us to confess Him before men. Cherish a righteous horror of popery. None but the devil could use such tools to build his house. Vigilantly guard your books of piety, devotion and controversy, and carefully read them ; save them by hiding them from the search of the persecutors, especially your Bibles, enduring all things rather than let those be snatched from you. You must seek for the means of deliverance at the-earliest possible time. If you escape destitute and naked, you will yet be happy if only you bring away with you your souls for a prey." Fenelon did not remain long in Saintouge ; he was impatient to get back to his New Catholics in Paris. Bausset tells us that in the report he made to the king, " he praised the zeal of his coadjutors, spoke of the present and future of the great undertaking, and observed profound silence with regard to himself." Another qf his biographers adds, that " he recommended the Huguenots to the royal consideration, and praised their peaceable disposition." The Shepherds driven aivay. 139 Fourteen years after Fenelon's mission, viz., in 1700, the intendant of Saintonge complained that there were still in the diocese of Saintes more than 60,000 heretics, and he warned the secretary of state that if there were not regular fixed j)enalties for neglecting to bring the children to the catechism, all the care that had been bestowed would be in vain." III. THE SHEPHEEDS DEIVEN AWAY, 1685. "Whilst Fenelon was labouring to made good Catholics of the New Converts of Saintonge, events in other parts of France did not stand still. The country, in fact, resembled a seething caldron. We will begin with the pastors. The Edict of Kevocation enacted that whilst the flocks were close penned the shepherds were to be driven away, The banishment of the ministers was no new measure, however ; a considerable number had already been sent away or had fled. Now, all who remained, perhaps seven or eight hundred, were cast forth to find an asylum in Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, Holland and England.* By the terms of the edict fourteen days were allowed them to depart in, but in many cases even this grace was denied. The pastors of Charenton were required to quit the kingdom in forty-eight hours; and Jean Claude, who had in 1678 so ably measured weapons with Bossuet, within twenty-four hours. They could not cross the frontier without passports, which were often vexatiously withheld. Three pastors of Upper Languedoc were refused this indispensable paper by La Keynie, who sent * At the great Eevolution, 1793, 7000 Catholic priests found refuge in England alone. 140 The Huguenots. them to Versailles. Chateauneuf, the secretary of state, after amusing them several days, ordered them back to their province, which they did not reach till after the fortnight had expired. On their arrival at Montpellier, Baville shut them up in the citadel and was near con- demning them to the galleys. They were placed under a guard of soldiers, whom they had to fee heavily to conduct them out of the kingdom, At first the pastors were permitted to take with them their families and their books ; soon their wives only were allowed to accompany them. Before leaving the country they were obliged to sign a certificate, declaring that they •carried with them nothing belonging to the consistories. The certificate tendered by Henri Latane being pro- nounced irregular in this respect, he was immured in the Chateau Trompette at Bordeaux, a castle which enjoyed an evil distinction amongst the many chambers of horror and living tombs bequeathed to France by the Middle Ages. By the time a clear certificate was prepared the day* of grace had expired. In vain his son and himself memorialized the court against the flagrant injustice of his detention ; the Marquis de Bouf&ers, intendant of the province, declared that seeing he was a man of ability and highly esteemed by his flock, it would be of more service to the king to let him lie in prison than to send him abroad. It is needless to say that many of those who were thus thrust out endured severe hardships. Some died on the journey, or on reaching the land of liberty. The case of two pastors at Metz may be noticed. This is a part of the country of which we have not yet spoken. Whether it was that in the northern provinces the Protestants were less numerous and of a nature less impulsive than in the south and west, or that the rule of the iutendants there was less severe, it is certain that they were exempt from The Shepherds Driven Aivay. 141 the extremes of persecution which their brethren in other parts had to endure. Their worship had been interdicted, their temples demohshed, their schools shut up, their civil rights forfeited, their Bibles publicly burned ; but the troops had not been let loose upon them, and there had not been the same examples of wanton barbarity. These Metz preachers were both of extreme age, and almost childish. The intendant of the province, touched with compassion at their condition, inquired of Louvois if they might not be allowed to remain. " If they are imbe- cile," replied the heartless minister, "they may die where they are ; but if they have any wits left, pack them off." When the time came for them to depart, a vast crowd accompanied them weeping down to the Moselle, where they embarked for Frankfort. One of them, David Ancillon, made his way to BerHn, whither he was followed by a large number of his parishioners, and where he was graciously welcomed by the Great Elector, who appointed him his chaplain. This was the foundation of the French Church in Berlin. Most of the pastors stood their ground, and patiently submitted to their lot, leaving all that was dear to them on earth, — goods, family, and flock. Alas! however, a considerable number not being prepared to give these up for their Lord's sake, made their abjuration. Antoine Court made out a list of between fifty and sixty, who in this way denied Christ ; and M. Douen thinks that if we had all the data before us the number would have to be doubled. Saurin, the noted preacher, in a sermon on *' Buying and Selling the Truth," in allusion to the unfaithfulness of so many, thus apostrophises Kome : — " thou, who never ceasest to insult and defy us, do not pretend to confound us by pointing to those galleys, which thou art filling with our confessors. If thou should desire to cover us with confusion, show us the souls thou hast 142 The Huguenots. robbed us of. Instead of boasting that thou hast extirpated heresy, let thy triumph be that tliou hast caused rehgioa to be denied ; instead of boasting that thou hast made martyrs, exult that thou hast made apostates. This is our real tender point ; it is here that there is no sorrow like unto our sorrow," It is cause of rejoicing to add that twenty-six of the faint-hearted almost immediately re- pented, abjured their abjuration, and, at great peril, . succeeded in making their way across the frontier. IV. THE EEIGN OF TEEEOE. No sooner were the shepherds driven away than their flocks attempted to follow them. Before, however, we accompany the terrified sheep in their perilous wanderings, we must inquire what changes were produced at home by the Act of Eevocation. The edict removed the last impediment to the universal and unbridled licence of the soldiery. Whilst the troops proceeded with their grim work of conversion in Lan- _guedoc, the Cevennes and Dauphine, fresh regiments were despatched into the northern provinces, and from theuce spread over the rest of the kingdom, so that in less than four mouths the Protestants in every town and village of France were driven to the Mass at the point of the bayonet. The bishops, indeed, denied that such was the case. Bossuet, in a pastoral letter to the New Catholics of his diocese, dated from Claye, March 24, 1686, says : " Not one of you has suffered violence, either in person or estate ; I hear it is the same in the other bishoprics. You are come back to us in peace, and you know it." But a letter from one of the sufferers to . Jurien, written from Meaux, December 16, 1685, tells a The Pieign of Terror. 143 very different tale : ' ' We are overwhelmed ; the dragoons -are come to Meaux after having converted Claye. j Nothing can resist them. See to what a pitiful state our sins have brought us!" And in another letter, January 3, 1686: "It is with tears of blood I tell you that the dragoons have forced everybody to change their religion in the circuits of Meaux and Soissons." A ray of hope having been kindled by some words in the last clause of the Act, which declared that the Huguenots were not to be molested in the private exercise of their religion, an agitation took place in several of the provinces. The Duke De Noailles wrote to Louvois from Languedoc that this remnant of tolerance would ruin everything. Louvois replied, Nov. 5, 1685 : " A few billetings, a little heavy pressure on those of the nobility and the third estate who still stand out, will soon undeceive them regarding the edict. The king desires that you will explain yourself very severely toward those who would wish to remain the last in a religion which is displeasing to his majesty." The deadly strife between the oppressors and the oppressed was intensified by an edict issued in December, by which it was made lawful to take from their parents infants of five years old. " So terrible a blow," says Michelet, "swallowed up fear in the hearts of the parents. To quell their spirit, and especially that of the mother, the soldiers had recourse to every kind of torment. Their victims were pinched, larded, suffocated, singed with lighted straw like a fowl, their hair and nails plucked out, hung up over burning coals " ; with other atrocities still more revolting. Where irresponsible power is placed in the hands of brutal natures there is no limit to the excesses which may be committed. But the torment which told most in the end was the de- j)rivation of sleep. The poor fellow on whom it was tried. 144 The Huguenots. if possessed of money, willingly paid ten, twenty, thirtj crowns an hour to be left in peace ; but as soon as the brief interval was over, the drum beat and the torture recommenced. An aged man at Nimes, thus tormented for a long season, at length yielded and signed his abjura- tion. The bishop who received it said : " Now, sir, you may rest." " Alas ! my lord," replied the poor fellow, "I look for no rest till I get to heaven ; and I pray God that for what I have just done He may not shut its gates against me." " The woman bore this deprivation better than the man. Often he would give in while she remained firm, and her words of admonition would re-inspire him. Then they drove him away and kept him out of his home, and the struggle was continued between the wife and a score of soldiers. But no humiliation could quell her spirit ; she rose again by prayer, by the fixity of her faith. "^ The case of the little children carried off to the nunnery was equally pitiful with that of the mother. *' Taken from home at so tender an age, everything was lost at once. The little bed so soft over which the mother bent, the garden, the great chimney-corner where the little girl had her chair ; nothing left of all this. Alone with strangers in a vast frigid dormitory, with long stone corridors, and icy courts to be crossed in the snow to reach the chapel on a winter's morning ; the kneeling during the long prayers in an unknown tongue, the frame chilled with the motionless posture ; the meagre, indiges- tible diet ; the endless classes and catechisms ; the humours of teachers and mistresses without sympathy and inca- pable of teaching ; the whip at hand for every offence. It seems to have been thought that these tender minds "would soon forget the little they had learnt, and would yield a ready obedience ; but it was not so ; they often showed a singular tenacity, both of belief and purpose," The soldiers revelled most when they were quartered in The Reign of Terror. 145 the houses of the nobihty and of the wealthy merchants. They locked the owner up in his chamber; they tbrew the costly furniture into the street, and stabled their horses in the splendid drawing-rooms, giving them buckets of milk and wine, and for litter, fabrics of wool, cotton and silk and the finest Dutch linen. We have the testimony of a well-known English divine and historian to the fierceness of the persecution. Bisbop Burnet passed through the southern provinces (and it is to these that the foregoing description especially applies), at the very time of the Kevocation. " I went over France," he says, in the History of his own Time, from Marseilles to Montpellier, and from thence to Lyons and so to Geneva, whilst it was in its hottest rage. 1 saw and knew so many instances of injustice and violence, that it exceeded even what could have been well imagined ; for all men set their thoughts on work to invent new methods of cruelty. Men and women of all ages who would not yield, were not only stripped of all they had, but kept long from sleep, driven about from place to place, and hunted out of their retirements. The women were carried into nunneries, in many of which they were almost starved, whipped, and barbarously treated. In all the towns through which I passed I heard the most dismal accounts of these things, but chiefly at Valence, where one D'Herapine seemed to exceed even the fury of inqui- sitors. In the streets one could have known the New Converts by a cloudy dejection which appeared in their looks and deportment. Such as endeavoured to make their escape and were seized (for guards and secret agents were spread along the whole roads and frontier of France), were, if men, condemned to the galleys, if women, to monasteries. To complete this cruelty, orders were given that such of the New Converts as did not at their death receive the sacrament, should be denied burial, and that L 146 TJie Huguenots. their bodies slioukT be left where other dead carcases were cast out, to be devoured by wolves or dogs. This was executed in several places with the utmost barbarity ; and it gave all people so much horror that, finding the ill effect of it, it was let fall. It hurt no one, but struck all that saw it with more horror than those sufferings that were more i'elt. The fury that appeared on this occasion did spread itself with a sort of contagion, for the inteudants and other officers, who had been mild and gentle in the former parts of their lives, seemed now to have laid aside the compassion of Christians, the breeding of gentlemen, and the common impressions of humanity." And he adds in a letter : "I do not think that in any age there ever was such a violation of all that is sacred either with relation to God or man." The gloom of these dark years was occasionally relieved by a struggling ray of light. We have already met with humane and sympathizing Catholics, good Samaritans to their Protestant neighbours. Benoit has preserved a few other examples. An officer, after tormenting a woman who was sick of a fever, without being able to shake her resolution, was touched by the sight of so great courage with so little strength, and instead of taking her to prison as he was ordered, set her at liberty. Some dragoons watched by turns to prevent from sleeping a man named Beauregard, of Dauphine ; two of them compassionated him, and when it came to their turn, suffered him to sleep in quiet. A woman named Poupaiu, having borne many outrages, some of her tormentors relented, and remon- strated with the rest, so that in the end they all left her in peace. The jailer of the General Hospital in Paris, who at first treated with harbhness a Protestant woman com- mitted to his charge, by degrees became softened and did all in his power to make her imprisonment tolerable. A C:itljoUc nobleman of Vendome was so indiirnant at the Jean Tirel. 147 murder of a Protestant widow of Epiiieaux being suffered to go unpunished, that he himself instituted a legal process against the murderer. Another instance of a jailer being won by the good conversation of a prisoner for conscience' sake appears in the following narrative. V. JEAN TIREL. Jean Tirel, a pastor of Normandy, was arrested some months before the Revocation, for the crime of having made a trip to Jersey without the royal permission. The judge at Coutances, after keeping him a long time in a dungeon, condemned him to the galleys. Tirel appealed against this sentence to the parliament of Rouen, but his appeal was in vain. He was sent to the prison set apart for the forcats, to wait for the chain to be made up. Here he was obliged to share the bed of a miserable priest under sentence of death for magic, who attempted to strangle him, and would have effected his purpose had it not been for the opportune arrival of the jailer. The priest was soon afterwards taken away to be burned alive. The jailer found himself attracted towards his new prisoner. He gave him a better lodging in an upper chamber, and by degrees permitted him, not only to receive visits from his brethren in the town and engage in religious exercises with them, but to extend his pastoral care to the other Protestant prisoners who also were waiting for the chain. One of these, an old man of seventy, died in Tirol's arms, giving glory to God. In the end the jailer allowed him to go outside the gate and take the air on the adjoining ramparts. This indulgence, however, cost Tirel his life. Seeing one day some garments on the path, he took them up; they were 148 The Huguenots. infected clothes spread out to air. Tirel caught the fever and died in a few days. His three infant children had been placed, the daughters in a convent, and the son in a seminary. Endeavours "were used to convert the boy, but the impressions he had received from his Protestant parents were too strong ; he made a determined resistance and was released. On his way to England he saw his father in the prison at Eouen and received his blessing. The daughters, when told of their father's death, shed tears, for which offence they were obliged to do penance. Tirel's elder son escaped to Holland in 1624, and being introduced to the synod of Gouda as the son of a pastor and confessor who had never abjured, but had remained faithful unto death, the synod voted him a pension for life. Doubtless many other acts of humanity might have been recorded. Their number would have been tenfold, but that, like Nebuchadnezzar, the king's commands were urgent, and Louis's officers, civil and military, were as obsequious as the servants of the Babylonian despot.] VI. AERIAL PSALMODY. Protracted and relentless persecution, mental and bodily- suffering, with the reproaches of conscience, produced in the southern provinces a state of supernatural excitement. No act of their religious exercises was dearer to these simple people than psalmody ; but this source of delight and consolation had long been forbidden under severe penalties. Grief and desire at length so wrought on their minds, that they began to hear in the air the divine songs they had loved so dearly. " In divers places," says Jurieu, " where temples had stood, voices were heard in Aerial Psalmody. 149 the air so perfectly like the singing of Psalms that they •could not be taken for anything else." Vivens, one of the Desert preachers, who had himself heard them, produced at one time thirty or forty witnesses of these aerial •chants. The marvel first showed itself in Beam, in October, 1685, a month after the dragoons had left that province, when the mourning church at Orthes was ravished and consoled by these supernatural concerts. Suddenly one man hears the melody ; he calls others and they too hear it ; they all fall on their knees ; they weep for joy ; some hear the tune only, others distinguish the words. When they retire to converse on the wonder, it breaks forth •afresh. The phenomenon mostly happened between eight and nine in the evening. The peasants flocked into the towns to listen to the celestial music and did not return home till the night was far spent, publishing everywhere •the tidings of the happy miracle. The poor people fondly believed that it was the angels ■who sang, and that they came to announce approaching deliverance. The persecutors saw in it the work of Satan : an order was made, forbidding anyone to listen to these heavenly songs or to speak of having heard them, under a penalty of 500 livres fine, afterwards raised to 2000. One night a numerous assembly saw a great torch in the heavens, and all cried out: "Behold our happy deliver- ance ! " The torch was held by a beautiful girl in white whom no one recognized, and who invited to repentance •several persons who had apostatized for money. The •meeting was discovered, and many were put to death. The hallucination spread to the Cevennes, where the music was heard for some weeks, from December, 1685, to the end of January, 1686. But the Cevenols, so much more ready to fly to arms than the Bearnese, heard other •sounds besides songs of consolation and praise. Their 150 The Hufjuenots. ears were filled with tlie roll of drums and the sounding of" trumpets for the battle. The celestial psalmody soon passed away, but it was succeeded by another psychical phenomenon, more wide- spread and more enduring, of which we shall speak by- and-bye. VII. THE FUGITIVES. The fourth section of the Act of Kevocation swept ofT the pastors. By the tenth section it was sought to hinder the sheep from following them, to enclose them all in an iron fence where the wolves might worry and devour them. This ordinance, as we have had occasion to see^ had already been more than once put in operation ; now it ■was made absolute and permanent. But the government had miscalculated on this as on every other measure of its blind and bigoted policy. " The flock hungering after food turned eagerly to those hands by which it had been accustomed to be fed. No vigilance could be sufficiently alert, no cordon of jailers sufficiently numerous to close every outlet of so extensive a frontier as that which, bounded France ; and notwithstanding the fearful penalr ties annexed to detection, a very numerous emigration: of the people succeeded the expulsion of their ministers." The tide of exile had in fact been flowing for twenty years ; it was now increased tenfold. Men, women and children quitted by stealth the paternal hearth and their native town, and took their way, one by one or in small companies, disguised as muleteers, colporteurs, beggars, sporstmen with dog and gun. Noblemen might be seen wheeling barrows, leading an ass, or driving pigs. Not a few passed as pilgrims, their beard long, a staff and rosary in their hand, and a scallop-shell on their breast, and. The Fugitives. 151 furnished with a certificate by some humane priest who was privy to the deception. Such a stream of pilgrims to Notre Dame de Liesse in Picardy, or to our Lady of Loretto, or St. James of Compostella, had not been seen for many a year. The movement commenced in the south ; whole parishes in Lower Langnedoc were deserted, and it is said that not fewer than 800 persons at once retreated from a village in Dauphine. The fears of the government were excited by this perilous and rapid depopulation, and force and artifice were alike employed in order to prevent its continuance. Armed peasants scoured the roads and guarded the most obvious passes ; and in remoter districts, gold was lavishly scattered to corrupt the fidelity of the guides to whom the fugitives intrusted themselves. April 23, 1686, there set out from three villages of Dauphine two companies, numbering together 240 persons (of whom only three were men), and twenty-eight mules carrying their clothes and the little children, under the conduct of six guides who had come over from Switzerland, doubtless themselves emigrants. Their pro- gress was exceedingly slow, for they had proceeded no further than St. Jean de Maurienne when they were arrested, June 22, and taken back to Grenoble. Three of the guides were beheaded, and their heads set on poles ; the three men fugitives were condemned to the galleys for life ; seventy-three of the women had their heads shaven by the executioner, and were imprisoned for life ; twenty- four girls were sent to spend two years in convents ; and forty-six were released on paying the expenses of their trial. . Lyons and the frontier towns towards Switzerland were full of prisoners. It was the same in the north. At Valenciennes, St. Omer, Lisle, Tournay, and as far back as Paris, the jails were bursting with men, women, and children, 152 Tlie Huguenots. stopped in their flight. At the beginning of 1G86, the jaileress of Tournay stated that since tlie Revocation she had lodged more than 700 Protestants flying from the kingdom. She added that the guards sometimes pursued the fugitives a considerable distance beyond the frontier. The guides were not always either honest or faithful ; many were vagabonds from justice ; ai:id amongst the dangers of flight must be reckoned their treachery and brutality, which did not stick at attempting the honour and life of women and girls with whom they were con- cealed whole days in the woods, and whom at the inns they passed off as their wives and daughters. It was by sea, however, that the most frequent, and probably the most successful, attempts at escape were made. Scarcely a vessel quitted any part of France without some contraband lading of emigrants. When other places of concealment failed, the miserable exiles secreted themselves under bales of merchandize, in empty casks, or amid heaps of stores ; and if securer means of transport were not at hand, an open boat or the skiff of a fisherman was eagerly coveted for the performance of some hazardous voyage. The Count de Marance and his lady, personages of distinction in Lower Normandy, formed part of a crew of forty souls, among whom were several women with children at the breast, who entered a vessel of seven tons burden in the depth of winter, wholly without provisions, and exposed to a stormy sea. Their sole refreshment during a long passage to the English coast was a little melted snow, with which, from time to time, they moistened their fevered lips ; until, after sufifer- ings which appeared to debar hope, this piteous company gained the shore, and found a hospitable reception. One of the pastors, who escaped by sea, was hidden at the bottom of the hold under some bales of merchandize. A soldier, who was sent to search the vessel, using his The Fugitives. 153 sword as a probe, thrust it into his body. The minister had the presence of mind not only to receive the thrust without uttering a sound, but to wipe the blood from the blade as it was drawn out. Many suffered shipwreck ; the fate of others was wholly unknown. Some, from the more western provinces, were made prizes by Corsairs, and endured years of slavery in Africa. Some were thrown upon the coast of Spain, and did but exchange persecution at home for an equal measure of severity from the Inquisition. Some captains, after receiving an enormous sum for carrying the fugitives, set them ashore far from the port of their destination, or left them destitute on some solitary coast, or even put them to death. A scoundrel was hanged at Caen for having, on divers occasions, drowned Huguenot fugitives instead of conducting them to England. " The greater number, however, by daring courage, by the sacrifice of their little remaining property in order to bribe those appointed to hem them in, or by the adoption of some skilful disguise, effected their retreat : and there was scarcely any labour too heavy, any service too menial, any privation too acute, to which even women of condition refused to submit, in order to escape the yet more hateful spiritual bondage and degradation which awaited them if they remained in France." To disencumber the galleys, stocked with condemned Huguenots, Louvois sent cargoes of the prisoners to America in crazy vessels, some of which foundered at sea. Such of the prisoners as escaped drowning and gained the shore were hospitably received by the Indians, especially when they understood that they had been driven out of their native country for adoring the Great Spirit ; they opened their cabins to them, and shared with them their maize and cassava. At length, when Louvois had filled the prisons, the 154 The Huguenots. galleys, and the colonies, he reopened the barriers, relying, says Peyrat, on the well-known character of the French people, who covet the apple only so long as it is forbidden. If he really thought so, however, he was mis- taken in this, as in all his former calculations. The tide of emigration rose immediately, and the king, enraged, gave orders again to close the ports. As already observed, whilst the persecution cost France a great loss of population, the Protestant countries were peopled at her expense. The emigrants spread themselves over Switzerland, Germany, Holland, England and Den- mark ; England, alone, is said to have received 50,000. The generosity of the Swiss towards the refugees, their brethren in the doctrines of Calvin, was unbounded. But the loss to France is not to be measvired merely by the drain of population. The refugees were excellent agricul- turists, and the first gardeners in Europe. Many of them possessed commercial secrets of great value, hitherto unknown in other countries. The North of Germany, in return for its liberality, received a busy swarm, who brought with them the art of dyeing all varieties of colours, and improved methods of manufacturing cloths, serges, crapes, druggets, hats, galloons, and stockings. Berlin obtained goldsmiths, jewellers, watchmakers, and carvers. In London, the then suburbs of Soho and St. Giles, were largely augmented ; and Spitalfields became the home of a new manufacture in a numerous and intelligent colony of silk-weavers. The mystery of glass-working, in which the French stood nearly alone, was not only transferred elsewhere by the removal of most of the artizans engaged in it, but became deteriorated at home. The nobles, trained to arms, engaged in foreign service ; many were enrolled in Savoy, Holland, and Germany ; and under William III. the regiments of Huguenot volunteers, who formed part of his army in Ireland, contributed in no The Perils of Jean Migault. 155 small degree to the victory at the Boyne, by which his throne was secured. So short-sighted is the policy of bigoted and desjDotic rulers. We cannot do better than follow some of those who sacrificed all they had and braved every peril that they might worship God according to their conscience. VIII. THE PERILS OE JEAN MIGAULT [concluded). We begin with our old friend, Jean Migault, the reader of Moulle, whom we left in comparative quiet and prosperity in the little town of Mauze. This state of ease ■was of short duration. In little more than a year his devoted, heroic wife died of fever, a profound grief to him, and an irreparable loss. Close upon this event there followed the law, of which we read awhile ago, prohibiting Protestant schoolmasters from taking in boarders ; and not many months afterwards the troops were sent again into Poitou to complete the ruin of the Protestant families. For a while the Church at Mauze was shielded from the storm through the influence of the Duchess of Liineburg, whose brother, M. D'Olbreuze, resided in the neighbourhood. Thus favoured, Mauze became a centre of attraction to the Protestants of Poitou, who flocked thither in order to enjoy that public worship which was denied to them elsewhere ; every Saturday evening the town was crowded. But this state of things was not permitted to last. It was the year 1685, and the Revocation was at hand. Migault, foreseeing the storm, dismissed his pupils and sent away his children, so that when, on September 23, the cavalry entered Mauze he was alone. On the approach of the soldiers he and a neighbour crept down into the dry moat which surrounded the town, 156 The Huguenots. and took the road to Arailly, passing on their way terrified women and helpless children, who, like themselves, were seeking safety in flight. They found a temporary refuge in several chateaux, but were unable to remain long in any, because the government had begun to station soldiers wherever the gentry were suspected of harbouring fugitives. Providing as well as he was able for his children, Migault was now obliged to wander up and down the province, hiding in the daytime, and seldom remaining more than forty-eight hours in one place. The cavalry were spread over the whole country, and the hospitable and tender-hearted among the Catholics who were thought likely to shelter their proscribed neighbours were daily subjected to domiciliary visits. "For three months," writes Migault, " I was hunted like a noxious animal from place to place by cavalry, priests, and lay-papists, all the while torn with anxiety about my poor children." In this emergency most of the children proved them- selves worthy of their parents, especially an elder daughter, Jane. She had been taken by a Koman Catholic friend to the house of some relations, where she continued a fort- night, and would have remained longer had not an informer denounced her to the captain of a troop of horse. Two dragoons were instantly despatched in search of her. At their approach she fled from the house and concealed herself in a wood, where she remained during the night ; but when day dawned, fancying her hiding-place insecure, she stole back and hid in the court-yard under a heap of straw. The soldiers, who had ransacked the house and maltreated the owners, renewing their search in the morn- ing, discovered her, and dragged her before the Catholic priest. She firmly withstood all the arguments and threats which were employed to make her deny her faith. The form of abjuration was placed before her, and violence The Perils of Jean Migault. 157 was used to force her to sign it, but in vain ; and when the priest, who was resolved to make it appear that he had converted her, wrote underneath that she did not sign because she was unable to write, she protested against the falsehood. How she obtained her release is not known ; but two days afterwards a benevolent man conducted her to her father at the house of M. D'Olbreuze. This good man's mansion was now the head-quarters of Jean Migault and his family ; and not theirs only, but of all who sought refuge in it. Not only the chateau, but the corn-lofts, barns, and outhouses were filled with persons of all ranks from Saintonge, Aunis, and Poitou, who were generously supplied with every necessary. Another Pro- testanc mansion, that of Monsieur and Madame de L'Aleigne, enjoyed the same distinguished honour. Both were threatened with visits from the military, but for a while their rank and the relation they stood in to the Duchess of Liineburg protected them. Of all the resi- dences of the Protestant nobility in the three provinces, these two houses alone remained unpillaged. At length they, too, were marked for destruction. Monsieur de L'Aleigne was consigned by a lettre de cachet to the castle of Loches, and M. D'Olbreuze was summoned to Paris to attend at court until further orders. Still Migault and three of his children were suffered to remain a little while with Madame D'Olbreuze, where they passed for her domestics. But now the order was issued forbidding Protestants to have any but Eoman Catholic servants, and Jean Migault again found himself adrift^ At this fresh trial he seems to have lost his former confidence in divine help. Thinking he saw the means of sending two of his sons out of the country, he ventured into La Eochelle. Here he was arrested, taken before the governor, and, after a severe examination, was induced to pat his hand to a paper, declaring himself a Catholic. 158 TJie Huguenots. What arts were employed to break down his resolution is not known. At this part of his autobiography four pages of the manuscript are torn out. He was set at liberty as to his body, but his spirit was in chains. "On leaving the prison," he says, " I was conducted to the convent of the Oratory, where I basely put my hand to a paper which they presented for my signature ; but no sooner had my guards disappeared and I regained my liberty than I despised the sophistry by which I had been inveigled, and my sin rose up before me in all its blackness and deformity. A friend whom I met, observing my distraction, persuaded me to go home with him. To soothe my agitation he directed me to passages of Scripture from which I might derive comfort. I left him the same afternoon, and walking throughout the night arrived at Mauze the next morning. I can but faintly describe the shame and sorrow I endured. I strove to pray, but it pleased God to hide the light of his countenance, and abandon me to my own reflections, which almost drove me to despair. The congratulations of my friends on my release from prison only increased the poignancy of my remorse ; their kind words were so many stabs in my heart ; it seemed to me no criminal was ever tormented by so many accusers." It was long before he could summon resolution to call on Madame D'Olbreuze. On entering the room he found her surrounded by several Protestant ladies who had sought her protection. " For a while," he says, "I remained motionless, my heart beat violently ; I was, happily, relieved by a flood of tears. Nothing could be kinder than the language of this little company of Christians. They dilated, indeed, on the enormity of my sin, but encouraged me, by the example of Peter and the disciples who abandoned their Saviour, to hope in God, saying my repentance appeared to be as deep, and they doubted not my forgiveness was as complete." Four of Jean's children succeeded in escaping to The Perils of Jean Migault. 159 Holland; and in December, 1C87, after many disappoint- ments, Jean found means to engage a passage for himself and the rest in a vessel about to sail with a company of •emigrants from La Rochelle. He was at Grand Breuil, at the house of a charitable lady ; the difficulty was to trans- port his family to La Rochelle without being observed. He hired a carriage, for which he paid a high price in advance, but the driver never made his appearance. With much trouble he engaged another, in which, travelling through two nights of intense cold, they made their way to the rendezvous, a small house on the seashore, near the chateau of Pampin, and a league from La Rochelle. In consequence of her advanced age, Jean's mother was left behind. It was here the captain had agreed to take the fugitives on board, so soon as night set in. A few lost their way ; the rest, to the number of seventy-five, assembled and waited in trembling impatience for the moment of departure. The arrangements had been made by a generous-hearted man who came himself to super- intend the embarkation. As the boat from the vessel could not take the whole number at once, lots were to be drawn who should have the first turn. Migault and his children, with some others, were in the house; the rest were on the beach, anxiously watching for the boat. Suddenly, cries were heard as of soldiers in pursuit, and the name of the gentleman mentioned above was repeatedly vociferated. Running to the house he exclaimed : " The guards are on the beach ! save your- selves ! " and then fled, followed by some of the emigrants. It was happily a false alarm, an idle frolic played off, strange as it may appear, by souie who were waiting to embark. In about a quarter of an hour the arrival of the boat was announced, and the superintendent not being present to regulate the embarkation, the greatest confusion 2)revaikd. Migault and his family missed their way, and 160 The Huguenots. did not arrive at tlie spot until the boat was putting off, overladen with its burden of thirty-five souls. Hours passed before it returned from the ship; hours of cold, weariness and suspense ; and when it came, instead of touching at the same point as before, it ran up a creek a hundred and fifty yards off. The moment the voices of the sailors were heard, everyone rushed to the spot. The most active and least encumbered arrived first, and when twenty-five had entered the boat, the sailors pushed off, saying they had been nearly swamped with the first load, and could take no more, but that they would return a third time for the remainder. Jean Migault's party were amongst those who were left behind. Day dawned ; but instead of the desired boat, which indeed could not then have reached the ship, the daylight revealed two guard-boats belonging to La Kochelle, whose business it was to look out for fugitives. " Our situation," says Migault, "was awful. We saw guards at sea; and we might expect to meet guards on land. Terror seized the whole party ; we knew the unbending severity of the governor and fancied ourselves already in his power." Jean's situation was worse than any ; he had six children with him, three of them too young to walk, besides a young lady entrusted to his care. Yet he could say : " At no time of my life was my faith more active. Many precious promises presented themselves ; one, ' The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear Him and delivereth them,' wonderfully supported me." He succeeded in returning undiscovered, with all his children, to his former hiding-place. The next day he went to La Eochelle, where he passed the evening with several others who had been disappointed of their passage. " We spent a delightful evening ; every one," he says, " talked of his own adventures ; I may safely assert that there was not a happier fireside in France ; certainly it could not have Escape of Daniel Brousson and Family. 161 been found in the king's palace, or in the houses of those who were accessory to this horrible persecution. The remembrance of the dangers we had incurred and the suffering we had endured, only increased our gratitude to our Almighty Deliverer. The evening was spent in serious conversation and fervent prayer." Another attempt to leave the country, which Migault made the next April, was successful. With a portion of his children, he embarked on Easter Monday, 1688, and after a tempestuous passage of nineteen days, arrived at Brill, in Holland. The next Sunday they all attended worship at the French Church, where they listened to a sermon by Jurieu ; and a few days afterwards Jean Migault made public confession of his sin in having signed the act of abjuration. Note. — The original manuscript of Migault's narrative was discovered in the earlier part of this century, in the possession of a poor inhabitant of Spitalfields, a lineal descendant of the writer. IX. ESCAPE OF DANIEL BEOUSSON AND FAMILY. We have seen with shame how the wealthy city of Montpellier turned Catholic in a single day. Amongst the weak and terrified multitude, however, there were a few who deserve honourable mention. Daniel Brousson was the younger brother of Claude Brousson. He was treasurer of the church, and was one of the deputation who, in October, 1683, presented the Duke de Noailles with a copy of the petition to the king and were in consequence put under arrest.* He was i-espected alike by Catholics and Protestants ; but already * See ante, p. 83. 162 T)ie Huguenots. some designing men, with the aid of the judges, had. Tinder various pretences, dispossessed him of the greater part of his property. When the dragoons entered tlie province, September 22nd, a week before they reached Montpellier, Daniel Brousson quitted his house, and leaving his wife behind, took with him his eldest daughter and fled to his mother's farm in the country. We derive the story of his escape from his son Claude, then thirteen years of age, who, with a narrative of his own adventures, has interwoven those of other members of the family. " I was," writes Claude, " at Codognan (a village between Nimes and Montpellier) when 1 received a note from my father, directing me to join him at the farm. I arrived there at midnight, and found him in great trouble. My grandmother, who had come there to her vintage, had determined to leave her grapes and accom- pany us. We set out and took the road to Provence. Before arriving at Luc, whilst travelling one dark night, the mules of the litter in which the two ladies rode, stood still in the middle of a bridge and refused to proceed. The muleteer going forward, found that one of the arches of the bridge was broken away, and that if we had gone two steps further we should have been precipitated into the stream. We made a circuit to the inn where we were to lodge, and the next day proceeded to Luc. " Arriving here my father went into the stable to attend to his horse. A moment afterwards he came to us to say that some gentlemen just arrived had been observing him intently, and that he feared he should be arrested. They were councillors of the parliament of Aix, come to Luc to demolish the temple. They immediately asked my father whence he came and his religion, and what was the object of his journey. My father avowed himself a Escape of Daniel Brousson and Family. 163 Protestant and said lie was going to Nice on business. They arrested him. My grandmother presented one of tlie councillors with a pearl necklace belonging to my sister; it was politely accepted, but it did nothing for us. They made us three retrace our steps to Aix, whither they brought my father the next day. On the way we met my uncle Jean's eldest son in a litter with his tutor ; they also were attempting to escape ; on hearing our report, how- ever, they turned back and went home. " At Aix we took a lodging ; and as my father, by a rare piece of favour, had liberty to go anywhere within the city, he made calls on the chief men of the parliament, who received him courteously. Several days passed in this way, but hearing that he was to be sent to Montpellier, and that there he would be obliged to submit to the royal decree, he saw that no time was to be lost. Secretly leaving the city therefore, he went to Marseilles, in the hope that my uncles would assist him to go on board a vessel. But this was impracticable, no one being suffered to leave without a passport. " On his return, he judged it needful for us to separate. He sent me to Marseilles under the care of a cousin, and himself set out the next day, October 10, for Orange, whilst my grandmother and sister took the road for Merindol." Young Claude remarks here on the super- stition of the people of Aix, where little chapels were erected at the corners of the streets, with images of the Virgin and saints. The figures were clad in the richest stuffs, and the dresses were often changed ; the finest fruits of the season were offered to them and little lamps burnt before them, all the children kneeling around, singing hymns and litanies. " No such practice," he says, " pre- vailed amongst the Catholics in our city of Montpellier." "At Orange," he continues, "my father engaged a ^uide, who, for a large sum, promised to conduct him 164 The Huguenots. beyond the frontier. Before setting out he put off his linen and lace and made himself as mean-looking as he could * also, I believe, smearing his face and hands with earth. After great fatigue and many dangers in traversing Dauphine, he crossed the frontier at Guillestre, and passing through Piedmont and Savoy, arrived at Geneva, November 1. At Lausanne he met my uncle Claude, with whom he remained a few days, after which he made his way to Amsterdam, December 23. " Whilst my father was preparing to set out for Orange, I went to Marseilles, to the house of my uncle Pierre. It was easy to see, however, that my visit was unwelcome,, for a few days before, the fear of making acquaintance with a dungeon had induced him to change his religion ; his brother had done the same, and as this kind of conversion was suspicious, they had reason to suppose that a sharp watch was kept over their conduct. He told me I must not expect him to give me any assistance in escaping from France ; and after five or six days, during which I was not allowed to show myself, I retraced my steps to Mont- pellier. On the way I called at my grandmother's house but found it deserted. Thence I took the road to Codognan, where I expected to find my uncle and aunt De Paradez. I arrived there in the evening, but found na one but a valet, a papist, who had served the family more than twenty years. With tears in his eyes the poor man told me that the fear of being compelled to become Catholics had made his master and mistress abandon their house, and he did not know whither they were gone. I asked if he had any provisions ; he replied that all the poultry had been consumed or strayed away, and that he had nothing but a little bread and raisins. I supped sorrowfully on what he gave me, and passed the night in anxious thought. " The next day I sent for a girl who had been a servant Escape of Daniel Brousson and Family. 165 of my uncle. She told me that my aunt had taken refuge at Bernis, with the lady of the place. The village being not far off, I resolved to go thither ; and as I was setting out, a papist nobleman who said he was her relation, hearing of my intention, desired to accompany me. We went together to the lady's house, where I found my aunt, and also my aunt De Gaillard. They wondered to see me, supposing I was already out of the kingdom. They besought the nobleman to intercede for them, telling him how they would be willing to part with the greater portion of their income, if only they might be suffered to worship God in secret as they had hitherto ■done ; and that in reality this would be no great favour, since at their age they could not long enjoy it. He replied that he could not help them, because the king made it a point of honour to have but one religion in his kingdom, in which he was strongly supported by the clergy ; and he advised them, as they could not long remain concealed, at once to obey the king's commands. They did not follow his advice, but my aunt De Paradez remained in concealment until her husband obtained a passport for himself and his wife, and made his way to Liiusaune. My aunt De Gaillard returned to Nimes and died without having abjured. " After two or three days at Bernis I went back to Codognan, where my old schoolmaster told me with sobs that the whole village, which I had known in past time as Protestant, had been compelled a month after I had left to turn papist. The same day I went on to Montpellier, where also a great change had taken place. The soldiers had been brought into the city, and notice given to the Eeformed that they must declare for the Komish religion or have men billeted upon them. This so terrified the people that they ran in crowds to the popish churches to objure. The concourse was so great that it was impossible 166 The Hufiticiiot^!. to examine the motives of the new proselytes ; there was; not time even to give them certificates of their infidehty^ "without which the soldiers would not quit their houses ; sealed cards were given instead." Claude now takes up his mother's adventures. She had, we may reraemher, been left behind at Montpellier.. *' Hearing that the soldiers were approaching the city, my mother was in the greatest alarm. She thought to flee,, but whither ? Within the city no one could protect her ; everyone had as much as he could do to take care of himself. Into the country ? There the peril was even greater, from the vigilance of the cures and the rage of the dragoons. Whilst she hesitated the soldiers entered her house. Flight was no longer possible ; she must- either violate her conscience, or resolve to undergo the insolence of the dragoons. For some days she stood out bravely, but at length the pressure of present suffering and the dread of the future, the entreaties of her friends, and most of all, anxiety for her children, made her waver. To complete her trial she heard that we had been arrested. Accordingly she pretended to renounce her religion. The soldiers were withdrawn ; but some days afterwards another detachment was sent, because it was remarked that my father was absent. She complained to the consul (city magistrate), explaining that my fnther was on a journey and would soon come back. He enquired how many soldiers she had. Twelve, she rejDlied. " Well, then," was the brutal answer, " to-morrow you shall have fifteen." My mother now had recourse to a Catholic-. Jady who was very friendly with our family, through whose interference all the soldiers were withdrawn." Meanwhile young Claude had returned home, and the family were comforted by hearing of the safe escape of his father ; but his sister, with her grandmother and an aunt,, had run all over Provence without finding a place of exit.. Escape of Daniel Brousson and Family. 167 As soon as the Protestants of Montpellier had become Cathohcs, commissioners were appointed for each quarter of the city to assemble them on Sundays and feast-days, and take them to Mass. If anyone was absent, soldiers were despatched to bring him ; and if the offence was often repeated, he was imprisoned or heavily fined. After the great Church festivals the commissioners went round to inspect the priest's certificates of conversion and com- munion ; where these were wanting, punishment followed. The children were obliged to attend the Catholic schools, and the masters had orders to take them to Mass every morning, and to flog those who were absent. The women, even, were forced to go to school to certain ignorant mistresses, sent down from Paris, who went under the grand name of " Sisters of Doctrine." The first ladies of the city had to obey this order, but they only ridiculed their ignorant teachers, who were infinitely less instructed than those they pretended to teach. From the living, the authorities proceeded to the dead. An aged lady, of one of the best families in Montpellier, confessed her remorse for having betrayed the truth, and protested that thenceforth she would live and die in the Eeformed rehgion. The priests did not wait for her death, but read at her bed-side the sentence by which her goods were to be confiscated, and her corpse dragged through the city and buried like a dog. Under the notion, inherited from the Catholics, that heaven is to be purchased by suffering, she replied that all they could do to her would only help to expiate her sin of abjuring. With these words she expired. The sentence was executed; and when some women brought vine-leaves to cover her body, the soldiers drove them away. " It was horrible," writes Claude, " to see the corpse dragged on a hurdle, preceded by trumpets, and followed by a procession of magistrates and soldiers. It was a sight which the better-minded 168 Tlie Huguenots. papists could not look upon without horror. As for me, I was so affected by these spectacles that I resolved no longer to remain in this unhappy country. " Setting out accordingly early in November, 1686, I left my mother, and went in the carrier's waggon to Lyons, in company with Mademoiselle Rigaud, daughter of a bookseller of our city. "We stopped at a village inn, where the host's uncle took me aside after supper to say he had noticed that the carrier had for some time taken Huguenots conti'ary to the king's commands, and that the young lady with me must be a Huguenot, for when sitting down to table she did not make the sign of the cross." No further notice, however, seems to have been taken of the circum- stance ; they were not stopped, but allowed to proceed to Lyons, where Claude found nothing but trouble. His father's friend, a New Catholic, on whom he depended for shelter and money, turned his back on him ; Mademoiselle Eigaud met with another lodging, and departed without leaving him her address ; and his landlady informed him that the commissioners went round the city once a week to search for fugitives. "I found myself," he says, " fifty leagues from home, destitute both of money and friends. I paid my landlady out of the little money I had left ; but when I was going to take my clothes she seized them, pretending that I must pay her a crown owing by a cousin of Mademoiselle Eigaud." With some trouble he got free for the time from this woman, and Jean Servand, a gentleman of Montpellier, who also was dodging the hunters, offered to take him with him to Geneva. Claude accordingly removed to an inn, called " The Covered Well," where he found a crowd of fugitives, men, women, and children, assembled, with guides, ready to depart. In the evening came his old landlady, and again demanded the crown. She would not listen to reason, and M. Servand, hearing the altercation, Escape of Daniel Brousson and Family. 169 ran up, and, to end the matter, threw her the piece of money she asked for. Now, however, she changed her tone, saying there were other matters to be settled, and that Claude must go with her to the commissioners to declare where Mademoiselle Eigaud was, and what was his business in Lyons. Seeing the trap that was laid for him, Claude left the house under pretence of enquiring for Mademoiselle Kigaud's lodgings ; and M. Servand at the same time slipped out by a back door. They met in the street, and agreed that it would be dangerous to remain any longer in the city, and that they must depart the same afternoon. They did so, travelling as far as the village of Varbonne, where they waited two days for the rest of their company, and then, to the number of about a dozen, proceeded together. The journey was slow and painful, and the guide, whom they had to fee heavily, was not well acquainted with the byeways. They travelled only by night, and on foot ; and it being near the end of November they suffered much from cold and rain, besides having to wade through tori-ents with the water up to their waists. In going down a mountain one of their company, an aged woman of Nimes, dislocated her ankle, and had to be carried. The next night she begged them to go on without her, and even obliged her daughter to leave her and follow the party. Passing through the town of Nantua they arrived at a small village, Les Voutes, at five o'clock in the morning. We resume Claude's narrative. " Our guide went forward and knocked at the door of a second-rate inn this side of the village. The host had soldiers lodging with him, and could not receive us till the next night. We consulted what to do. To reach our next place of refuge we should have to travel by day, and we were besides already tired out ; we decided to go no 170 Tlie Huguenots. farther. Climbing a hill close by we concealed ourselves, some in the bushes, and M. Servand, myself, and another under a ledge of rock. Here we passed the next day without food, exposed to the wind and rain. Our shoes and stockings were so soaked that we took them off to keep our feet the warmer. About nine on the following morning we saw the soldiers go past ; still we could not move for fear of the peasants. " In the evening the waiter from the village inn brought us bread and wine, and I do not think I ever made a better meal. At night he came again to tell us our companions had already come down to the inn. We slipped on our shoes, carrying our stockings in our hands ; but when we were almost at the house we heard a voice call, ' Who goes there ?' Our terror may be imagined ; we stood still and held our breath, but the challenge was repeated ; the speaker at the same time shouting to his comrades to come back. We heard them galloping up, and ran ; they followed us hard, firing pistol-shots, and soon came up with us. They were revenue officers. They had passed without observing us, except one who was behind, who had noticed our movements in the dark, and caught sight of our white cravats. Our companion and I were seized, M. Servand escaping, as if by a miracle. " We were taken to the inn, where the rest of the company had been drying their clothes. Hearing the pistol-shots they hid themselves. Our captors went first to the stable, where they found no one, although M. Servand was in reality concealed there. Then they took us upstairs, and seeing a large quantity of clothes round a great fire they concluded there were more of the party, and accordingly searched the house, dragging out those whom they found. They secured all but the guide. We were interrogated and searched, and our money taken away ; and the next day, bound two and two together, Escape of Daniel Brousson and Family. 171 were led to Nantua and put in the jail there. After we were gone, M. Servand came out of his hiding-place, and begged the host to sell him an old pair of shoes to finish the journey ; but the man, who had not recovered from his fright, refused, and he was obliged to walk barefooted to Geneva, which caused his feet and legs so to swell that he kept his bed a fortnight. As for us we were taken from the prison at Nantua to that of Belley (near the frontier of Savoy) in very severe weather," Here Claude and his companions found all in confusion in consequence of an attempt made two nights previously by the Huguenot prisoners to possess themselves of the jail, and escape. Most of them were retaken the next day, hounds being employed in the pursuit. " On arriving in the prison I was placed, with five or six others, in the room next to the jailer's, where we lay on a little straw under the chimney. We were devoured by vermin. The prisoners had nothing to eat but the * king's bread,' villainous stuff, and but little of it. The bishop, pitying their condition, induced the inhabitants to supply them with soup. A few days afterwards," conti- nues Claude," I was taken down into the lower dungeons, built of great stones and vaulted. In each of them were fourteen prisoners, packed close, with nothing but straw to lie on, which was changed once a month, but in less than a fortnight was reduced to dust and almost rotten. There were double doors, because of the water, and when they were opened in the morning our breath, which had been shut in all night, issued like the smoke of a furnace, whilst from the roof the condensed breath trickled down the walls the whole day. Here we were locked in, in utter darkness from six in the evening until nine in the morning. We passed much of the night in singing Psalms and in prayer ; and although we could hardly be heard in the court, the jailer, one night, listening at the door, came 172 The Huguenots. suddeuly in and, after rating us, took out the woman whom lie supposed was our leader because she sang the loudest, intending to make her pass the rest of the night in the open court, exposed to the cold. But she struck up the Psalm beginning — ' Jamais ne cesseray De magnifier le Seigneur,' with such hearty good will, that, fearing the neighbours might take offence, he put her into another cell, where she lay a long time, separated from her husband, who was with us. Almost all the prisoners were sick. "We had permission to walk in the court during the day, except when the jailer took a fancy to go into the town, in which case he locked us up until his return. In the court we diverted ourselves by running races, leaping, and other exercises, which helped to keep us in good spirits. There was amongst us a tailor of Montpellier, who bethought himself of dressing up some marionettes, and making them play from behind a sheet stretched across the court, a show which the jailer found so entertaining that he invited many persons from the town to see it." Hitherto Claude, still but a boy, had bravely stood his ground ; but now the horrors of the dungeon and the threats of the authorities, for he was frequently taken before the judges in the audience chamber, broke down his resolution. If his fellow-prisoners had remained con- stant it is more than probable he would have held out to the end, but many of them also gave way ; and after six months of incarceration, he and they renounced the Pro- testant religion in the presence of the bishop. But although Olaude abjured he was not yet free ; he could not go abroad without a guard. One day the jailer took him and one of his companions to the cathedral to see some relics, — the hand of John the Baptist and the body of St. Elme, the ancient bishop of Belley, " both as fresh as when living." Escape of Daniel Brousson and Family. 173 They were disgusted with the spectacle, and the more so as they had tc drop money in the silver basin which was held by the priest. Fresh prisoners arriving every day, the old prisoners, to the number of sixty, were turned out to make room for them. " Those who, like myself," says Claude, "had changed their religion, were now set at. liberty, with orders, under pain of the galleys, to return home ; those who had stood firm were chained hand and foot, and sent away under an escort. " In the prison I had become acquainted with a young man of Montpellier, named Perie, and, as he was much older than I, I resolved to place myself under his guidance. Those of our brethren who had been set free and had taken the road to Geneva, instead of returning home, were most of them arrested. My friend foresaw this, and advised that we should stay a while at Belley. There was in the town a papist, who whilst we were in prison sold us wine under the rose, for the jailer supplied us very badly and at a very high price. As he appeared to be an honest man we went to his house ; he received us kindly and lodged us ; and when we told him we did not intend to remain in France, he offered to conduct us to Geneva. By the side of the river (the Ehone), at the place of embarkation, there is a road which leads to Savoy. It was agreed that we should take this route, and that Perie and I should start some hours before our friend, and wait for him at the first town in Savoy. " Accordingly, one afternoon we went down to the river as though we were about to embark for Lyons. We had to pass through a large square tower, where we ran great risk of being discovered. Happily the guards were in their rooms on either side of the gateway, and had even shut the doors, so that, although we heard a great noise within, we passed unobserved. The same evening we arrived at a small town in Savoy, and began to breathe more freely, but were still in 174 The Huguenots. some fear, because the duke allowed the French soldiers to arrest fugitives iu his territory. Here our guide joined us, and the next day we set out again, and although a Savoyard, who recognised us, predicted that we should infallibly be taken, we arrived safely at Geneva after several days' march. We rewarded our guide according to our small ability, giving him a louis-d'or apiece, with which he appeared well satisfied. " I went on to Lausanne, where I saw two of my uncles, Claude Brousson and De Paradez, and where I made confession of my fault before M. Combes, an aged minister, who instructed me more thoroughly in the principles of our religion. As it was still summer I set out for Holland, in company with more than twenty refugees, and arrived at Amsterdam the 23rd of August. The joy with which my father received me, after a separa- tion of nearly two years, may be imagined. He had no other son, and I was the first of his children who rejoined him." Claude next speaks of his mother's escape. After enduring for awhile the intolerable burden of the soldiery, she signed, as we have seen, a pretended abjuration. She made several fruitless attempts to leave the country, in one of which, accompanied by five of her daughters and an Italian guide, she travelled safely as far as Pont St. Esprit, on the PJione. Here they were betrayed by the ferryman, and as they were embarking were surrounded by soldiers, who cried, "Kill them, kill them!" They were not killed, however, but taken to Nimes, with their guide, who was hanged. The mother was carried back to Montpellier, where the intendant Bilville sternly reproached her for her perverseness, and, concluding it was poverty that made her desire to leave France, offered her a pension, which she haughtily rejected, declaring that she would attempt to escape as often as she had the Escape of Daniel Brousson and Family. 175 chance. The iutendant then told her she might do as she pleased, but as for her daughters he would put them in a place of safety. Accordingly they were sent to a convent, and paid for out of the King's Pence (derived chiefly from the confiscated goods of the Protestants). Unable to obtain their release, she left them, crossed the frontier, and succeeded in arriving at Amsterdam in August, 1688. Whilst the mother was on her journey, her eldest daughter Jeanne, aged about fifteen, through the inter- vention of her Catholic relations, was released from the convent on bail. To secure her person, her surety kept her in his own house, but she contrived to escape, and hid herself in the city, her kind harbourers pretending to seek for her in places where they knew she could not be found. When the excitement had subsided they sent her to Geneva, where she arrived a few days after her mother had left, and where she passed the winter. Whilst she was in tbat city, she had the joy of welcoming her little sister Dauphine, six years old. This sister, who had always remained at Nimes with her grandmother, had been safely conducted by a guide, and when she reached ^Geneva was presented to Jeanne as an orphan just come from France, who had no relations abroad. Jeanne did aiot recognize her, not having seen her for two or three jears, but she treated her with the tenderness due to her supposed forlorn condition. On being told it was her sister, her surprise and joy overcame her, and for a long time she could not restrain her tears. Jeanne proceeded to Holland in the spring, leaving the little Dauphine sick ^t Lausanne with her uncle Claude, who sent her forward some months afterwards, so that in less than a year the father, mother, son, and three daughters were re-united. For four months efforts were made to obtain the release of the other four daughters. Baville, weary of paying their board, and of the repeated solicitations of their 176 The Huguenots. friends, more than once consented to their release ; but the nuns found them too profitable to part with, and con- trived to procure from the intendant fresh orders for their retention. After awhile, however, the payment fell off; and the nuns, being unsuccessful in an attempt to obtain any money from Daniel Brousson, at length suffered them to depart. This was in 1692. They set out for Mar- seilles (the eldest was only twelve) accompanied by an aged servant, who managed to obtain a passport as a lady of rank going with her daughters to seek her husband. They were taken on board a vessel bound for Genoa, the . captam of which was under obligations to the children's uncle. In consequence of a furious tempest the voyage lasted twelve days. They were hospitably entertained by some Protestants of Genoa, who kept them all the winter, and sent them on to Amsterdam, where they arrived in 1693. X. THE SUFFEKINGS AND SHIP WEE CK OF M. SEKKES. At the same time with Daniel Brousson, another citizen of Montpellier attempted to make his escape, but with a different result. M. Serres, a collector of taxes, was born a Catholic, and was tonsured when only eleven years of age. For awhile he was zealous against the heretics ; but through the influence of an aunt he became a Protestant, and applied himself to the reading of the Scriptures. In September, 1685, when the dragoons came into Montpellier, he concealed his property, and sending away his children, fled into the country. His mother and aunt sent a messenger to let him know that all the Protestants in the city had abjured, and to entreat him to return The Suferincjs of M. Serves. 177 home, otherwise twenty-four dragoons would be quartered in his house. He wrote back that he had offered to God not his goods only but his life, and that he could not return. Upon this his father-in-law brought his mother to his hiding-place, with two other friends, who all entreated him to submit, but to no purpose; he cried out: "Get thee behind me, Satan ; thou shalt not move me." Not finding himself safe in his retreat, he wandered about till November, when he was informed against, and being apprehended was taken to the citadel of Montpellier. Here lie heard that his children who, with an aunt, had been attempting in vain to quit the kingdom, had been arrested at Lyons. Serres was removed to Aigues-Mortes, a strong place on the Mediterranean, famous in the annals of the Huguenot Church. Aigues-Mortes is not so much a fortified town as a vast quadrangular citadel, enclosing a miniature city within its walls. The walls are pierced with nine gates, and at the four corners, and at intervals between, are fifteen half-engaged towers, with another tower outside the north angle, of much larger proportions than the rest, — the Tour de Constance. In the middle of the south-east wall, and therefore almost at the opposite end of the town, is the Queen's Tower. The fortress was built in the thirteenth century, on the model of the Byzantine castles of Jerusalem and Damietta. We reserve a detailed description of the Tour de Constance for the Sequel to this work, where it plays a more conspicuous part. Serres was placed in the Queen's Tower, in a solitary and filthy room, where for three days and nights he could neither eat, drink, nor sleep, for the flies and vermin. He fell ill and his mother obtained leave to visit him, but only on the condition that she should use her influence to convert him, and that their interview should be in the 178 Tiic Huguenots. presence of two Gapucliin monks. A change had come ■over her since she had visited him in his hiding-place. She kissed him and whispered that she could not help l)ringiug the two monks with her, but that she would Tatlier a thousand times hear of his death than of his unfaithfulness. At the instigation of one of the Capuchins, lie was removed to a dungeon where the jailer brought him his rations once only in twenty-four hours, and where, although the fever was still upon him, no water was allowed him to quench his thirst. To keep him aUve he was taken out of this hole and placed in a chamber with other Huguenot prisoners. Some of these being released the next day, he sent a letter by them to his mother and other friends, informing them that there were many prisoners in the Queen's Tower and the Tour de Constance in a destitute condition. One of his aunts came to Aigues- Mortes bringing relief, but after two days she was dis- covered and driven from the town. XI. THE ESCAPE OF NISSOLE, SALENDKES AND VIDAL. Serres and his fellow-prisoners in the Queen's Tower were in a miserable case ; they were half-starved and were cruelly tempted by the importunate monks, so that the more enterprising among them were always on the watch for some means to escape. Three in particular, Jean Nissole of Ganges, Salendres of La Salle, and Vidal of the Vivarais, agreed to make the attempt. Observing that the wood brought for fuel was bound up with a strong cord, Salendres saw in this the means of effecting their purpose. With the cord and a mulberry branch for a lever, by slow degrees and without noise, he succeeded in >3 a .a fee O) 5^ o