YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

THE HUGUENOTS AND
THE REVOCATION OF THE EDICT
OF NANTES

THE HUGUENOTS AND
THE REVOCATION OF THE EDICT
OF NANTES

BT

HENEY M. BAIED
PROFESSOR IN THE UNIVEBSITY OE THE CITY OP NEW TORE ; AUTHOR OP THE
HISTORY OF THE RISE OF THE HUGUENOTS OF FRANCE, AND
OF THE HUGUENOTS AKD HENRY OF NAVARRE

WITH MAPS

VOL. I.

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCEffiNEE'S SONS
1895

COPYRIGHT, 1693, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

TROW DIRECTORY
PHIMTIKG AND BOOKBINDING COKPANV
NEW YOHK

PREFACE

I purpose in these volumes to write the history of the Hugue
nots from the close of the reign of Henry the Fourth — that is,
from a point at which the Edict signed by him at Nantes, some
twelve years earlier, may be said to have been in full operation.
I shall narrate their fortunes not merely as far as to the formal
repeal of the Edict in 1685, but through the century duiing
which their worship was suppressed and they were themselves
deprived of all civil rights, down to the promulgation of the
Edict of Toleration by Louis the Sixteenth, on the eve of the
first French Revolution, and, indeed, down to the full recogni
tion of Protestantism by Napoleon Bonaparte, as First Consul,
in the second year of the nineteenth century.
The work comprises a space of not much less than two hun
dred years, an eventful period of great interest in the history of
civilization, of which the successive portions are of a widely
different character and present startling contrasts.
The first fifty years must be regarded, upon the whole, as the
epoch of the greatest material and intellectual development of
the Huguenots. Then it was that they obtained such opportu
nities as they had never before enjoyed, and as they were never
again to enjoy under the rule of the Bourbons, for the exhibi
tion to the world of their true genius, and of the legitimate
fruits of their ecclesiastical organization, as well as of the excel-

VI PREFACE
lence of the moral and religious training which, had they been
permitted, they would have extended throughout France. It
is true that within this very half-century fall the three Hugue
not wars under Louis the Thirteenth and the reduction of
La Bochelle, the citadel of French Protestantism. But if, de
spite the heroic efforts of Henry of Rohan, of his brother Sou-
bise, and of others scarcely less brave and chivalric, the military
and political importance of the Huguenots, as a party in the
state, came to an end, the loss of this importance was more
than compensated by their quiet and peaceful enjoyment of the
benefits of the great law of Henry the Fourth under the admin
istration of the two cardinals, Richelieu and Mazarin.
The next twenty-five years (1660-1685) were strangely differ
ent ; for they witnessed the progressive and unceasing assaults
made upon the rights guaranteed by law to the Huguenots.
The Edict of Revocation, when at length it came, was not a
detached act of supreme iniquity. It was rather the culmina
tion of a long series of criminal acts. I purpose, therefore, to
follow, step by step, the preparations made for striking the
final blow by which it was hoped to annihilate the Reformed
religion in France. The examination is not devoid of interest
for the curious. It may be instructive even for men of a subse
quent generation. As history repeats itself, the close of the
nineteenth century is even now beholding the counterpart, or
the copy, of the legislation by means of which Louis the Four
teenth undertook to crush out the Huguenot religion from
France, in laws remarkably similar, menacing the existence of
Protestantism in the Baltic provinces of a great empire of our
own times.
The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes with its consequences,
both in persecution at home and in emigration to foreign lands,
requires the extended discussion which I have undertaken to
give. It does not fall within the scope of the present work to
follow the exiles for religion's sake much beyond the bounds of
France, and to tell the story, which is in itself of romantic

PREFACE Vii
interest, of the subsequent adventures of the devoted exiles that
fled from their native land, destitute indeed of worldly goods,
but rich in faith toward God, and blessed in the conscious pos
session of His favor. I must leave the inviting field of their
fortunes after their departure from France, for the most part,
to others. I need scarcely say that the Huguenot emigration
to America has been treated with rare thoroughness of research
by my brother, the late Rev. Charles Washington Baird, D.D.,
whose work should be supplemented by one or more volumes
taking up the narrative at the point where death compelled him
to lay down his work.
I have viewed the War of the Camisards as an episode of
Huguenot history well entitled to a fulness of treatment which,
at the first glance, might appear disproportionate to the brevity
of the struggle and the paucity of the men that took a part in it.
The heroic character of the conflict, comparing favorably with
the character of the most famous contests of early Greece or
Rome, would be my ample justification, even were it not for
the controversy, not yet fully settled, respecting the answer to
the question, How far the peasants of the Cevennes were war
ranted by natural right in their recourse to arms to resist intol
erable tyranny; not to speak of the equally curious inquiry,
Whether the results of this recourse were, upon the whole, fa
vorable or injurious to the progress of that spiritual religion
in whose interests the Camisard war was waged.
If the fruits of recent investigation have placed us in a posi
tion of great advantage for the intelligent and accurate study of
all the events to which I have just referred, this is especially
the ease with respect to the period of the " Desert," so called ;
a period whose importance, particularly outside of France, has
been strangely overlooked. Thanks to the industry of a band
of enthusiastic collaborators, the memoirs and narratives of the
obscure workers upon whom devolved the herculean task of
reconstituting the churches in the presence of one of the most
determined persecutions that ever raged on the face of the

Mil PREFACE
globe, have been supplemented by numerous documents drawn
from various sources. The files of the hostile departments of
state, war, and police have proved only less valuable than the
inedited letters of such men as Antoine Court, Paul Rabaut,
Rabaut Saint Etienne, Court de Gebelin, and others ; while
the Minutes of the Synods of the Churches of the Desert,
now for the first time printed and made accessible to all, enable
us to gain such inside views of the growth of Protestantism as
it was formerly impossible to obtain.
The preachers and missionaries that worked at a wonderful
disadvantage, always under the ban of the law, not infre
quently with a distinct price set upon them, whether taken
dead or alive — gladiators in an arena from which they seem
always to be saluting us as about to die — these were not always
in themselves very picturesque personages. But if they were
often clad in rough attire and themselves unlearned rustics,
daily and hourly committing the sin — unpardonable at the ele
gant court of Versailles — of preaching and praying to Almighty
God in very bad French, at least, they were men who, being
able to die for their opinions, could not be constrained. Thus
it was that, with God's blessing upon their labors, they learned
the divine art how to make a great church out of a very little
one, or, indeed, out of one that did not exist at all.
The Huguenot drama would be incomplete without the last
and crowning act — embracing the recovery of religious liberty
and of full civic rights. It was much to obtain toleration after
proscription. It was much to compel a distinct admission of
the fact that Protestantism still existed in France, when the fact
had been denied a century through. If professed sceptics
proved very useful allies in preparing the way, and if, to secure
his ends, a humane and intelligent statesman like Malesherbes
was driven to resort to the device of ascribing to Louis the
Fourteenth equitable intentions respecting the Protestants,
much at variance with his known acts, these circumstances did
not make the boon of freedom, when at last it came, any the

PREFACE ix
less acceptable. The imperfect work of Louis the Sixteenth, in
1787, was duly enlarged within a few months by the Revolu
tion, with its recognition of the Rights of Man ; and finally, in
1802, Protestantism was accorded an established position as
the religion of a part, although a minority, of the French
nation. There the history of the Huguenots ends.
Thus the volumes now offered to the public constitute an
independent history, intended to be complete in itself, of the
causes and the effects, proximate and remote, of the repeal of
one of the most important laws ever given by a human legis
lator. At the same time they form the conclusion and natural
complement of a historical series of which the first two parts
have heretofore been published, in "The Rise of the Huguenots
of France " and " The Huguenots and Henry of Navarre." It
is the author's hope that the last piece in the Huguenot trilogy
may be as kindly received as its two predecessors.
The very great number of works, both old and well-known
and of recent publication, upon which this history is based,
must serve as my excuse for not attempting, in this place, the
task of inserting a list, even approximately complete, of my
authorities. I shall only repeat what I said on a previous oc
casion, that no trustworthy source of information, whether
friendly or hostile to the Huguenots, has been consciously
neglected by me ; that I have endeavored to hold a steady and
impartial course between conflicting views and representations,
and that I have, as far as possible, preferred to read history in
the contemporary writings of both Roman Catholics and Prot
estants. I trust that the notes, which I have endeavored to
make a faithful guide to the original sources of information,
will enable any reader that is so disposed to verify my asser
tions and test my conclusions.
I feel it a pleasure, not less than a duty, to acknowledge once
more the invaluable assistance which I have derived from the
great store of fresh and hitherto unknown material brought to
light in the successive volumes of the Bulletin of the Societe

X PREFACE /
de l'histoire du Protestantisme Francais. To the labors of the
scholars connected with this Society, more than to the labors of
any other investigators, is due the great progress made of late
in Huguenot studies. I avail myself the more gladly, there
fore, of the present opportunity, to give public expression to
my sense of gratitude for the high and unexpected honor con
ferred upon me, on the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of
the foundation of the Society, in my election to be an Honorary
Member of the Governing Committee.
At the same time I may be permitted to make thankful
acknowledgment of the help of various kinds rendered to me
by my French friends and correspondents — Baron Fernald de
Schickler, President of the Society which I have just named,
and M. N. Weiss, the Secretary, worthy successor in the editor
ship of the Bulletin of the lamented Dr. Jules Bonnet. I
am under special obligations to the late Charles Dardier, Presi
dent of the Consistory of Nismes, whose death is one of the
most notable losses recently sustained by students of Huguenot
history, especially the history of the eighteenth century. M.
Dardier's two collections of the Letters of Paul Rabaut to An-
toine Court and to Others, annotated in so rich and scholarly
a manner, not to speak of his Esai'e Gasc, and a series of
monographs on particular points of importance, are monuments
of his well-directed labors. Nor should I fail to make mention
of the kindness of Professor G. Frosterus, of the University of
Helsingfors, Finland, editor of the Memoirs of the Baron
d'Aigaliers, of M. Th. A. Dufour, Director of the Library of
the City of Geneva, and of the Abbe Goiffon, formerly archivist
of the diocese of Nismes.
While referring to these particular obligations, I cannot
refrain from expressing my high appreciation of the truly fra
ternal spirit that has appeared to me to animate all the workers
in the same field of study, a spirit that leads each cheerfully to
extend a helping hand to all the rest. Of such a spirit was
that eminent scholar to whom I referred in the preface of my

PREFACE xi
" Rise of the Huguenots," the late Professor Baum, of Stras
bourg, who, writing to me under the dark shadow projected by
the fast approaching Franco-Prussian War, cheered his own
heart and mine with these words : "In the midst of the mili
tary despotism to which the continent of old Europe seems to
be fatally destined, it is, after the Gospel and its immortal
principles, one of the greatest consolations that the Republic of
Science and Letters will remain standing, and that against her,
too, the gates of hell shall not prevail. I understand thereby
the great association and fraternity, in all the civilized coun
tries of the globe entire, of those that believe that man does
not live by material bread alone, but by every word that pro-
ceedeth out of the mouth of God."
I am happy to be able to lay before my readers, in the sec
ond volume of the present work, a reproduction of a remark
able medal struck at Rome to commemorate the illustrious
piety exhibited by Louis the Fourteenth in revoking the Edict
of Nantes. I state on the sixty-sixth page of that volume the
circumstances under which it was my good fortune to discover
the existence of this interesting but forgotten product of the
pontifical mint.
It is not without a feeling of regret akin to sadness that I lay
down my pen at the conclusion of historical studies that were
begun more than thirty years ago. In the inception of my
plans it was my privilege to profit by the wise suggestions and
encouragement of a father, himself not less conversant with the
present condition than with the past fortunes of the churches
of the Reformation. In the prosecution of my work I long
had the companionship and derived inestimable benefit from
the counsels of a brother, whose scholarly tastes led him to
devote the leisure hours wrung from an engrossing profession
to pursuits kindred to my own. The advantage which I
enjoyed in the inspiration of the words and the example of
such men, not less than the circumstance that I am now per-

XU PREFACE
mitted to complete an undertaking that has occupied much of
my time and thoughts for so considerable a space of human life,
justly demands of me a grateful acknowledgment of the good
ness of the great Being in whom we live and whose are all our
ways. TJniveksity of the City of New York,
July 12, 1895.

CONTENTS

VOLUME FIRST

BOOK I
THE HUGUENOT WARS AND THE REDUCTION OF LA ROCHELLE
CHAPTER I
1610-1612 Page
Accession of Louis the Thirteenth — Political Assembly of
Satjmur  . .3
The Great Charter of Protestant Liberties ...... 3
Not an Edict of simple Toleration ..... 4
Geographical Distribution of the Huguenots . . .5
Provision for their Security  . . 6
Huguenot Hostage Cities .... . 7
" Places de Mariage " . . . . .7
" Places Particulieres "... . .8
Land and Sea Forces ..... 8
Deputies General and Political Assemblies  9
Roman Catholicism and Despotism  .9
Protestantism and the Rights of Man ..... .10
Protestant Assemblies, the Model of free and constitutional Bodies . 11
Character of Louis the Thirteenth . . ... 13
His Hatred of Protestantism  14
The Queen Mother, Marie de' Medici  15
Duplessis Mornay, the leading Protestant Statesman . . 17
His Treatise on the Means of diminishing the Power of Spain . . 18
Duplessis Mornay contrasted with Theodore Agrippa d'Aubigne . . 21
He is appointed Governor of Saumur  22
Is surnamed " the Pope of the Protestants " . . . . .22
Marie de' Medici is recognized as Regent .... 23
The Duke of Sully  ... 25

XIV

CONTENTS

Inconsistencies of his Character 
A lukewarm Protestant ... ...
His great Services to France . . . .
His Irresolution after Henry's Murder
Rough Pleasantry of the Baron St. Poix
Downfall of Sully 
Loyalty of the Governor of Saumur and the Huguenots
Louis confirms the Edict of Nantes (May 22, 1610) .
The Regent abandons the Policy of Henry the Fourth
The Court all Spanish .......
The projected Spanish Marriages ....
The Huguenots and the great Nobles ....
Antagonism of the Dukes of Bouillon and Sully
Bouillon consents to become a Tool of the Court
His ample Recompense ......
The Political Assembly of Saumur (May 25, 1611) .
Protestant Grievances .......
Demand for the Edict as originally granted
The royal Envoys 
They discourage the chief Huguenot Demand
D'Aubigne's Indignation at Bouillon's Propositions
More complete Organization of the Huguenots
Establishment of the " Cercles " 
The Protestant Delegates at Paris 
The Queen Mother threatens to recognize the Minority
Assembly . . ......
By his Tact Duplessis Mornay parries the Blow of the Court
Choice of the Deputies General, Rouvray and La Milletiere
Unsatisfactory Answers to the Huguenot Petition
The " Pretended Reformed Religion " ....
Disappointment of the Saumur Assembly
Its Adjournment (September 12, 1611) ....
Profuse Employment of Money ....
Protestantism and exaggerated Ideas of royal Prerogative
Types of Character in the Ranks of the Protestants
The Provincial Assemblies send new Delegates to Paris .
They are roughly treated and dismissed
The King offers an Amnesty (April 24, 1612) .
Which the Huguenots indignantly reject as an Insult
Unsatisfactory Declaration of July 11, 1612
President Jeannin's Suggestion .....
Mutual Distrust of the Court and the Protestants .
The Priests of Saint Sulpice and the dying Protestant
A seditious Placard at Rouen 
Calumny against Mornay ......
He publishes his " Mystery of Iniquity "...
National Synod of Privas (May 23-July 4, 1612) .
Protestant Union 

of

the

CONTENTS XV
Page
The " Committee of Reconciliation "  63
Jeremie Ferrier .  64
His Weakness or Treachery at the Saumur Assembly .... 64
The Excommunication (July 14, 1613)  65
Riot at Nismes  66

CHAPTER II
1612-1616
Civil Commotion, the States General of 1614, and the Politi
cal Assembly of Grenoble and Nismes . . 68
Henry, Duke of Rohan ... ..... 68
His Life and Character .... . . 69
Affair of Saint Jean d'Angely  71
Rohan's Course condemned by the more prudent of his Party . . 73
But apparently justified in the Circumstances  73
Meeting of the " Cercle" of La Rochelle  75
Duplessis mediates and averts War ....... 77
Conde and other malcontent Nobles withdraw from Court ... 79
The Huguenots prudently stand aloof from the Quarrel ... 80
Treaty of Sainte Menehould (May 15, 1614)  81
National Synod of Tonneins (May, 1614)  81
James I. 's Plea for Protestant Union .  82
The Synod submits a Plan of Harmony  82
Louis proclaims his own Majority  84
He confirms the Edict of Nantes (October 1, 1614) .... 85
The States General of 1614  85
The Tiers Etat opposes the Publication of the Decrees of Trent . 86
Savaron's Arraignment of the Loyalty of the Nobles . . . .88
Anger of the Noblesse  89
De Mesmes proclaims the Brotherhood of the three Orders ... 89
The Doctrine repudiated with Insult  90
The first Article of the Tiers Etat reprobates the regicidal Tenets of the
Jesuits  91
Violent Opposition of the Clergy and Nobles  92
Cardinal Du Perron pronounces "problematic " the Doctrine that Kings
cannot be deposed  94
He hints that Calvinistic influence has been at Work .... 94
Parliament sides with the Representatives of the People . . 95
Deliberation of the King's Council ... ... 96
Conde shows how Kings may lawfully be killed . . 97
The Tiers Etat forbidden to use their Article . . 98
Paul V. thanks the unpatriotic Orders ... ... 99
Cardinal Richelieu, Spokesman for the Clergy ..... 100
The Clergy's Demands foreshadow the Revocation  101
The " Pretended Religion "  101

XVI CONTENTS Pago
Louis's Coronation Oath  108
He again confirms his Father's tolerant Legislation (Maroh 12, 1615) . 103
Clerical Fund for converted Protestant Ministers  105
Fresh Rising of malcontent Princes  ¦ 107
The double Spanish Marriages  108
"L'Annee des Magnificences" (1612) . . . 108
Remonstrances against the Marriages .... • 109
Protestant National Assembly of Grenoble (1615) 110
Huguenot Demands ... .111
Extravagant Deference to royal Authority ... .113
The unsatisfactory Answer of the Court . . . . 114
Alarm caused by Jesuit Preaching ... . 114
No secret Articles between France and Spain . 115
The Protestant Assembly resolves to leave Grenoble . . 115
Remonstrances of Marshal Lesdiguieres . . 116
Arguments of Duplessis Mornay  116
The Assembly removes to Nismes . . . . . 118
Audacious Crime of the Archbishop of Bordeaux .... 119
The Huguenots of Bordeaux commanded to hold religious Services . 120
The Assembly of Nismes concludes a Treaty of Union with Conde (No
vember 10, 1615)  121
It removes to La Rochelle by royal Permission ... . 122
Peace of Loudun (May, 1616) .... . 122
The Course of the Duke of Rohan . .... 123
His caustic Reply to the Prince of Conde . . . 124
Ephemeral Conversion of the Duke of Candale . . . .125

CHAPTER III
1617-1620
Thr Reduction of Beatsn .... ... 127
Importunity of the French Clergy . 127
Harangue of the Bishop of Macon . . . 128
History of the Reformation in Beam . . . 129
Queen Jeanne d'Albret  130
Conspiracy of her Enemies  . 131
Mutual Toleration  . 131
Jeanne's Ordinance of 1566  132
Terride overruns the Principality  133
Jeanne's Authority re-established by Count Montgomery . . 133
Ecclesiastical Ordinances of 1571  134
Maintained in force by Henry of Navarre  135
Confirmed by his " perpetual and irrevocable " Edict . . . .135
Henry refuses to expel the Protestant Ministers ... .136
And rebukes the Pertinacity of the Bishops  137

CONTENTS

XV11

Page
Louis XIII. orders the Re-establishment of the Roman Catholic Religion
(June 25, 1617)  138
And the Restoration of the ecclesiastical Revenues . . . 138
Compensation promised to the Protestants . . . 138
Opposition of the Bearnese . ... 139
Political Assembly at Casteljaloux . . . 140
Louis issues a " Lettre de Jussion " ... ... 141
Prudent Advice of Duplessis Mornay  141
The Assembly goes to Orthez, then to La Rochelle . . 142
Political Assembly of Loudun (1619-1620) .... 143
Protestant Grievances ...  143
The Assembly ordered to adjourn  145
Assurances given by the Prince of Conde ..... 146
And endorsed by Montbazon on the King's Part ... . 146
Civil Commotion  . 148
La Force, Governor of Beam  149
Louis XIII. proceeds to Pau ... . . 151
The Protestant Governor put out of Navarrenx . . . 152
The King overturns his Grandmother's Legislation . 153
The Protestants expelled from the Churches . . . 155
Insults and Violence  . . 155
National Synod of Vitre (May, 1617) ... . . 156
Exaggerated Loyalty of Hesperien's Address to the King . 157
The Synod of Alais (1620) endorses the Canons of Dort . . 158
Proposed Protestant University at Charenton ..... 160
Opposition of the University of Paris  160
Father Arnoux succeeds Father Cotton as royal Confessor . 161
Richelieu, Bishop of Lucon . 1 62
Jesuit Progress . .... . 163
Interpretative Ordinances .  164

CHAPTER IV
1620-1622

Assembly of La Rochelle, First Huguenot Wak, and Siege of
montauban ... . . . 165
Huguenot Grievances . . . . 165
The Assembly summoned . . . ... 166
Forbidden by the King to meet . ...... 166
Rohan, Soubise, and Duplessis Mornay oppose the Convocation . . 167
The Assembly's " Remonstrance " . . . 168
Answer of Lesdiguieres . ... . . 169
Indifference of the great Protestant Nobles . .... 171
Conference at Niort . .... 1 72
Soubise, La Tremouille, and Rohan take the side of La Rochelle . 173
La Force compelled to flee from Beam  173

179181

XVlll CONTENTS Page
Louis XIII. takes the Field in Person . • • * ™4
He redresses the Wrongs of the Protestants of Tours . .175
Daniel Tilenus and his Controversies  1 ">
He remonstrates with the Assembly .... • 1 JJ
Louis at Saumur 
He violates his Promise and deprives Duplessis Mornay of his Governor
ship 
The Offer of a pecuniary Reward rejected . .... 182
Deliberation of the royal Council .... • 182
The Lackeys make Havoc of Duplessis Mornay's Library . . . 183
Louis makes new Engagements and breaks them . . 184
Death of Duplessis Mornay (November 11, 1623) . . 186
Articles of the Assembly . . ....
Necessity of a new military Organization
The Plan adopted (May 10, 1621) ....
Rohan and Soubise accept their Appointments .
The Huguenot Seal  •
Submission of many Cities 
Siege and Fall of Saint Jean d'Angely ....
The King's triumphant Advance 
Brief of Gregory XV 
Henry of Rohan's Resolution 
His Letter to Constable Luynes
He provides for the Defence of Montauban .
The Burghers refuse to listen to Sully's Solicitations
The Duke of Mayenne killed .....
The Parisians burn the Temple of Charenton .
The Huguenots opprobriously called " Parpaillots" .
Death of Daniel Chamier .......
Rohan's Activity 
He resists Constable Luynes's Seductions
Pestilence invades the Camp of the Besiegers
A Carmelite Monk brought to bless the royal Camp
The Siege abandoned .........
Address of the Bishop of Rennes ......
He advocates a Repeal of the Edicts in favor of the Protestants . 212
Their Cities of Security should be taken away . . . 213
La Rochelle to be reduced to a Village ... . 214
Royal Entry into Toulouse  . 214
Death of Constable Luynes . . . . . . 215
President Jeannin, an Advocate of Peace ...... 216
A Vindication of the Huguenots  . 217
Soubise takes Royan  218
Many Towns recovered ......... 219
Collections in Great Britain in Behalf of the Huguenots .... 219
Louis again takes the Field ......... 220
Untrustworthiness of CMtillon  220
The Duke of La Force submits  221

187
187189191
192192193 193
195196
197199201 201
202 202
203 205
207
208 209 210 211

CONTENTS xix
Page
Negrepelisse taken  . 222
Cardinal Retz pleads for Humanity  . 222
Conde advocates exemplary Severity . . . 223
Brutality of the Troops .... . . 223
Saint Anthonin ..... ..... 225
German Mercenaries .......... 225
Fort Louis founded near La Rochelle . . . . . 226
Siege of Montpellier  226
Treaty of Pacification (Montpellier, October 19, 1622) . . . .227
The Cities of Refuge ... ... .229
Terms granted to Montpellier ... . . . 229
Unpopularity of the War  231

CHAPTER V
1622-1626
The Citadel of Montpellier, Fort Louis, and the Second Hu
guenot War  .... 233
Thanksgiving in Scotland for the French Peace ... . 233
End of the Assembly of La Rochelle . . . . 234
The Citadel of Montpellier  235
Trickery of Governor Valencay ........ 237
Royal Commissioners ..... . . 239
The Temple of Charenton  .239
Rohan's Letters on the Infractions of the Peace . . . . 240
Louis's discourteous Reply  241
Royal Orders disobeyed  242
Fort Louis  242
" Arnauld du Fort "  .... 243
National Synod of Charenton (September, 1623)  247
"The Reign of Cardinal Richelieu"  249
Richelieu's great Projects  . . 250
Outbreak of the Second Huguenot War (January, 1625) . . 251
Aversion of Rohan to a Recourse to the Sword  252
Blavet  252
Soubise attempts to seize the royal Fleet  253
Huguenot Nobles and Cities disclaim Responsibility . . . 254
Escape of Soubise  . 255
Indignation of Cardinal Richelieu  255
Sufferings of " Jacques Bonhomme " .  256
Division among the Huguenots  . . 256
The Montauban Pastors  257
Strange Journeyings of the Duchess of Rohan .... 258
Treaty of Union between La Rochelle and Rohan . . . 259
Rohan's Appeal to the States of Holland ... . . 260
English Sailors refuse to fight against the Huguenots .... 260

CONTENTS

Conflict between Soubise and the Dutch Fleet
Soubise is defeated by the Duke of Montmorency
Heroic Defence of Mas d'Azil . . .
Negotiations for Peace . . • •
Attitude of Louis toward La Rochelle
Maniald's Address ......
Peace Concluded (February 6, 1626) ....
The English Envoys make Charles a Warrantor of the Peace
Richelieu's Purpose . , .

261 263
264265266267269269
271

CHAPTER VI
1626-1629
The Third Huguenot War and the Fall of La Rochelle
National Synod of Castres (September-November, 1626)
Nominates for the Office of Deputy General
Rohan's Negotiations with Spain .....
Masuyer, First President of the Parliament of Toulouse .
His bloodthirsty Character
The Protestants Proclaim their Loyalty ....
The Duke of Buckingham ... . .
Bassompierre's Mission to England ....
The Privy Council intervenes in Behalf of the Huguenots
Its Right to do so repudiated by the French .
Cardinal Richelieu's Triumph .....
He resolves to reduce La Rochelle .....
Charles declares War ......
Buckingham sails for the Relief of La Rochelle
Sir William Beecher at La Rochelle ....
Buckingham lands on the Isle de Re
His bad Generalship ....
Duplicity of Charles .... . .
Failure of the English Enterprise .
Hastens the Fall of La Rochelle ....
Henry of Rohan's ' ' Apology " . ...
Auguste Galland strives to prevent a Huguenot Uprising
Rohan gathers a Protestant Assembly (September, 1627)
His eloquent Appeal . . . .
The Huguenot people espouse his cause
Rohan is elected General . ....
His professed Willingness to immolate himself for his Faith
A scurrilous Retort ......
The Cevennes 
Milhau . . ......
Castres shuts its Gates ... . .
Revel, Mazeres, etc., welcome Rohan

272
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284 284 285286287289 290
291292 294 294259 296
297 297298298 299
299

CONTENTS

XXI

Bastide

Conde selected to crush the Huguenots
" Conversion " of Aubenas by Marshal Ornano
Rohan condemned to Death as a Traitor
His Estates forfeited 
Conde's Zeal and Importunity ...
Wretched Fate of Realmont .....
Leads Castres and Montauban to open their Gates to Rohan
Saint Affrique besieged (May, 1628) ....
Pastor Jean Bastide plans the Fortifications
Heroic Defence of the Huguenots .
Retreat of the Duke of Conde
Louis XIII. demands the deposition of the brave
Alertness of the Duke of Rohan .
His Base of Operations in the Cevennes
Ancient Importance of this Region
Conde's Dissatisfaction ...
Bloody Reprisals — Gallargues and Aimargues
Correspondence of Conde and Rohan
Siege of La Rochelle ...
Mistakes of the Besiegers
La Rochelle and its Ports
The Fortifications . . .
Works of the Royalists .
Targon's Chain ....
Richelieu's Dike ......
Visit of Marquis Spinola .....
Insincerity of Spain, which recalls its Fleet
Reception of the Danish Embassy
New English Fleet under the Earl of Denbigh
Heroism of the Duchess of Rohan .
Jean Guiton, Mayor of La Rochelle
Richelieu's Tenacity of Purpose
Continued Assurances of Charles I.
The Third English Fleet ....
Famine of La Rochelle .....
La Rochelle capitulates (October 29, 1628)
Speech of Louis XIII. to the Huguenot Deputies
Treatment of the City and its Defenders
Reception of the News of the Fall of La Rochelle abroad
Rohan continues the War
He concludes a shameful Treaty with Spain
Fall of Privas ......
The Peace of Alais (June 27, 1629)
Richelieu at Montauban ... .
His good Faith 

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346

XXII

CONTENTS

BOOK II
QUIET UNDER THE EDICT OF NANTES (1629-1659)

CHAPTER VII
1629-1643
The Huguenots under Richelieu
Advance in material Prosperity 
Richelieu claims to have treated the Protestants fairly
His Letters to Count Sault 
And to President Le Masuyer ....
He maintains the Chambers of the Edict
Twenty-sixth National Synod (Charenton, 1631)
Grievances 
The Annexes 
Misohievous Interpretations of the Edict
Presumptions of Law against the Huguenots .
Grands Jours de Poitiers (1634) .
Omer Talon on the Edicts of Pacification
They must not be " graciously " interpreted
Richelieu receives the Protestants with Courtesy
Sully is made a Marshal of France
France placed under the Virgin Mary's Protection (1638)
Alleged Falsification of the Psalms ....
The Huguenots accused of altering their Faith
Demand that the Huguenot Liturgy be expurgated
The Bishop of Saint Flour on the regal Power
National Synod of Alencon (1637)
Demands of the royal Commissioner
Reply of the moderator, Benjamin Basnage
" The great Affair of Amyraut and Testard "
Birth of Louis XIV. (September 5, 1638) .
Richelieu and the proposed Patriarchate
Minor Vexations .......
Death of Cardinal Richelieu (December, 1642)
And of Louis XIII. (May 14, 1643)
The halcyon days of French Protestantism 1629-1660
Huguenot Population ......
Churches and Ministers . . .
The Nobles . . . .
The Middle Classes 
Trade in the Hands of Huguenot Merchants
The Huguenot Artisan works more Days in the Year
Loyalty to the Crown ......
Care of the Poor 

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CONTENTS

XX111

The Consistories ....
Observance of the Lord's Day .
Morals and Discipline ....
The " Temples " 
Temple of Rouen, at Quevilly
Of La Rochelle 
Church Expenses . . . .
Preaching ...
The Geneva Gown
Calvin's Liturgy ...
The Psalms 
The Services. The Clock
Generous Collections for foreign Brethren
Mereaux, or Tokens ....
The " Avertisseur " ....
Sacraments and Marriage
Internal Difficulties
The Huguenot Pastors
Protestant Academies and Colleges
Nismes . 
Saumur .....
Sedan and Montauban

French Protestant Preaching in the Seventeenth Century

Page 374 375
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383 384 384385

CHAPTER VIII
1643-1660

Under Cardinal Mazarin — The Last National Synod
Cardinal Mazarin ... ...
The Edict of Nantes again confirmed (July 8, 1643)
Anne of Austria's Promises .....
Marquis d'Arzilliers appointed Deputy General
National Synod of Charenton (1644-1645) .
Complaints of the royal Commissioner
Manly Reply of Antoine Garissoles
Courteous Treatment by the Crown
The " pretended Religion " ....
Calumnies of the Archbishop of Narbonne
And of the Bishop of Angouleme
Loyalty of the Huguenots during the Fronde .
Louis's Declarations in their Favor (1649, 1650) .
They secure the King's tottering Crown
Mazarin's Tribute to their Loyalty
Hervart, the Protestant Controller General of Finances .
Huguenots in the public Service ....

387 387388 388389389
389 390
391 392
392393394394395
396396396

XXIV

CONTENTS

Page
Louis XIV. commends the Huguenots (1652) .... 397
Their consequent Exultation  398
The Edict of Nantes " a singular Work of Henry IV.'s Prudence ' . 399
Louis XIV. dashes Huguenot Hopes . .... 400
A new and iniquitous Law (July 18, 1656)  400
Pressure of the Clergy for the Repeal of the Law of 1652 . . 401
Speech of the Archbishop of Sens  401
Attacks by the Bishops of Montauban and Bordeaux .... 404
Reply by Drelincourt ... . . 404
Commissioners for the Execution of the Edict . ... 405
Annoyance to Patrons .... 405
Ministers not to style themselves Pastors .... 405
Marquis Henry de Ruvigny appointed Deputy General (1653) . 406
His Character and Services . . ... 407
Death of Oliver Cromwell . . . ... 408
Disturbance at Montauban ... . . 408
Loss of its University and College . ... 410
And, later, of its Protestant Churches . ... 411
Twenty-ninth and last National Synod, Loudun, 1659-1660 . . 412
Jean Daille defends the Protestant Confession and Practice . 414

BOOK III
THE EDICT UNDERMINED (1660-1685)

CHAPTER IX
1660-1680

Growing Persecution
Omer Talon on the Rights of Men
Louis XIV. and the Judges of Parliament
His Personal Appearance
Intellectual Abilities ....
Neglected Education ....
Conceit of his own Importance
Love of Adulation
Imperturbable Equanimity
His Purpose respecting the Huguenots
His estimate of Justice and Decency
The Commissioners sent out (1661)
The Protestant Commissioner .
Establishment of Intendants
The Governors of Provinces in the sixteenth Century
Louis XIV. makes Appointments for only three years .
Powers of the Intendants ....

419 419 420
420 421
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424 425 426 428428
429 430430

CONTENTS XXV Page
These encroach on the Functions of the Provincial Estates and Parlia
ments  431
The Intendant the King's Man .... 432
The Pays de Gex . ... 433
Intendant Bouchu ... . 435
His Decision against the Protestants . . ... 435
Confirmed by the royal Council . . . . . 436
Summary Execution . . .... . 436
Discharge of Debts for three Years .... 438
Insolence toward Geneva . . . . 438
The King's Order in Council  439
Francis de Sales's Successor asks that the Protestants be compelled to
be converted  . 439
Labyrinth of Writs and Decisions against the Huguenots 441
Vexatious Interference . . . . 441
Exclusion from Trades and Professions . . . . 444
Institutions of Learning .... . . 445
The Age of Conversion ....... 445
Churches interdicted and torn down ... . 446
Multitudes at public Worship  . 447
Meynier's Manual and Bernard's Maxims ... . 447
General Law of 1666 . ... 448
Visitation of the Sick . ... 449
Anne of Austria's dying Injunction . . . 450
The Great Elector of Brandenburg remonstrates . . . 450
Reply of Louis XIV. .... 451
Other hostile Legislation . . ... 453
Inspired by the Clergy . . . 453
The first Emigration of 1666 . ... 454
Pierre du Bosc  • 454
Project to abolish the Chambers of the Edict . . . 456
Du Bosc selected to plead with the King . . . 457
His eloquent Harangue  457
Intolerable Condition of the Huguenots . . 459
Louis eulogizes Du Bosc .  . 459
Suppression of the Chambers of the Edict (January, 1669) . 460
Huguenot Persistence justified . . . ¦ 460
Fairness of the ecclesiastical Judges . ... 461
Marcilly's Project  462
Louis XIV. revokes his Edict of 1666 (February, 1669) . . 463
Annoyance and Protests of the Clergy . . . 463
Speech of the Bishop of Uz&s . . . . 464
Secret Project of Reunion . .  465
To further it Louis proposes to allow a National Synod . . 465
The Project killed at a provincial Synod (1673)  467
The Book of Chastelet, " La Politique de France " . . 468
Louis entreated to slay the Hydra of Heresy . .... 469
Protestant Girls not to he forced to see their Parents before abjuring . 470

XXVI

CONTENTS

Conversions of the Prince de Tarante and Marshal Turenne
Paul Pelisson and the "Caisse des Conversions" (1676)
Paltry Price of Converts
The Peace of Nimeguen . . . •
The elder Marquis of Ruvigny resigns his Office
And is succeeded by his Son
Law against the Relapsed . ...
A far-reaching Measure
The public Conscience seared
Suppression of the " Chambres mi-parties "
The King's Jesuit Confessors
Pere de la Chaise
Pastoral Visitation restricted .
No Protestant Midwives ...
Exclusion from financial offices . ...
No Liberty of Conscience for Roman Catholics .
Postponement of the Payment of Debts of " New Converts
Letter of Ruvigny to the Chancellor ....
Louis XIV. personally active

Benoist's "Histoire de l'Edit de Nantes"

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487

491

CHAPTER X
1681-1685

Prelude of the Revocation — The Great Dragonnades . . 494
The " Terrible Law " of June 17, 1681  .494
Huguenot Children of Seven may renounce the Religion of their Par
ents . .... . . ... 494
A Blow struck at the Family  496
Lists made of the Huguenots and their Children .... 497
Children noted to be taken from their Homes ..... 497
Another Appeal to Louis XIV. .  499
The elder Marquis of Ruvigny intercedes with the King . . 501
Louis regards himself as bound to extirpate Heresy . . . 501
He will concede nothing to the Protestant Petition .... 502
The Bailiff of Charenton undertakes to "reform " the Protestant Con
fession and Liturgy . . ... 503
The Dragonnades in Poitou . ....... 504
Michel de Marillac . . . . . . . 505
The Troopers riot in Huguenot Homes .... . 505
Louis's Satisfaction with Marillac's Success . . 507
Louvois's Instructions ... . ... 507
Protests against Marillac's Inhumanity ..... 508
Was Louis XIV. misinformed ? . . ..... 508
What constitutes " Violence " . ........ 509

CONTENTS

XXVll

Page
Marillac recalled from Poitou  509
His Defence of his Course ...... . . 510
Henry Savile, the English Ambassador  511
Advocates an "easy Naturalization" of the French Protestants in Eng
land  -512
Charles II. orders a Collection in London for their Relief (July 28, 1681) 512
And promises them Letters of Denization ...... 513
Emigration to England . .... . 513
Louis's Efforts to check Emigration ... . 514
Welcome extended to Refugees by the Duke of Hanau . . 514
By Denmark, Sweden, and Holland ....... 514
New Acts of Oppression . . ... 515
Academie and College of Sedan closed . . . . . 515
The Clergy draws up a " Pastoral Announcement " to the Protestants 516
Its open Menace ....... ... 516
Louis orders the Pastoral to be read to all the Consistories . . . 517
How it was read at Charenton . . .... 518
Jean Claude's Protest .... .... 519
The Consistories deport themselves with Firmness and Dignity . . 520
Impertinence of the Clerical Representatives  520
Pastor Le Sauvage at Alentpon  . 520
" Peace is beautiful, but Truth is sacred " . . ... 521
Vexatious Ordinances for Protestant Worshippers . . . . 521
The Parliament of Toulouse .... . .522
An absurd Proposal rejected  523
Exclusion from judicial Offices ..... . . 523
Secret Instructions to withhold Justice  . 523
Trust Funds of Protestants given to Roman Catholic Hospitals . . 525
Strange and inconsistent Legislation . ... 526
A Bench in every " Temple " for Roman Catholic Controversialists . 526
Disorder and Mob at Quevilly . . . ... 527
" Two Weights and two Measures " . . ... 528
None but Residents may attend " fief " Churches  529
How the Church of Montpellier was closed ...... 530
The Exclusion of " New Converts " . . . . . 531
Board of " Directors " of Languedoc .  532
The Toulouse Meeting ... . .... 533
The " Project " and its Articles . . . 533
A virile Measure . ... ..... 534
Protestant Manifesto  . 534
The Deputy General discourages the Movement  535
Timidity at Charenton aud Elsewhere  535
Bloodshed in Vivrais and Dauphiny ... . 536
Heroism of Chamier' s Mother ... .... 538
Huguenot Pastors welcomed at Geneva . . .... 538
Pastor Isaac Homel broken on the Wheel  539
A judicial Murder  540
Songs in the Air  541

XX Vill

CONTENTS

Destruction of Huguenot Churches 
The Huguenot Pilgrimages to their remaining Places of Worship
The Government appoints Protestant Ministers to administer Baptism
Hasty and negligent Legislation . ...
Louis XIV. 's Intentions . ....
No Pastor to remain over three Years in one Place
Indications of a Change of Purpose on the Part of the King .
Joy of the Clergy at the Suppression of Protestant Places of Worship
The Marquis of Louvois, Minister of War 
Nicolas Joseph Foueault, Intendant of Pau
His Scheme for suppressing Protestant Worship in Beam
The great Dragonnade of Beam .....
Reign of Force and Terror
Conversion a la Bearnaise . .
Foucault's Success . 
Louis XIV. rejoices and applauds ....
Unsatisfactory Abjurations .....
Ephemeral Conversions 
The Dragonnades in Guyenne and Upper Languedoc
Louvois gives the first Order for the great Dragonnades
It Contains no Suggestion of Violence
The Savage Execution . 
Story of Samuel de Peschels, of Montauban .
Boufflers, Commandant of the Troops .
Character of the Conversions ....
Bayle on the Severity of the Persecution
Spread of the Dragonnades throughout the Kingdom

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546
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560561
563 564565

BOOK FIRST

THE HUGUENOT WARS AND THE REDUCTION OF
LA ROCHELLE (1610-1629)

BOOK FIRST

THE HUGUENOT WAES AND THE SEDUCTION OP
LA EOCHELLE (1610-1629)

CHAPTEE I

ACCESSION OF LOUIS THE THIRTEENTH — THE POLITICAL AS
SEMBLY OF SAUMUR
The Edict signed by Henry the Fourth at Nantes, in the
province of Brittany, on the thirteenth day of April, 1598, but
not registered and published by the Parliament of Paris until
the twenty-fifth of February in the ensuing year, was the great
charter of the Protestant liberties. In securing it, the Hugue-
Tne great no*s reached the goal of their desires in the present
ftotestant order of things, and felt themselves warranted in look-
liberHes. jng forward with some degree of confidence to a long
period of quiet and prosperity, under the protection of a law
expressly declared to be perpetual and irrevocable. The age of
persecution was believed to be wholly in the past; an era of
harmony had been inaugurated under the most favorable
auspices. The edict was not, however, a proclamation of equal
rights to the professors of all Christian creeds: this was its
weak point. The Reformed religion was not recognized as
entitled to the same consideration as the Roman Catholic.
The latter was tacitly accepted as the religion of the state as a
whole, the traditional and better religion, into conformity with
which it was desired, and it was hoped, that all the king's sub-

4 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. I
jects would ultimately be brought. By the side of this state
religion, and in its shadow, the Protestant religion might stand,
and for its security many equitable provisions were enacted.
Yet it stood an inferior and with inferior rights. Not many
years, indeed, elapsed before its enemies assumed as a self-
evident principle that by the edict Protestantism was merely
tolerated, suffered to exist as a thing whose presence
of°mereeto£ is hateful, but which, for some reason, it is injudicious
to attempt to remove. Such was the dangerous doc
trine first distinctly enunciated, as we shall see, by the attorney-
general, Omer Talon, at the Grands Jours of Poitiers, in 1634.
But the Huguenots indignantly repudiated this interpretation
as unwarranted by anything that the edict said or implied.
The odious word " toleration," or its synonyms, occurred nowhere
in the lengthy document. The adherents of the " so-called Re
formed religion " were " permitted " to live in France without
molestation ; their title to unrestricted liberty of conscience was
recognized ; they might worship God publicly in certain places,
while their religious services were excluded from others ; but in
no instance was it asserted that they were "tolerated."1 The
edict was framed with the view of protecting, not of insulting,
them ; and " toleration " is in itself an insult. The legislator,
indeed, proclaimed himself a Roman Catholic, and made no
pretence of regarding dissent as equally desirable with con
formity. But the exercises of the Protestant worship were
" lawful " within certain limits, and for the peaceful mainten
ance of these exercises all the authority of the crown was
solemnly pledged.
The relations of the Huguenots to the crown and to the realm
of France seemed, therefore, to be firmly settled, if not for all
time, yet until the advent of the day, concerning the nearness
of whose approach no one, it is true, had very sanguine expec
tations, when a religious union might be effected. Meantime
there was some reason to hope that the happy consummation an
ticipated in the preamble of the great edict might be realized ;
1 Floquet (Histoire du Parlement de Normandie, iv. 383) quotes with approval
the assertion of La Roche Flavyn, in his Treze Livres des Parlements de France
(livre xiii. , ch. 46) : " La religion calvinienne n'estoit seulement toleree, ains per-
raise en France."

1610 ACCESSION OF LOUIS THE THIRTEENTH 5
so that, if it had not as yet pleased God to permit that all the
king's subjects should worship Him in one and the same form
of religion, it should, at least, be with one and the same inten
tion, and with such order that the difference should cause no
trouble or tumult. The monarch and the realm might yet merit
in future the glorious title of Very Christian, a title which the
loyalty of subjects declared that realm and king had long since
and deservedly acquired.
The Huguenots constituted, indeed, but a small minority of
the entire population of France.1 They were, however, so
Geograph- massed in certain parts of the country as to exert an
Bmofthe11" influence which could not be overlooked, or misunder-
Hnguenots. st00d. If there were comparatively few Huguenots in
Champagne and Brittany, they were numerous in Normandy
and Poitou. Saintonge and Aunis, with the flourishing seaport
of La Rochelle, were, to a great extent, Protestant. Of Beam a
a large part of the people had conformed to the reformation
instituted, or fostered, by Jeanne d'Albret. Upper Guyenne,
Lower Languedoc, Vivarais, and the Cevennes were strongholds
of the Huguenot faith, as they had already been, and were des
tined again in future to be, strongholds of the Huguenot arms.
The very circumstance that in Nismes, in Milhau, in Castres,
and in hundreds of smaller places they constituted a clear ma
jority of the citizens, insured them respect and was a guarantee
of harmony. There was many a southern town where at the
annual election, all the " consuls," the chief municipal officers,
returned were Protestants. In many other towns the numbers
of the Reformed entitled them to one-half of the governing
board. Occasionally a spirit of mutual respect and conciliation
won the day, and terminated, for the time at least, the dissen-
1 1 have spoken elsewhere (The Huguenots and Henry of Navarre, ii. Ill
446) of the difficulty of ascertaining the numbers of the French Protestants.
Rough estimates are wont to err on the side of exaggeration, and Benoist's "two
millions of subjects" (Histoire de l'fidit de Nantes, v. passim) by which he re
peatedly designates the Huguenots in the course of the seventeenth century,
might seem to go considerably beyond the mark. On the other hand, Cardinal
Bentivoglio in estimating their number at " a million or a little more," out of a
total population of fifteen millions, may have somewhat underrated them (Breve
Relazione degli Ugonotti di Francia, 198, 199). They probably reached a mill
ion and a quarter or a half.

6 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. I
sions arising from difference of creed. In rare instances a
single bell answered the double end of summoning the Hugue
nots to the "preche" in their "temple," and of announcing the
time of the celebration of the mass and vespers in the old parish
church. Even where they were not in a majority, the Hugue
nots, by virtue of their confessedly higher intelligence and of
their more thorough education,1 secured for themselves an influ
ence disproportioned to their numbers. This was evident when,
a few years later, it became a point of honor with the govern
ment to give to the Roman Catholics in every place at least one-
half of the municipal offices, and the court, or the voters, were
more than once confronted with the difficulty that there existed
no one among the Roman Catholics of the town upon whom the
honor could with any regard to decency be conferred.
The Huguenots did not depend for their security solely upon
the pledged word of the king, or upon their superior numbers in
certain localities, much less upon occasional and ex-
&r their se- ceptional good-will on the part of the adherents of the
other faith. The Edict of Nantes, rather recognizing
an existing order of things than establishing a new arrangement,
placed in their hands substantial means of defence against un
just aggression. Undesirable as it might be to recognize an
authority within the bounds of the kingdom that might under
certain circumstances assert itself independently of, and even in
opposition to, the authority of the national government, the
events of the last half of the sixteenth century, and the imper
fect comprehension gained by that age of the rights of the indi
vidual conscience in matters of religion, had both led to, and
necessitated the strange anomaly. It was in every way better
that the surface of France should be dotted over with cities of
refuge, than that men persecuted for their opinion's sake should
not know whither to direct their uncertain steps. It was better
1 Often Huguenot education was not only free but compulsory. In 1576 Prot
estant Castres established a college, and the next year the council of the city
adopted a resolution to this effect: "To prevent the youth from spending their
time in disorderly conduct (debauche), an order shall be published enjoining
all persons who have the charge of children below fourteen years of age, and
who may be occupied with some office or calling, to send them daily to the col
lege for instruction upon pain of a fine." Records under date of April 17, 1577,
Inedited MS. in Memoires de Gaches, 491.

1610 ACCESSION OF LOUIS THE THIRTEENTH 7
that armed men receiving their orders from governors of their
own religious creed, and obeying them more implicitly than the
directions sent from Paris, should garrison these cities, than
that Huguenot blood should drench the streets of towns and
hamlets in southern and central France, as it had drenched the
streets of the capital and many another city in the Massacre of
Saint Bartholomew's Day. Unless the Protestants of France
were to submit pusillanimously to every insult which the in
genuity of their enemies could invent, and look forward to exile
or death as the sole alternative in case they remained steadfast
to their convictions of duty, they acted wisely in declining to
part with the instruments of defence which the fortunes of war
had thrown into their hands, and in refusing to trust their lives,
their wives and children, and their possessions unconditionally
to tender mercies which heretofore they had found cruel enough.
Precisely what might have happened had they decided to act
otherwise than as they did may not be certain ; but this may
be assumed as beyond controversy : the salutary fear of Hugue
not arms postponed for many years the day when the formal
abrogation of their privileges should be attempted, and the pos
session of cities of refuge was among the most important guar
antees of quiet.
Of hostage cities proper the Huguenots held forty-eight in
all. Most of these were in the three " generalities " of Bor-
deaux, Montpellier, and Poitiers, which respectively
not hostage contained nineteen, ten, and nine such cities; the re
maining ten cities were scattered through six other
generalities. A little over three thousand soldiers constituted
the garrison of these places, being maintained at an expense of
about one hundred and eighty thousand crowns annually. The
city of Saumur stood at the head of the list with three hundred
and sixty-four soldiers, costing the government nearly eighteen
hundred crowns a month for its defence. Next to the hostage
cities were sixteen other towns strangely designated as " places
•¦ Places ae de mariage," because of their being, as it were,
manage." -wedded to certain of the former, from which they
" borrowed " their garrisons. Thus Saumur detached from the
number of its soldiers as above stated, twenty-eight men to
guard Vitre, ten to guard Beaufort, and twelve to guard CM-

8 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. I
tillon en Vendelais. Seven of the sixteen " places de mariage "
were in the single province of Guyenne. In addition to the
sixty-four towns whose maintenance was thus provided for from
the public treasury, the Huguenots were masters of the five
" royal free cities " of La Rochelle, Montauban, Samte-Foy,
Nismes, and Uzes, which had no garrisons, but were governed
by their municipal officers in virtue of ancient privileges, and
-places par- of seventy-five or eighty "places particulieres," or for-
ticuiieres." tige^ piaces belonging to private noblemen, Protest
ants or Roman Catholics. In the case of the latter, the
rights and revenues of the titular owners were duly re
spected ; the castle was held by the Huguenots, but they had
nothing to do with the town outside of the castle walls. Thus
it was that, including all the places which they held by various
forms of tenure, the Huguenots were the possessors of nearly
or quite one hundred and fifty cities of greater or less impor
tance and strength.1 Granted to them by the Edict of Nantes
originally for the space of only eight years, the title of tha
Huguenots to their hostage cities had been confirmed, and the
term had been lengthened by four years, in a patent of Henry the
Fourth given in August, 1605. As the first period did not begin,
according to the edict, until the publication of the law by all the
parliaments, it was supposed to date from the year 1600, and the
concession still had two years to run, at the death of the king.2
Powerful by reason of the possession of so many strongholds
in various parts of the kingdom, the Huguenots were moreover
formidable because of the troops that they could muster by
Land and lan<^ an<^ D7 sea> ^ secret report made to the king
sea forces. affirmed that the Protestants were able, if necessary, to
place fifty thousand troops in the field ; while, from their strength
upon the seaboard, the navy which they could put in commission
was known to be much superior to that of the king himself.3
1 See the lists in L. Anquez : Histoire des Assemblies Politiques des Re-
formes, 160-166.
s Ibid., 430. It may be remarked that, shortly after his accession (July 23,
1611), Louis XIII. prolonged the Huguenot possession of the first class of
places for five years, or to January 1, 1617. Subsequently the term was still
further lengthened. Ibid., 433.
3 M. G. Schybergson : Le Due de Rohan et la Chute du Parti Protestant en
France, 8, 9.

1610 ACCESSION OF LOUIS THE THIRTEENTH 9
Meanwhile the prospect was believed to be fair that no re
course to the arbitrament of civil war would ever again be
necessary. With a well-ordered ecclesiastical constitution,
permitted to hold their church courts with due regularity and
conformably to the prescriptions of their book of discipline,
from the simple meeting of the consistory, or church session,
to the more solemn gathering of the colloquy, or presbytery,
and of the synod, provincial or national, the strictly religious
concerns of the Huguenots were administered with little or no
interference. For the supervision of their civil and political
Deputies interests, they had secured the right to keep at the
poSti3uaaS court two deputies-general, who were expected to
sembiies. devote their entire time and attention to devising and
recommending such measures as might relieve the Protestants
of any hardships to which they should be subjected. Those
hardships furnished also the occasion for the convocation, from
time to time, of the Political Assemblies, although this sort of
meeting had long been unpopular with the royal court and had,
of late, been conceded with great reluctance. Consequently it
was likely that in future the effort would be made to confine
the right of meeting for the discussion of Protestant grievances
to such gatherings in the provinces as might be necessary for
the purpose of communicating local wrongs to the deputies-
general, and that the political assemblies of the Huguenots of
the entire kingdom would, if possible, be wholly dispensed
with. In that case some new provision would have to be made
for the periodical election of the deputies-general.
At the advent of the Reformation, Roman Catholicism stood
forth as the advocate of unreserved submission to constituted
authority, whether in things spiritual or in things temporal.
Soman ^n ^ae Roman Catholic system there was nothing that
andbaespo™ naturally allied itself to popular institutions. The
l8m- same voice that required, in matters of faith, unques
tioning obedience to the priest as the appointed minister of
God, and to the pope, in particular, as His earthly vicegerent,
dictated a like obedience, in temporal matters, to the monarch as
the living image of the invisible God. Subordination to author
ity was the keystone of the structure, whether in Church or in
State. The notion of the paramount rights of the citizen as

10 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. I
the being for whose benefit all laws ought to be enacted, for
whom all offices, from the lowest municipal functionary up to
the governors of provinces and to the king himself, existed, was
as far removed from the theory of the Roman Catholic Church
as was the doctrine of the universal priesthood of believers, or
the idea that the clergyman was in truth the servant, the pope
in truth the servant of the servants of the Lord's household.
Within the domain of religion, the Church had come to mean
not the company of all the faithful, but the corporate body
known as the clergy, and membership in the Church was
synonymous with sacerdotal orders. In like manner the State
was no longer the proper designation of the entire association of
citizens sovereign in their rights, because constituting the ulti
mate source from which all authority emanated and the persons
whose interests were primarily to be consulted, but was a name
appropriated exclusively by the officers who had been originally
chosen to guard and protect the social fabric, and, above all, by
the king.
The jealousy with which the crown viewed the political as
semblies of the Protestants was not altogether unreasonable ;
for in truth those periodical gatherings of the representatives
of the Reformed communities revealed very clearly the growth
of tendencies which in more recent times have given birth to
free institutions, whether in the form of republican government
or of constitutional monarchy.
The Protestant doctrine of the rights of the individual con
science was far-reaching in its consequences ; and in France,
especially, the check received by the reformatory movement in
consequence of the so-called religious wars waged for the de-
Protestant- struction of Protestantism, was a political disaster the
ri^tTof the magnitude of which may be appreciated even by those
man- who cannot sympathize with the doctrines of Calvin
and Beza. For with Protestantism came the recovery of the
consciousness of the personal dignity of man, for whom all
things earthly subsist — the Church for his spiritual advancement,
the State for his temporal well-being. The affairs of neither
Church nor State could be entrusted to the exclusive control of
self-perpetuating orders. The Calvinistic form of church gov
ernment denied the sole care of ecclesiastical interests to the

1610 ACCESSION OF LOUIS THE THIRTEENTH 11
special officers set apart for the work of preaching the Gospel
and administering the sacraments ; and gave a participation to
the delegates of the people, to elders and deacons elected by a
majority of the popular vote. The synods, in which the more
purely ecclesiastical concerns of the religious community were
considered, consequently contained a representation, as nearly
equal as might be, of ministry and laity. It was a development
of the same idea, and a partial extension into the secular do
main, that when the political exigencies of their situation de
manded attention, when provision had to be made by the
Protestants for securing themselves from injustice and oppres
sion, they convened assemblies bearing a marked resemblance
to their religious representative bodies. Thus, as the synods
were the expression of the popular tendencies of Protestantism
in the sphere of strictly religious activity, the political assem
blies were the expression of the same tendencies in the relations
of the Huguenots to the crown and to their fellow-citizens.
Chosen by the intelligent suffrage of the members of their
communion, the Protestant deputies, sitting in their political
Protestant assembly, presented a model of a well-ordered de-
theSmodefof liberative body, which needed but to be extended
tatfonCainBti" in its constituency so as to embrace all France, Prot-
'" estant, and Roman Catholic alike, in order to realize
completely the necessities of a free and constitutional form
of government. No other such model existed in France ; un
less, indeed, those strange and cumbersome bodies, the States
General of the kingdom and the States Particular of individual
provinces, may be said to have presented some points of resem
blance. But the States General were brought together at ir
regular intervals with such wide gaps between the meetings, that
frequently few could recall the time of the last convocation, and
old and young alike were unfamiliar with their duties and
privileges. The functions of the States rarely went beyond vot
ing such pecuniary assistance, in the way of the institution of
new taxes or the continuation of former grants, as the crown
demanded, and humbly petitioning the king for the redress of
abuses. Above all, the representatives of the people consti
tuted but one out of three orders, an order, moreover, so de
spised by both clergy and nobles, that any attempt it might

12 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. 1
make to vindicate the rights of the people as against its op
pressors, was sure to meet the immediate resistance not only of
the monarch, but of the other two orders beside which it sat an
acknowledged inferior.1 With no authority to make laws, with
no authority, indeed, even in the matter of taxes, beyond the
specific powers granted to the members by their constituents,
the States General bore as little resemblance to the legislature of
a free country, as did the Parliament of Paris, a purely judicial
body, to the Parliament sitting at Westminster, with its sturdy
and at times very independent House of Commons. The
municipalities of southern France possessed, in their contracted
sphere, a germ of self-government which, under more favorable
circumstances, might have developed and assumed greater im
portance ; but so far from that, the reign of Louis the Thir
teenth was to witness what little independence the cities of
Languedoc and Guyenne possessed crushed beneath the spirit
of centralization and absolutism incarnated in the person of
Cardinal Richelieu. The hopes of constitutional liberty, of
popular representative government, of a wise legislation, pro
gressive yet conservative, of the gradual preparation of France
for a liberty to be attained without violent commotion and
without bloodshed, and of an intelligent and systematic devel
opment of the national resources, lay, though men as yet did
not recognize the fact, in the scheme of government which the
Huguenots had sketched, and, in particular, in the political as
semblies, suspected though these were by the Roman Catholic
party, and hated by the crown and its advisers.2
The prince into whose hands the sceptre of France nominally
passed from the relaxed grasp of the great Henry murdered by
1 The States General of 1614, to which reference will hereafter be made, fur
nish a signal illustration of the remarks of the text.
2 1 can heartily commend the judicious observations of M. Gustave Garrisson
on this subject, in a remarkable article " De la politique du Calvinisme en
France," Revue..des Deux Mondes (February, 1848), xxi. 738, 739. The state
ment made by M. Garrisson with regret, that " the history of the Calvinist as
semblies, which are one of the sources of our political jurisprudence and of our
civil liberty, that history so fruitful of instruction, has never been undertaken
in France," is happily no longer true, since the publication of the admirable
work of Professor Leonce Anquez, ' ' Histoire des Assemblies politiques des Re-
formes de France."

1610 ACCESSION OF LOUIS THE THIRTEENTH 13
Ravaillac's knife, was a boy who had not yet completed his
ninth year. In himself an insignificant person, the accident
of his birth placed him in a position which now ren-
Characterof ., .. .. , _ , , \
Louis the ders lt necessary that 1 should speak of what he was
both as man and as ruler, although the peculiarities of
his character exhibited themselves fully only after the lapse
of some years.
What Louis the Thirteenth might have become in other cir
cumstances is uncertain, but the eldest of the six children whom
Marie de' Medici bore to her royal husband obtained little of
that training which might possibly have fitted him to become a
wise and excellent king. Whether by their fault or by his mis
fortune, the successive tutors to whom the dauphin's education
was entrusted failed to kindle in his breast any thirst for knowl
edge. He never thoroughly mastered even the rudiments of
Latin, a language still esteemed indispensable for kings. Fal
conry and the chase were more to his taste than study. He was
one of the best huntsmen in the kingdom ; and if he had an im
pediment in his speech, he could, we are told, talk to his dogs to
perfection. His preceptors had done well, observes a historian
with pardonable sarcasm, had they trained him to talk to men.1
Destitute both of self-reliance and of discrimination, he was
'Le Vassor, Histoire du regne de Louis XIII. (Amsterdam, 1712), i. 607, seq.
This candid historian remarks that, although he had made a careful search, he
had often been surprised to find in the records of Louis's minority so little said
regarding the education of the young king. In mentioning the dismissal of one
of the best of the prince's preceptors, one who knew Louis well remarks :
" Ceux qui lui succederent donnerent des preuves a. tout le monde que la jalousie
que l'on avoient eue d'une personne de savoir et de merite avoit ete cause de
sa disgrace, plutot qu'aucun dessein de donner une nourriture royale a, ce jeune
prince." Memoires du marechal d'Estrees, 225, 226.
The royal historiographer Charles Bernard, in his Histoire du Roy Louis
XIII. (Paris, 1646), naturally gives a very different account of the monarch's
endowments and acquisitions from that given by Le Vassor. According to Ber
nard, Louis was bright and of keen wit. If he admits that in infancy the prince
had "a pretty great difficulty of speech," he is careful to add that this impedi
ment was probably the cause of his becoming a good listener and thinker and
one of the best of men at keeping a secret. He would have us believe that in
time Louis became a fluent and entertaining talker. His testimony from per
sonal knowledge to the purity of the king's own conversation and to his intoler
ance of profane or foul language on the part of his courtiers may be accepted
as less liable to the suspicion of partiality.

14 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. I
equally incapable of ruling without the help of others and im
patient that others should enjoy the semblance of rule. He
would brook no interference of parliament when the judges
undertook to remonstrate against unjust laws or delayed enter
ing them upon their registers. Still more jealous was he of the
favorites upon whom he had himself lavished authority and
riches. Suspicious and distrustful both of himself and of
others, he was taciturn because he had no set purpose to an
nounce, no well-considered policy to point out. Only when his
dignity seemed to be invaded or his authority defied, was his
mind made up at once. The moment he mistrusted the Mar
shal d'Ancre, he was ready to authorize the assassination of
that courtier, that afterward he might repeat the boast of Henry
of Valois upon ridding himself of the Duke of Guise and say :
" Now indeed I am king ! " Fourteen years later, he did not
hesitate to summon to the Louvre the members of the highest
court of judicature in France, that, while the learned judges
knelt humbly before him, he might subject them to the morti
fication of seeing a leaf torn from their records by the royal
hand, and to the affront of receiving an order to substitute in
its place a paper prohibiting them from henceforth venturing to
deliberate respecting the execution of the monarch's behests.1
A sovereign at once so weak and so certain to become the
tool of ambitious and designing ministers would have been
sufficiently dangerous to the Huguenots even had he entertained
no special malevolence toward them. But Louis was
of Protest- brought up in hatred of Protestantism and of all those
that professed Protestantism. He was more averse
than even his ecclesiastical counsellors to contracting an alli
ance with the Lutherans of Germany and the North to oppose
the aggressions of the House of Hapsburg, although he could
not be ignorant that in opposition lay the true interest of
France.2 Cardinal Richelieu, prince of the Roman Church
1 This was in 1631. Bayle, s. v. Louis XIII.
2 Zorzi's observation is correct to the letter, and dates from the time, when,
La Rochelle having fallen, the question whether France should take part in the
Thirty Years' War was trembling in the balance. He says: " Conosce che per
ogni ragione umana e celeste e nato per far bilancio a Spagnoli ed ad Austriaci,
ma da ogni minima rimostranza che gli venga fatta o dall' autorita della madre,

1610 ACCESSION OF LOUIS THE THIRTEENTH 15
though he was, found it difficult to persuade his master to make
common cause with Gustavus Adolphus in the Thirty Years'
War. In the end, political considerations won the day, and
Louis found himself in the anomalous position of assisting with
men and money the "heretics " denounced by Urban the Eighth ;
but no political considerations prevented him from atoning for
any temporary and apparent recreancy to the faith by a solemn
espousal of the Roman Catholic cause in general. By a royal
declaration, in which all the customary formalities were ob
served, Louis devoted his person, his estates, his crowns and
his subjects to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and took her to be the
Protectress of the Kingdom.1
Such was the monarch to whose caprices and to the caprices
of whose favorites the Huguenots were to be subjected during
the ensuing thirty-three years — an unhappy prince who lived
in a dense atmosphere of suspicion and distrust, having not a
soul about him in whose candor, good-will, or honesty he could
repose implicit confidence, having at all times good reason to
entertain misgivings respecting the love and fidelity of mother,
wife, brother — a prince who, so far from extracting unmingled
happiness from the possession of a crown, declared that every
day of his life was marred by disappointment, and who is said
to have had continually upon his lips during his last hours the
lament of the patriarch Job, " My soul is weary of my life." 2
Meanwhile for a few years at least, another and somewhat
firmer hand held the reins of government and kept the young
king's peculiarities from coming to the light. Marie de' Medici,
his mother, was the daughter of the late Grand Duke
The queen-
mother, Ma- of Tuscany, and an Italian woman of the same family
riede* Medici.
 that had already cursed France by giving it a queen
and the regent during the minority of a boy-king. Like Catha-

o dal genio de' ministri, resta in un tratto mortificato e senza calori. " Relation
of the Venetian ambassador Zorzo Zorzi, in the documents of Ranke, Franzosis-
che Geschichte, v. 286.
1 This singular document, under date of February 10, 1638, was published in
full in the Mercure frangois, xxii. 284, etc. The curious may read the most
important provisions in Bayle, s. v. Louis XIII. See Benoist, Histoire de
l'Edit de Nantes, ii. 578.
! Bayle, ubi supra.

16 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. I
rine de' Medici, more than a half century before, she found in
the sudden death of a husband given to the love of other women,
a happy release from a condition of things under which she had
long chafed. The infelicities that had characterized her ten
years of married life were known by report to all the world, and
many a courtier had witnessed the outbreaks of her indignation
with her husband, against which even that brave but dissolute
prince being unable to stand, he consulted his quiet, if not his
safety, by a precipitate flight from her presence.1 There were
those indeed who, despite the queen's protestations of sorrow,
by no means held her guiltless of compassing Henry's death.
However that might be, the deed of Ravaillac threw into her
hands a power which the sequel proved she knew not how to
use for the best interests of France. Twenty years later the
Venetian ambassador Zorzi described her to the senate of the
republic as a woman who never forgot her fancied wrongs, who
aimed solely at pleasing herself, and who had no solicitude for
the common weal. On the other hand, he admitted that she
was generous and liberal to the extreme, loving letters and
literary men, by whom she delighted excessively in hearing
herself praised.2
The most truly representative Protestant of France, at the
period at which this history opens, was undoubtedly Philippe de
Mornay, Seigneur du Plessis Marly, and Baron de la Forest
1 Cardinal Richelieu was informed by the Duke of Sully, that he had never
seen the king and queen together for a week without a quarrel. Once, fearing
that Marie de' Medici was about to give Henry a blow, the duke lowered her
upraised arm with so much roughness that she afterward averred that Sully had
struck her. In spite of this she was grateful to him for his interference. Me-
moires du Cardinal de Richelieu (Histoire de la Mere et du Fils), Petitot edi
tion, x. 152. Sully himself gives a better idea of Henry's domestic misery,
especially in chapter 39 of the second part of his Memoires (vol. iii., p. 754
seq ) , where he relates a conversation that took place as the king and the duke
were pacing the spacious halls of the arsenal. Even the sight of the munitions
of war which his provident minister had laid up there and in the neighboring
Bastile, the one hundred cannon ready for service between which he was walk
ing, the equipment for fifteen thousand foot and three thousand horse, the one
hundred thousand cannon balls and two million pounds of powder, and the
seven millions of gold crowns in his chests — could not banish from the king's
mind the remembrance of the queen's ungovernable temper.
2 Relazione di Zorzo Zorzi, belonging to the end of 1629 or the beginning of
1630, among the documents in Rauke, Franzosische Geschicte, v. 287.

1610 ACCESSION of LOUIS THE THIRTEENTH 17
sur Sevre, commonly spoken of as Duplessis Mornay. Other
noblemen indeed were to be found professing the same religion,
whose rank was superior to his, and who could boast
Mornay, the of a more illustrious lineage and of broader posses-
estant Itates- sions. But not one among them all enjoyed so deep
and sincere consideration among his fellow-believers,
because not one superadded to the reputation of genuine and
unselfish devotion to the interests of his brethren in the faith,
intellectual abilities recognized to be of a high order, and a
calmness of judgment never so precious an endowment as in the
midst of civil commotion or among the perils of an uncertain
peace. For if there was any adviser to whose wise counsels the
Huguenots might turn for safe guidance through another minor
ity, it was the loyal and prudent statesman and soldier, whom
Henry of Navarre had, more than a score of years before,
selected for the responsible post of governor of Saumur, at the
passage of the river Loire.
Duplessis Mornay was born at Buhy, in the Isle de France,
on the fifth of November, 1549, during the reign of Henry the
Second, and was consequently older by four years than the
chivalrous prince to whose service he devoted almost his entire
life. His father, a decided Roman Catholic, caused him to be
educated in the popular faith. There would have been no lack
of opportunities for ecclesiastical promotion, had the young
man been inclined to enter a profession to which, as a younger
son and as a lad of somewhat delicate constitution, he was at one
time destined. There were prelates of influence among his near
kinsmen. A maternal uncle was successively bishop of Nantes,
and archbishop of Rheims. The prelate offered to resign the
former see in favor of his nephew. Another uncle was dean of
Beauvais, and a cousin was archbishop of Aries. But a mother's
secret instructions, reinforced by his own independent investi
gation, led Duplessis Mornay to embrace early in life the doc
trines of the Reformation.
An extraordinary thirst for letters characterized his child
hood. This was not quenched even by a serious interruption
occasioned by dangerous illness. Indefatigable in study, his
scholarship covered a wide range of subjects. He became
familiar with languages which it was not the fashion of even
2

18 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. I
the most cultivated of noblemen to undertake, and buried him
self in researches such as the most erudite alone dreamed of
making. He not only read and wrote with ease and elegance
his own native tongue and Latin, the universal language of
statesmanship and diplomacy, but mastered the difficulties of
several of the languages of central and southern Europe. His
knowledge of Greek literature and philosophy was as broad as
it was thorough. He studied the Greek of the New Testament
and the Hebrew of the Old with as much assiduity as if he in
tended to become a professed theologian. He was proficient
in law, and wrote as persuasively concerning international obli
gations as regarding the truth of the Christian religion. His
culture was broadened by travels, extensive for the times in
which he lived, and by a sojourn for the sake of study at Hei
delberg, at Padua, and at Venice. If in more than one place he
nearly fell into the prisons of the Inquisition, he felt himself
more than recompensed for the danger encountered by the
opportunities he enjoyed for becoming acquainted with the
constitutions and politics of foreign states, and securing the
friendship of scholars and statesmen like Hubert Languet, and
Sir Francis Walsingham.
On his return to his native land, he wrote, when barely
twenty-three years of age, a masterly plea for the justice and
expediency of waging war against the Spaniard in defence of
the Low Countries. It was the paper which Admiral Gaspard
de Coligny presented to King Charles the Ninth, a month or
two before the butchery of St. Bartholomew's Day — a document
so clear in its statements and so forcible in its deductions, that
De Thou has not hesitated to incorporate a summary of its ar
guments in his immortal history of his times. Duplessis Mor
nay barely escaped with his life from the Parisian massacre,
but his experience of the perfidy of one of the Valois kings of
France did not discourage him from the attempt to induce that
His trea- king's successor and the last of his house to enter upon
memsofdi- a course which would have secured his realm from all
thenpower further aggression on the part of Philip the Second.
of spam. Duplessis Mornay's treatise " on the means of dimin
ishing the power of the Spaniard," submitted to Henry the
Third in the spring of 1584, contained the sketch of a project not

1610 ACCESSION OF LOUIS THE THIRTEENTH 19
only bold but broad and comprehensive.1 Had the sensual king
to whom it was addressed condescended to abandon the inor
dinate pursuit of low pleasures, and to listen for a while to the
voice of patriotic Frenchmen, in place of the suggestions of the
paid pensioners of the king of Spain, it is not unlikely that he
might have dispelled the gathering cloud of the League, already
big with disaster to his kingdom and to himself, that he might
have saved the lives of countless thousands of his subjects, and
that he might have secured for France a position in European
affairs more proud than that won by the arms of Louis the
Fourteenth. The plan embraced a general league with the
states opposed to the pretensions of the Hapsburg princes —
England, Protestant Germany, Denmark, Netherlands, Turkey.
The addition of the vote of the reforming Archbishop Gebhard
Truchsess of Cologne to the votes of the three Protestant
electors afforded an opportunity, which had never heretofore
presented itself, of employing their numerical preponderance to
exclude the House of Austria from the future possession of the
imperial dignity in Germany. The alliance with Denmark
would close the Sound at Elsinore against the Spaniard, who
from the Baltic obtained grain to provision his troops, wood
and pitch for his navies, saltpetre for the manufacture of his
powder. So important was the Danish friendship, that Philip
had recently offered four hundred thousand crowns in hand paid
to conciliate the amity of the king and to close the northern
passage to the Dutch. Alliance with Turkey would open a new
and shorter line of trade with the Indies, and undermine the
commercial advantages possessed by Spain. To secure great
results only a small expenditure of men and money was neces
sary. Four thousand arquebusiers and five hundred horse
would enable Archbishop Gebhard to hold out against his
enemies, and, possibly, secure the imperial crown of Germany
for the French monarch, when the throne should first become
vacant. The Dutch might be effectually assisted in their des
perate struggle by cutting off the communications between the
Spanish troops in the Low Countries and Italy through Bur-
1 " Discours au roy Henry III. sur les moyens de diminuer l'Espaignol, 24
avril 1584," Memoires de Duplessis Mornay, ii. 580-593.

20 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. I
gundy; while the English with their ships guarded the Channel
and precluded intercourse between" Spain and her revolted
provinces by sea. An expedition from France might make a
descent upon Minorca ; a second might seize Gibraltar, and
give Philip so much to do at home as to restrain him from
troubling his neighbors. While the possession of the Mediter
ranean sea was thus disputed to his fleets in the East, the
isthmus of Panama might be occupied by another force, and a
formidable bar might be established to the supremacy of Spain
in the western waters. Altogether it was a grand conception,
possibly too grand for execution in all its parts, yet sufficiently
practicable, had the effort to realize it been honestly and vigo
rously made by him upon whose will the attempt necessarily
depended, to change the character of European history for many
generations. If France could have been spared the horrors of
the civil wars of the close of the sixteenth century, it is not be
yond the bounds of possibility that Germany, also, might have
been delivered from the ruin and butchery that ran riot
throughout her fair dominions for full thirty years in the seven
teenth. Later, Duplessis Mornay fought by the side of Henry of
Navarre in the wars of the League. He distinguished himself
for his courage at Coutras and at Ivry. Before long, however,
the Bearnese discovered that, while he had many gentlemen and
captains equally brave and fearless upon the battle-field with
Philippe de Mornay, he had no counsellor on whose advice he
could so implicitly rely. Moreover Mornay's was the facile pen
which could best be trusted with the delicate task of giving to
foreign princes and to the world at large, in the most convincing
form, the justification of the actions of Henry of Navarre and
the Huguenots. He was therefore accorded the responsible
duty of drawing up much the greater part of the important
Protestant state documents of the last quarter of the sixteenth
century. One other Huguenot alone might have competed for these
honors. Theodore Agrippa d'Aubigne was no mean scholar.
He was well versed in classical lore, and by nature able to
put his literary acquisitions to excellent use. He was even
more precocious than Duplessis Mornay ; for if we may believe

1610 ACCESSION OF LOUIS THE THIRTEENTH 21
his own assertion, at six years of age he already read in four
languages, and eighteen months later he was translating the
Duplessis Crito of Plato, spurred on by his father's promise that
toastodywith" B^s version should be printed with the portrait of the
Agrippa6 child-author for a frontispiece. But the restless spirit
d'Aubigne. 0f D'Aubigne could ill brook the confinement of
study, at a time when the air was full of tales of war and ad
venture ; and his midnight escape from his preceptor's care,
when he ran, clad in a simple shirt, to join the recruiting Hu
guenot band, was a formal renunciation of systematic learning.
He was but seventeen or eighteen years old at the time. It
was inevitable that Agrippa d'Aubigne's scholastic attainments
should be less extensive than those of Duplessis Mornay, as his
intellectual grasp was less firm and comprehensive. If D'Au
bigne's style was superior in some regards to that of Duplessis
Mornay, bearing in every sentence the inimitable marks of true
literary genius, it was also less even and correct, and less adapt
ed to be the vehicle for the quiet and cogent exposition of
important truth. A brilliant and effective pleader, the southern
Huguenot could never disguise his partisanship, and seemed
always to be attempting to maintain the cause for which he
held a brief. But Duplessis Mornay, with a calmness more
characteristic of northern regions, spoke and wrote as a judge,
whose dispassionate nature rose superior to the conflicting tides
of animosity and prejudice, and pronounced the ultimate deci
sion of truth upon the matters in controversy. D'Aubigne's
intellect was keen and incisive, his expression pithy, his striking
phrases lingered longer in the memory of men ; but Duplessis
Mornay's logical statements and orderly arguments made the
more lasting impression upon those to whom they were ad
dressed. There were fewer of his witty sayings current, and
the sharpness of his tongue was less dreaded ; but he could, at
least, congratulate himself that he had never made an enemy by
the severity of his language. Thus it was that while D'Au
bigne" alienated even his royal master by his trenchant wit,
Duplessis Mornay retained the confidence and affection of
Henry the Fourth to the very end of his days, despite the plain
truths and even the reproof which, as a counsellor, he had more
than once been compelled to utter in the king's ear.

22 THE HUGUENONS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. I
It was no mere accident that when Henry of Navarre re
ceived from his cousin, Henry of Valois, the city of Saumur,
He is a - as a Pledge of the truce into which thej had. entered>
emoreofS°v" anc* as a sa*e crossing-place on the Loire, he intrusted
iEur. its safe-keeping to Duplessis Mornay. Saumur had
remained in the Huguenot nobleman's hands for twenty-one
years, at the time of the king's sudden demise. From this, the
second city in importance in the County of Anjou,1 Philippe de
Mornay exerted an influence in many ways unlike that to which
any other subject of the French crown could aspire. By the
Roman Catholic party he was regarded as the truly represent
ative Protestant of his time, for his virtues were the most per
fect embodiment of the doctrines professed by the Reformers ;
while the Huguenots yielded him a respect so sincere, and de
ferred so generally to his opinions and wishes, that he gained
with the masses of the people the complimentary surname of
is snrnamed " the PoPe °f the Protestants." To the strong and
thehprPotest°£ stately castle of Saumur, that great and massive
ants." structure with lofty round turrets but little changed,
which still from an eminence frowns upon the modern town and
commands the long bridge connecting the northern suburb,
sensible men, Huguenot and Roman Catholic alike, looked for
wise and prudent counsels, with firm assurance that their ex
pectations would not be disappointed. A patron of arts and
letters, the founder, in his little domain, of the Academie or
University destined to acquire the highest distinction among
the educational establishments of the Protestants, he was from
conviction not less than through the force of circumstances, the
most steadfast and trustworthy advocate of peace.
Of this he had early an opportunity to give proof.
The queen-mother had no sooner heard of the tragic death of
her husband than she seized the reins of government before the
knowledge of the disaster that had befallen France had had
time to be noised abroad. In this prompt action she found
her most valuable coadjutor in the Duke of Epernon. Free
1 " C'est, Sire, laseconde ville de vostre duche d' Anjou." Duplessis Mornay to
the king, March 23, 1615, when announcing the destruction caused by the great
freshet which had carried away the excellent bridges. Memoires, ed. of 1652,
iii., 742.

1610 ACCESSION OF LOUIS THE THIRTEENTH 23
that intriguing nobleman may possibly have been of partici
pation in the plot for the assassination of Henry the Fourth,
Marie de' Me- despite the strong conviction of many men well sit-
nlzea afrf- u£lted for arriving at a true decision ; but certain it is
gent. that he could not have taken measures more steadily
or more successfully, had he been prepared in every particular
for this precise emergency. He assisted the queen-mother both
by word and by deed. Marie de' Medici had been appointed
by her husband temporary regent during his prospective ab
sence at the seat of war. No better excuse could have offered
itself for conferring upon her the regency during the minority
of her son. True, the ancient custom of the kingdom gave that
honorable and responsible distinction to the nearest prince of
the blood, as the person most likely to feel a deep interest in
the welfare of the realm, in preference to a princess always an
alien by birth, and certain to be divided in her attachment to
the land of her adoption, by reason of her more deeply seated
affection for the land of her birth. But of the only four princes
of the blood outside of the queen's children, not one was in a
position to assert his rights. The Prince of Conde was in exile
at Milan, having been forced to leave France that his beautiful
wife might escape the mad passion which had disgraced the last
months of Henry the Fourth. The Count of Soissons with his
young son was indeed in France, but at too great a distance from
Paris to return in season. The Prince of Conty alone was
present in the capital ; but whatever rights he possessed he
was too timid or too negligent to assert.1 A prince whose hear
ing was imperfect, who spoke with difficulty, whose health was
every way infirm, and who was almost incapacitated for manag
ing his own affairs, was not likely to display much anxiety to
take upon himself the troublesome task of governing a nation.2
1 " Contius, princeps sanguinis, qui turn in aula erat, per metum aut negligen-
tiam silet, jurique renuntiat si quod habuit." G. B. Gramond, Historiarum
Gallise ab excessu Henrici IV. libri xviii. (Amsterdam, 1653), 5.
2 Ch. Bernard, Histoire du roy Louis XIII., i. 8, describes Conty well as
one "qui avoit de si grandes incommoditez de 1'ouTe, de la parole, et de la
sante, que ne pouvant suffire a ses affaires propres, il ne pouvoit pas avoir le
gouvernement d'autruy." Cardinal Richelieu, when mentioning Conty's death,
which occurred four years later (August 13, 1614) sums up the poor prince's
misfortunes in this fashion : " II etoit si begue qu'il Stoit quasi muet, et n' avoit

24 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. I
The Parliament of Paris, having been compelled to lend its
spacious hall for the great feast to be given in honor of the
queen's solemn entry into the capital on the ensuing Sunday,
was holding its sessions temporarily in the Convent of the
Augustinian friars. It was now hastily summoned. The lead
ing judges were easily induced to further the queen-mother's
designs. In little more than two or three hours after Henry
had breathed his last, the highest court of judicature in France
issued a formal decree declaring that the entire administration
of affairs had devolved upon his widow during the minority of
the young king. On the very next day, Saturday, the fifteenth of
May, 1610, Louis, attended by his mother, by Chancellor Sillery
and by other officers of state, was received by the judges of
parliament, all attired in their red gowns, and held
his first -lit his first lit de justice. In order that the arrangements
made without consulting him by his mother and by
parliament might have all the advantage of seeming to emanate
from him, the boy-king was made to repeat a short sentence
that had been taught him, wherein he authorized the chan
cellor to declare his will respecting the matters in hand. By
the universal consent of the nobles and all others present, the
queen-mother was confirmed in the powers which she had
seized. Only one circumstance occurred to mar the complete
satisfaction of the audience. The judges in drawing up the
formula for the chancellor to read, had taken good care to
insert a clause wherein the king declared that he had appointed
his. mother regent " in accordance with the parliament's decree
given on the previous day." The wily chancellor when he
came to read the paper aloud, as the duty of his office com
pelled him to do, is said to have "omitted purposely words
which, being pronounced in so august a presence, would have
seemed to be an official confirmation on the part of the king
and the highest officers of the crown, of the parliament's right
to take part in the selection of a regent." Sillery's excuse was
a lame one, that the omission was due to a slip of memory ; but
parliament took good care that the objectionable words should
appear in the official records of the transaction.1
pas plus de sens que de parole." Memoires (Histoire de la Mere et du Fils),
x. 350. ' Gramond, p. 7.

1610 ACCESSION OF LOUIS THE THIRTEENTH 25
One Huguenot alone there was in Paris who might, it was
thought, by his prompt and energetic interference, either have
frustrated the queen's designs, or himself assumed so impor
tant a part as to secure a guarantee for the protection of his
own interests and the interests of his fellow Protestants. The
The Duke Duke of Sully, Superintendent of the Finances, and
of suiiy. ^ iea(jing statesman in Henry's council, held at his
master's death the important post of governor of the Bas-
tile. As such and as grand master of the artillery and superin
tendent of the fortifications, he would seem to have had the
fortunes of the city and of the new king at his disposal. There
were reasons, however, based upon his character and previous
history that rendered it impossible for him to obtain a com
manding position at the present juncture.
Maximilian of Bethune, Marquis of Rosny, whom the late
king, four years before his death, created Duke of Sully with the
rank of a peer of the realm, offers us a character as full
Inconsisten- £ . . '
ties of hie of inconsistencies and contradictions as was the . char-
character. . . .#
acter of his royal master himself. Among the courtiers
there was no one that surpassed him in pliancy or in inflexibil
ity ; for he resisted the monarch's determinations with as little
compunction as he lent himself to the accomplishment of his
majesty's whims. His occasional condescensions surprise us
no less than his more frequent exhibitions of opposition to
Henry's will. At one time he is the ready tool of the king in
breaking up the marnage arrangements between Catharine of
Bourbon and her cousin, the Count of Soissons ; and in the
accomplishment of his task, which requires that he shall obtain
and destroy the written promises which the lovers had inter
changed, he is compelled to stoop to actions as mean as they are
dishonorable. At another time he braves the royal displeasure
and incurs the undying hatred of mistresses supposed to be all-
powerful with the licentious prince, by interposing to rescue
Henry from the results of his own folly. He is determined that
no one of the frail women with whom Henry has consorted
shall sit as queen of France in place of Margaret of Valois. He
braves Gabrielle d'Estrees to her face, and in the king's de
clared preference of his disinterested counsellor to his mistress,
the latter reads the death-warrant of her cherished hopes.

26 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. I
When Henry has gone so far in his imprudence as to hand the
Marquise of Verneuil a document conditionally pledging him
to marry her should she bear him a son, Maximilian does not
hesitate, when he gets possession of the paper, to tear it in pieces
before his master's very eyes, and accompanies the act with
severe and impolitic remonstrances on Henry's conduct. Only
the confidence with which Sully has inspired the king in the
sincerity and unswerving fidelity of his purpose, saves the min
ister from instant disgrace.
If the devotion of the duke to the prince whose fortunes he
had so long followed serves as the single clew to the maze of his
political acts, we shall be compelled to look elsewhere for the
means of reconciling the contradictions of his personal life.
He had almost in so many words expressed the opinion that the
Huguenot king must abjure the faith in which he had been
brought up, if he would make good his title to the throne of
France. Yet Sully himself remained constant in his profession
of. the Protestant religion to the end of his days. His exposi
tion of the arguments for and against the royal change to the
Roman Catholic communion, as set forth by his own pen or by
his secretaries, exhibits so little of conscientious conviction that
the reader imagines that he can hear the cynical laugh that ac
companied the spoken words and can detect the scarcely con
cealed scepticism of the speaker even as to the reality of any
future state of rewards and punishments. Yet for himself
Sully refused to listen to any inducements that might be offered
to him by Henry, and preferred to die, as he had lived,
warmProt- a Protestant. It would be pleasant could we believe
that there was some show at least of cordial attach
ment either to the doctrines, or to the forms of worship, of the
church of his choice. But here again disappointment awaits
us. A more careless or irreverent worshipper could scarcely
have been found in the French Reformed Churches. The man
who represents himself as having declined the offer of the sword
of High Constable of France for himself, and of the hand of one
of the king's daughters for his son — advantages that would have
dazzled many another nobleman in France and many a prince
beyond its borders — and this simply because he could not bring
himself to increase in honors, or in goods, or in dignities at the

1610 ACCESSION OF LOUIS THE THIRTEENTH 27
expense of his conscience, at the same time declaring that
should he ever have occasion to change his religion, he would do
it in consequence of having been convinced, and not through
ambition, avarice, or vanity 1 — this very man behaved in a man
ner betokening contempt rather than respect for the worship of
God's house.2 He almost always came late to the services held
in his castle, and took the honorable place reserved for him af
ter having made the congregation wait long for his appearance.
He remained seated and with his hat upon his head even in
prayer time, and, for the most part, was more engaged playing
with a little dog which he held upon his knees, than in listening
to the words of the service. Such conduct was not edifying,
though it must be confessed, it was little worse than that of the
Duke of Bouillon, who himself informs us that during his em
bassy to England, in 1612, he attended divine worship with
James the First, in order to see the ceremonies of the estab
lished church, and spent the whole time that the sermon, and,
perhaps, the services, lasted, in giving his majesty a history of
everything that occurred in France pertaining to the Protestants
from the assembly of Saumur down.3 A gradual improvement of
the manners of the Duke of Sully is said to have been noticeable
in his last years, thanks to the faithful admonitions of a young
minister. He is even stated to have submitted himself to the
discipline of a regularly organized church instituted in his
castle, and to have accepted the office of an elder and dis
charged its functions until his death. But the fruits of his
tardy piety, whatever its character may have been, belong to
his old age and to a period much later than that which is now
under consideration.4 Not only did the Protestants find great
fault with Sully's lukewarmness in matters of religion, but they
were scandalized by the fact that when writing to the pope, he
1 Memoires de Sully, c. 177. — One need not be so incredulous as Marbault,
secretary of Duplessis Mornay, in his " Remarques sur les Memoires des Sages
et Royalles CBconomies d'Estat ' ' passim, to entertain some suspicion that the duke
is attributing to Henry greater promises than that prince ever made, or, if he
made them, ever thought of fulfilling.
2 Benoist, ubi infra.
3 Autograph Journal of Bouillon now in the archives of the Duke of La Tre-
mouille, quoted in Schickler, Eglises du Refuge en Angleterre, i. 404.
4 Benoist, Histoire de l'Edit de Nantes, ii. 536.

28 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. I
addressed him as " Your Holiness ; " quite as a Roman Catho
lic would have done.1 When the duke was sent as ambassador
to congratulate James the First on his accession, the king took
the duke to task for this, and expressed his opinion that to des
ignate the Roman pontiff thus, was an insult to Almighty God,
in whom alone holiness resides. Sully defended himself by
alleging the example of a number of princes who lay claim to
crowns and kingdoms the possession of which is in other hands.
In order not to offend them needlessly, said he, we do not hesi
tate to give them the title which they appropriate to them
selves.3 But whatever may be thought of the depth of Sully's re
ligious convictions, there can be no doubt of the immense ser
vice he had rendered to France in every one of the of-
Bemcrafto fices which it had been the king's pleasure to confer
upon him. A country well nigh ruined by the slaughter
of tens of thousands of its inhabitants, in the course of protract
ed civil wars, and by the destruction of scores of towns and
villages, a country whose fertile fields lay fallow, whose trade
languished, whose manufactures were prostrate, called for a man
of large and liberal views to start it upon the slow and painful
road to recovery. In the few years in which Sully was per
mitted to control its resources, he brought order out of confu
sion. The payment of the interest upon the enormous public
debt was provided for. Husbandry received great marks of en
couragement. The heavy burdens resting upon the tiers etat
were somewhat readjusted, so that they might more easily be
borne. The rapacity of the nobles was checked by a fearless
minister whose stern integrity was above reproach ; by a minis
ter who cared little whom he offended by rough words and by a
remorseless exposure of all plots concocted to rob the treasury
committed to his charge.
The avenues of commerce received due attention. Great roads
were laid out, lined with rows of stately elms. A system of
canals was projected, and partially undertaken, to unite the two
seas and bring the remote interior of France into direct com-

1 Benoist, Histoire de l'Edit de Nantes, ii. 298.
2 Memoires de Sully, iii. 392.

1610 ACCESSION OF LOUIS THE THIRTEENTH 29
munication with tide-water. The capital was embellished with
imposing structures and strengthened by formidable works of
defence. New streets were opened. At least one bridge com
pleted by Sully remains to our days bearing witness to the wise
forethought and fruitful activity of Henry's great minister.1
But the knife that pierced the king's heart cut short the
duke's beneficent career. The suddenness of the calamity that
Hisirresoiu- befell France deprived the prudent counsellor, for the
HeSrf'semur- time' of nis accustomed self-possession. In this,
der- Sully's experience was the experience of many an
other devoted friend of the crown. His first impulse was to
hasten to the Louvre and take the young heir to the throne and
the queen-mother under his protection. In fact he sallied forth
from the Bastile at the head of a band of horse to carry the
plan into execution. But midway on his ride, at the spot
known as the Croix du Trahoir, he received tidings that changed
his purpose. A party of courtiers whom he met and exhorted
to stand faithfully by the queen and her son, retorted by in
forming him that it was they that were demanding the promise
of loyalty from others. To the excited mind of the duke, fully
aware that his political course, not less than the asperity of his
manners, had made him a host of enemies, the words had an
ominous sound. He fancied that his honors and dignities, pos
sibly his life and the lives of his fellow Huguenots, were in
danger from a conspiracy the extent of which it was impossible
as yet to ascertain. A fear as irresistible as those panic terrors
which sometimes seize great bodies of soldiers, took possession
of the stout-hearted hero of many a battle. He rode precipi
tately back to the great fortress, as if fleeing before an enemy,
and ordered the ponderous gates to be closed and barred, as if
expecting an immediate siege. It is even said that he de
spatched companies of soldiers to seize and bring in the bread
that they could lay hold of at the markets and in the bakers'
shops, lest his beleaguered garrison might be starved out of their
stronghold, and that he hastened to send a messenger to his
son-in-law, young Henry of Rohan, then in Champagne, bidding
1 La France Protestante, in the article upon the Duke of Sully, ii. 484-6, has
well sketched this great man's services to France. See the Memoires de Sully
(ed. of 1663), iv. 336, seq., and elsewhere.

30 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. I
him march toward Paris with the six thousand Swiss under his
command.1 Yet the duke's alarm, if baseless, was by no means
unreasonable. Why might not the occurrences of thirty-eight
years before be re-enacted ? A Huguenot who remembered only
too well his own narrow escape from butchery on the eventful
St. Bartholomew's Day, might be pardoned for looking for a
repetition of the horrors of that day. Whether welcomed or
scouted, the idea of another such massacre suggested itself also
doubtless to some Roman Catholics. Of this the grim pleasan
try or scandalous outrage, whichever it may be styled, that was
soon after reported from the district of Cotentin, is a sufficient
proof. The Roman Catholic Baron of St. Poix met upon the
Eouo-h teas- n^§nway ^our Poor Huguenots returning from divine
bar^oVst worsnip a* Grousi, just after tidings came of the mur-
Poix- derous act of Ravaillac. Upon the instant he stopped
them with the rough greeting : " Die you must ! The king is
dead ! " He ordered them to kneel upon the ground and to re
peat their last prayer — In manus tuas. Three of the terrified
peasants complied ; the fourth stoutly refused and received a
beating for his obstinacy.2
It was not until the following day that the Duke of Sully, af
ter being repeatedly pressed to come to the Louvre, perceived
his mistake and ventured to make his obeisance to the young
king. He was not ill received, but he had missed whatever op
portunity he might otherwise have had to shape the course of
events. Marshal d'Estrees asserts in his Memoires that, in a
studied speech, Sully tried to make it appear to the queen and
her son that he had always dissuaded Henry from the war
upon which he was about to enter at the time of his death, and
that, in confirmation of the truth of the statement, the Hugue
not appealed to Vendome, the king's illegitimate son, who was
present, and who, he pretended, had several times heard him ex
press himself in opposition to the king's purpose. It is highly
' Memoires de Bassompierre (Edition of Michaud et Poujoulat), 72 ; Memoires
de Richelieu (Histoire de la Mere et du Fils), x. 182-4. It was Bassompierre
himself that gave Sully the disquieting reply. Memoires du Marechal d'Estrees
(Petitoted.), 188.
2 Duplessis Mornay to Villarnoul, June 3, 1610, Memoires de D. M. (Edition
of 1652), iii. 245.

1610 ACCESSION OF LOUIS THE THIRTEENTH 31
improbable that Sully stooped to so mean and unprofitable a
falsehood.1 But however this may be, the question of the re
gency had been settled without consulting a single Huguenot,
and it was not in the nature of the case that so well known a
Huguenot, and a Huguenot withal so heartily detested as Sully,
should be invited to retain permanently the position of in
fluence which he had occupied under Henry the Fourth. His
downfall, though delayed for a few months, could not be
Downfall of avei'ted. True, the duke had been one of the most ac-
smiy. tive promoters of the marriage to which Marie de' Me
dici owed her present eminence. But the queen-mother had
long borne with impatience the haughtiness of his manners, and
could now no longer brook his close economy. For Sully, as
treasurer, did not conceal his disgust at the reckless expendi
ture of funds laboriously collected for the prosecution of the
wars that were to have placed new laurels on the brow of his
late master. Unhappily, if Marie de' Medici had made her own
no other part of Henry's policy, she had at least learned the
dangerous secret of purchasing with substantial equivalents the
support of the doubtful or disloyal. Henry had been prodigal
of money and dignities when he sought to secure the submission
of a Mayenne or a Mercosur ; the new regent was not less lavish
in dispensing her rewards to the greedy nobles whose acquies
cence was essential to her government.
The single instance of the Count of Soissons, a prince of the
blood, may suffice for illustration. This nobleman left Paris in
disgust some time before Henry's death, because the monarch
insisted that the wife of Vendome, his illegitimate son, should
wear a gown sprinkled with fleurs de lis, a privilege to which
only the princesses of the blood were entitled. On hearing of
the king's assassination, Soissons hurried back, only to learn
upon his arrival at Saint Cloud, that the regency had been con
ferred upon the queen-mother. His consequent discontent was
great, but short-lived. He asked and received the following
'Marshal d'Estrees was confessedly an enemy of Sully. Henry had com
pelled D'Estrees's father to resign the office of grand master of artillery, that he
might confer it on Sully. The son never forgot the injury, and, in his Me
moires, did not hesitate to show his gratf [ 'iion at having been able to contrib
ute effectively to Sully's dismissal.

32 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. 1
compensation for his wounded honor : a yearly pension of fifty
thousand crowns, the governorship of the great province of Nor
mandy, the reversion of the governorship of Dauphiny and of
the office of grand-master for his son, a boy four or five years of
age, and the payment of a debt of two hundred thousand
crowns which he owed to the Duke of Savoy for the purchase
of the duchy of Montcalier in Savoy.1
A spendthrift princess like Marie de' Medici had no use for
so frugal a treasurer as Sully. His disgrace was inevitable.
The crisis came early in the ensuing year. The queen
avoided the appearance of removing the duke from his offices
as governor of the Bastile and superintendent of the finances,
by pretending to accept the offer of his services which he had
himself made. The surprise of Sully was not inferior to that
which a Spanish grandee might experience should the traveller
from other lands take in their most literal sense his lavish re
quests that his guest should consider his own the host's house
and lands. He replied to the queen's message in a long letter
setting forth in some detail the services he had rendered
France and complaining of the treatment he received in return.2
None the less, however, did he deem it advisable to yield to
the polite request of the regent, lest the more humiliating fate
might await him of summary removal. The Huguenots, for the
most part, condemned his too ready acquiescence, taking the
ground that the duke should not have yielded up advantages in
which his fellow Protestants had some common interest, with
out consulting one of their political assemblies. Sully, in turn
attempted to justify himself in their eyes, and posing, for the
first time, as a sufferer for his faith, gravely submitted for their
advice the question whether he ought to require at the hands
of the government a compensation in money or in dignities, for
1 Memoires de Richelieu (Histoire de la Mere et du Fils), x. 189-192, 208.
2 The text of the letter is given in the Mercure francois, ii. 70-74. It must
be confessed that Sully makes a neat plea for himself, even if he does not suc
ceed in extricating himself from his awkward dilemma. "Que si vostre ma-
jeste m' accuse de lui avoir moi-mesme offert tout ce que je possedois, je le
confesse : Je ne nie point que souvent je n'aye assenre vostre majeste, que
tout ce qui dependoit de moi, dependoit d'elle, et ma vie mesme. Mais certes,
Madame, j' advoueray aussi qu'alors je ne pensois pas encore, que faire telles
offres a son prince fust un crime suffisant pour estre despouille de ses dignitez."

1610 ACCESSION OF LOUIS THE THIRTEENTH 33
the offices which had been taken from him. His appeal, to use
the apt remark of Elie Benoist,1 would have been very affecting
had he been able to join to all the things to which he called at
tention, a single good turn that he had done to his religion and
to the churches of France during the period when he had the
power to serve them.
Meantime the queen-mother found no reason to complain of
the deportment of the Huguenots at this grave crisis. Du
plessis Mornay lost no time in assuring her of the loyal
the governor intentions of his fellow-believers, and in making good
of Saumur . ° ,°
and the Hu- his assurances, by exhorting all whom he could influ
ence to a hearty submission to the new government.
He wrote to the young king. He wrote to Marie de' Medici.
He urged the deputy-general of the churches, M. de Villarnoul,
his son-in-law, to impress upon the new regent, that the Prot
estants draw no subtle distinctions in the matter of loyalty.
Of whatever religion these may be, the Huguenots hold their
kings to be given of God, and believe the persons of their kings
to be sacred.2 He gathered the burgesses of the city committed
to his charge, and urged Roman Catholics and Protestants alike
to mutual forbearance and charity. " Our king," he said, " the
greatest king that Christendom has produced in five hundred
years, the survivor of so many hardships, dangers, sieges,
battles, and attempts at assassination, has fallen at length by
the knife of a wretch, who in an instant plunges this whole State
in mourning and bathes all good Frenchmen in tears." He
took an oath in the presence of the assembly, and called upon
all his hearers to take an oath, to render faithful service to the
young prince and his mother. Then he exclaimed : " Let not
the words Huguenot and Papist be spoken among us. These
words are forbidden by our edicts. Would also that the ani
mosities connected with them were extinguished in our hearts !
Were there not an edict in the world, if we are Frenchmen, if
we love our country, our families, ourselves, those animosities
should henceforth be effaced from our souls. We need now
1 Histoire de l'fidit de Nantes, ii. 28.
2 " Ceux de la religion ne subtilisent point en l'obei'sance de leurs roys," etc.
Memoire des poincts que M. de Villarnoul doit toucher a, la Royne, in M6m. de
Duplessis Mornay (Ed. of 1653), iii. 252.
3

34 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. I
but one badge. Whoever proves himself a good Frenchman
shall be my fellow-citizen, shall be my brother. I conjure you
all then to embrace, to have but one heart and one soul. We
are small and our city may be of little consideration ; but let
us be ambitious of this praise, that despite the wickedness of
the age, we set our neighbors a good example of loyalty to our
kings, of love to our country, indeed of care for our own wel
fare." x
Nor did the new government delay its recognition of the
rights guaranteed to the Protestants and its profession of a
sincere purpose to maintain inviolate every pledge given by
Henry the Fourth. One of the first documents to
firms the which the child-king was made to affix his signature,
Nantes (May was a solemn Declaration ratifying and confirming the
Edict of Nantes. The document is the more worthy
of attention, that it stands at the head of a long series of papers
wherein Louis the Thirteenth and his son freely and unreserv
edly applaud and re-enact the great law of Henry the Fourth.
The Declaration of the twenty-second of May, 1610, began by
narrating the experience of former kings, who had discovered at
their cost that the fury and violence of arms, so far from serv
ing the purpose of bringing back their Protestant subjects to
the pale of the Roman Catholic Church, had rather proved det
rimental to that purpose. It affirmed that the observance of
the Edict of Nantes, published by Henry the Fourth, had intro
duced an assured peace between all his subjects, a peace which
had continued without interruption until the present time.
Wherefore — " although that Edict is perpetual and irrevocable,
and consequently has no need of being confirmed by a new
Declaration," yet to the end that his subjects should be fully
persuaded of the royal intention to require the strict observance
of a law issued for the welfare and quiet of all his subjects, " as
well Catholics as of the said pretended Reformed religion," his
majesty declared it his good pleasure to order that the Edict
of Nantes, in all its points and articles, together with the other
articles granted to the Protestants, and the regulations and
1 Propos tenus par M. du Plessis en l'assemblee de la ville de Saumur, le 19
may, 1610, Ibid., ii. 227-229.

1610 ACCESSION OF LOUIS THE THIRTEENTH 35
decrees given respecting the interpretation or execution of the
Edict, and in consequence thereof, be inviolably maintained ;
and that all persons contravening its provisions be severely
punished, as disturbers of the public peace. The monarch's
guardians could not have made him give more unequivocal
testimony to the propriety and utility of the great law of his
father, to its perpetual and irrevocable character, or to the sin
cerity of his intention to retain it in full force.1
But if the queen was profuse of words of assurance which she
put in the mouth of her son, she was less prodigal of acts that
m might have had some substantial value. With Henry
The recent
abandons the the Fourth's death, his noble policy, his large plans,
Henry the his very sympathies had also died. The court of the
Italian princess found itself with a war upon its hands,
but with no heart to prosecute that war. Success in such a
campaign as that upon which Henry was entering when stricken
by Ravaillac's blade would be worse than defeat ; since success
must strengthen the power of the Protestants and weaken the
power of the Roman Catholics of Germany. Did not Father
Gonthier boldly declare from the pulpit that the captains who
recruited troops for the war against Cleves were acting in de
fiance of conscience, and that all the shots that might be fired
would lodge in the heart of our Lord himself ? Did not two
Jesuits visit Marshal La Chastre, when on the point of leaving
Paris to take command of the army, and warn him that he
was doomed to eternal fires, if he ventured to go ? 2 This is no
place to narrate in detail the disgraceful story of the tergiversa
tion of the French court, of hypocritical asseverations on the
part of the queen that she intended to carry out her husband's
designs, of lying professions made to the representatives of the
allies of the late king by Chancellor Sillery and Secretary Vil-
leroy, which deceived neither the diplomatists themselves nor
the outside world.3 From French, the court of Marie de' Me-
1 Text of the Declaration of May 22, 1610, in Benoist, ii., Preuves 3-5.
2 Remonstrance & messieurs de la court sur l'assassinat du roy, Memoires de
Duplessis Mornay, xi. 84, 85. This entire paper is a startling impeachment of
the Jesuits at the bar of public opinion.
3 See the admirable account of the sequel to the death of Henry IV. by Mot
ley, Life and Death of John of Barneveld, i. 227, seq.

36 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. I
diei had become all Spanish. The military preparations which
were kept up for a time came to little, and were not intended
The court aii to accomplish any more. The army in Dauphiny,
Spanish. under command of Lesdiguieres, was disbanded. It
would never do for a Huguenot to lead the soldiers of the Very
Christian king over the Alps and into Italy. Another Hugue
not, the Duke of Bouillon, deemed himself entitled to conduct
the German campaign, and was actually at Sedan ready to
enter upon his duties. His claim was ignored, and the honor
was conferred upon Marshal la Chastre, an old general of the
League, who, if inferior to the duke in military ability, was at
least orthodox in the faith, and more in sympathy with the new
government.1 Marshal la Chastre did, indeed, reach the siege
of Juliers, with his eight thousand foot soldiers and six or seven
hundred horse,2 in time to see the city surrender to Prince
Maurice of Orange ; but his coming was unwelcome and effected
nothing that would not have came about without his intervention.
And this was the end of all the great Henry's magnificent
schemes. His late enemies were now the dearest friends of his
widow. The Duke of Epernon, whom he both distrusted and
hated, had become all powerful. And Epernon so contrived as
that the trial of Ravaillac should disclose no trace of the mind
that had planned, the hand that had arranged the details of the
foul plot against France's best king. The Spanish ambassador
and the papal nuncio were no longer strangers to the counsels
of the Louvre, but the most intimate of the friends of the house.
Henry had died with his heart full of schemes whereby he
hoped to humble the Spanish crown, author or promoter of all the
wars that had kept him busy before and since his accession to
the throne. His widow had scarcely donned the habiliments in-
^ . ^ tended to betoken grief, before she was casting in her
Tne proiect-
ed Spanish mind how best to bring about, not a single marriage, but
marriages. _ °
two marriages between Henry's children and the grand
children of his worst enemy, Philip the Second. The Duke of
Feria, commissioned to condole with her upon her recent loss,
1 Memoires du Cardinal de Richelieu, x. 218, 219 ; Memoires du Marechal
d' Estrees, 192, 193.
2 M. de Seaux to Duplessis Mornay, June 20, 1610, Memoires de Duplessis
Mornay, xi. 101.

1611 THE POLITICAL ASSEMBLY OF SAUMUR 37
was the first to broach the subject of the union of Louis to the
Infanta, Anne of Austria, and of the Prince of the Asturias to'
Henry's eldest daughter, and the queen readily entertained the
project.1 " From the very beginning of her regency," says her
confidant, Cardinal Richelieu, " she had ardently desired " the
Spanish marriages.2 To the daughter of a simple grand duke
of Tuscany, the prospect of seeing her son upon the throne of
France, while the boy's sister should be espoused to the heir of
the most powerful empire of Christendom, promised the reali
zation of fancies once apparently transcending the range of
possibility. The Huguenots saw in the altered state of affairs the need of
an opportunity to meet together for consultation. They re
quested permission to hold a political assembly, and it was
granted by the queen-regent, with the less reluctance that the
time for the renewal of the appointment of the Protestant dep
uties-general had about arrived. The date of the convocation
was fixed for the twenty-fifth of May, 1611, and the place was
to be the town of Chatellerault, in the province of Poitou.
Meanwhile the indications became daily clearer that Duplessis
Mornay had not erred when he expressed the desire that the
Huguenot assembly should rather be delayed than hastened.
The Protestant movement in France had long seemed to lose
more than it gained by the alliance of the great nobles.
nots anl the While the churches were of one mind regarding
their interests, and differed little in respect to the course
to be pursued in seeking to obtain their demands, the mutual
jealousy of the members of the powerful families that had es
poused the Protestant cause was a fruitful source of disquiet
and consequent weakness. Sully, Bouillon, and Lesdiguieres,
each aspiring to a controlling influence in the Huguenot party,
Antagonism distrusted or hated one another, with a passion which
of Boiniion68 n°ne of them was willing to bury out of consideration
and suiiy. for tne common weal. The antagonism of Bouillon
and Sully, in particular, was violent and unconcealed. With
in a few months they had seemed to exchange places, and each
1 Memoires du Marechal d' Estrees, 201.
2 " Que des le commencement de sa regence elie avoit desires ardemment. "
Memoires de Richelieu (Petitot ed.), x. 276.

-38 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. I
had adopted the mission of the other. Bouillon, disgusted that
the command of the army sent to Juliers had been intrusted to
Marshal la Chastre instead of to him, at first assumed an atti
tude of hostility to the new government, and endeavored to
make himself formidable by gaining the support of his fellow-
religionists. He is said to have busied himself sending his
agents at intervals throughout the provinces, to induce the
churches to incorporate in the petitions which they were to
forward to the coming assembly extreme and even unreasonable
demands. He is said furthermore to have insisted that the
deputies remain together until the demands should be granted ;
a course which would result either in a renewal of war, or in
concessions wrung from the impotence of the court. After a
few months, however, he was restored to favor at Paris, and he
would gladly have recalled his advice ; but it was too late.
Meanwhile the downfall of Sully had occurred, and Bouillon
saw nothing more likely to further his private interest than an
assumption of the part which his rival had laid aside.1
In the first instance Bouillon obtained a signal advantage.
As Chatellerault was situated within the bounds of a province
of which the Duke of Sully was governor, and where Sully's
counsels would be likely to predominate, Bouillon had no dif
ficulty in inducing the queen to change the seat of the Hugue
not assembly to a place outside of Poitou, and to fix upon
Saumur as the substitute. He was less successful in his next
attempt. He had given the court to understand that such was
his influence with the Huguenots that he would easily be elected
to preside over the assembly. But this was an exaggerated
estimate of his support. Great was his astonishment, when the
votes were counted, to find that, of the sixteen provinces into
which Protestant France was divided, only six had declared
themselves in his favor ; the remaining ten provinces had un
hesitatingly and without the knowledge or solicitation of that
gentleman, given their support to Duplessis Mornay, from
whose calm judgment and tried integrity a reconciliation of ex
isting disputes was confidently expected.2
1 Memoires de Richelieu, x. 247, 248.
2 Cardinal Richelieu's statement (Memoires, x. 249, 250), " qu'au lieu de le
porter [sc. Bouillon] a la presidence, on savoit avec certitude qu'il [Duplessis

1611 THE POLITICAL ASSEMBLY OF SAUMUR 39
And, indeed, all the prudence of Duplessis Mornay was
needed so to direct the course of the Huguenot assembly as that
it should not run upon the rocks that lay about on every side.
Of the difficulties besetting the deputies at Saumur the most
formidable arose from the fact, which was at that time sus
pected, but is now positively known, that the Duke of Bouillon
had been virtually bought by the queen to urge the measures
agreeable to her. A month before this — in April — Bouillon had
returned to Paris from Sedan, and the Marquis of Cceuvres,
better known to us as the Marshal d'Estrees, was used by
Marie de' Medici to sound his disposition. The agent readily
convinced himself that his own task would be an easy one. The
Bouinoncon. duke at once professed a strong desire to gratify the
tool of°thee a qiieen> and to do everything in his power for the pub-
court. ]±G weal, so far as his honor and conscience would per
mit. It soon became evident that this proviso would not be
likely to embarrass the duke much in his dealings with his fel
low-Protestants. Bouillon was willing to receive instructions.
He had been invited to the assembly, but was not a deputy.
He would go to Saumur or remain at court, just as the queen
might direct him to do. So docile a servant of her majesty's
could naturally be better spared from Paris than from Saumur,
and Bouillon was encouraged to go on his way. This he did
the more cheerfully that the Marquis of Cceuvres had flattered
him with the prospect of receiving the governorship of Poitou,
should Sully be forced to give up that lucrative office, and that,
finding that Bouillon caught at the bait, Marshal Ancre subse
quently brought him the queen's express promise that he should
receive the coveted prize. Moreover, he went well supplied
with money "to gratify those whom he might be able to gain
over." x The results of his mission, we are told, fully corre-
Mornay] etoit resolu de la briguer pour soi : ce qui parut le lendemain, en ce
que de cent soixante suffrages qu'il y avoit, il n'y eut pas dix pour lui," is a
gratuitous slander, disproved not only by the well-known character of the man,
but by positive evidence.
' We have the account of this intrigue from the pen of the man who took the
leading part in bribing the Duke of Bouillon. One scarcely knows which most
to admire, the cool cynicism with which the Marquis of Cosuvres narrates his
successful mission of corruption, or the simplicity with which Bouillon offers to
obey the behests of the queen. See Memoires du Marechal d'Estrees, 223, 224.

40 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. I
sponded with the promises which the duke had given. His
prudence, his skill, his firmness enabled him to do a signal ser
vice to the State. Such at least did the queen and the ministers
and their unscrupulous agent esteem his achievement. Accord
ingly, when, a few months later, Bouillon returned from Saumur
at the conclusion of the sessions of the Protestant assembly, he
was received at court with the marks of distinction ordinarily
reserved for a general on his return from a successful campaign.
The high chancellor, the veteran secretary of state Villeroy, and
His am le President Jeannin waited upon him, in a body, to do
recompense. nim honor and to testify the lasting obligations under
which he had laid the monarch and all France. This was in
itself an extraordinary display of favor. It was followed very
shortly by a gift of a more substantial character ; Marie de'
Medici was pleased to bestow upon the great Huguenot noble
man the stately mansion henceforth known as the Hotel de
Bouillon, in the Faubourg Saint Germain.1
But it is time that, leaving the former companion of Henry of
Navarre, who had now so far forgotten the dictates of honor as
to betray for pecuniary considerations the cause which he pre-
The political tended to support, we should return to the assembly of
saumuwMay Saumur, which, against such odds, was attempting to
25, i6ii). secure to the Huguenots the undisturbed enjoyment
of the rights conceded to them by the Edict of Nantes.
The failure of the marshal to obtain the presidency was not
the only evidence that the deputies were determined to pursue
a resolute course. The election of Duplessis Mornay to the
first place at the disposal of the assembly was followed by the
choice of Daniel Chamier, the intrepid pastor of Montelimart, as
adjunct moderator, and of Desbordes Mercier, as secretary or
scribe. These were men whom no money could purchase — men
of the incorruptible sort that were the despair of the royal
court, and whom consequently Cardinal Richelieu delights in
1 Memoires du Marechal d'Estrees, 239. "Ce qui parut fort considerable," is
D'Estrees's comment upon the congratulatory visit of the three leading mem
bers of the royal council. Pontchartrain, also, in his diary under date of Novem
ber, 1611, has something to say of the gracious reception given by Marie de'
Medici, " pour les bons services qu'il avoit rendus dans l'assemblee de Saumur."
Memoires (Petitot ed.), i. 465.

1611 THE POLITICAL ASSEMBLY OF SAUMUR 41
characterizing as two of the most seditious men in France, de
picting the former as a leader of his fellow Huguenots, so far as
he was able, to extreme resolutions, and the latter as a preacher
of fire and blood.1 The rest of the assembly was fairly repre
sentative of the body of the people in whose name it sat. There
were thirty noblemen or gentlemen, twenty ministers, sixteen
members of the tiers etat, and four delegates from the city of La
Rochelle. These seventy persons sat for the fifteen Protestant
provinces proper, while Beam, which claimed to rank as a six
teenth province, on an equality with those comprised within
the limits of the ancient kingdom of France before the union of
Navarre under a single crown, had also sent a minister and a lay
delegate.2 Four great noblemen, Marshal Lesdiguieres and the
dukes of La Tremouille, Bouillon, and Sully, who, although
deputed by no province, had been invited to be present by special
letters addressed to them, brought up the total number of mem
bers to seventy-six persons.3 The two deputies-general, chosen
by the Protestants in 1607 and confirmed by Henry the Fourth
in the following year, were in attendance. It was one of the
principal objects of the meeting to select their successors. The
sessions of the assembly were held in the spacious hotel de ville
of Saumur, which had been carefully prepared for its reception,
in a manner comporting with the august character of the body.
All eyes throughout the kingdom were directed in expectation
to Saumur. " The holding of this assembly," wrote a contem
porary, " gave matter for talk in all the towns of France, for
never had such an one been seen, or one in which there sat so
many dukes and great lords of that religion, and that too during
the minority of a king." *
With the Protestants the election of the persons who were to
serve as their deputies-general at the court of Louis the Thir-
1 Memoires de Richelieu (Histoire de la Mere et du Fils), x. 250.
2 One of the first decisions of the assembly, adopted even before the election
of its officers, was to admit Beam to take part in its deliberations, on the ground
that that district had, ever since the days of Jeanne d'Albret, been united with
the churches of France "in doctrine, in discipline, and in sufferings for the
same faith." Anquez, Histoire des Assemblies politiques, 231.
3 Charles Read, Daniel Chamier (Paris, 1858), 315 ; Mercure frangois, ii. 165.
4Mercure frangois, ii. 166.

42 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. I
•
teenth and his mother during the ensuing few years was rather
the occasion than the reason of seeking the present convoca^
Protestant ti°n- There were grievances to be remedied ; above all
grievances, there was another effort to be made to secure the point
which had been the goal of all their exertions during the past
ten or twelve years. The Edict of Nantes as originally agreed
Demand for uPon by the royal commission and signed by Henry
the Edict as in the month of May, 1598, was as perfect a law as
originally J . . ^.
granted. could be hoped for under existing conditions ; but the
Edict of Nantes as modified and registered by the Parliament
of Paris in February, 1599, was by no means so satisfactory an
instrument. It was, for instance, a very different tribunal which
Henry the Fourth at first intended to establish in the capital,
for the adjudication of those cases in which the Protestants
were concerned, from that which he was persuaded by his Ro
man Catholic advisers to substitute for it. It is true that even
in the " Chamber of the Edict " of Paris according to its orig
inal constitution, the Protestant judges numbered but six out
of sixteen, and were barely enough to protect the interests of
their fellow-religionists in matters so evidently just that they
could count upon the support of two or three votes of the fairest
among their Roman Catholic colleagues. But it was quite
another thing when, as in the registered edict, only a single one
of the newly appointed judges of the Reformed faith was admitted
to the Chamber especially charged with the affairs in which mem
bers of the less numerous religious communion were concerned,
while the other five judges were distributed, one in each of the
" chambres des enquetes " of the Parliament of Paris.1 Six
Protestants in a court of sixteen judges might have offered some
effective resistance to unrighteous and oppressive conduct on
the part of the majority ; a single Protestant among so many
Roman Catholics was practically powerless.
But beside the restoration of the Edict of Nantes to its ear
liest terms, there were other things upon which the minds of
the Huguenots were ardently set. Many hardships needed to

1 Compare the 30th article of the edict in its original form in Anquez, Histoire
des Assemblees politiques, 466, with the same article in its modified form in
Edits, Declarations et Arrests, xx., xxi.

1611 THE POLITICAL ASSEMBLY OF SAUMUR 43
be removed. New measures were required to secure the enforce
ment of the edict's provisions where these were now rendered
nugatory through the carelessness, or active hostility, of the of
ficers of the law ; and the privileges enjoyed by some more
highly favored provinces must, if possible, be definitely ex
tended to other portions of the kingdom. Among other things,
the door ought to be closed so far as possible to undue influence
from without, upon the choice of the men that were to represent
the churches at court. The king must be induced to permit the
Protestants to hold their political assemblies regularly every
two years, and to accept the two deputies-general whom they
should elect ; instead of insisting upon the submission of six
names of the candidates from among whom he might select the
two most easily approached through the avenues of flattery, cu
pidity, or ambition.
Scarcely had the assembly set itself at work upon the me
morial which was to embrace and set forth in due form the
The royai separate grievances contained in the particular me-
envoys. morials handed in by the provincial assemblies, before
the envoys of the royal court made their appearance. They
were two in number, and both were members of the council of
state. Jean de Turnery, Seigneur de Boissize, was a Roman
Catholic. Claude de Bullion was a Protestant, of that facile
character which found many representatives at this period, a
Protestant with whom the interests of the nobleman whose ser
vice he happened for the time to be following, decidedly out
weighed all considerations of religious duty, or even of personal
integrity. Boissize and Bullion brought a letter from the queen-
regent and her son, and assurances that their Majesties were
ready to hear and to grant the just requests of the Huguenots.
First of all, however, they called upon the members of the as-
The dis- sembly to make choice of the six candidates for the of-
chiefaHithae- nce °^ deputy-general.1 But among the hopes held
not demand, f orth was certainly no encouragement to expect that
any radical change would be conceded in the organic law under
which the Huguenots were living. " There is no other edict,"
said the royal commissioners, " than the one that was registered
1 Mercure franfois, ii. 178.

44 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. I
by parliament, the edict under which all the king's subjects have
lived in peace since the year 1598. The changes made in it at
the time of the registration were of little moment and were
adopted after long and mature deliberation, and with the con
sent of the chief men of your religion." 1 A little later they
added : " It would not be seemly for the queen, who acts only as
a guardian and trustee of the kingdom, to make any alteration in
the edict during the king's minority." 2 And when they had re
ceived in their hands the assembly's memorial, the commissioners
continued to urge the Protestants to make their nomination and
promptly break up a meeting which, they asserted, " gave great
umbrage to many both within and without the realm." 3
There was indeed no lack of men, in the bosom of the assembly
itself, who were ready to advocate unconditional submission to the
will of the court. Among these, as might be expected, the Duke
of Bouillon distinguished hirnself. He went so far as to recom
mend his fellow-Protestants to give up every safeguard which
they still had for the maintenance of their rights. In an ad
dress described by one who was present as " very moving," he
declared that he would have the Huguenots, of their own free
will, renounce possession of all their hostage towns, and place
themselves wholly at the discretion of the queen and of her
council. He concluded his speech by exalting to the skies the
glory which the Protestants would earn by thus voluntarily
D'Aubigne's exposing themselves to suffer martyrdom. Among
a" Boufuon's *ke hearers was Agrippa d'Aubigne, one of the duke's
propositions. 0\^ comrades in arms under the standard of Henry
of Navarre. He listened to Bouillon's proposition with as
much indignation as he had felt, a quarter of a century before,
when the same speaker, at that time simple Viscount of Tu-
renne, in a Huguenot council of war, pusillanimously advocated
a course of patient endurance of insult and oppression.4 If

1 Mercure franpois, ii. 180.
2 lb. , ii. 181. " Qu'il ne seroit pas a propos a la Royne (qui n'estoit que comme
tntrice et administratice du Royaume) de changer aucune chose au dit Edict du
rant la minorite du Roy.''
3 lb. , ii. 182.
4 The Huguenots and Henry of Navarre, i. 333, etc. The conference at Gui-
tres took place in 1585.

1611 THE POLITICAL ASSEMBLY OF SAUMUR 45
Agrippa's words on the former occasion were eloquent and con
vincing, his retort on the present occasion was even more tren
chant. He exhibited to the Huguenot assembly the absurdity
of the duke's positions, and closed with these words : " Yes, sir,
the glory of martyrdom cannot be extolled with too much praise.
Blessed beyond measure is he that endures suffering for Christ !
It is characteristic of a good and true Christian to expose him
self to martyrdom for Christ's sake. But to expose one's brethren
to martyrdom, and to make the path to it easy for them, is
characteristic of a traitor or a hangman." J
Unable to obtain from the two royal deputies an answer to
the memorial which it had drawn up, the assembly, early in the
summer (on the twenty-third of June), elected five of its mem
bers to carry this important document, together with three or
four papers of less moment, to Paris, and to urge upon the govern
ment to grant a favorable reply. Meanwhile, during their ab
sence, extending over a space of five or six weeks, the assembly
matured a scheme for a more complete organization of the Prot
estant party, and gave it definite form, in the famous ordinance
signed on the twenty-ninth of August, 1611.2 If the Huguenots
More com- were still to maintain themselves as a distinct body,
latton of tt?e" surrounding themselves with those safeguards which
Huguenots. eXperience nad led them to seek in the many despe
rate struggles through which they had to pass with a vigilant
enemy, if the public faith pledged in royal edicts and declara
tions and sanctioned by solemn registrations by courts of parlia
ment was yet an insufficient reliance as against popular malice
fostered by a clergy which still scouted the very suggestion of per
manent religious liberty for dissenters from the Roman Catholic
and Apostolic Church, and which did not disguise its estimate
of the Edict of Nantes, as possibly a convenient temporary ex-
1 Memoires d' Agrippa d'Aubigne (Edition Pantheon litteraire), 510. — D' Au-
bigne claims to have prevented Bouillon from obtaining the presidency of the
assembly of Saumur, and to have opposed loudly several proposals which the
duke made with the view of engratiating himself with the court. Thus a friend
ship of thirty years' standing between the two soldiers came to an end.
"Reglement general, dresse en l'Assemblee generale des Eglises Reformces
de France tenue a Saumur, en l'an mil six cens onze. par permission du Roy.
Benoist, Histoire de l'Edit de Nantes, ii., pieces justificatives, 5-9.

46 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. I
pedient for the king of a country distracted by a diversity
of religion to enact, but in reality " an edict the most accursed
that can be imagined, whereby liberty of conscience is granted
to everyone, which is the worst thing in the world"1 — if, in
short, the Huguenots must still look to their own stout arms to
protect their liberties and, indeed, their lives, then the new solici
tude which the assembly of Saumur displayed to perfect their
organization, in view of the new perils of another minority
under another Italian queen of the same Medici family as re
gent of the kingdom, cannot be regarded as singular or mis
placed. The provisions of the scheme so nearly resembled the pro
visions of the plans adopted by the Huguenots in the course
of the preceding reign, that it is unnecessary to describe the
assemblies, general and provincial, and the provincial councils,
bodies to which, in conjunction with the deputies resident at
the court, the duty was entrusted of watching over the interests
of the churches. The only novel feature that dates from the As
sembly of Saumur is the institution of still another form of de
liberative body, in what soon came to be popularly known as
" the assemblies of the circle." Whenever any province found
itself menaced by dangers or difficulties too great for
ment of the its unaided powers to contend with, it was henceforth
** cercles " authorized to call upon the neighboring provinces, to
the number of not less than three, to send deputies from their
councils to a designated place, for mature and decisive action.
Whether the " cercle " derived its name from the circles into
which the German Empire was divided, or not, may be uncer
tain. There is no doubt, however, that the innovation was re
garded by the opponents of the Huguenots as fraught with
mischief to the state, and a capital device for enabling a sedi
tious party to find pretexts at will to throw the kingdom into
confusion.2

1 The opinion of Pope Clement the Eighth, expressed to Cardinal d'Ossat, in
the audience of March 27, 1599, is reported by the latter to Henry IV. , in a dis
patch dated the next day. Lettres du Cardinal d'Ossat, ii. 44. See the Hugue
nots and Henry of Navarre, ii. 431, 432.
2 See Richelieu, Memoires, x. 252, Benoist, ii. 58^60, 109 ; Anquez, Hist, des
Assemblees politiques, 247-250.

1611 THE POLITICAL ASSEMBLY OF SAUMUR 47
Meanwhile the Huguenot delegates sent to the royal court
were well received, but accomplished nothing. Admitted one
evening to a pompous audience at the Louvre, where, besides
TheProt- *ne queen-mother, there were assembled the princes
egatesat1' °^ *ue blood and the great officers of state, her majesty
Pans. very graciously informed them that their petitions
had been answered, and that in a favorable manner. To this
the five Huguenots replied by thanking her very humbly.
Next, the chancellor made them an address, insisting much upon
the obedience of subjects to their prince. He dwelt long on
the queen-mother's kindness to men of both religions, and
especially her grace in answering the Huguenot documents.
What the particular replies were, he did not state. It would
take too long. Suffice it to say, the Huguenots should have
their places of security for five years more, with the support of
the garrisons. They should have an increase of the allowance
for the maintenance of their pastors. Other points in their
demands were as well provided for. It was therefore high time
that the Saumur assembly should attend to the chief matter
for which it convened — that it nominate its six candidates for
the office of deputy-general — and break up. At every turn the
same words met them ; the poor delegates wrote home that
they knew not what to do.1 Finally they returned to Saumur.
There the royal commissioners, faithful to their instructions,
imitated the stubbornness displayed at the Louvre. They had
in their possession the Huguenot demands with the answers
written over against each article ; but they positively refused to
give them up until the nomination had been made. In vain
did Duplessis Mornay and others insist that the knowledge of
the court's answers' was indispensably necessary to enable the
assembly to give proper instructions to the new deputies. All
they could elicit from the Protestant royal commissioner Bul
lion, was a declaration that he was willing to risk his soul's
salvation on the truth of his words, when he assured his fellow-
believers that they would be satisfied with the queen's conces-

' See their own curious account — Lettre de Mess, de la Caze, de Courtamer,
Ferrier, de Mirande et Armet, a M. Duplessis Mornay, Paris, July 24, 1611,
Memoires de Duplessis Mornay, xi. 254-7.

48 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. I
sions. Still Duplessis Mornay and the majority of the assembly
remained unmoved in their determination. Even the solicita
tion of Lesdiguieres, who wrote from Vizille in support of the
court's policy, had no effect.1
Then it was that the commissioners fell back upon a measure
the credit for the invention of which seems to be due to the
fertile but treacherous brain of the Duke of Bouillon. To such
advantage had this unprincipled nobleman exerted himself that
there had been gained over, not indeed a majority of the as
sembly, but somewhat over a score of members.2 Some had
been imposed upon by the asseverations of the commissioners,
others had been overpersuaded, others still, unless they were
greatly maligned, had been brought over by direct bribes.8
Knowing that they could depend upon a sufficiently large
number of persons to bear a semblance of respectability, the
royal commissioners now produced a letter from the queen-
The queen- mother of a somewhat startling character.. The as-
threatensto sembly was commanded for the last time to make
the°mhior- instant choice of its candidates. In case of disobe-
sefmbiy.eae'" dience, not only did Her Majesty revoke the permis
sion granted to hold the gathering and declare all its proceed
ings null and void, but she empowered the obedient minority
to assume the functions of the entire body, to elect the six
persons from whom she would select the deputies-general, and
to receive in turn the answers which she had been pleased to
make to the Huguenot petition.4
The blow had been well struck to carry confusion into the

1 Lesdiguieres to Duplessis Mornay, Vizille, August 28, 1611, Memoires de D.
M., xi. 280.
'Richelieu reckons the number of those upon whom the queen -mother could
count at exactly twenty-three, and mentions by name Chatillon, Parabere, Bris-
sac, Villemade, Guitry and Destreheres. Memoires, x. 262. Henry of Rohan
speaks of twenty-five, Memoires, 102.
3 Mirande, La Caze, and Ferrier, the preacher of Nismes, soon to become famous
for tbe commotion which he occasioned, are specially mentioned as having been
bought with money. Anquez, Assemblees politiques, 251.
' Lettre de la royne presentee k l'assemblee generale des eglises reformees de
France, tenant a Saulmur, par M. de Bullion, conseiller au conseil d'estat,
le 3 septembre, 1611. The letter is dated Paris, August 27. Memoires de Duples
sis Mornay, xi. 281-287.

1611 THE POLITICAL ASSEMBLY OF SAUMUR 49
Huguenot ranks and to render incurable the dissensions already
developed among the adherents of the same cause. Its worst
„ , . effects, however, were averted by the promptness and
By his tact . . J i r
Duplessis sagacity of Duplessis Mornay. Taking advantage of
Mornay par- ." . ^ u ° °
ries the blow his position as moderator of the assembly, no sooner
 had the queen's letter been read, than he disappointed
the expectations of those who looked that the missive should
prove a signal for the outbreak of disorder, by at once declar
ing that the assembly would comply with the royal command.
Afraid lest his efforts should after all prove vain and the affair
take a peaceful turn, the surprised royal commissioner again
rose to his feet, to make a useless plea for submission. Two or
three of the minority, in their zeal to create a disturbance, also
claimed the floor, frantically calling attention to the fact that
they were of the number of the loyal servants of the crown
whom the letter designated. But Duplessis Mornay never lost
his self-possession, and his dignified words brought over to his
side all the sensible men hitherto opposed to him. These
called upon the noisy partisans of division to sit down and be
quiet. The presiding officer, then sure of his ground, proceeded
to submit the matter to the vote of the assembly, not, he said,
that he had any doubt respecting the opinions of those present,
but in order that all the due forms should be observed. His
declaration received the endorsement of the unanimous approval
of the assembly.1
Two days later (on the fifth of September) the assembly se
lected six candidates, from whom the court at once
the deputies- made choice of two, Rouvray and La Milletiere, the one
general, 1 •
Souvray and to represent the nobles and the other the third estate,
La Milletiere. x . .
as deputies-general to reside at Paris in the interests
of the Huguenots of the kingdom.
And then the royal commissioners condescended to hand to
the assembly the long-promised answers to its pe-
factory an- tition. It was no pleasant surprise that awaited the
swers to the x
Hngpenot Huguenots. The satisfaction which Bullion had so
vociferously pledged his soul's salvation that the Prot
estants would find in the court's gracious concessions, had van-
1 Benoist, ii. 48-50.

50 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. I
ished into thin air. On not a single important point, however
reasonable, was justice clone. For the most part, the court fell
back upon the impossibility of making any alteration in the
Edict of Nantes as registered. It would know no other edict,
but promised to see that the provisions of this registered edict
should be duly executed. Where grievances were alleged by
the Huguenot petition, the reply dealt in vague assurances that
such provision would be made as that the petitioners would be
contented. If some concession was granted, pains were taken
to limit it as narrowly as possible, or connect with it some hu
miliating condition. The Huguenots had asked that, in in
terpreting the thirty-eighth of the " particular " articles of the
edict, they be allowed to hold " little " schools, to teach their
children reading, writing, and the first rudiments of grammar,
in all the cities and towns of the kingdom. In reply, they
received permission to have schools of this description in
those cities alone where Protestant services were permitted in
the faubourgs, or quarters outside the walls ; but the schools
must each have but a single master, who could give instruction
in nothing beyond reading and writing, and must abstain from
dogmatizing — that is, from imparting any religious views — as
well as from receiving more than ten or twelve pupils, none of
whom must be strangers. Here and in other articles the petty
restrictions were sufficiently annoying ; but the ground upon
which they were manifestly based was still more vexatious.
The Huguenots, in the view of Marie de' Medici and her ad
visers, were members of a dangerous and hateful party, men
whom it might not be safe to provoke too far, but whom it was
advisable never to regard otherwise than with suspicion.
That, as men and as Christians, they were fit objects for the re
ceipt of generous or charitable treatment, seemed never to enter
into the narrow minds of those who drew up the reply, article
by article, to the Saumur petition. The Protestants had long
chafed under the legal enactments which not only sanctioned
¦¦The .pre- the application to their creed by others of the desig-
forSedRe- nation of "the pretended, or so-called, Reformed
Hgion." Religion," but actually made it obligatory that they
should themselves employ the offensive words in all public doc
uments. By the eighth article of their petition they asked to

1611 THE POLITICAL ASSEMBLY OF SAUMUR 51
be relieved of this humiliating necessity. The reply was : "The
king cannot grant the petitioners permission to assume any
other title than that which has been given them in the edicts."
It was so throughout. The Huguenots, save in the matter of
continued possession of their places of security (for five years
more, however, instead of ten years, as they had asked), re
ceived little or no satisfaction. Their. political assemblies were
not to be held every two years, as they petitioned, but at the
monarch's good pleasure. Their two deputies-general must
still be chosen by the king from among six candidates submitted
to him by the assemblies, and it was evidently intended that
they should remain in office just so long as their deportment
continued to be pleasing to the court. As for the articles which
the Huguenots had appended to their requests, in behalf of the
Protestant churches of Beam, the court curtly refused to enter
tain them at all, on the ground that the king had never sanc
tioned the union between those churches and the churches of
France.1 When the royal answer was read, the majority, which had
from the first been suspicious of the court's intentions, and was
therefore somewhat prepared for its unsatisfactory contents, was
Disappoint- more moderate in expression than was the minority
sanmnrAs- wnich had reposed confidence in the commissioner's
sembiy. asseverations. At that moment a more sensitive man
than Bullion would have desired to be anywhere else rather than
at Saumur, and within hearing of the maledictions of those whom
he had duped. La Caze, in whose pockets the money he had
taken burned, ran to Bullion's lodgings to load him with re
proaches on his duplicity. Another of his victims told him to
his face : " I shall never again put any confidence in your word,
whatever oath you may choose to take ; inasmuch as you several
times gave yourself to the devil, and declared that you consented
to be damned, if all that you asserted to be contained in the re
plies to the petition were not really there." 2 The more temper-
1 The petition of the Saumur assembly, with the replies written on the mar
gin of each successive article, is given in Benoist, ii., pieces just., 9-25; the
text of the petition alone by the Mercure franpois, ii. 185-198, and Memoires de
Duplessis Mornay, xi. 231-246.
2 Anquez, Histoire des Assemblees politiques, 244.

52 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. I
ate majority consented to a prompt adjournment, but declined
to assume the responsibility of accepting the reply of the court
in the name of their constituents ; that function belonged, they
said, to the provinces which had deputed them, and to which
they would refer the further consideration of the matter.
Thus closed, on the twelfth of September, 1611, the political
assembly of Saumur, which may with truth be regarded as
marking the entrance upon a disastrous period of division and
r. ... commotion which was to produce an essential change
Its adjourn- x . >~
ment, seP- jn the relations of the Huguenots to the State.1 On
tember 12, ° .
leu. the one hand, the assembly had developed, and m
some degree given definite form to the policy which the govern
ment was to pursue in its treatment of the Huguenots. The
profuse employment of money had been tried by Marie de'
Medici in the civil administration, and, if the treasure
payment of laid up by Henry the Fourth, with the intelligent co
operation of the Duke of Sully, had begun to diminish
rapidly and promised soon to disappear altogether, the Italian
princess at least felt herself secure for the time in the possession
of the regency. The first attempt to apply a similar policy to
the solution of the problem of controlling the Protestants, so far
proved a success as to raise the question whether this was not
the best and shortest method. If it was true, as was commonly
reported,2 that four hundred thousand livres had been expended
in sowing discord in the Protestant assembly, and with such
effect as to disconcert the prudent plans of Duplessis Mornay
and the most devoted adherents of the Huguenot cause, it was
certain that the same methods would continue to be pursued,
and the Huguenots might count upon bribery, in one form or
another, as among the most effective instruments likely to be
used against them.
On the other hand, the incidents of the summer had revealed
to the court as well as to the Huguenots themselves the diver
sity of sentiment and of tendency existing in the ranks of the
party. Well nigh a century had passed since the first dawn

1 " Voila le commencement de nos maux et divisions," says Henry of Rohan.
Memoires du due de Rohan, i. 104.
2 See Anquez, Histoire des Assemblees politiques, 251.

1611 THE POLITICAL ASSEMBLY OF SAUMUR 53
of the French Reformation, and it would seem that the
glow of zeal and the thirst for martyrdom that characterized
the period of persecution in the time of Henry the Second, no
longer affected so large a part, proportionately, of the Protestant
community. There were, indeed, many men and women who
would cheerfully have faced gallows and estrapade for their re
ligion's sake. But there were many with whom pru-
ismandex- dential motives had such weight as to render them
ideas of royal averse to contention, and more likely to see the course
of duty in submission to constituted authority, than
in stalwart support of principle. To this result the insidious
growth of exaggerated ideas respecting the royal prerogative
and respecting the claim of the king upon the unquestioning
obedience of his subjects, had already begun to contribute.
True, the day was yet distant when the devotion to the monarch
as " the living image of the invisible God," was to become a
species of worship which it was hard to distinguish in some of
its outward manifestations from the tribute of adoration ren
dered to Deity. But already there were not a few who, in the
conflict of motives, where the claims of loyalty were balanced
against the claims of the ecclesiastical organization — the
" cause," as it was known by pre-eminence — were quite inclined
to decide in favor of the former. With such persons theoretical
views were frequently reinforced by prudential considerations,
and the tradesman or merchant whose gains depended upon the
maintenance of peace, was loath to approve those virile resolu
tions that might need to be supported by armies, and to be put
to the test of battle and siege. Thus it was that there coex
isted in the Protestant communion a number of dis-
characterm tinct types of character, some of which the experience
the Protest- of the court in dealing with the political assembly of
Saumur had brought distinctly to the light. One of
the many pamphleteers of the time, a partisan of Marie
de' Medici, divided the Huguenots into three classes : the Ma
licious, the Zealous, and the Judicious. The Malicious consisted,
according to him, of those with whom ambition, or the desire to
make themselves of some importance in the party, was the pre
vailing motive. The Zealous embraced all that insisted upon
obtaining not only the Edict of Nantes in its original form, but

54 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. I
the full demands of the assembly of Saumur. With them dis
trust was the mother of safety. To be a Huguenot and to be
distrustful were as much synonymous expressions, as to be a
monk and to have one's head shaven. Only the Judicious were
willing to abide by the terms of the royal edict as verified by
the parliaments. In their estimation civil war was worse than
all the ills that could arise in a tolerable peace.1 Thus much
for a classification of the Huguenots from the Roman Catholic
point of view. On the other side, it was insisted that a truer
division would make the Huguenots fall into three very different
categories : the high nobles whose sole purpose it was to make
use of the rest of the Protestants for their own purposes ; the
men of right intentions who knew that nothing good could be
expected from a Council governed by the Jesuits, and who con
sequently sought all lawful safeguards against perfidious and
implacable enemies ; and, last of all, the timid, who were either
weak and indifferent by nature, or enervated by the artifices of
the court. The first class and the last were the cause of all the
mischief ; the one class taking advantage of the zeal of the men
of good intentions simply to obtain consideration for themselves
at the royal court ; while the other class forsook their brethren
just so soon as the court offered them some semblance of quiet
and repose.2
All the cajolery of the court, however, had not succeeded in
quieting the Protestants. The dispersion of the members of
the political assembly with unsatisfactory answers to the de-
The provin- mari<ls which the provinces had made through them,
bifisasend" on^7 had the effect of transferring the scene of dis-
gatesdtoPa- content from Saumur to more distant parts of the
ris- kingdom. The members upon their return to their
homes carried with them copies of the document returned from
Paris, and laid these copies before provincial assemblies of their
fellow Huguenots. No permission had been sought to hold
these assemblies, and no permission had been granted by the
government. The Huguenots assumed, in the very nature of
the case, their right to gather for the purpose of hearing the
1 See the analysis of the contemporary letter and some quotations from it in
the Mercure francois, ii. 208, etc., and 598. 2 Benoist, ii. 33.

1612 THE POLITICAL ASSEMBLY OF SAUMUR 55
report brought back by their deputies respecting the important
questions committed to them. Everywhere the Huguenots of
the provinces betrayed quite as much displeasure at the court's
shuffling and double-dealing as their representatives at Saumur
had exhibited. Soon deputies from eight of the most im
portant provinces reached Paris, sent to urge with renewed
vigor the just claims of the king's Protestant subjects.1 But on
the plea that the assemblies that had sent them were unautho-
Theyare rized, the court refused to listen to the remonstrances
ed^1dlydiseat"an(1 complaints. The deputies were ordered to depart
missed. from the capital, in terms not only severe but insult
ing.2 As if this were not enough, a few weeks later there was
issued in the king's name a declaration by which a pardon
The ting of- was exten<ied to such Huguenots as had attended
nraty?Aprii ^ae unlawful assemblies, and the prosecuting officers
24, 1612). 0f the crown were forbidden to institute any criminal
proceedings against them. Meanwhile all similar meetings
were strictly prohibited for the future. The only bodies that
would be tolerated were expressly named — the consistories,
colloquies, and synods, provincial and national — and the state
ment was accompanied with the stipulation that, in these eccle
siastical gatherings, the discussion be confined to matters of
doctrine and church discipline, on pain of the loss of the privi
lege of holding even these, in case of disobedience.3 Now, in-

' The chief articles they insisted upon, as we learn from a letter of Duplessis
Mornay to Diodaty, January 6, 1612, were seven in number : that the Protes
tants be relieved of the necessity of applying to their own faith the designation
of religion prelendue reformee; that they be allowed schools in all the towns
where they, might teach their children to pray, to read, and to write, and in
struct them in the elements of grammar ; that the children of Protestant fathers
dying intestate be brought up in the Protestant faith ; that nearer places of
worship be substituted for places remote and inconvenient; that Protestant
ministers obtain the immunities enjoyed by Roman Catholic priests ; that equit
able judges be granted to them ; and that, such places of security as they had
lost through the apostasy of the governors be restored. Memoires de Du
plessis Mornay, xi. 377-9 (Ed. of 1652, iii. 342-4).
2 Dumaurier describes the reply as "une asses aigre response " (letter from
Paris, February 11, 1612), and Duplessis Mornay justly says : " On les a de la
sorte fleslrls et criminalises par le brevet de conge '' (letter of February 20,
1612). Memoires de Duplessis Mornay, xi. 389, 400.
s Declaration du roy, sur les assemblees d'aucuns de ses sujets de la religion

56 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. I
asmuch as the Huguenots were not conscious of having com
mitted any crime, and had asked for no forgiveness, the royal
declaration was both a surprise and an annoyance. Men saw
at once that the court's purpose in the document lay solely in
the concluding portion. The imaginary fault of the Protestants
was used only as a pretext for stripping them of a right which
was essential to the expression of the sense of grievance. How
else than by coming together could the Protestants consult one
another, or arrive at any common understanding ?
The Huguenots did not submit tamely to this insult. Not to
speak of private remonstrances, the deputies-general at Paris
made formal opposition to the registration of the obnoxious
document by the chief parliament of the kingdom, pro-
mSuenota testing that the Reformed churches had never ex-
r^eftnast,y pressed or even felt a desire for such a pardon as was
an insult. there granted_ A fortnignt later, the twentieth Na
tional Synod, in session at Privas, in Yivarais, drew up a solemn
act repudiating the pretended favor extended to the Protestants.
" None of us," said the synod, " are guilty of the imaginary
crimes laid to our charge. We are ready to answer, collectively
and as individuals, for our past actions. Any form of torture
will be easier for us to endure than a mark of infamy that will
render us contemptible and odious in the eyes of posterity, and
deprive us of the honor we have ever enjoyed of being good
Frenchmen." "Furthermore," said the synod, "we declare that
we shall not avail ourselves in any wise of the letters of amnesty
and pardon, and, should any persons have consented, or should
any in future consent, to accept them, we repudiate their action." '
To these protests, as well as the petitions which the provin
cial delegates, at their departure from Paris, had left in the
hands of the deputies-general for presentation to the king, the
court made a pretence of replying, but the concessions were
delusive and well-nigh valueless. A second royal Declaration,
of the eleventh of July, 1612,2 did, indeed, pretend to remove

pretendue reformee. . . donnee a Paris le 24 jour d'avril, 1612. Benoist,
ii. pieces justif., 25-27, Aymon, Tous les Synodes, i. 405-7.
] Aymon, i. 407-9.
2Text in Benoist, ii., pieces justificatives, 27, 28.

1612 THE POLITICAL ASSEMBLY OF SAUMUR 57
the stigma affixed to the Huguenots by the Declaration of April,
and publish the king's full satisfaction with the conduct of his
The unsatis- Frotestant subjects in general. But, inasmuch as the
rationo? Ju?y new document excepted a certain number, to whom
11,1612. the monarch renewedly extended his forgiveness, as
suring them that no blame or stain should attach to them in
case that for the future they remained within the bounds of
duty and of submission to law, and, inasmuch as the strict prohi
bition of provincial gatherings was not withdrawn, it could not
be said that the situation was essentially improved. The case
stood somewhat better as regarded the Huguenot petition ; yet
at the chief points about which the petitioners were concerned,
their requests were skilfully parried.1 Above all, the court
could not be brought frankly to relieve the Protestants of the
indignity of being required always to style themselves members
of the " pretended " reformed religion. The royal ministers, in
deed, professed their willingness to sanction a certain neglect
on the part of the Protestants to employ the detested adjective ;
but they would by no means consent to give any written docu
ment to which appeal might subsequently be made. The
shrewd device offered by President Jeannin as a solu-
jeannin's tion of the whole difficulty was to intimate to the
king's attorneys in the several " Chambers of the
Edict " and " chambres mi-parties," that they should hereafter
pretend not to notice the illegal designation which the Hugue
nots ministers and others might make use of in official docu
ments, and tolerate it.2
Thus it was that a manifest spirit of suspicion reigned in
the minds of the queen-mother and her counsellors, which was
but too well calculated to maintain and augment the distrust
Mutual dis- engendered in the Huguenots by years of ill usage.
court andtle r"-° ^ne liberal counsels which, upon the whole, pre-
Protestants. vailed under Henry, there had succeeded a tricky
policy, affecting by preference indirect methods, a policy char
acteristic of men who were better satisfied with themselves when
they had overreached an opponent than when they had con-
1 See Benoist, ii. 94, 95.
2Pres. Jeannin to Duplessis Mornay, April 6, 1613, Memoires, xii. 149.

58 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. I
ciliated his friendship or won his respect. With such men to
confront, it were in vain for Duplessis Mornay to urge that,
after all, kindliness was possibly the surest road to success. It
was in vain that he reminded the crafty president that, accord
ing to an ancient fable, the fierce blasts of the north wind, in
stead of tearing off the traveller's cloak, only led him to wrap it
more tightly about him, while it was the sun that, by its heat,
quickly compelled him to throw the garment aside.1 The
Huguenots were distrustful. They had good reason for dis
trust. The murder of the king who gave them the Edict of
Nantes was not an event calculated to induce them to exercise
less vigilance in future than they had exercised in the past ;
and, since the death of Henry the Fourth, the violations of the
provisions of the edict, provoked by the clergy and abetted by
the officers of justice, had been too frequent to be overlooked.
The plainest rights of Protestants under the law were set at de
fiance. In two instances within the space of six weeks, Prot
estants upon their death-beds had been disturbed by the impor
tunate visits of priests, under the very eyes of the first parliament
of the realm, and with the connivance of the inferior magis
trates. In one of these cases, the vicar of Saint Sulpice forced
his way into the chamber of a dying man and com-
of saint sui- pelled his wife to leave the room, in order that the
dying Prot- priest might interrogate him privately respecting his
inclination to profess the tenets of the Roman Catholic
Church and to receive the last sacraments. The sick man per
sisting in his Protestant faith and desiring to be left alone, the
vicar departed, only to be succeeded by the curate of the same
parish church. He came with a following of sixty or eighty
persons. When admission was refused him, he threatened to
break down the door. The bailli of the Faubourg Saint Ger
main, a judicial officer, now appeared upon the scene. De
manding an entrance in the king's name, he brought this second
ecclesiastic to the bedside of the Protestant. The latter, when
again pressed to change his religion, summoned all his remain
ing strength and raising himself to a sitting posture, bade the

1 Duplessis Mornay to President Jeannin, October 19, 1612, Memoires, xi.
472.

1612 THE POLITICAL ASSEMBLY OF SAUMUR 59
intruders to be gone, then exhausted by the effort fell back and
instantly expired. " At once," writes our informant, " the bailli
compelled the poor woman to bury her husband, who had but
just drawn his last breath." 1 When such crimes occurred, and,
for the most part, remained unpunished, it would have been
idle to expect the Huguenots to be unmoved.
The precautionary measures to which the Huguenots were
driven, reacted upon the Roman Catholic populace. The acts
of the political assembly of Saumur, published far and wide
throughout France, fanned the flame of hatred and suspicion.
At Rouen, one morning in September, a placard was found
posted in the streets, which ran thus : " Poor Catholics !
A seditious
placard at Have a care of yourselves and beware of the Hugue
nots, who will soon make you feel the effects of the
resolution taken at Saumur. Therefore, visit their houses and
disarm them ! Let a good watch be kept ready, and at the soon
est ! We are sleeping, and the Huguenot is awake ! " 2
Calumny was rife and did not spare the most illustrious of the
Huguenots. It was currently reported that Duplessis Mornay,
the most loyal of men, had openly expressed the senti-
againstMor- ment : " Now that the king is a minor, we must de-
nay. °
clare the majority of our churches." 3 To the Dutch
envoy, who gave him the information that scarcely anything else
than his arrogant speech was heard from the lips of the courtiers,
the Huguenot patriot gave as a sufficient answer to this fabrica
tion the record of a life thoroughly known to the world, within
and without, and thirty years of service of the late king, during
which he had won much praise and incurred no reproach. " At
all events," he added, " I have learned to commit myself to God
in well-doing. And if I do not know the art of living in the
1 An unknown correspondent of Duplessis Mornay, writing from Paris, July
25, 1612, Memoires, xi. 448^449. The incident occurred the previous Monday.
2 The words of the placard are preserved for us in the secret registers of the
Parliament of Rouen, under date of September 27, 1611. Floquet, Histoire du
parlement de Normandie, iv. 385.
1 "On n'oit que la maxime, qui se diet proferee par vous, que le roy est mi-
neur, qu'il fault faire les Eglises majeurs." D'Aersens to Duplessis Mornay,
Paris, March 3, 1612, in Memoires de D. M., xi., 405.— Cardinal Richelieu re
peats the story in his Memoires, x. 251 ; but why he should style Duplessis a
" ministre," I cannot surmise.

60 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. I
world so well as some others do, by way of compensation I have
studied how to die well." x
Meanwhile, however, the governor of Saumur drew upon him
other hatred than that provoked by his loyalty to the Hugue-
He ub- not cause- Scarcely less a theologian than a states-
¦• MeSsteJB of man> ke na(^ a8aui entered the lists against the papal
iniquity." system, by the publication of a profound and scholarly
Avork to Avhich he gave the significant title of " The Mystery of
Iniquity." 2 It purported to be a history of the papacy, and it
undertook to exhibit the successive steps by which the popes
arose to their present height, together with the opposition which
they encountered from time to time at the hands of good men.
It included a defence of the rights of Christian emperors, kings,
and princes against the assertions of Cardinals Bellarmin and
Baronius. The author, so far from hiding his identity behind a
pseudonym, gave to the public his name with a full list of his
dignities and appointments. The book could not be dismissed
by its opponents with affected scorn, as the production of some
unknown scribbler. It was written by "Philippe de Mornay,
Chevalier, Seigneur du Plessis Marly, Councillor of the Very
Christian King in his Council of State and in his Privy Council,
captain of fifty men at arms of his Ordinances, Governor of the
city and senechaussee of Saumur, and Superintendent of his
House and Crown of Navarre." That nothing might be wanting
to make its publicity complete, the Latin edition was dedicated
to King James the First of England, and the French edition to
King Louis the Thirteenth of France. The former monarch
was pleased to accept the gift graciously, and to thank God for
having put it into the author's heart to compose so necessary a
book and one so useful to the true Church -of Christ, exhibiting
the successive steps of the usurpation by Antichrist.3 Not so

1 " Et si je ne scais pas si bien l'art de vivre au monde que quelques aultres,
en recompense j'ai estudie a, bien mourir." Duplessis Mornay to DAersens,
March 10, 1612, Memoires, xi. 410.
2 We learn from the Mercure franQois, ii. 212, that the book appeared near
the end of the month of July, 1611.
3 See the letter of James I., October 7, 1611, in Memoires de Duplessis Mor
nay, xi. 309-311. As to the very natural exhortation of Duplessis Mornay, un
der the circumstances, ' ' henceforth to leave the pen and go sword in hand to

1612 THE POLITICAL ASSEMBLY OF SAUMUR 61
with the advisers of the young king of France, and the ecclesi
astical authorities at Paris and at Rome. The theological faculty
of the University of Paris deemed the work sufficiently impor
tant to make it the object of special censure.1 The pope com
plained loudly that the most direct attack upon his prerogative
that had issued from the press in many a year, appeared under
the name of a privy councillor of France. More than all the
arguments and historical statements in the body of the Avork,
the two illustrations with which the original edition was pro
vided, rankled in the breasts of the Roman Catholics. For the
one represented symbolically the approaching downfall of the
papal See, under the guise of a proud and stately fabric, a
species of tower of Babel, resting upon perishable wooden sup
ports to which the flame that was to consume them had already
been applied; while the other reproduced the portrait of Paul
the Fifth, together with the most blasphemous of certain inscrip
tions recently placed on a triumphal arch erected in Italy in
honor of the new pontiff, and seemed to prove satisfactorily
that the servility of Paul's worshippers had unwittingly affixed
to him the exact number of the Beast of the Apocalypse.3
That the " Mystery of Iniquity " called forth angry retorts
from the other side, need surprise us as little as that one Ray-

dislodge Antichrist from his fortress," the pedantic king chose to understand the
Huguenot's words in the most literal sense, and, while applauding his zeal,
begged him to consider that no warrant could be found, either in Holy Scripture
or in the teachings and example of the primitive church, for an offensive war
waged for religion's sake against any king or potentate, ecclesiastical or secular.
1 The decree of the Sorbonne may be read in the Mercure francois. ii. 214-16.
2 Rev. xiii. 18. The inscription from which the mystic number 666 was made
out was "Patjlo V. Vice-Deo ;" the method was, of course, the addition of
the equivalents of such letters occurring in these words as have a numerical val
ue in Latin, viz.: V, L, V, V, I, C, D. — It must not be forgotten, however, that
the mystic number was found by the curious in many other names besides that
of Paul V. For example, Florimond de Raemond satisfied himself that it was
contained in the name of Martin Luther both in Hebrew and in Latin, while the
designations of the Lutheran sect and of the Saxon origin of the reformer con
tained it in the Greek language It will, however, scandalize no one familiar
with the latitude of spelling which discoverers of anagrams are wont to claim
for themselves, to learn that the Protestant heresiarch must figure as Martin
Lavlher in order to furnish satisfactory results. See Historia de Ortu, Progressu,
et Ruina Haereseon hujus Saeculi (Coloniae, 1614), 37.

62 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. I
mond du Bray found, or thought that he had found, the mystic
number of the Apocalypse not once, but five times, in the name
and titles of Duplessis Mornay himself.1 It was an age that
revelled in polemic discussion, certainly not altogether profit
less, since, at least, it qualified not only the minister of the
gospel, but all intelligent laymen, to understand and to set forth
the tenets of their OAvn communion Avith a clearness and accuracy
which it would be difficult to equal in our own more peaceable,
but possibly less well informed age. It may not be easy to
state precisely Avhat the translations of the "Mystery of In
iquity" made into the other languages of modern Europe
effected, but Ave risk nothing in affirming that the reading of the
work in French confirmed many a Huguenot in the doctrines in
which he had been brought up. That the Protestant churches
esteemed the Avork of controversy to be, especially in this as
pect, not unworthy of notice, appears from the fact that a con
siderable gratuity was voted by the National Synod of Privas to
the authors of two treatises,2 bearing upon the same theme as
that treated by Duplessis Mornay.
The ecclesiastical body to which I have just referred, was
the tAventieth of the series held since the organization of the
Protestant churches of France, and the first that con-
The ^Nationsl
synod of vened since the death of Henry the Fourth. In the
23 to j'uiy 4, firmness of its attitude and the decision of its utter
ances, it was not inferior to any of its predecessors.
As an ecclesiastical court, the synod's functions vrere more
strictly of a spiritual character, and centred in the considera-
1 Mercure francois, ii. 216-222. I have been as unsuccessful as Mr. Smedley
(History of the Reformed Religion in France, iii. 108) in the attempt to verify
the accuracy of Du Bray's arithmetic.
2 They bore the significant titles of "Theatre d'Antechrist," and " Chasse de
la Bete Romaine." Aymon, Tous les Synodes, i. 436. Besides this, the synod
granted a large sum for the times (two thousand livres) to Daniel Chamier, to help
to defray the expense of bringing out the first three volumes of his notable work,
Panstratim catholicce, sive controuersiarum de religione adversus pontificios corpus
— a vast treasure-house of arguments against Roman Catholicism, which has,
perhaps, never been surpassed by the collections of any subsequent writer,
whether in the thoroughness and acuteness of the author's treatment, or in the
erudition which he summons to his support. See Aymon, i. 404 ; Charles Read,
Daniel Chamier (Paris, 1858), 325 ; Haag, La France protestante (2de ed.), iii.
1035, etc.

1612 THE POLITICAL ASSEMBLY OF SAUMUR 63
tion of the best methods to secure the soundness of the faith of
the churches and the proper administration of canonical discip
line. But, between the purely spiritual concerns of the churches
and their distinctively political relations, there was a debatable
ground into which the national synods were frequently tempted
to enter ; or, to speak more exactly, even the undeniably secu
lar affairs of the religious communion touched at so many points,
and frequently were so entwined with considerations of morality
and religious duty, that the ministers and elders who sat in the
highest judicature could not refuse to consider them. This was
pre-eminently the case on the present occasion. I have already
referred to the obligation under which the national synod of
Privas found itself, of uttering a distinct and forcible protest
against the so-called "Letters of Amnesty," by means of which
the Protestants were to be entrapped into a constructive admis
sion of guilt. More important than its action in this matter,
were the efforts which the Synod put forth to defeat the machi
nations of the enemy to sow discord in the Protestant ranks.
The Protest- -^ ac^ °^ u^031 was again adopted by all the deputies,
ant union. wno themselves promised to have it adopted in all the
churches of the provinces Avhich they represented. It was a
solemn oath, wherein every man promised his associates that he
would maintain the confession of faith and the ecclesiastical
discipline of the Reformed Churches of the kingdom, recogniz
ing these as conformable to the word of God, " Whose dominion
remaining in its entirety," said they, "we protest and SAvear to
render all obedience and fidelity to their majesties — our sover
eign king and the queen-regent his mother — desiring nothing
else than to serve our God in liberty of conscience, under the
favor of their edicts."1 As such promises, hoAvever,
The " com- .
mitteeofrec- were likely to prove of little avail in healing the dis
sensions of which the Assembly of Saumur had rather
revealed the existence than been the occasion, the synod took
in hand the difficult task of reconciling the great nobles of the
Huguenot party. It appointed three of its members to labor
for this end, in conjunction with the two deputies-general. It
ordered the preparation of letters to be addressed to Marshals
1 Aymon, i. 398, 399.

64 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. I
Bouillon and Lesdiguieres, to the Dukes of Rohan and Sully,
and to Soubise, La Force, and Duplessis Mornay, as well as to
Chatillon and Parabere, conjuring them to lay aside all mutual
distrust and discontent, hoAvever just they might believe these
to be. It conjured the noblemen again to manifest their former
affection and zeal for the common cause, both by living in amity
themselves and by promoting concord among others.1 Nor did
the synod shrink from the punishment of those who, in the late
political assembly, had betrayed the Protestant interests, and
jeremie played into the hands of the court. Among these
Pemer. persons Jeremie Ferrier Avas most prominent, and his
singular case gained Avide notoriety.
A man of considerable intellectual ability, a ready speaker, a
pulpit orator who easily moved his hearers to tears, but ambi
tious, self-willed, and impatient of control, Ferrier, in the early
years of his ministry, had signalized himself by violent and in
discreet attacks upon the Church of Rome. He did not hesitate
to denounce the pope as Antichrist, and this in so aggressive a
manner that words, which from the mouth of another might
have passed unnoticed, when uttered by him, called forth from
the Parliament of Toulouse an order of arrest. The Protestants
took his part, and the National Assembly of Gap not only testi
fied its approbation by electing him assistant moderator, but,
endorsing the vieAv which he advanced, ordered the article on
Antichrist to be inserted as the thirty-first article of the Con
fession of Faith.2 This was in 1603, under the reign of Henry
the Fourth. It was hardly to be expected that at the end of
eight years more, during the course of which he more than once
filled important positions of trust, Ferrier would prove
His wss.k-
ness or unfaithful to the Huguenot party. The fatal deputa-
the saumur tion from Saumur to Paris led to his downfall.3 He
returned to the Assembly ready to support all the
measures of the court, even to the acceptance of the queen's
proposition to invest the minority with all the powers of the
majority of the body. To the charge of corruption were added
other accusations of offences against the discipline of the
1 Acte d'Union et de Paix, Aymon, i. 421-3.
2 Aymon, i. 258. 3 See above, pp. 47, 48.

1612 THE POLITICAL ASSEMBLY OF SAUMUR 65
church, as well as of the misappropriation of funds confided
to his keeping. The censure based upon these faults Ferrier
treated with contempt, and claiming the reward of his ser
vices rendered at Saumur, obtained from the government an
appointment as a member of the royal "presidial" court of
Nismes. Failing to prevent Ferrier's reception, or to induce
him to resume the ministerial duties which he had so uncere
moniously relinquished, the provincial synod of Lower
The excom-
munication Languedoc passed a sentence of deposition and ex-
of Ferrier. communication against him. By its orders the sen
tence was read from the pulpit on the fourteenth of July, 1613.
The text of this singular paper has come down to us. Selecting
from the New Testament every passage that refers to the ex
clusion of unfaithful members of the Christian communion, and
discharging the accumulated mass of denunciation upon the de
voted head of the recreant pastor, the author of the document
displays a severity Avhich at the present day few reasonable
men could be found to excuse, none, it is to be hoped, to ap
prove, or imitate. The "scandalous, incorrigible, indisciplin-
able " Ferrier, is cast out of the company of the faithful, and
given over to Satan ; he is cut off from the communion of saints ;
he is declared to be no longer worthy to be esteemed a member
of Jesus Christ, but he must be regarded as a pagan and a pub
lican, a profane person and a despiser of God. The faithful are
exhorted to have no intercourse with this child of Belial, but to
keep aloof from him, if so be that this judgment and separation
to the destruction of the flesh may save his soul, and lead him
to a dread of that great and fearful day in which the Lord
shall come with the hosts of His saints, to execute judgment,
and to convince the ungodly of their ungodly deeds. The for
mula concludes with these words : " Cursed is he that doeth the
work of the Lord deceitfully. If any man love not the Lord
Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha, Amen. Come,
Lord Jesus, Come. Amen." 1
1 Aymon, Tous les Synodes, i. 463, 464. — I am not surprised at the indignation
expressed by Mr. Buckle (History of Civilization, i. 403), but this author's
well-known prejudice against the ministers of the Protestant Churches no less
than against the priests of the Church of Rome, leads him to exalt into a martyr
for independence of thought a man who, I fear, had few claims upou our re-
5

66 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. I
The very day after the publication of the sentence of ex
communication from the pulpit, Ferrier went to take his place
in the royal court of Nismes. This was the signal for a popular
mi. . . demonstration against him, as disgraceful to the Prot-
Thenotat ° . , <-" .
msmes. estant town as the ecclesiastical denunciation had been
discreditable to the religious tribunal from which it emanated.
On his way to the court-room, indeed, the obnoxious judge,
protected by an escort of a few archers of the provost, passed
through the streets unmolested. Not so on his return. First,
a band of boys and youths greeted him with insulting epithets.
Their number was quickly increased, as grown men flocked to
the spot, and from cries of " Traitor ! " and " Judas ! " the mob
came to hurling stones.1 Ferrier was so fortunate as to escape
with his life ; but, while he lay hidden in a safe retreat, the
mad crowd visited his house, plundered his goods, burned his
furniture, and broke the windows. The excitement speedily ex
pended itself and order was restored ; but the government, great
ly offended at the insult offered to the royal authority, instruct
ed the " chamber of the edict " to make diligent search for the
guilty, and punished the city by transferring the seneschal and
the presidial court from Nismes to Beaucaire.2
With this incident the figure of Ferrier passes out of Hugue
not history. Not indeed that Ferrier at once renounced the
Protestant faith. He was too prudent to take this step until

spect. If we are to believe Tallemant des Reaux (Historiettes, edit, of Monmer-
que and Paulin, iii. 481), Ferrier was the most avaricious of men. His par
simony reached meanness. "A man of such a disposition," he remarks, "was
easy to corrupt ; accordingly when, after the death of Henry IV., the resolution
was adopted to see whether some of the ministers could be gained over, this
man anticipated those who came to offer pensions from the court.''
1,1 Mais a, la sortie pensant retourner a sa maison, il trouva les adversaires
avec la populace, qui s'entredisoient en le monstrant de la main, Vege lou, vege
lou, lou traistre Judas : puis commencernt a luy jetter des pierres et courges."
Mercure fran^ois, iii. 112.
2 See the royal " letters of translation," Paris, August 3, 1613, ibid., iii. 113-116.
The Parliament of Toulouse in registering the document, September 9, took ex
ception to the use of the words "Court of Parliament" in designating the
Chamber of the Edict at Castres. " Sans approbation toutesfois du mot de Com
de Parlement en ce qui regarde la Chambre de l'fidict." Ibid., iii. 116. The
letters had spoken of a commission of investigation addressed to " N6tre Courde
Parlement et Chambre de I'Edict seante a Castres."

1612 THE POLITICAL ASSEMBLY OF SAUMUR 67
he had made sure of greater advantages.1 It is not surprising,
however, that when once be had abjured his old religion, he em
braced an early opportunity to undo whatever he may have
been able to effect by means of his celebrated theses, and, in
a stately quarto, he undertook to prove, " as against the enemies
of the Catholic Church," that the Roman Pontiff bore none of
the marks of Antichrist.2

'"La [a Paris] il ne se fit pas catholique tout d'abord; il fit bien des cere
monies avant que d'en venir la, et ne fit point abjuration qu'il ne fust asseure
d'une grosse pension que le Cardinal du Perron luy fit donner par le Clerge."
Tallemant des Reaux, ubi supra. The Bulletin of the French Protestant His
torical Society (iv. 475) prints from the MSS. of the National Library a receipt
given November 16, 1621, by " Hieremye Ferrier, ministre converty en la reli
gion catholique," for the goodly sum of six thousand livres, the pension for the
year accorded to him by the king.
2 Haag, La France protestante, vi. 487 et seq.

68 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. II

CHAPTER II
CIVIL COMMOTION, THE STATES GENERAL OF 1614, AND THE POLIT
ICAL ASSEMBLY OF GRENOBLE AND NISMES
Befoee the ferment to which reference was made in the last
chapter had time to subside — while the Roman Catholics of the
kingdom were still excited by vague alarms of Protestant de
signs upon the public peace, foreshadowed by the more perfect
organization effected by the Assembly of Saumur, and while
the Protestants themselves were hot with indignation at the trick
whereby an unsolicited pardon was thrust upon them, in order
that they might be held up to the Avorld as guilty of crimes
which they had never committed — an incident occurred in the
southAvest that nearly precipated the outbreak of war.
Among the younger Huguenots of high rank, there Avere none
that enjoyed a wider influence, or gave promise of a more brill
iant career, than the two sons of the late Rene of Frontenay,
Viscount of Rohan, hero of the siege of Lusignan and of many
other important passages at arms in the preceding century.1 It
is with the elder, known in history as Henry, Duke of Rohan,
Henry, nuke *na^ we have at present to do ; and the importance of
of Eohan. ^g parj. wni0]1 ne was destined to play in Huguenot
affairs renders it proper that a few words should be said re
specting his character and his aims. Of the younger, Benjamin,
Baron of Soubize, a worthy and able coadjutor in all his brother's
enterprises, it will be more fitting to speak in connection with
his own exploits.
Henry of Rohan was born in the castle of Blain, in Brittany,
on the twenty-first of August, 1579, and was therefore now in
the thirty-third year of his age. Not only was his family power
ful in his native province, but it ranked among the most ancient
1 See The Huguenots and Henry of Navarre, i. 45, 379.

1612 CIVIL COMMOTION 69
families in Europe. Members of the House of Rohan had for
ages intermarried with the reigning princes of the continent.
A viscount of Rohan wedded a queen of Navarre in the four
teenth century. In the early part of the sixteenth (1535),
another viscount, Rene by name, became the husband of Isa-
beau or Elizabeth of Navarre, sister of that Henry of Albret,
titular king of Navarre, whose wife, Margaret of Angouleme,
was the first important protector of the French Reformation.
The present Duke of Rohan was therefore closely connected by
blood both with the late king and with the reigning monarch of
France. Henry the Fourth was his second-cousin, and Louis
the Thirteenth was but one degree further removed.
To the advantage of high rank, the duke added the possession
of large estates, situated especially in Brittany, where, among
other landed property, he held a district not far from Brest,
which gave him the title of Prince of Leon.1 From his mother,
the heroic Catharine de Parthenay, daughter and sole heiress
of Jean l'Archevesque, Seigneur de Soubise, a leader in the first
religious war under Charles the Ninth, the House of Rohan
received a great accession of wealth ; it was confirmed in devo
tion to the Protestant cause by the example of her signal piety
and self-sacrifice. She still lived, and was destined for nearly
a score of years to constitute, in her own sphere, one of the
chief bulwarks of the reformed faith in France.
To a good address and engaging manners, Henry of Rohan
joined intellectual and moral endowments of a high order. He
was quick and energetic, persevering and indefatigable in the
His char- execution of his plans. His judgments were promptly
acter- made, and steadfastly maintained. He was bold and
intrepid, with a complete mastery of himself and able to control
others by the force of his own earnestness and honest convic
tions. For a nobleman of the period, he was well versed in
letters, displaying special fondness for those branches of learn
ing that bore directly upon his chosen pursuit, the profession
of arms. Caesar and Plutarch were his favorite authors. The

Leon, variously styled a barony and a principality, occupied a portion of the
northwestern part of the modern department of Finisterre. Its capital, Lan-
derneau, on the river Elhorn, is still a trading place of some little importance.

70 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. n
one gave him the, model after which he fashioned his own com
mentaries on the wars in which he subsequently engaged ; the
other supplied his imagination with incentives to vie with the
renowned of antiquity in valor and self-devotion. If he has
left to posterity writings in the form of historical memoirs
claiming a distinguished place in the rich collections of original
authorities, both because of their accuracy and because of the
clearness, conciseness, and vigor of the style ; he was in his own
time a master of eloquence in public discourse, and was able to
sway his hearers, bringing them to accept the views he advo
cated, however unpopular those views had previously been and
however strong the prejudice against them previously enter
tained. Thus it was that, by his fervid and persuasive oratory,
he made himself the idol of the people, even when the worldly
wisdom of the more conservative middle classes, averse to war
from motives of prudence rather than of conscience, remained
deaf to his appeals.1
After a few years spent in travel, according to the manner of
the young men of the best families of the period,2 Rohan, who,
even before leaving France, had made trial of arms before
Amiens, when only eighteen years of age, entered the service
of his king with all the ardor of a young soldier thirsting for
military distinction. His zeal and his abilities were so fully
appreciated by Henry the Fourth, that, in 1603, that prince
raised him to the rank of a duke and a peer of the realm, and
arranged his marriage with Catharine, daughter of the Duke of
Sully. Having been appointed colonel-general of the Swiss,
Rohan was ordered to take part with the king's army in the
intended expedition against Cleves, and, at the moment of
Henry the Fourth's assassination, was in Champagne in com
mand of six thousand Swiss mercenaries, ready to join the king

1 On the character of Henry de Rohan, see the interesting monograph of the
Finnish Professor, M. G. Schybergson, Le Due de Rohan et la Chute du Parti
protestant en France (Paris, 1880), especially pages 15 and following.
2 Voyage de M. de Rohan fait (1598 a 1600) en Italie, Allemagne, Pays-Bas,
Angleterre et Ecosse. An interesting summary of this narrative, written origi
nally merely to meet the eyes of the writer's mother, may be read in L. Anquez,
Un nouveau Chapitre de l'Histoire politique des Reformes de France (Paris,
1865) Appendice, 352-5.

1612 CIVIL COMMOTION 71
as soon as the latter should take the field. After the conclusion
of the campaign of Cleves, in which he served under the Mar
shal de la Chastre, in place of his beloved master, Rohan re
turned to France only to witness the desperate efforts of the
court to sow discord among the Protestants. In the political
assembly of Saumur, he showed himself to be a firm and un
swerving adherent of the Protestant cause. It was due in no
slight degree to his exertions and to his fiery words spoken
in the assembly itself, that the policy of Marie de' Medici and
her advisers, if not altogether thwarted, was nevertheless so far
counteracted as to lose most of the advantages that had been
anticipated. A friend of decided measures, he was opposed to
concession in any form, and saw, in the factions and divisions
reigning in the ranks of the opponents of Protestantism, the
best opportunity the Huguenots had ever enjoyed for coming
into possession of their rights. "France," said he, "used to
be divided between the House of Bourbon and the House of
Lorraine, but the pretext for the division was taken from the
diversity of religions. Now that both sides are Roman Catho
lic, they have lost the old pretext, and, the papal religion hav
ing split in two, we are left to choose which one of the twain
we shall join." J
The jealousy and suspicion of the court had not unnaturally
fastened upon the youthful champion of the Huguenot rights.
The affair Proof of this fact was soon forthcoming. The town of
JeaW'Aii- Saint Jean d'Angely, in the province of Saintonge,
gely' was one of the most important of the Huguenot places
of security in the southwest, occupied by a garrison, paid from
the royal treasury, of over one hundred and sixty men. Only
five other cities held by the Protestants were deemed worthy
of a larger number of defenders.2 Henry of Rohan had been
appointed governor of the place by the late king. The town
Avas now recognized as too strong a point of support that he
should be left in undisturbed possession. A plan was laid,
with the connivance, if not by the suggestion of Marshal Bouil-
1 Henry of Rohan, ap. Petitot's notice prefixed to vol. xviii. of Collection des
Memoires relatifs a 1'Histoire de France, p. 13.
'Anquez, Histoire des Assemblees politiques des Reformes, 162-4. These
were Saumur, Niort, Chltellerault, Jargeau, and Thouars.

72 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. II
Ion, to wrest Saint Jean d'Angely from his grasp. It is char
acteristic of the times — and the circumstance throws light upon
the possibilities of division and discord afforded by the revived
feudalism of the latter part of the sixteenth and the beginning
of the seventeenth centuries, that the chief instruments upon
whom the court relied were La Rochebeaucourt, royal lieu
tenant-governor of Saint Jean, and Foucault, who commanded
the garrison. Apprised of the designs of his enemies, Rohan
repaired to Paris to justify himself for the part he had taken
at Saumur, and to obtain from the regent the abandonment of
the scheme formed against him. He found his efforts fruitless.
In a few days the election of a new mayor of the town would
take place, and it was evident that, in the duke's absence, the
chief municipal authority must pass into the hands of a man
whose first move would be to close the gates to the nominal
governor. Prompt action was needed, and Rohan acted
promptly. Pleading the serious illness of Soubise, the duke
obtained leave of Marie de' Medici to depart from the capital.
Instead, however, of lingering by his brother's bedside in Poitou,
he sped to Saint Jean, taking with him Soubise, whom he met
by the way, and hastened to secure the place. In vain did the
court send messengers to bid him by no means to proceed with
the contemplated election. In vain did the court direct that the
former mayor should temporarily be continued in office, with
out prejudice to the city's privileges for the future. Rohan was
deaf to the most express commands. He sent his secretary,
indeed, to Paris, to justify the course he had adopted, and to
remove misapprehensions existing in the queen's mind respect
ing the true state of affairs at Saint Jean ; meanwhile reassur
ing the minds of the burgesses by promising to obtain for his
acts the approval of the government when better informed.
But he proceeded without delay to assemble the people on the
proper day, a week before Palm Sunday, and forwarded to the
court, without further apology, the names of the three candi
dates that had received the greatest number of votes (all three
being persons upon whose fidelity he could count), for the
queen-mother to choose whichever one she preferred. It would
be difficult to describe the mingled anger and vexation of
the court. The first impulse was to declare Rohan a rebel and

1612 CIVIL COMMOTION 73
to send an army to deal with the resolute Huguenot. His
mother, his sisters, and his wife, who happened to be in Paris,
were placed under arrest, and the secretary that had brought
the duke's excuses was thrown into the Bastile. It required all
the exertions of Duplessis Mornay and of the Protestant depu
ties-general to prevent the outbreak of civil war. In the end,
hoAvever, pacific counsels prevailed. The honor of the king
Avas vindicated by Rohan's consent that the keys of Saint Jean
should be placed for a week in the hands of the former mayor,
that the obnoxious lieutenant and captain who had been ex
cluded should be permitted to return and resume their func
tions, at least for a season, and that the form of a new election
should be observed. The substantial fruits of the struggle,
however, remained in the hands of Rohan. Saint Jean d'Angely
continued to acknowledge his authority.1
Pubhc opinion was divided in its estimate of the conduct of
the duke. The Roman Catholics with one accord denounced
Rohan's his actions as rebellious, and there were many even
demned0by among the Huguenots themselves who, if they Avere by
dentof'nisni"no means willing to pass so severe a sentence upon
! them, nevertheless deplored an incident Avhich had
nearly involved France in a fresh war. More peaceable meas
ures, they said, might have secured the same ends. Even the
appearance of a conflict with the royal authority ought to have
been avoided. A little forbearance would have been rewarded
by the merited confidence of the queen-mother and her advisers,
and Marie de' Medici would have been less inclined in future to
harbor doubts of the loyalty of subjects who themselves cast
aside all distrust of the crown. Another part of the Huguenots,
however, could not forget the lessons of the past, nor banish
from their minds the remembrance of former attempts on the
But ap- part of their enemies. As a private individual, Rohan
Med under might have been commended had he preferred to ex-
stances, pose his possessions and even his life to the covert at
tacks of his personal enemies, rather than stir up strife by
seeming to live in an atmosphere of suspicion. As a professed
1 Memoires du Due de Rohan, i. 104-9 ; Vie de Duplessis Mornay, 361-3 ;
Mercure francois, ii. 597-604 ; Memoires du Cardinal de Richelieu, x. 290, 291 ;
Benoist, ii. 103-8.

74 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. H
Protestant, to whose safe-keeping one of the most important
of the hostage cities had been entrusted, as a nobleman who
must answer with his honor that his charge should be lost
through no lack of courage or foresight, the duke was bound
to act with promptness and decision, even should his fearless
course bring him into collision with the guardians and advisers
of the young king.
And it must be noticed that even the calm and judicious Du
plessis Mornay, inclined though he was in general to conciliatory
measures and to peace, distinctly took this view. He wrote to
the queen, to the princes of the blood and to other men of in
fluence, telling them frankly, that men deceived them, when
they represented the affair of Saint Jean d'Angely simply as a
matter of private concern. It was a pledge given to all the
churches that Avas at stake. It was the authority of a person
who did not occupy a private station that was in question.
All the neighboring provinces were interested in Saint Jean, as
in an outwork thrown up for their defence, and even the more
distant provinces were daily coming to recognize the cause as
common to them also.1
But while the first movements of the Duke of Rohan may
commend themselves to the candid judgment of men who, at
this remove from the excitement of contemporary partisanship,
Avill carefully examine the circumstances in which the Protes
tants of France Avere placed, his subsequent course cannot be
viewed so charitably. The attempt of the court upon Saint
Jean d'Angely, followed by other unfriendly acts on its part,3
furnished to some hot-headed persons among the Huguenots
of the southwest a ground, or a pretext, for a first trial of the
dangerous weapons newly forged by the Assembly of Sau
mur. With Rohan's consent, if not at his suggestion, the prov
ince of Saintonge, believing itself aggrieved, called a meeting of

1 Vie de Duplessis Mornay (Leyden, 1647), 367.
" Especially by a scheme to secure the mayoralty of La Rochelle through Du
Coudrai, who was at the same time a counsellor of the Parliament of Paris and
one of the echevins, or aldermen, of La Rochelle. The scheme not only failed
ignominiously, but led to a riot (September, 1612), in which Du Coudrai was ex
pelled from the city, and the popular mayor, apparently while attempting to
protect him, was wounded. Benoist, ii. 111-113, etc.

1612 CIVIL COMMOTION 75
the representatives of the " cercle " to come together in Septem
ber. The five neighboring " provinces," each of which was to
Meeting of sen^- *wo members of its council, were La Rochelle,
atLaEo-16 'Lower Guyenne, Poitou, Anjou, and Brittany. And
cheiie. now began a complicated course of negotiation and in
trigue, with the details of which I shall not tax the reader's pa
tience. Conservative men Avho readily conceded the justice and
necessity of self-defence to ward off a wanton attack, repudiated
the step now taken, as a decided advance toward open hostilities.
The queen issued an order prohibiting the proposed meeting.
By her request, Duplessis Mornay, who had already used his pru
dent counsels to counteract the evil effects of the rashness of
the more inconsiderate part of his felloAv Huguenots, was in
duced to represent to Rohan the dangers of the course upon
which he had embarked, and exert himself to bring about the
disruption of the assembly. In the first part of his commission
he Avas but moderately successful. The duke was either blind
to the breakers toward which the current of events was steadily
drawing him, or feared the entire loss of his influence, should
he seem to swerve from the bold course urged upon him by
Haultefontaine and other advocates of extreme measures. In
his other efforts Mornay met with more encouragement. One
of the provinces, Anjou, sent men of knoAvn moderation to rep
resent it in the councils of the circle. When the body ac
tually began its sessions, at La Rochelle, two months after the
date of its original assignment, Rouvray, one of the two Protes
tant deputies-general, and Mornay himself made their appear
ance with proposals from Marie de' Medici looking to the sat
isfaction of the Protestants. The assembly suspended its
sessions while the deputy-general journeyed to Paris Avith the
demands which it was thought best to make, and returned
bringing the queen's reply. This reply did not satisfy all the
desires of the Huguenots. As a proof of the purpose of the gov
ernment to protect the Protestants, the king was made again to
issue a declaration confirming the Edict of Nantes,1 and extend
ing full pardon to those who, presumably taking umbrage at
1 Declaration du Roy et Confirmation de l'Edit de Nantes, donnee a Paris, le
15 Decembre, 1612, in Benoist, ii., documents, 28-30.

76 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. H
certain recent occurrences, had held unauthorized assembhes
and councils, and collected money, provisions, and soldiers.
But while it consented to grant an amnesty for the acts of dis
obedience of the Huguenots that had taken part in the convo
cation of the circle, the government was unwilling to appear to
yield to compulsion. It would promise only to fulfil the priA'ate
assurances which had already been given, and insisted upon the
immediate Avithdrawal of the deputies from La Rochelle. On
this point indeed no option was left them. The province of
Anjou, represented by men who fully sympathized Avith Duples
sis Mornay, had already intimated its withdrawal ; and the
municipal authorities of La Rochelle, as soon as once they had
received intelligence that the king would overlook the past, gave
out that they would not tolerate the continued sojourn of their
troublesome guests. It only remained for Rohan and the rest
to make the best of the situation, and to send deputies to the
court with the customary assurances of submission and the
customary protestations of loyalty. Irrespective of the personal
concessions obtained by Rohan, the Protestants gained little of
importance by their imprudent meeting at La Rochelle.1 In
fact, it may be asserted with positiveness that the apparent ad
vantages were far more than counterbalanced by the injurious
impression made by the Huguenots of one small region, repre
senting the sentiments of a small portion of the Protestants of
France, that the adherents of the Reformed faith Avere ready,
on the slightest occasion or pretext, to plunge their country
anew into the horrors of a civil war.2

1 A few points evaded or denied to the assembly of Saumur were granted.
The attestations made by Protestant pastors were to be accepted without the hu
miliating description " ministre de la Religion Prelendue Reformce." After a
good deal of urgency ou the part of the deputies-general, the queen, who had
absolutely prohibited the "provincial councils" for the future, was induced to
give an underhand consent that they be tolerated, provided the Protestant
churches should use this institution "modestly." "Thus," remarks the his
torian of the Edict of Nantes, ' ' one and the same thing was forbidden by a pub
lic and verified law, and permitted by a secret promise ; so that it was easy for
the queen to return to the law when she pleased to do so, and to forget her
promise." Benoist, ii. 120.
" For the story of the meeting of the circle at La Rochelle, compare Memoires
de Rohan, i. 111-114 ; Mercurefran;ois, ii. 737-744, iii. 36 ; Benoist, ii. 113-120 ;

1612 CIVIL COMMOTION 77
That this impression did not become universal, was due
above all to the patriotic and untiring exertions of one man,
who never lost either courage or self-possession. Duplessis
Mornay, from his castle of Saumur, swayed the influences
Duplessis which dissipated for the time the threatening storm
a^rtfanouf- of war- ^e interceded with the angry court, he gave
break of war. soulid advice to the excited deputies at La Rochelle,
he labored by letter and personally with the Duke of Rohan,
to free him from the temporary delusion into which the evil
counsel of Haultefontaine and his own fear of loss of in
fluence with his followers had led him. Not even the unAvise
advance of the royal troops to the Loire, ordered by Marie de'
Medici in a moment of uncontrollable passion, caused by the
presumption of the circle, Avas sufficient to make him flinch.
To show fear, to collect provisions, to mass troops and prepare
as if against an expected attack, would have been to precipi
tate war. Duplessis Mornay refused to do more than exercise
the ordinary precaution against unauthorized attempts at a sur
prise. " I prefer," he replied to his friends, " to run the entire
risk, rather than add to hatred of my religion some pretext of
rebellion. No crime can be laid to my charge. I fear as little
an examination of my accounts. Our opponents are too pru
dent to attack me for religion's sake alone. The state of their
affairs does not admit of it, and a spark would doubtless set
the whole kingdom on fire. In any event, I shall not be the
first gentleman that has succumbed either to force or to in
justice." 1
And Duplessis Mornay's wisdom and integrity commended
themselves to all persons of sound judgment and confidence.
Among the first to congratulate him upon his success was the
dowager duchess of Rohan, Catherine de Parthenay, who,
facetiously playing upon the name of the Huguenot assembly,
descanted upon the disruption of the magic " circle " which had
thrown a spell over all that entered it. " You struck it a severe
Vie de Duplessis Mornay, 366-376 ; Memoires de Pontchartrain, ii. 15-22 ; An-
quez, Histoire des Assemblees politiques des Ref ormes, 257-261 ; and particularly
the correspondence of Duplessis Mornay during the months of December, 1612,
and January, 1613, in Memoires (ed. of 1825) vols. xi. and xii.
1 Vie de Duplessis Mornay, 363.

78 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. H
blow," she wrote, " and I am not astonished that you have
drawn upon you the curses of those who longed for pillage. I
bless you with all my heart, and what is better is, that, not
withstanding their imprecations, God will bless you. I am very
sorry that all those that sprang from me cannot appreciate so
clearly as do a part of them, what you have accomplished for
them. For those that are of the feminine gender honor you
therefor, and utter a thousand prayers for your prosperity.1 I
hope the others will do so likewise in good time, when they
have leisure to measure the depth of the precipice from whose
brink they have been drawn. Meantime, I beg you to excuse
the spell under which they are, and to bear in mind, that so
long as a person is within the circle, he is in the power of the
magician. Recall in imagination those enchanted knights, of
whom the romances tell us, who used to fight against their best
friends, and even against the very men that came to deliver
them."2 The extravagant favor shoAvn by the queen-mother to the
Italian adventurer, Concino Concini, and his wife, Leonora Ga-
ligai, had long irritated the great nobles of the royal court.
The millions hoarded in the Bastile by Henry's parsimonious
treasurer, had, in the course of less than four years, been
scattered to the winds, and the mercenary brood of courtiers
had good reason to fear that the king's majority (only nine
months distant) would be reached before they had sufficiently
feathered their nests.3 The first outbreak of discontent oc-

1 The reference is to Anne de Rohan, who surpassed her two brothers as much
in learning and literary attainments, as in equipoise of judgment. She was re
garded as one of the most graceful writers of her time, and Agrippa d'Aubigne,
at the close of his Histoire Universelle. inserts a dozen or more stanzas of her
poem on the death of Henry IV., prefacing them with the complimentary re
mark : " Je laisse parler mieux que moi Anne de Rohan, Princesse de Leon, de
laquelle V esprit trie entre les delices du del, escrit ainsi." Bayle, who devotes
an article of his Dictionary to her, relates with admiration the fortitude which
she evinced in enduring, in company with her mother, the hardships of the
siege of La Rochelle, when for three months she was reduced to subsisting upon
horse-flesh and a daily allowance of four ounces of bread.
- Madame de Rohan to Duplessis Mornay, January 24, 1613, Memoires,
xii. 56.
3 Memoires du Cardinal de Richelieu, x. 325, etc.

1614 CIVIL COMMOTION 79
curred early in the year 1614. The Prince of Conde, the Count
of Soissons, and the Dukes of Longueville, Vendome, Mayenne,
and Nevers were the leaders whose names were given to the
public ; but the chief conspirator was the intriguing Duke of
Bouillon, who kept his connection with the movement in the
background, that he might seem to intervene rather as a me
diator than as an interested party.1 The princes withdrew from
conde and the royal 'court and took up their residence at Mezieres,
conSno- on *ne northeastern frontier,2 where they might possess
drawfto^11" *ne double advantage of being able to introduce foreign
the court, troops into the kingdom with ease, and of readily mak
ing good their own escape, in case they were hard pressed.
Neither contingency, however, occurred. Their rash enterprise
had been too carelessly planned to be really formidable ; it was
supported neither with men nor with money. And though the
manifesto of Conde, in the form of a letter to the queen-mother,
had much to say of the disorders of the state, the boasted
patriotism of its author and his associates was not proof against
the seductive offers of money and rewards that were made them
from Paris. On the other hand, Marie de' Medici, in her per
plexity, was only too happy to purchase the submission of the
estranged noblemen, even if the money to secure it must be
wrung from the poor people, already burdened almost beyond
endurance. For whole provinces were either in revolt or, like
Poitou, waited only to see which would prove the stronger
side. Moreover, in the endeavor to find suitable generals to
command the king's army, such were the reigning dissensions
and jealousies that Marie found herself perplexed, and almost
in despair.3
The princes would gladly have involved the Huguenots in
1 " Et lui sortit le dernier avec le consentement de la Reine, sous l'esperance
qu'il lui donnoit de ramener tous ces princes, et menagea si industrieusement
cette affaire, qu'il en demeura toujours le maitre et le moyenneur." Memoires
de Rohan, i. 115.
2 Excepting the Duke of Vendome, who was arrested in the Louvre before he
could leave. Subsequently he found an opportunity to escape to Brittany, a
province of which he was governor. See his letter from Aucenis, March 1,
1614, in Mercure francois, iii. 253-5.
3 "Ce fut aussi un des plus cruels embarras ou la Reine se trouva dans cette
facheuse conjuncture." Memoires de Pontchartrain, ii. 40, 41.

80 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. II
their quarrel. Indeed, Conde's letter to the queen contained a
special mention of the wrongs to which the Protestants had
been subjected by the failure of the government to
notspra-116" execute the edicts made in their favor, and by its
aSof^rom studious efforts to sow discord and division among
the quarrel, ^em.1 A very few of the Huguenots would seem to
have hesitated as to the course they should take at this crisis,
and the Duke of Rohan not only sent an agent to watch the
negotiations betAveen the court and the princes, but advised, or
acquiesced in the dangerous step of calling a political assembly
of the Huguenots of Lower Guyenne to meet at the very time
and place where the next national synod was to convene.2 But
the sober good sense of the Protestants restrained them from
committing the blunder of linking their fortunes to the whims of
a body of political malcontents with Avhom they had nothing in
common. They saAv through the shallow pretext of concern for
the preservation of the Protestant churches, alleged, as the mo
tive for their revolt, by noblemen, every one of whom, with the
single exception of Marshal Bouillon, was a firm adherent of
the Roman Catholic religion.3 They agreed, with Duplessis
Mornay, that it was the clear duty of the Huguenots to remain
quiet, and, while keeping on their guard, to leave it to those
whose duty it was, to settle the present disturbances. A holy,
a purely religious cause must not be conjoined with a civil un
dertaking.4 1 " Et par une entiiire observation des Edicts de ceux de la Religion Pre-
tendue Reformee, on leur eust oste toutsujet de plainte : on eustreprimee ceux
d'entr'eux qui eussent passe les limites de leur devoir : on n'eust seme des divi
sions, qui leur faisans songer a, leur particulier, ont failly a jetter le public et
l'Estat en peril." Conde's letter, dated February 19, 1614, is given in the
original by the Mercure franc;ois, iii. 224-231, and in Latin by President
Gramond, Hist. Galliae ab excessu Henrici IV. (Amsterdam, 1653, 40-42).
2 Benoist, Histoire de l'Edit de Nantes, ii. 130, 131. Rohan, in his Memoires,
i. 117, 118, refers to the mission of Haultefontaine, but makes no mention of
the call of the political assembly.
3 " Je vous confesseray aussi franchement," wrote Vauder Myle, March 15,
1614, " que je ne suis pas capable de comprendre, d'ou procederoit cette charite
pour la conservation de nostre religion, que plusieurs veulent que M. le Prince
et autres princes et seigneurs qui sont avec luy, nous porteroient," etc. Me
moires de Duplessis Mornay (Elz. ed.), iii. 585.
4 Letter to Baron de Blet, February 28, 1614. Memoires, iii. 568, 569.

1614 CIVIL COMMOTION 81
The trouble was settled on the fifteenth of May by the treaty
of Sainte Menehould, brought about in good part by that man
Treat of °^ sterling patriotism and tried abilities, the historian
houid m6™" JaC(lues Auguste de Thou.1 Dismissing from pres-
15, i6i4. ent consideration the prizes which the princes were
able to secure each for himself at the expense of the public, the
great point reached by the revolt of 1614 was an engagement
entered into by* the court to summon the States General of the
realm to meet in the city of Sens, on the tenth day of the ap
proaching month of September. The Prince of Conde was
confident that by means of this assembly he would be able to
overthrow the present administration and place himself at the
head of affairs.2
Meanwhile the attention of the Huguenots was directed to
the sessions of the National Synod of their churches, held at
Tonneins, on the Garonne, in the month of May, 1614.3 As the
National preceding synod had striven not unsuccessfully to
To'anenfs restore harmony between the leading nobles of the
May, 1614. Protestant communion, so the present body put forth
its efforts to introduce concord, both within the bosom of the
Reformed church of France and between the different churches
holding a common faith in western Europe. A doctrinal con
troversy had for some time raged between two noted theo
logians — Tilenus, a professor in the college founded by the
Duke of Bouillon at Sedan, and the more celebrated Pierre Du
Moulin, late Chaplain of Catharine of Bourbon, sister of Henry
the Fourth, and for twenty-two years one of the pastors of the
Protestant- church of Paris, worshipping at Charenton.4 The

1 It is pleasant to note that De Thou's excellence was so highly appreciated by
contemporaries, as appears from the following sentence in the Mercure fran^ois
(ii. 252): " Or la candeur de ce President, et saprobite, eurenttant de pouvoir
sur M. le Prince, qu'il lui donna parole de s'approcher et venir a Soissons, et
la entrer en une Conference."
2 See the text of the numerous letters of Marie de' Medici, of Cardinal Du
Perron, of the Duke of Vend6me, and the Prince of Conde, in the Mercure
francois, iii. 216-259. "Articles de la Paix arrestee et conclue S, S. Mene
hould," May 15, 1614, ibid., iii. 297-301.
3 The acts of this synod occupy the beginning of the second volume of Ay
mon, Tous les Synodes, pp. 1-77.
4 On Pierre du Moulin, as one of the leading preachers of the Huguenots, see
6

82 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. II
matter in dispute was the character of the union of the divine
and human natures in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The sympathies of the members of the national synod were
decidedly on the side of the Charenton minister, for whose ortho
doxy they vouched with a positiveness which is quite wanting in
the case of his antagonist. None the less were they anxious
to bury the controversy in oblivion. To this end they ap
pointed a conference to be held at Saumur, at which both Du
Moulin and Tilenus should be present, and Duplessis Mornay
and the professors of the Protestant academie, or university,
should endeavor to bring the two theologians to forget their
former disputes in " a good union of doctrine." Indeed they
gravely proposed to institute a careful search for the books writ
ten on either side, with a view to the removal of the offending
cause from the body politic. Every volume written upon the
subject in dispute either by Tilenus or by Du Moulin, having
been brought to Saumur, the entire mass of controversy was to
be placed in the safe-keeping of Duplessis Mornay. What the
ulterior disposition of the collection was intended to be is not
stated, but may be surmised.
The Protestant synod was honored with a letter from no less
a personage than James the First of England, a monarch who
seemed to have renounced the influence which, as Elizabeth's
James the successor, he might rightfully have claimed in the
for Prates68, settlement of the destinies of Europe, in favor of theo-
tant union. 1 0gjcai discussions, in which he believed himself to be a
master. The communication, which was not read until it had
been loyally submitted to the French government, proAred to be
The synod in ^ne marn a plea f°r union and peace among all that
™a™fhar- sincerely professed the Christian faith. To its con-
mony. ciliatory advice the synod replied not only by a letter
full of appreciative sentiment respecting his majesty's character
and services to the cause of Protestantism, but by a plan "for
A. Vinet, Histoire de la Predication parmi les Reformes de France au dix-
septieme siecle (Paris, 1860), 9-71. It is, as Vinet well remarks, a conclusive
evidence of Du Moulin's great excellence in controversy, that the Roman
Catholic church long esteemed him her most formidable adversary, and that,
more than sixty years after the publication of the Protestant pastor's book " Ln
vocation des pasteurs," Fenelon deemed it deserving of a formal refutation.

1614 CIVIL COMMOTION 83
reuniting the Christian churches which have shaken off the yoke
of the Pope, and for the adjustment of the differences that
have arisen, or may yet arise, betAveen them in future." The
scheme was a long one. The project, as is well known, came-
to nothing. But, in strong contrast with the tenacity with.
which a past age clung to every detail of doctrine, as if upon
the minutest point depended the whole system of Christian
truth, the framers of this paper deserve to be long remembered
as having sketched a course of procedure that accorded more
nearly with the dictates of Christian charity and the suggestions
of common -sense than any set forth by their predecessors
in similar undertakings. In the congress of theologians whom
it was proposed to assemble, for the purpose of drawing up a
common symbol of faith, no discussion of rival tenets was to be
tolerated. Instead of that, a tabular statement would be sub
mitted of the confessions of the Reformed churches of England,
Scotland, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the Palat
inate. Out of all these the joint confession would be con
structed of the doctrines which all held in common. From that
confession " might be omitted," said the broad-minded authors,
" many points which are not necessary to our eternal salvation ;
among which may be reckoned those controversies that have
been agitated respecting Free Will, the Perseverance of the
Saints, and Predestination. For it is a very certain thing, that
all errors in the matter of religion arise from our desiring either
to know too much, or to have too much ; that is to say, that
curiosity or avarice are the source of them. It was this latter
sin that corrupted and ruined the church of Rome. Satan still
puts forth all his efforts to corrupt us by the former. However
this may be, could we but gain this advantage over ourselves, to
consent to be ignorant of many matters, and be satisfied with
knowing solely that which regards our soul's salvation and God's
glory, we should make a great stride, and should undeniably
have already greatly advanced our work of Union." J
Over the complaints of the synod respecting some acts of in
justice of which the Huguenots were the victims, I pass
1 Expediens que 1'on propose pour reunir les figlises Chretiennes, etc., in Ay
mon, Tous les Synodes, ii. 57-62.

84 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. H
lightly. In comparison with the greater grievances of a sub
sequent part of the century, they seem almost unworthy of
notice.1 On the twenty-seventh of September, 1614, Louis was just
thirteen years old. Custom placed the majority of the kings of
France at their fourteenth year, and the lawyers had found
reasons satisfactory to their conscience for interpreting this to
mean not the completion but the beginning of the fourteenth
year. As Marie de' Medici had abundant cause for desiring to
shift the load of responsibility for the administration of affairs
from her own shoulders to those of her son, she was not slow
in availing herself of the opportunity of doing so before the
meeting of the three Orders of the kingdom. On the second of
October, but five days after his birthday, Louis the Thirteenth,
accompanied by his mother and his brother, as well as by the
Louis pro- Frince of Conde, the Count of Soissons, and a goodly
ownmaior- retinue of dukes, peers of France, marshals, cardinals,
"y- and other dignitaries, repaired to the halls of the Par
liament of Paris. In the presence of that august body he
proceeded to hold a lit de justice, and to proclaim that he
entered upon the full rights of his regal office. At the same
time he declared it to be his good pleasure that the queen, his
mother, should assume the charge of the affairs of the kingdom,
with the same authority that she had heretofore exercised.2 A
formal Declaration, dated the first of October, was then registered
in his presence, Chancellor Sillery, in the midst of the judges,
all clothed in their red gowns of office, acting as the head of the

1 As an instance, one of the six Protestant counsellors of the Parliament of Paris
became a Roman Catholic. The Synod of Tonneins petitioned that his place
should be filled by the appointment of another judge representing the religion
from which he had apostatized. Five years later, at the Assembly of Loudun,
the Huguenots reiterated a demand to which no attention had been paid. Mr.
Buckle (History of Civilization in England, i 345), with the perversity which
characterizes his entire treatment of the Huguenots of this period, makes this a
piece of unpardonable presumption. Would he have us believe that they
had no right of self-preservation, but that they should have tamely acquiesced
in any diminution of their safeguards which the royal council might be pleased
to effect ?
2 Memoires de Pontchartrain (Ed. Michaud et Poujoulat), 336 ; Memoires du
Cardinal de Richelieu (Ed Petitot), x. 350 ; Benoist, ii. 139, 140.

1614 CIVIL COMMOTION 85
judiciary of the kingdom. The document contained, together
with two or three other articles eminently appropriate to the
occasion, a confirmation of the Edict of Nantes and
firms the of all the legislation based upon it, couched in terms
tes, October, clear and forcible. These laws were to be inviolably
kept and observed. Any that violated them were to
be punished with severity as disturbers of the public peace.1
The meeting of the States General which, according to the
treaty of Sainte Menehould, should have been held on the tenth
of September, began about a month later, in Paris in-
Generai of stead of Sens. It is no purpose of mine to enter into
a discussion, which in a history of the Huguenots
would be out of place, of the purely political relations of this
body, the last of its kind to be summoned until the tardy con
vocation of the memorable States General of 1789, which sealed
the fate of royalty in France. There are, however, certain con
siderations arising out of the position of the Huguenots in the
sight of the law that make it necessary that we should give
more than a passing glance to a gathering which failed so sig
nally both to set bounds to the growth of the power of the
Order of Jesus, and to check the development of that principle
of absolutism in government which was to prove not less fatal to
the existence of the Protestant religion within the dominion of
the very Christian king, than to all civil freedom.
It is generally admitted by historians that the impotence ex
hibited by the States General of 1614 to administer any proper
remedy for the ills under which the kingdom was confessedly
suffering, goes far to account for the long interval of a century
and three-quarters during which the voice of the people, even as
imperfectly expressed by this method, remained unheard. The
blame must be set down to the account not so much of the Tiers
Mat, as of the two privileged orders, which so readily combined
for the purpose of effectually suppressing all movements tend
ing to the cure of existing abuses. It is true that even in the
Third Estate the religious consciousness had been partially

1 Declaration de la Majorite du Roy, contenant confirmation des Edits de Pa
cification, et defenses des Duels. Donne a Paris, le 1. Octobre, 1614. Verifie
en Parlement le 2. des dits mois et an. Benoist, ii., Documents, 31-33.

86 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. H
paralyzed during the half century which had elapsed since the
States that met at Orleans and Pontoise, in the first year of the
reign of Charles the Ninth (1561). What persecution was
powerless to accomplish was effected through the searing influ
ence of wars ostensibly waged in the name of religion. The
opposed camps of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism were
now clearly marked out. There was now no prospect, scarcely
the possibility, that France should be gained over by the Refor
mation. The epoch of general awakening and general expect
ancy, the epoch of an undefined anticipation of a change for the
better in spiritual affairs, ended abruptly on the Sunday morn
ing when Francis, Duke of Guise, encouraged or permitted his
soldiers to fire upon defenceless peasants gathered for divine
worship in a barn in a small town of Champagne, and when the
Massacre of Vassy proclaimed the outbreak of a war that was to
last for more than a generation. There Avas, therefore, no rep
resentative of the Tiers Etat in 1614 to set forth before Louis
the Thirteenth, as Jacques Bretagne, vierg of Autun, had set
forth, in the presence of Charles the Ninth and Catharine de'
Medici, in 1561, the necessity of a free national council, to be
presided over by the king in person, for the purpose of institut
ing a reformation of the Church — a council Avherein no one
should sit who had an interest in retarding that reformation —
a council that would recognize the word of God as the sole
guide for the settlement of the matters in dispute.1
To the need of some slight and superficial amendment in the
church, the Tiers Etat of 1614 was not, it is true, altogether
The Tiers blind. ; and it steadily refused to incorporate in its
?heatpubj?cies cahier a petition for the publication of the decrees of
de°cre°efs of° Trent, which the clergy urged with great persistence.
Trent. N0t so with the nobles. At first, indeed, these last also
objected, on the ground that the very Christian kings, Louis the
Thirteenth's predecessors, had seen impediments in the way of
the publication, and had purposely deferred it. They were
willing only to request his majesty to recognize the decrees with
such modifications as might seem adA'isable. But presently,
when the clergy consented to make the reservation that the
1 The Rise of the Huguenots, i. 489-493.

1614 THE STATES GENERAL 87
decrees should not affect the person and rights of the king
and other matters respecting which apprehensions had been
expressed, the nobles yielded so gracefully and so complete
ly, as to receive from the prelates, through their president,
Cardinal de la Rochefoucault, the most fulsome praise. The
nobles, forsooth, had acquired undying glory, and, beside
merit in God's sight, had laid the clergy under an eternal
obligation.1 On the other hand, the Bishop of Beauvais hav
ing appeared in the chamber of the third estate to advocate
the measure, his arguments were met and skilfully parried
by the president, Robert Miron, provost of the merchants of
Paris, who reminded him that the promulgation of the decrees
of a council, even though that council were oecumenical, Avas
an unheard-of novelty. The registers of parliament contained
no such document. Neither Constance nor Basle had been so
honored. "The true publication of councils," he said, "lies in
the observance and execution of their prescriptions." And he
added, not without a spice of malicious pleasantry, that, al
though the divisions of opinion now rife seemed rather to
dictate the rejection than the acceptance of the much-opposed
decrees in question, the hierarchy might nevertheless take a
step in the direction which they were anxious for others to
pursue. "You, gentlemen of the clergy, have it in your own
power to enter upon the execution of the decrees of the Council
of Trent, by cutting off the plurality of benefices, and other
abuses to which those decrees offer a remedy." 2 The advice
was excellent ; but there is no record of its having been fol
lowed. The spirit of manly independence in the expression of opin
ion was not extinguished in the breast of the representatives of
the people. There is evidence, indeed, rather of a dawning con
sciousness, on their part, of those rights which were at last to
be proclaimed in tones of thunder at the common downfall of
the monarchy and the " noblesse." Early in their sessions they
1 Mercure frangois, iii. 496.
2 ' ' Neantmoins Messieurs du Clerge se peuvent mettre d'eux-mesmes dans ce
Concile, en practiquer les resolutions, en retranchant la pluralite des Benefices,
et autres abus ausquels il a remedie." Mercure frangois, iii. 495. Archives
curieuses, 2e sSrie, i. 46, 47.

88 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. II
were solicited by the noblesse to join that order and the clergy
in a request that the king should discontinue the " Paulette '' —
an annual tax levied upon the holders of judicial and other
offices under the crown, in return for which they secured the
transmission of those offices, upon their death, to their sons.
The representatives of the Tiers Etat insisted on adding two
it calls for more articles. The one regarded a reduction of the
tton^ftoi- taxes known as " tailles" by at least one-quarter, or to
withdrawal6 the scale of the year 1576 ; the other sought to stop
of pensions, ^e i^sh presents by which the very life-blood of
France was drained. " We cannot consent," they said on one
occasion to the deputy of the clergy who came to reinforce the
request of the nobles — "we cannot consent to the continuance
of the excess and the profusion of the pensions extorted during
the king's minority, chiefly by persons of little consideration,
without by the same act consenting to the subversion of the
State. If by the withdrawal of the Paulette the revenues of
the king are diminished by fourteen hundred thousand livres,
it is reasonable and necessary to remove all superfluous ex
penses. As to the reduction of the tailles, this is imperatively
demanded by the impossibility of levying them, and by the
extreme wretchedness of the poor people."1
The nobles and the clergy refusing to endorse the very reason
able requests of the Tiers Etat, the latter proceeded to present
those- requests without the co-operation of the privileged orders.
When Savaron, lieutenant-general and representative of the
savaron's senechaussee of Clermont in Auvergne, a man no less
of the loyai- admirable for the gravity of his character than for his
bies. abilities and his erudition,2 appeared in the name of
the third order before the king, on the fifteenth of November,
1614, he made a terrible arraignment of the oppressors of the
commons. He reminded the young prince and his mother that
France threw off the Roman yoke, long ages ago, simply because
of the insupportable burden of tribute imposed upon her by a
foreign master. He warned their majesties that a desperate
¦Mercure fran^is, iii. 464; Archives curieuses. 2e serie, i. 31.
2 See Henri Martin, Histoire de France, xii. 245. Savaron edited the writ
ings of Sidonius Apollinaris who was himself born not very far from Clermont,
probably at Lyons, in the fifth century A.D.

1614 THE STATES GENERAL 89
people might in time be compelled to copy this example.
He held up to universal reprobation the greed of the nobles,
" whose loyalty," he said, " the king has been obliged to pur
chase for money, while these excessive expenditures have re
duced the people to browse upon the grass of the fields like
brute b/easts." At this blunt speech the nobles were enraged.
As the deputy left the royal presence one of their
the no- number exclaimed in a tone loud enough to reach
his ears, that Savaron ought to be handed over for
summary chastisement to the pages and servants in waiting.
An open outbreak between the two orders being imminent, the
clergy undertook to mediate between the angry noblesse and
the equally resolute Tiers Etat. The prelate sent to induce the
latter to make friendly advances to the upper chamber was no
less a personage than Armand de Richelieu, the future arbiter
of the destinies of France, but as yet simple bishop of Lucon
and possessor, as he was wont to say, of " the poorest and vilest
diocese of France." Inasmuch as Savaron, who declared that,
having borne arms before assuming the gown, he was ready to
answer for his words either as a soldier or as an officer of jus
tice, nevertheless disclaimed any intention to attack the honor
of the noblesse, the third estate consented, at Richelieu's sug
gestion, to send a deputation of twelve of its members to give
that assurance to the nobles, while demanding at the same time
a repudiation of the insulting remark applied to Savaron. De
Mesmes, who was the spokesman for the twelve, was no less
dignified than Savaron, and his words were as significant as
Savaron's had been. Addressing himself to the delegates of the
nobles, he said : " France is our common mother, who has nursed
us all at her breast. The clergy have had the blessing
De Mesmes
proclaims the of Jacob and Rebekah, and have carried off the birth -
of the three right. You, gentlemen, are their juniors, and we are
their younger brothers.1 Treat us as your younger
brothers, treat us as belonging to the household, and we shall
honor and love you. It has often happened that younger
1 " La France est notre commune mere, qui nous a tous allaites de sa mamelle.
Messieurs de l'Eglise ont eu la benediction de Jacob et Rebecca, et emporte le
droit d' ainesse; vous en etes, messieurs, les puines et nous en sommes les
cadets," etc.

90 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. II
brothers have repaired the fortunes of houses which elder
brothers had ruined and dissipated. By the grace of God, we
have reached official stations and dignities. We bear the char
acter of judges ; and, as you secure peace for France, so do we
secure it to the families into which division has entered." If
we may credit the official minutes of the proceedings of the
noblesse, their president, the Baron of Sennecey, made on the
spot a most insulting reply. The nobles had already, he said,
forgotten the displeasure occasioned by Savaron's speech. " We
can retain harshness," he added, " only against those from whom
Ave can obtain satisfaction by generous arms. We
of "frater- should believe that we had committed an act too shame-
atect wtthin-" ful to our reputation and the reputation of our prede
cessors, had the great and disproportionate difference
that exists between the Tiers Etat and the Noblesse allowed us
to be offended." He denied that the relation between the two
orders was that of elder and younger brothers, a relation imply
ing identity of virtue and blood. The Tiers Etat was a depend
ent who ought to esteem it a great piece of good fortune and
a ground for self- congratulation that it was permitted, after
God and the king, to be subject to the noblesse.1 Nor was this
an end of class arrogance. The Baron of Sennecey sought and
obtained an audience of the king, that he might have the oppor
tunity to complain of the impertinence of the Tiers Etat, in vent
uring to institute a comparison between itself and the higher
order, and repudiated in strong terms the hateful notion that
there subsisted between them any such tie as that of " frater
nity." " No ! " loudly cried out the young nobles who accom
panied him, " there is no more ' fraternity ' between us and the
roturiers than there is between a master and his footman." 2
: I ought, however, to mention, as Henri Martin has done, that the registers
of the Tiers Etat inform us that De Mesmes himself, on his return, reported only
a somewhat commonplace reply on the part of Sennecey, containing the desired
disclaimer respecting the insult offered to Savaron. It is not at all improbable,
therefore, as M. Martin suggests, that the account has undergone essential alter
ations, and does not faithfully represent what the president actually said.
'Proces verbal de la noblesse, etc., Recueil des Etats Gen., vii. 85, etc., ap.
Sismondi, Histoire des Francois, xxii. 307, seq., and Henri Martin, Histoire de
France, xii. 245, seq. ; Boullee, Histoire des Etats Generaux, ii. 139, etc. The ac
count of the States General contained in tbe Mercure francois (and reproduced

1614 THE STATES GENERAL 91
Another affair that occupied a good part of the attention of
the States General equally deserves notice. Although the death
of Henry the Fourth had thus far remained unavenged, good
men of both religions were desirous not to let pass without re
buke the dangerous teaching of the Jesuits respecting the right
of the Roman pontiff to depose heretical princes and deprive
them of their crowns. The Protestant National Synod of Ton-
neins, a few months since, had expressed itself briefly but for
cibly on this point. " Inasmuch as the pernicious doctrine of
the Jesuits against the fife, estates, and authority of sovereigns,
is every day more impudently published by the chief men of
that sect (Suarez having, within a few months, outdone his
companions in the treatise which he has anew brought out), this
body, detesting that abominable doctrine with its authors, ex
horts all the faithful to hold it in horror and execration, and all
that are commissioned to teach, to combat it vigorously, for the
purpose of maintaining, conjointly with the rights of God, those
of the sovereign powers whom He has established." ]
Not to be behindhand in the advocacy of the prerogatives of
France as a country free of all subjection to a foreign prince,
fir ^e Patri°tic Tiers Etat placed as the very first article
m?le °Lt]f OI the cahier or memorial which it proposed to present
J. iers -bi t.ut i-i» i •¦ /it
reprobates to Louis the Thirteenth an enunciation of the same
the regicidal
doctrine of principle. "In order," it said, "to arrest the course
of the pernicious doctrine, introduced within a few
years, against kings and sovereign powers established of God,
by seditious persons who aim only at disturbing and subvert
ing them, the king shall be petitioned to have it decided in the
Meeting of his Estates, as a fundamental law of the realm, which
shall be inviolable and known to all men, that, as he is recog
nized to be sovereign in his estate, holding his crown of God
alone, there is no power on earth, be it what it may, spiritual
in an abridged form in the Archives curieuses) refers to the whole matter very
briefly. It informs us that, in consequence of the quarrel " there was no good
union between these two chambers [the Noblesse and Tiers fitatj until the 5th of
December, when the deputies of the chamber of the Tiers Etat repaired to the
chamber of the Noblesse, and protested that none of their number had had the
intention to utter or had uttered any words to offend them." Mercure franrois,
iii. 467; Archives curieuses. 2" serie, i. 31.
1 Aymon, Tous les Synodes, ii. 38, 39.

92 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. II
or temporal, that has any right over his kingdom to deprive
thereof the sacred persons of our kings, or to dispense or ab
solve their subjects of the fidelity and obedience Avhich they
owe it, for whatsoever cause or Avnatsoever pretext it may be.
. That the contrary opinion, specially, that it is lawful to
kill and depose our kings, to rise in rebellion against them, to
shake off the yoke of their obedience, for any occasion whatso
ever, is impious, detestable, and opposed to the truth, and to
the institution of the state of France, which depends immedi
ately upon God alone." Coupled with this declaration was an
order that the declaration be sworn to by all the deputies to the
States and by all royal officers, be taught by all professors,
doctors, and preachers, be maintained by all clergymen in pub
lic discourse, and be executed by all sovereign courts of judica
ture. All books containing the contrary doctrine were to be
held to be seditious and damnable, all advocates of it, being
Frenchmen, rebels and guilty of high treason, or, being foreign
ers, sworn enemies of the crown.1
The article had originated in the Tiers Etat of Paris and the
Isle de France, which placed it at the head of its particular
memorial. As soon as offered in the States General, nine of
the tAvelve governments of which the popular chamber was com
posed voted in favor of it. The delegates from Guyenne
wanted to think the matter over until the morrow, but delay
being refused, concurred in the motion. Lyonnois regarded the
article as good, but desired to have it communicated to the
clergy and nobility. Orleanois approved of all excepting the
title of " fundamental law," which struck the delegates as " too
proud " a designation.2
It might certainly have been expected that so patriotic an ex
pression would be regarded by the two privileged orders as in-
vioient op- nocent, if not commendable. It was far otherwise. At
?heScierey the rumor that the third estate had adopted an article
an no es. " reiating to the faith and to religion, and looking to
the introduction of a novelty respecting the pope's authority,"
the clergy instantly took alarm. It sent two cardinals to beg

1 See the text, in the Mercure frangois, iii. 571, 572, under date of December
15,1614. 2 Ibid., iii. 572.

1614 THE STATES GENERAL 93
the king and his mother to interpose their authority, and de
spatched other ecclesiastics to the nobles and to the Tiers Etat,
to dissuade them from entering upon the consideration of mat
ters pertaining to religion or church government, without pre
viously consulting the clergy. It assured them that, on the other
hand, the clergy would respect their rights. The chamber of
nobles promptly acquiesced, and gave the clergy every reason to
feel secure in that quarter. But Marmiesse, capitoul of Toulouse,
who came at the head of a delegation of six members of the
Tiers Etat, to explain its position, receded not a step. The
body whom he represented had, he said, no idea of touching
upon vital points ; they wished merely to deal with the robes,
with the externals, to obviate the scandal, the shame, the de
formity with which others Avould invest the church ; to meet the
views of all good Frenchmen who desired to see the church in
her purity, her honors, prerogatives, and authority. Again the
clergy deliberated. It came to the unanimous conclusion that
the proposed article had a distinct tendency to create a schism,
either among the faithful in France, or between them and the
rest of Christendom. For it reduced to an article of the faith
what is regarded by the church as problematic. A political
statement was made a principle of theology. Thus arose di
vision, and heresy obtained an advantage which she had never
heretofore been able to gain.1
A protracted discussion between the orders ensued. The
nobles did everything that the clergy could have desired, and
were duly complimented by the clergy for their piety. The
Tiers Etat stood its ground with obstinacy, and listened un
moved to the interminable speeches of bishops, who wearied,
but did not convince. Du Perron, the same ecclesiastic who dis
puted with Duplessis Mornay at Fontainebleau, in 1600, and
was rewarded by the pope with the cardinal's hat, now came to
the chamber of the third estate, with an escort of twelve nobles
of distinction, not to speak of archbishops and other dignitaries
of his own order, and delivered an address of three hours' du
ration,2 in which every available argument was mustered to do
1 Mercure frangois, iii. 575-9.
a So says the Mercure fran;ois, whose report covers pages 590-621 of the

94 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. II
service for papal pretensions. Of the three assertions of the
article of the Tiers Etat, he cheerfully conceded two ; namely,
that for no cause whatever could a king lawfully be assassinated,
and that the king of France was a sovereign with all the powers
of sovereignty, and no feudatory holding his lands of the pope
or of any other prince. But he denied the third assertion, that
under no circumstances could kings be dethroned.
Perron de- This was a problematic doctrine, that is, not necessary
doctrine of to salvation, a doctrine which, in point of fact, was not
be6- prob-° held by all the rest of Christendom. Even in the Gal
lican church, from the time of the institution of the
theological school down to the appearance of Calvin, all had
held the contrary view. " When a prince comes to violate
the oath he has made to God and to his subjects, that he
will live and die in the Catholic religion, and not only becomes
an Arian or a Mohammedan, but goes so far as to declare war
against Jesus Christ, that is to say, to constrain his subjects in
their consciences and force them to embrace Arianism, or Mo
hammedanism, or other similar infidel sentiments, that prince
may be declared to have forfeited his rights, as guilty of felony
toAvard Him before whom he took his coronation oath. In case
this comes to pass, it belongs to the authority of the church
residing in its head, who is the pope, or in its body, which is
the council, to make this declaration." 1
The cardinal went so far as to intimate that the article be
trayed a Calvinistic spirit operating in its authors, but he added
that the Protestants themselves would by no means
that Protest- agree to it. " There is not a synod of their ministers,"
has been at said he, "that would have consented to sign the article
work. which they want to force us to sign. There is not a
single one of their consistories which does not regard itself as
relieved of the oath of fidelity to Catholic princes the moment
the attempt is made to force their consciences. Hence come
third volume. The forty-six folio pages which the cardinal's remarks occupy
in the Recueil des Actes, Titres et Memoires concernans les affairs du Clerge de
France (Paris, 1673), v. 2° partie, 197-243, give the impression of a much more
protracted discourse. It is not unlikely that it has been expanded since the
delivery. ' Recueil des Actes, Titres et Memoires du Clerge, v. 2e partie, 201.

1615 THE STATES GENERAL 95
those modifications which they have so often in their mouths,
'Provided that the king does not force our consciences.' Hence
those exceptions in their Confession of Faith, 'Provided the
sovereign authority of God be maintained in its integrity.'"
In a reply on behalf of his order, President Miron repudiated
the cardinal's innuendo. The article, he said, was composed
AAdthout the participation, indeed without the cognizance of any
of the Protestant delegates of the third estate.1 He averred,
indeed, that the Tiers Etat had no intention of wounding the
church by its action ; but he intimated, at the same time, that it
had as little intention to abandon the course taken.
The cardinal's speech and the president's answer were de
livered on the second day of the new year (1615). Two days
before, the Parliament of Paris had intervened in the discussion.
ThePariia- ®n Wednesday, the thirty -first of December, 1614,
Paris takes Louis Servin, speaking in the name of the three advo-
theTfers>f ca,tes and attorneys-general of the king, called the at-
^tat- tention of the united chambers of that august body to
the fact that the highest court had repeatedly confirmed the
maxims, of all time held in France and as old as the crown it
self, that the king recognizes in temporal matters no superior
but God himself, that no power may dispense his subjects of
their oath of allegiance, nor suspend, deprive, or depose him,
much less make or authorize attempts upon the sacred persons
of kings. Notwithstanding which, they had been advised that
many persons, both in public and in private discourse, had of
late been so bold as to dispute these points and to hold them to
be "problematic " in their character. In consequence of this
alarming circumstance, Servin called upon parliament to sus
pend all other business, and to direct the renewed publication
of the declarations heretofore made on the subject in all the
courts and places within its jurisdiction. The advice was
promptly taken. Upon the very day on which Cardinal Du Per
ron was delivering his long and tedious argument before the
Tiers Etat, the Parliament of Paris passed a formal decree
ordering the observance and publication in all bailiffs' and

1 " Cest article enfin a este compose sans qu'aucun de la religion pretendeue
reformee en ait approche, ny qui en ait rien sceu."

96 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. II
seneschals' courts of the decisions by which disloyal and regi
cide principles had been put under the ban of the law.1
If the cup of the clergy's indignation had been filled to the
brim by the action of the third chamber of the States, the ac
tion of the Parliament of Paris made the contents to run over.
Though the next day was the feast of Sainte Genevieve, patron
saint of Paris, the clergy met and remonstrated upon the al
leged infringement of the liberty granted the representatives of
the three orders to deliberate upon any matter concerning
which their consciences might lead them to give the king ad
vice. That very day they sent Cardinal Sourdis and others of
their body to ask his majesty to arrest the course of the auda
cious judges, for fear that parliament might proceed to sign and
execute its decree. The royal council spent some hours
of the royal in considering the part it should take in a somewhat
perplexing case. The Prince of Conde, who, in the
main, approved the course of parliament, but yet was in favor of
having the king remove the consideration of the question from
that court and reserve to himself the decision after the clergy
and the third estate had had full freedom to draw up their
cahiers, made a speech on this occasion which gives a higher
impression of his abilities than that which we should form from
the general impotence of his political course.2 In particular
1 The decisions in question were of December 2, 1561 , December 29, 1594,
January 7 and July 19, 1595, May 27, June 8, and November 26, 1610, and June
26, 1614. Mercure frangois, iii. 633. It is interesting to note that the first
named was the condemnation of the doctrine propounded by Jean Tanquerel, a
doctor of the Sorbonne, "that the pope could depose an heretical prince."
See The Rise of the Huguenots, i. 566, and Journal de Bruslart, Memoires de
Conde, i. 67, 68, where the text of the decree is given. The decree of Decem
ber 29, 1594, against Jean Chastel, is given by Matthieu (Histoire des Derniers
Troubles, ii. fols. 52, 53) ; who also refers to that of January 7, 1595, against
the Jesuit Jean Guignard (ib. , ii. fol. 53 v.). The decrees on occasion of the
assassination of Henry IV. are well known. The decree of June 26, 1614, con
demning the Jesuit writer Suarez's treatise "Defensio fidei catholica? et aposto
lus adversus Anglicanse sectse errores," because of its propositions "tending to
subvert states and to induce the subjects of kings and sovereign princes and
others, to make attempts upon their sacred persons," may be read in the Mer
cure francois, iii. 306, 307.
2 Henry of Rohan in his Memoires (Petitot Collection, p. 120) well observes
of the Prince of Conde, that had his life and actions corresponded with his re
monstrances, he would have greatly embarrassed the queen's government.

1615 THE STATES GENERAL 97
he unmercifully ridiculed the idea that any condemnation of the
crime of regicide would avail to protect the hves of kings, so
long as the power to depose kings was lodged in the hands of
the pope or any one else. " The enemies of the royal author
ity," he said, " sustaining opinions Avhich nowhere else than in
France could be called problematic, have never been so insane as
to say that kings ought to be killed. On the contrary,
shows how they, with us, detest that pernicious assertion, and it
kings may . -. ,
lawiuiiy be would be very easy to procure the condemnation of it
from the pope. That is not the question, however.
Let us take up an individual case. We shall see, Sire, that your
sacred person may in a certain case be laAvfully killed, according
to their doctrine. Suppose that your majesty, as they assert,
commits some sin. You are admonished thrice over ; you per
sist in your sin. You are excommunicated ; you do not repent.
You are deposed from your royal dignity ; your subjects are
absoh'ed of the allegiance which is due to you. Now, while
Louis the Thirteenth was king, it was not permissible to kill him ;
but having from a king become no king, his place is taken by
another, a legitimate king. Then if he continue, in opposition
to the spiritual authority of the pope, and the temporal author
ity of the newly elected king, to style himself a king, he is a
veritable usurper, guilty of treason divine and human, and, as
such, a proscribed person, whom all are allowed to kill. It is
therefore folly to ask for a condemnation of those who make at
tempts upon the lives of kings." 1
It would be too tedious to trace in detail the successive steps
of the wrangle between the ecclesiastics and the Tiers Etat.
The former fought with a desperation worthy of a better cause
to prevent the adoption of any resolution that should seem to
diminish the papal prerogative, while the latter stood firm in
its resolution to defend the rights of the crown and people of
France. At one moment the clergy passed a resolution to the
effect that temporal laws and penalties were ineffectual to deter
the assassins of kings, and called upon Louis to order the pub
lication of the articles of the Council of Constance, which con
demned as heretics the authors of murderous attempts even
1 Mercure francois, iii. 635, 636.

98 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. II
Avhen aimed at the persons of tyrants.1 Again and again the
prelates had recourse to the royal council, now to press their
suit that the discussion of the doctrine of the church by the
third estate should be silenced, now to protest ineffectually
against the statement of the council in an official paper that
there existed a dispute between the two orders. At length,
after a fortnight had passed, the influence of the upper house
proved sufficiently powerful to secure a summary, but illogical,
conclusion of the entire matter. President Miron was sum
moned to the council with twelve of his associates, and there
The Tiers received the instructions of the king to bring him
aetntto°used' " ^e article respecting the fundamental law." When,
their article. four ^yg ia|;er) Miron again presented himself at the
Louvre, in company Avith the presidents of each of the provinces,
it was only to be informed by Marie de' Medici that her son
forbade the Tiers Etat from employing the objectionable article
in the caliier which they Avere to hand in.2 Great was the in
dignation of the delegates of the people. There were sugges
tions of petitions and remonstrances ; but convinced of the fu
tility of any such action, the Tiers Etat finally concluded to
preface their cahier with this simple statement : " The first
article has been presented to the king heretofore and in ad
vance, by his express command, and he has promised to reply
to and make provision for it, which thing his majesty is humbly
begged to do." And here ended the unequal struggle.8
It was evident that the Huguenots were better friends of the
French crown and of the independence of the realm than was
the Roman Catholic clergy. For, at almost one and the same
moment, the Protestant national synod of Tonneins was declar
ing the national sovereignty, and the clergy of the established
church was moving heaven and earth to prevent the States
1 Benoist points out, however, that the article of the Council of Constance
upon which the clergy fell back, is, after all, so equivocal and unsatisfactory,
as that it leaves exposed to assassination all princes against whom a conspiracy
is formed after the sentence or order of certain judges, that is to say, after the
ordinance of some council or pope. Histoire de l'Edit de Nantes, ii. 147,
148. 2 The text of the queen-mother's speech is given in the Mercure francois, iii-
651. 3 Mercure franc. ois, iii 651-53.

1615 THE STATES GENERAL 99
General from accepting that sovereignty as a " fundamental
law." J To the everlasting disgrace of the proud nobility of
France, from the highest duke to the most insignificant baron,
they had obediently followed the summons of the ecclesiastical
order. And verily they had their reward. Before many weeks
The pope there came from Pope Paul the Fifth briefs of the
unpatriotic mos* flattering character, addressed to the clergy and
estates. nobles, who were jointly congratulated upon their
labors to frustrate the assault that had been contemplated upon
the authority of the Holy See.2
It may have appeared to the Huguenots a sort of poetical
justice that, as their assembly of Saumur had, two years before,
been dismissed by the regent Avithout being allowed an oppor
tunity to consult together respecting the answers given to its
demands ; so the court positively refused to reply to the peti
tions of the three orders of the kingdom until, by their adjourn
ment, they had ceased to possess any power to disturb the
plans of a government which was fully resolved to introduce no
other changes into the administration than such as it pleased.3
The device was certainly a convenient one for the purpose of
enabling the king, or his ministers, to free themselves from im
portunity in case they failed to meet the expectations of the ad
vocates of reform, whether in matters of church or of state.
The student of political institutions, and the historian whose
chief object it is to trace the growth of civil liberty, would be
justified in dwelling at some length upon the last speech of
President Miron, which alone among the addresses made to the
throne on behalf of the three orders, in connection with the
presentation of their bills of complaint and petition, is fairly
entitled to rank as a masterpiece of dignified and patriotic re-
1 The synchronism was noticed by M. de Larrey, in his Reponse a l'Avis aux
Refugiez (Rotterdam, 1709), 153 : " Ce qu'il y a d'extremement remarquable
dans cette affaire, c'est que dans le terns que le Clerge Reforme assemble en
Synode etablissoit l'independance des Rois, le Clerge Papiste, qui se trouvoit
aux Etats, faisoit rage pour la detruire." See, also, A. F. Lievre, Du role que
le clerge catholique de France a joue dans la Revocation de l'Edit de Nantes
(Strasbourg, 1853), 17.
2 " L'enterprise que l'on vouloit faire sur l'authorite du S. SiSge Aposto-
iique." Mercure franc.ois, iii. 655.
3 Ibid., iii. 671, etc.

100 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. H
monstrance. The writer who has chosen for his special theme
the story of the fortunes of the Huguenots must deny himself
the satisfaction of reproducing even in part this noble plea for
the rights of the down - trodden commons.1 The address
cardinal of Richelieu, in the name of the clergy, though
adaresffor otherwise far from possessing the same interest, must
the ciei-gy. foQ mentioned because of its bearing upon the wel
fare of the Protestants. If the later course of this ecclesi
astic, when he had exchanged the administration of his insig
nificant western bishopric for the cardinal's hat and the all
but absolute control of the destinies of France, seemed to be
inspired by a broad and politic toleration, there was little
on this occasion to foreshadow any coming liberality. The
harangue of the future ally of Gustavus Adolphus and of the
German Protestants breathed nothing but fierce hostility to the
Protestants of France. He espoused the advocacy of the
decrees of Trent. He loudly condemned the practice of con
ferring abbacies upon heretics or upon laymen. He expressed
his grief at the fact that "falsehood" was preached through
out entire districts of France, as for example in Beam, within
the walls of consecrated churches. His most vehement expres
sions of indignation and horror were reserved for a recent occur
rence at Milhau-en-Rouergue, where, on Christmas eve, during
the course of a quarrel that arose between the Roman Catholic
and Protestant inhabitants of the town, priests were said to
have been maltreated, crucifixes to have been broken, altars to
have been overturned, the relics of saints to have been pro
faned, and even the consecrated wafers to have been scattered
and trampled under foot. " It is France," said Richelieu, " it
is France, formerly exempt from monsters, that has produced
the authors of so horrible a crime ! I grow pale, I shudder as
I say it, oh, unspeakable patience of Heaven ! How did not
the earth open to swallow them up at their birth ! " Not that
the clergy demanded the punishment of any but the guilty.
Respecting the innocent among the Protestants, the clergy had
no desire save their conversion, which it would compass by its

' Boullee has given a synopsis and a few brief extracts, in his Histoire des
Etats Gtneraux, ii., 187-191, to which I take pleasure in referring the curious.

1615 THE STATES GENERAL 101
example, its precepts, its prayers. The king, however, was ex
horted to seek out and punish with as much zeal as he would
the murderers of his royal father the perpetrators of the out
rage done to the Host — an outrage which the speaker called
" the assassination of his God." 1
More significant than the harangue of Richelieu was a me
morial which it was his commission to present to the king in
behalf of his order. So much of it as touched upon the*
Huguenots — and about one-fifth of its three hundred articles1
related directly or indirectly to them — was in effect a
of the6ciergy petition to the crown to strip the professors of the
the6Eevoca- Reformed religion of all the immunities and privileges
guaranteed to them by the great law of Henry the
Fourth. The plan of the subsequent persecutions under Louis
the Fourteenth, culminating in the formal recall of the Edict
of Nantes, may be read with tolerable distinctness in the
minute and multiplied prescriptions of a bigoted zeal, to which
no labor was wearisome, no detail tedious, if thereby the ruin
of an inimical sect might be compassed. One may be in
doubt whether to regard with indignation or dismiss with
contempt the petty devices of a document which affected to
distort even the opprobrious designation forced upon the Prot
estants by their opponents — " La Religion Pretendue Re
formee " — and by a studied transposition of words, at one time
referred to " La Pretendue Religion Reformee " — the Pretended
Reformed Religion, and at another more briefly to "La Pre
tendue Religion " — the Pretended Religion, as if questioning the
claim of Protestantism even to a place among the creeds of the
earth. But such demands as that the cognizance of all matters
pertaining to the observance of the church festivals should be
long exclusively to ecclesiastics, were ominous in the eyes of

1 See the speech of Richelieu delivered February 23, 1615, among the Re
monstrances et Harangues faites au Rois et aux Reines, in the 5th volume of
the Recueil des Actes, Titres et Memoires concernant les Affaires du Clerge.
(Paris, 1673), pp. 248-261. The reason assigned by Benoist (ii. 150, 151) for-
the supineness of the court in punishing the pretended outrage at Milhau, is
that it was more than balanced by the destruction of a Protestant Church andi
the violent treatment of the Huguenots at Belestat, in the same part of France,,
at the hands of their Roman Catholic townsmen.

102 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. II
men who remembered the infinite trouble which the Fete-Dieu
and its processions and drapings had caused. To ask seriously
that Roman Catholic bishops should have the power to send
men to the galleys, was a threat of no small significance to the
adherents of another faith. To withdraw from the "chambres
mi-parties," in case the votes of the Roman Catholic and Prot
estant judges were equally balanced in the adjudication of a
criminal case, the privilege of endeavoring to reach a har
monious conclusion by the adoption of a milder sentence than
the statute allowed, on the pretext that such tenderness in the
treatment of law-breakers impeded the due course of justice,
savored neither of Christian love nor of regard to the dictates
of a common humanity.1
In justice to the government, it must be stated that the queen-
mother and her advisers showed little disposition to listen with
favor to the more exorbitant demands of the ecclesiastical
chamber. And when extreme zealots among the nobles at
tempted to copy the examples set them by the prelates, the
regent and the ministers were evidently displeased. The Re
formed faith was not without a representation among the
nobility of the States General, although the number of Hugue
nots on the benches was comparatively small. When, there
fore, it was moved and carried " that the king be entreated to
be pleased to maintain the Roman Catholic and Apostolic Re
ligion, in accordance with the oath taken at his coronation," the
Huguenot nobles took alarm, and an acrimonious dispute en
sued. The Protestants not only refused to sign the memorial,
which, they maintained, in its present form did them serious
wrong, but applied directly to the king to protect them against
what they regarded as a blow struck at the edicts of pacifica
tion.2 The ferment spread beyond the chamber of the nobility.
The corona- Nor was this strange. The coronation oath was on
tion oath. ^g ^ace a distinct menace directed against all whom
the established church placed under the ban. "I shall en
deavor, according to my ability, in good faith, to drive from my

1 See the synopsis in Benoist, ii. 151-56.
2 Louis XIII. to Duplessis Mornay, Feb. 26, 1615. Memoires de Duplessis
Mornay, iii. 717.

1615 THE STATES GENERAL 103
jurisdiction and from the lands subject to me, all heretics de
nounced by the church, promising on oath to keep all that has
been said. So help me God, and these holy gospels of God ! " 1
These were the words which Louis the Thirteenth had uttered,
with his hands resting upon the Sacred Scriptures, even as his
father had done at Chartres, a score of years before.2 If a dec
laration Avas necessary to calm the apprehension of the Hugue
nots and to assure them that Henry the Fourth " would,
through no oath made or to be made, hold himself bound to
wage war against or persecute " his former fellow-believers and
comrades in war, the Protestants,3 certainly it was not unreason
able that the young king, ruling under the continued influence
of his Italian mother, should give an equally clear and unequi
vocal statement respecting his intentions. Nor did he refuse
to do so. Not only was Duplessis Mornay assured by a letter
personally addressed to him by the monarch that no change had
come over the gracious purpose which the latter had formed at
his accession to the throne and ratified when he came of age ;
but in a royal declaration of the twelfth of March, 1615, the
Louis again w^se legislation of Henry the Fourth respecting his
fathervto^8 Huguenot subjects was confirmed for the third time
ton'March srnce *ne beginning of the neAV reign. The king re-
12, wis. hearsed the action of the queen-mother immediately
upon her minor son's accession, in causing a declaration to be
published in every parliament of the realm, expressing the royal
purpose to maintain all the edicts issued by the late monarch in
favor of the Protestants, a purpose which he asserted had been
fully adhered to. The same motives, he said, induced him, upon
reaching his majority, to issue a fresh declaration of similar im
port to the first. But to his very great displeasure, a dis-
1 " Je tascherai a mon pouvoir, en bonne foy, de chasser de ma jurisdiction
et terres de ma subjection tous heretiques denommez par l'esglise." Oath in
Bouchitte, Conference de Loudun, 785 note. Isambert (Recueil general des
anciennes lois franeaises, xv. 76) traces the introduction of this sentence in the
oath back to the Lateran Council in 1219, and remarks that it was taken by
every successive king from Saint Louis to Louis XVI. He gives the Latin form :
"Item, de terra mea ac jurisdictione mihi subdita universos hsereticos ab ecclesia
denotatos pro viribus, bona fide, exterminare studebo."
'Cayet, Chronologie novenaire, 557. Le Vassor, ii. 251.
3 The Huguenots and Henry of Navarre, ii. 382.

104 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. II
pute arose between the deputies of the nobility in the States
General, respecting the petition that the king should be pleased
to maintain the Roman Catholic religion, in accordance with
the oath he took at his coronation— " a proposition scarcely
necessary," said Louis, " or, rather, altogether useless, seeing
that we profess it, with a firm resolution, by God's grace, to
live and die therein." However, the intentions of the movers
were excellent, and they had protested to his majesty, both
singly and collectively, that they desired the observance of the
edicts, and wished that he should be pleased to await from the
divine goodness the reunion of all his subjects to the Roman
Catholic and Apostolic church by the ordinary and accustomed
means of that church. He expressed his OAvn persuasion, based
upon the experience of the past, " that violent remedies have
served only to increase the number of those that have forsaken
the church, rather than to instruct them how to return to it."
"In order, therefore," he added, " to remove every false im
pression from the minds of our good subjects of the Pretended
Reformed religion, who profess it Avith a zeal which is pure, in
nocent, and far removed from all faction and evil intent, as well
as to take away any pretext from such as might seek one for the
purpose of disturbing the quiet of the kingdom . . . We
declare and order . . . that all the edicts, declarations, and
particular articles granted in favor of those of the aforesaid Pre
tended Reformed Religion ... as well by our late lord and
father as by us, together with the regulations and other letters
issued, or decrees given in their favor, on the interpretation and
execution of the Edict of Nantes, and in consequence of the
same, be maintained and kept inviolably ; and that those who
transgress them be punished according to the rigor of our or
dinances, as disturbers of the public quiet."1
So distinct a re-enactment of the Edict of Nantes was well
calculated to quiet the apprehensions of the most suspicious
among the Protestants, and to convince them of the willingness
of the present government to abide by its engagements. It re-

1 Declaration du Roy, portant renouvellement de tous les Edits de pacifica
tion, Articles accordez, Reglemens et Arrets intervenus en consequence. Pnblie
en Parlement, le dernier Avril, 1615. In Benoist, ii., documents, 33, 34.

1615 THE STATES GENERAL 105
mained to be seen, hoAvever, Avhat influence the continued insist
ence of the clergy might exert. For the clergy never swerved
from its aggressive policy, and in its assembly, which came to
gether only a few months after the dissolution of the States
General, it did not hesitate, as we shall see in the next chapter,
to give new expression to the hope that Louis would gratify his
Roman Catholic subjects by undertaking the re-establishment of
the ancestral faith in Beam. The favorable answer from the
throne came not yet, but we shall see that it came in due time.
The requests of a body that met at regular intervals, to vote a
very welcome subsidy to the government, were always likely to
be treated with consideration by the crown. Meantime the most
interesting action taken by the assembly of the clergy, so far as
Fund for the Huguenots were concerned, was the establishment
converts118 of a fund of thirty thousand livres to be annually em-
Huguenot ployed in the support of such former Protestant pas-
ciergy. ^.org ag j^g}^ haye been induced to embrace the Roman
Catholic faith. The plan seems to have worked satisfactorily ;
at least, it was long kept up. But, whereas it was originally in
tended that the beneficiaries should be confined to persons who
had been actually in the sacred ministry or been of eminent
capacity, as evidenced by their writings or public teaching, the
difficulty of finding a sufficient number of well-qualified candi
dates, led the clergy to countenance the distribution of a part
of the fund as a free gift among " converted persons who were
useful to the service of the church." x The usual allowance to
each recipient continued to be four hundred livres, a sum about
equal to the salaries paid to the Protestant ministers, outside of
the principal cities of France, and a decree of the council of
state, some years later,2 made the gift still more valuable by
forbidding its seizure for debt.
1 Reglement fait en l'Assemblee du Clerge, Paris, 1615, in Recueil des Actes,
Titres, etc., v. 51.
2 September 15, 1629. Ibid., v. 55. From the statement of a decree of the
council of September 18, 1627, ibid., v. 52-54, it would appear that a renegade
named Mahaut had the effrontery to style himself syndic of the converted min
isters and consequently secured a pension of six hundred livres. He is probably
the person described in the list of deposed ministers given by the Nat. Synod
of Charenton, 1623 (Aymon, ii. 295), as having been formerly pastor at Havre
de Grace.

106 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. H
Whatever hopes of a salutary change in the government of
France had been founded upon the convocation of the States
General, had come to naught. The determined opposition of
the two privileged orders to the proposals of the third estate
effectually crushed all the sanguine expectations of reform.1
The church with unanimity, and the great majority of the
nobles, stood by the queen-mother and the administration, un
der her name, of the upstart Italian marquis. The queen-
mother and Marshal d'Ancre repaid the debt of gratitude under
which the ecclesiastical chamber had placed them, by unhesitat
ingly sacrificing the interests of the French crown to the claims
of the Roman See. The Prince of Conde, with his secret ally
the Marshal of Bouillon, found that so far from using the States
General as an instrument to secure for themselves a preponder
ating influence in the administration, that body had only served
to strengthen the tenure of their enemies. Marie de' Medici
could noAv point Avith confidence to the fact that, whereas pre
viously she exercised the supreme poAver in her son's name with
the consent of a few grandees, her authority had now been
recognized by the representatives of the three orders. As she
had been shorn of none of the powers which she had exercised
for the past five years, she claimed the endorsement of the
French nation for her entire course; more especially as it was
notorious that the meeting of the States General had been asked
for by those who wished to restrict or abrogate her influence.2
Disappointed in their expectations, the nobles who laid down
their arms, in accordance with the treaty of Sainte Menehould,
again prepared to try the issues of a civil war. Scarcely a twelve
month of comparative quiet had intervened. Conde was again
the ostensible head of the movement. The Duke of Bouillon,
throwing off all disguise, from a pretended mediator, became an
1 Even the historiographer Charles Bernard is compelled to admit that
" France derived no advantage from these Estates, which were pretty loudly
said to have been convened not for the reformation, but the deformation, of the
kingdom." Histoire du Roy Louis XIII., i. 38.
2 " De sorte qu'ils s'en allerent sans avoir de rien servy au roy ny au royaume,
comme on avoit pense ; mais seulement a la reine, contre qui iis avoient este
assembles, qui demeura bien plus autorisee qu' auparavant, puisque c'estoit du
consentement des Etats, et qu'ils ne luy avoient rien retranche." Memoires de
Fontenay-Mareuil (Ed. Mich, et Pouj.), 82.

1615 THE SPANISH MARRIAGES 107
avowed malcontent. Other powerful noblemen, among them the
dukes of Nevers and Mayenne, united with them. The Parlia
ment of Paris early showed its sympathy by the pas-
Fresh dis- « -, ... ,-, . -, «
turbances sage of a decree inviting the princes and peers ot
malcontent France to meet with it for the purpose of consultation
respecting the interests of the realm. When the gov
ernment forbade their attendance, the judges proceeded to draw
up a paper setting forth the disorders in the present adminis
tration, and, seeking an audience of the king, handed to him
their weighty remonstrance. As a matter of course, President
Nicholas de Verdun and the grave judges who accompanied him
upon his unwelcome errand, were treated to rough words and
sent away Avith a severe reprimand for what was styled their
insolent meddling in political concerns. In her indignation
Marie de' Medici gave free rein to her anger and cared little
whose ears she offended. She defended herself against the
charge of squandering the treasure. She had managed, she
said, to preserve, and recently to hand over to her son at his
majority, the kingdom as prosperous as it was when she re
ceived it from Henry. The princes and powerful nobles had
given her no help, the parliament but scanty assistance. In
this work the outlay incurred was immense. Commotions
arose ; the loyalty of every order had to be bought. Quiet had
been procured for France by means of money.
What was most amusing about the scene was that the noble
men of her suite, the very persons whose integrity was im
peached by the queen's statement, were compelled by circum
stances not only to stand by and listen patiently to her
accusations, but even to applaud them.
The record of the parliament's action was ordered to be torn
from the official registers. But the moral effect was not lost.1
The budget of grievances was long. It found expression, as
usual, in " declarations " and " proclamations," of the customary
prolixity and the customary insincerity. With these we have
nothing to do.
' See Memoires de Pontchartrain, ii. 80,81 ; Memoires de Rohan, 122. A very
graphic account of the reception of the parliament's envoy, and of the anger of
the qneen-mother, encouraged by the adulatory words of the attendant courtiers,
is contained in Gramond, Hist. Galliae ab excessu Henrici IV., 80-83.

108 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. H
Meanwhile the queen-mother, undeterred by opposition, be
gan the preparations for the consummation of the object upon
which her heart had long and perversely been set. It was more
than three years since the " double Spanish marriages"
Spanish mar- had been definitely arranged between the courts of
Paris and Madrid. The resolution of Marie de' Med
ici and the fervid eloquence of the Duke of Guise at that time
overbore in the royal council the faint-hearted opposition of the
Prince of Conde and the Count of Soissons, and the prince well
deserved the stinging words addressed to him by his father-in-
law, Constable Montmorency : " Sir, you know neither how to
fight with courage nor how to yield with prudence." 1 The publi
cation of the contracts of marriage was celebrated with tourneys
and combats, with dances and other demonstrations of joy that
consumed almost an entire month. The Place Royale Avas the
scene of a pompous display wherein almost every nobleman of
the court figured either as an assailant or as a defender of the
beautiful structure surnamed the Castle of Felicity. In the
processions, triumphal cars, resplendent with gold and silver,
were drawn by every kind of animal, says the chronicler, as well
such as nature produces as those that fable has invented ; while
temples and mosques, rolling seas and whales and dolphins
moved along to the accompaniment of such music of lutes and
spinnets, of guitars and theorbes, of hautboys, flutes, and trum
pets, that the like had never been heard before. These public
displays, together with the scarcely less notable demonstrations
made at the reception of the Duke of Pastrana, of the house of
Silva, Avhen he came, a few months later, as the special envoy of
Philip the Third to the French court, had well earned for the
year of grace 1612 the designation of " the Year of
des magnift- Magnificent Displays — L'annee des magnificences." 2
' ' The thoughtless multitude that applauded the pro
jected matrimonial alliances with Spain, rival and capital enemy
of France, forgot that the good king Henry the Fourth had
promised his eldest daughter to the Prince of Piedmont, son of

1 Le Vassor, Histoire du regne de Louis XHI., i. 277.
'' Bernard (Histoire du Roy Louis XIII., i. 22-24), describes, while affecting to
dismiss, these gorgeous exhibitions.

1615 THE SPANISH MARRIAGES 109
the Duke of Savoy, whom he regarded as a more desirable ally
than the Spanish monarch ; it did not know that, had Louis the
Thirteenth married the young Princess of Lorraine, as his father
proposed, his bride would have brought a rich dower to the
French crown in the duchies of Bar and Loixaine, and hastened
by a full century and a half the consolidation of those important
districts with the French monarchy.1
And now the time for the fulfilment of the matrimonial con
tract with Spain had come. True, the persons most nearly con-
Eemon- cerned were mere children, scarcely old enough to
SinstV leave the nursery. But Marie de' Medici had been led
marriages, to expect such wonders from the Spanish alliance that
her impatience knew no bounds. The expostulation of the
Duke of Bouillon, Avho warned President Jeannin that the haste
of this procedure would be likely to cost France the loss of her
old allies and throw her into the arms of other confederates Avho
would detract from her greatness,2 fell upon dull ears. Equally
fruitless was the remonstrance which the ambassador of James
the First addressed to the king and his mother, pleading the
privilege of a monarch who had been on terms of close friend
ship with Henry the Fourth to exercise all the influence he
might possess with Henry's son in order to prevent him from
rushing headlong into a connection by which he would seem to
Christendom entire, to be espousing all the interests of Spain
and turning his back upon the rest of the world.3 On the
seventeenth of August, Marie de' Medici set out for the Span
ish border, where the interchange of the princesses that were
to become the future queens of France and Spain was ap
pointed to take place. As the malcontent noblemen who had
retired from court were known to have gathered a consider
able army both of foot and of horse, the royal party were
accompanied not only by the dukes of Guise, Elbeuf , Uzes, and
Epernon, but by a military force, under command of Marshal
1 See Le Vassor, i. 132, 196. It may be noticed that, according to the prelim
inary articles of Vienna, signed October 5, 1735, both Bar and Lorraine were to
become an integral part.of France upon the death of Stanislas Lesczcynski.
This event took place February 23, 1766.
2 Bouillon to Jeannin, June 9, 1615, Mercure francois, iv. 92.
3 Synopsis in Bernard, i. 44.

110 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. II
Boisdauphin, sufficient to discourage attack or attempt at inter
ference.1 Meanwhile the malcontents were exerting themselves to the
utmost to induce the Huguenots to make common cause with
them — an effort in which they were the more likely to succeed,
The Protes- because a national political assembly of the Protes-
Sntasseambr tants was, by royal permission, at that time in session
of Grenoble. jn £ne c^y 0f Grenoble. No little trouble had been
experienced in settling upon the place. The Protestants saw
but too clearly the object of the government in selecting,
in the first instance, the capital city of the province of Dau-
phiny for the seat of their assembly. Apart, from the incon
venience of meeting in so distant a spot on the extreme eastern
frontier of the kingdom, it would scarcely be possible, they
reflected, to pursue an independent course in the immediate
neighborhood of a nobleman so powerful and so open to the
seductive influences of the court as Marshal Lesdiguieres.
Nor was this the only reason for which, they petitioned that
another and more suitable place be named. If Lesdiguieres
was still professedly a Protestant, he was not only known to
be an utterly irreligious man and a libertine, but accused on
good and sufficient grounds of having recently compassed the
murder of the husband of Marie Vignon, the lewd woman with
whom he had long lived in scandalous adultery, and whose
ambition he had gratified by having her created Marquise of
Treffort. With such a man it was shocking to the common
instincts of decency to be compelled to associate, not to speak
of the ceremonious respect which it would be necessary to
render him. But matters were not improved when, in place of
Grenoble, the king named Gergeau, or Jargeau, on the Loire, a
small and inconvenient town so near to Paris that the assembly
would have felt the pressure of the capital. Some restless
spirits were in favor of a bold move on the part of the Hugue
nots, and even named Montauban as a suitable place, in the
midst of a Reformed population, for them to adopt of their own
motion. In the end they were fain to accept the court's original
selection, and begged to be permitted to meet at Grenoble.2
' Bernard, i. 45. 2 Benoist, ii. 165.

1615 POLITICAL ASSEMBLY OF GRENOBLE 111
Such details would be of little importance did they not serve
to bring into relief the reigning spirit of mutual distrust of the
court and the Protestant subjects of the crown.
The assembly had no sooner begun its sessions than it was
plied with solicitations to espouse the cause of the Prince of
Conde as its own. Nor were the delegates altogether averse to
taking this imprudent step. Their past experience of the in
ability of Marie de' Medici and her advisers to deal generously
or even justly with them, inclined them to take sides with those
who, whether their professions Avere honest or insincere, under
took to represent the true patriotism of the day. Wisely, how
ever, they determined on this occasion to await the reception
that might be accorded to the complaints and requests which
they made it one of their first duties to put in proper form.
And what was the nature of these requests ? The contemporary
historian Gramond, president of the Parliament of Toulouse,
stigmatizes them as the ordinances of an insolent brood of
sectaries whom success had inspired with lust of absolute rule,
and ostentatiously parades the disgust with which the insane
aspirations of their authors inspires him.1 The perusal of the
Protestant articles, or even of the epitome which
not de- Gramond himself gives us, will, on the contrary,
create in the dispassionate reader no feelings but
those of respect for the courage, patriotism, and loyalty to their
faith of the men who drew them up. To reiterate the " essen
tial maxim" which the famous first article of the Tiers Etat
and the action of the Parliament of Paris had formulated, and
to urge that the principle that the king of France is inde
pendent of all other powers ought to be held as a "fundamental
law " of the kingdom ; to call for a more thorough inquiry into
the authors of the assassination of Henry the Fourth ; to peti
tion that the pernicious Decrees of the Council of Trent should
not be accepted and promulgated in France, according to the
demand of the clergy, " to which it had by subtilty enticed the
noblesse" — in short, to repeat the wise and just suggestions
1 "Superbae plebiscita gentis, Latine restitui ut sonant verba, quo neminem
lateat prosperis rebus affectasse Sectarios usque in tyrannidem rerum imperia.
Piget me dum haec scribo vesante libidinis qua se prsecipitem dedit Secta im-
potens," etc. Hist. Gallia? ab excessu Henrici IV. (Amstelodauii. 1053), 90.

112 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. II
made by the representatives of the people of France in the late
States General, was certainly an indication rather of a true love
of country than of a mad thirst for poAver. Whatever else was
added came within the bounds of a due regard for the right of
self-preservation belonging by nature to all men and to all
bodies of men. The Huguenots claimed that the ecclesiastics
of a church so inimical as the Roman Catholic should not sit, in
the royal council or elsewhere, as judges respecting the con
cerns of the Protestant religion or its adherents ; that the king
should authoritatively declare that in the use of the word
" heretics " in his coronation oath he had not intended to refer
to the members of the Reformed Church ; that the injurious
designation of "pretended" Reformed Church should be dropped
from the documents which the Protestant pastors were com
pelled to sign ; that the Protestants should themselves elect the
two deputies-general that were to represent them, instead of
submitting to the king six names from Avhich to pick out those
most likely to be subservient tools of the court ; that the pos
session of the cities of security be continued to the Protestants
for ten years ; that if the governors of such cities of security
had apostatized, they should be replaced by men professing the
Protestant religion ; that the Protestant churches of Beam
should be permitted a representation in the political assembly
by the side of the churches of France.1 In all this, including
even the respectful request with which the document closed,
that the monarch should consider carefully the supplications of
the Prince of Conde and of those associated with him, there
was nothing which a Protestant ardently devoted to his country
and to his faith might not properly suggest, nothing that a ruler
having at heart his own best interests and the welfare of a
large body of his subjects ought not to have been anxious to
grant. For if the assembly had in any degree exceeded its
competence in treating of matters that could by some be re
garded as purely political, the anxiety of all good citizens for
the safety of the person of their chief magistrate, not to speak
1 The summary in Benoist, ii. 174-176, is very full ; the accounts of Gramond,
95, 96, and of Anquez, Hist, des Assemblees politiques, £67, 268, are briefer.
The extract in the Mercure francois, iv. 213-19, gives the text of six of the
twenty-five articles.

1615 POLITICAL ASSEMBLY OF GRENOBLE 113
of the particular concern of Protestants in checking the over-
Aveening pretensions of their arch-enemy, the occupant of the
papal See, must be regarded as an ample justification.
At the same time it cannot but be admitted that the Protes
tant assembly erred in judgment when by its last article it
seemed inopportunely to give a partial endorsement to the
movement of Conde and Bouillon. It alienated still more the
queen-mother and others whose course was indirectly cen
sured, and rendered them even less disposed than before to con
cede the just demands already made. But more disastrous than
this mistake was the error which the assembly of Grenoble com
mitted in the letter with which the bearers of the budget of its
requests were charged. In their eagerness to contrast their OAvn
fidelity to the crown with the disloyal attitude assumed by the
clergy and those who upheld the clergy's hands in the late
meeting of the States General, the Protestants were betrayed
into expressions of a blind and extravagant obedience to the
Extravagant ro7al authority. The blunder was not a solitary one.
royal author- ^e SQau see tnat as *ne toleration of the Reformed
it?. religion became more and more precarious, as the safe
guards of their liberties were successively impaired or Avithdrawn,
the Huguenots, in their endeavor to prove themselves to be,
what in reality they were, the most obedient and trustworthy
subjects of the crown, were tempted to rear with their own
hands that formidable structure of the absolute authority of the
king, which, when once erected, was destined to prove the ruin
of their hopes of quiet. In the end it was no very difficult task
to overwhelm those who had been studiously instructed to be
lieve that, save where their religion was directly concerned, they
had no right to defend themselves against the oppression of a
king who, in virtue of his divinely conferred prerogative, and as
the "living image of the invisible God," was absolute master
of the hves and property of his subjects.1
The queen-mother and her children had already left Paris
and were advancing toward Guyenne and the Spanish frontier
with as much expedition as a royal progress will admit of. The
Protestant envoys, coming up with the court at Amboise, were
1 This point is discussed by Le Vassor, ii. 339, 340.

114 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. II
promised an opportunity to hand in the assembly's demands
when Tours should have been reached. At Tours they were
promised that the royal answer should be given them at Poitiers.
Of that answer, when at last it came, it could only be
The royal ' . *•
answer. sai<j that it gave the Protestants little reason to believe
that the government had any object but to gain time by giving
vain and illusory promises. True, there was a definite state
ment that the Reformed were not the " heretics " designated in
the coronation oath, and, while the king refused to make any
change in the title by which the Protestant religion was to be
known, he graciously permitted the pastors to style themselves
simply " ministers of the church established in such or such a
place in accordance with the Edict." But nothing of essential
importance was conceded, and the assurances, whether that the
death of the late king should be more narroAvly looked into,
or that the clerical members of the royal council would retire
whenever Protestant affairs were treated of, were so vague or
could so easily be evaded, as to amount to little or noth
ing.1 The deputies, themselves detained at court — a suspicious cir
cumstance — wrote to the assembly and expressed their dissatis
faction and alarm. The Jesuits, they said, were preaching at
Alarm court and everywhere spreading the report that the
Jesuit5 by royal marriages had been resolved upon only with the
preaching, view of extirpating the heretics. And when Chancel
lor Sillery was informed of the fears which these utterances fos
tered among the prospective victims — it was none other than
Duplessis Mornay himself that brought the matter to his notice
— he confined himself to the exclamation, " Good God ! Are we
to take account of all that the Jesuits take it into their heads to
preach ? They do not govern the state." To which the experi
enced diplomatist well replied : " No alarm is created by what
the other monks may say, but our people believe that they must
pay attention to the proceedings and the speeches of the Jesuits.
We see them constantly about the princes and state ministers.
Under cover of religion and piety they instil their own political
views and designs. You know even better than I, sir, that
1 Benoist, ii. 176, 177.

1615 POLITICAL ASSEMBLY OF GRENOBLE 115
France has only too deeply experienced the fatal effects of the
counsels given by the Jesuits." :
Were the Jesuit preachers injudiciously divulging a real de
sign of the court, and not simply imposing upon their credulous
hearers ? Were there in existence certain secret articles agreed
No secret npon by the high contracting parties in accordance
agreefupon "^i^h which the marital union of the princes and prin-
Franceand cesses was to be cemented by a general proscription of
spam. Protestantism ? Louis and his mother asserted the
contrary in the reply sent about this time to a letter lately
written by the Grenoble assembly requesting the adjournment
of the royal progress and of the marriages. " The king can
not," it said, " for many good reasons defer his journey, but
neither the journey nor the marriages ought to give umbrage to
the Protestants, since they will produce no change in the pro
tection, liberty, and security the Protestants have ever enjoyed,
nor in the observance of the edicts, and the maintenance of
foreign alliances.2
Marie de' Medici and her son probably spoke, or meant to
speak, the honest truth on this occasion. They had bound them-
The political serves by no secret contracts to a policy of persecution.
BoivetoTeave There is a class of persons, however, that are not
Grenoble, readily believed even when they tell the truth ; and
the present rulers of France had unfortunately incurred suspi
cion of belonging to this class. The Grenoble assembly, more
alarmed than ever, resolved to remove from a town where, as it
had from the first anticipated, the predominant influence of
Lesdiguieres was a perpetual menace to its independent activity.
The step was injudicious, not only because offensive, if not
positively insulting, to the marshal, but because by the change
of place the assembly forfeited the royal sanction to its exist
ence, and came into direct collision with the authority of the
king. There was no great interest of the Protestant religion in
France that would have suffered by a little delay, and certainly
the Huguenots that had deputed them might well have expected
of the members of the political assembly that their pleasure

1 Vie de Duplessis Mornay, 417, Le Vassor, ii. 342.
2 Memoires de Pontchartrain, 100.

116 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. 11
should be consulted in a matter that might prove of great con
cern to the general cause. For the removal was likely to prove
the signal of war.1 Marshal Lesdiguieres endeavored to reason
with the delegates, and presented the state of the case
Kemon- D ' x . , . ..
strancespf {n a wise an(j sensible speech, which won him golden
Marshal Les- r. . °
diguieres. opinions from all impartial men. Ihe doughty gen
eral of Henry the Fourth well deserved the designation given
him by the historiographer Bernard of " a man of great experi
ence," however much we may question the appositeness of the
farther characterization of so licentious a nobleman as " of high
virtue." 2 " But in reality the potent arguments to which he gave
utterance on this occasion were from the pen of the indefatigable
Duplessis Mornay, whose castle of Saumur served as the inex
haustible arsenal from whose resources the soundest instru
ments of statesmanship, as well as the most trenchant weapons
of religious controversy, forged by a practised hand, were freely
dispensed to all parts of the Protestant world.3 I can touch
only upon a few of the considerations by means of which
prudence sought to check ill-regulated zeal — the
mentsug- danger that if the king should resort to rigor in
gestedby . ...
Duplessis punishing Huguenot insubordination, the Protestants
would lose in a day two or three hundred of their
churches, and among these not a few of the most flourishing,
the fruits of the labors of the past eighteen years ; the certainty
of many a massacre provoked by the Jesuits and executed with
ardor by a populace only too ready to fall upon those whom
they would hold to be the authors of the war ; the detestation
of all good Frenchmen, who would sympathize and even fra-

1 " Et certes la resolution de quitter Grenoble etoit de si grande importance,
et les suites en etoient si fort a, craindre pour toutes les Eglises Reformees de
France, que les deputez meritent d'etre blamez de l'avoir prise de leur tete, sans
avoir consulte auparavant ceux dont iis avoient recu leur commission." Le
Vassor, ii. 364.
8 Histoire du Roy Louis XIII., i. 53.
3 In Duplessis Mornay's letter of September 7, 1615, he gave Marshal Lesdigui
eres permission to make use of the truths and reasons alleged in the enclosed pa
per as he might deem advisable, but requested him to furnish no copy of it to
any one and to avoid giving the writer's name. Both the letter and the paper are
given in the Vie de Duplessis Mornay (Leyden, 1647), 418-423, as well as in the
Memoires de D. M. (Amsterdam, 1652), iii. 786-792.

1615 POLITICAL ASSEMBLY OF GRENOBLE 117
ternize with the -victims of unjust persecution, but would loathe
men who were both quarrelsome and restless ; the condem
nation of foreign princes and states, that otherwise might un
dertake their defence, when they saw the French Protestants
taking advantage of the youth of the king for their own ends,
and enfeebUng the only prince of Christendom who could be a
counterpoise to the power of which all stood in dread ; the male
dictions of such of the churches themselves as might refuse to
obey the summons of their ill-advised associates, for needlessly
disturbing their peace and endangering their very existence.
Respecting the issue of the war that might ensue, he left those
to judge who, with the experience of the past forty years before
them, would consider the difference between arms taken up of
necessity and arms taken up in mere wantonness, between the res
olutions of a persecuted Huguenot and of a Huguenot that can
live unmolested. " Remember," he said, " how often our fathers
and we ourselves have sighed for such a liberty as that which
we now possess. If there be some lack in the things granted
us by the Edict, as in point of fact there is only too much, we
can justly and earnestly petition for reparation or increase, in
order to strengthen and better the condition of our churches ;
but we may not transcend the bounds of conscience or of pru
dence." He answered the objection that the Spanish marri
ages, a Jesuit inspiration, were planned with a view to the
extirpation of "heresy," by affirming that the prince who
takes the daughter of his neighbor does not of necessity es
pouse with her his neighbor's counsels, nor cease to regard his
own interests, nor set his kingdom on fire in order to gratify
him. " After all, however," he concluded, " if, when we have
remained steadfast in our duty, the attempt should be made to
deprive us of our religion, or of anything whereupon our liberty
or security is dependent, acquired by the blood of our fathers
and by our own blood, and granted to us by that great king, the
restorer of France, we shall enter upon the career of arms full
of justice and of true zeal, we shall find in our bosoms the
heart and valor of our ancestors, we shall be supported in our
righteous defence by all good Frenchmen, we shall be assisted
by all princes and states that love either the true religion or the
welfare of this realm. In sum, we shall be favored by the

118 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. H
blessing of God, which we have heretofore manifestly experi
enced in our just warfare, and this warfare He will cause to
redound to the glory of His name and to the spiritual and tem
poral advancement of our churches." 1
But not even the arguments of Duplessis Mornay, forcibly
set forth by Marshal Lesdiguieres, could persuade the Prot
estant assembly, too fully imbued with suspicion of the mo
tives of the latter, to renounce its projected removal. In his
indignation Lesdiguieres talked of closing the gates of Gren
oble and detaining the delegates by main force ; but soon per
ceiving the storm which so violent a course would raise every
where throughout Protestant France, he permitted them to go,
contenting himself with preventing the deputies of Dauphiny
The potiti- Ir0m accompanying their associates. The rest of the
removesntoly body proceeded to Nismes, where it took up its abode,
Nismes. sending messengers to the king to beg him not to
take amiss the removal from Grenoble, and proposing, in case
that were his preference, to go to any other place that he might
designate. When, however, his majesty, or the ministers that
acted in his name, repressing some natural anger at Huguenot
insubordination,2 took advantage of the incautious offer, and
bade the assembly transfer its sessions to the city of Mont
pellier, the Protestants perceived their blunder too late and
refused to leave the friendly shelter they had reached. For it

1 Lesdiguieres's speech before the assembly of Grenoble, September 21, 1615, is
given at length in the Mercure frangois, iv. 267-274. A comparison shows
that the marshal used Duplessis Mornay's paper with commendable fidelity.
2 " Le Roy a pris en bonne part les raisons que nous luy avons faict repre
sentor, touchant le changement de nostre assemblee en ce lieu, auctorisant sans
aucune injonction neanmoins la continuation d'icelle a Montpellier, ou nous ne
sommes point allez, d'autant que les memes raisons qui nous ont fait partir de
Grenoble s'y rencontrent a plus pres, outre plusieurs antres considerations,
lesquelles representees a S. M., nous esperons qu'elle en demeurera satisfaite.''
Lettre des deputes de l'assemblee generale de Nismes. a Messieurs du conseil
des eglises de l'Isle de France, Picardie, etc. Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du
Prot. franc., xiv. (1865) 59. The deputies were equally confident in their
hope that by the assurance of respect which they had sent to Lesdiguieres
they had removed the disagreeable impression produced by their removal
from Grenoble. At least, the marshal declared "'qu'il ne lui en demeuroit
aucnn maltalent pour se departir de notre union.'- In this they were misled
bv their wishes.

1615 POLITICAL ASSEMBLY OF NISMES 119
Avas no secret that at Montpellier, where Chatillon, a powerful
nobleman of too indolent a disposition to oppose the court's
influence, was governor, the assembly would enjoy no greater
freedom than in the city from which it had just escaped. The
king's ministers, not sorry to have induced the Protestants to
put themselves in the undesirable attitude of a discontented
party whom nothing but an entire submission to their whims
would satisfy, were in no haste to take measures to compel the
assembly to proceed to Montpellier.1
It is no part of my purpose to describe the journey of the
king to the Spanish frontier, nor to detail the pompous cere
monial of the exchange of the two princesses, future queens of
Spain and France, effected upon the river Bidassoa, the boun
dary between the two kingdoms. The curious, if they will,
may read the story in all its tedious prolixity upon the pages
of the admiring chroniclers of the day.2 The marriage of Louis
the Thirteenth and the Infanta Anna of Austria, having been
previously performed by proxy, was celebrated with all solem
nity in the city of Bordeaux, and with no other mishap than that
the Bishop of Saintes was at the last moment called upon
to officiate in place of his superior, Cardinal Sourdis, Arch
bishop of Bordeaux. This last-named prelate had been so
Audacious audacious, or so unfortunate, as on the day before
Archbishop ^° ven^er himself liable to arrest on the charge of
of Bordeaux, complicity in a case of murder. As, with the great
cross carried before him, the cardinal Avas passing, Avhether by
accident or design, near the pubhc prison in which was confined
one Hautchastel, a gentleman whom the parliament of the
city had condemned to death for his crimes, and in whose be
half the king had refused to intervene, the nobles of the pre
late's suite had demanded of the jailer the surrender of his
prisoner, and when he refused had killed him, broken down
the doors, and liberated the culprit. The prelate protested
that the crime was committed without his knowledge or con
sent. The parliament judged otherwise, and to avoid imprison-
1 Le Vassor, ii. 366, 367.
! See the Mercure f rangois, x. 287-300. Bernard, Histoire du Roy Louis XIII. ,
i 58, 59.

120 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Cn. n
ment, or possibly a worse fate, Cardinal Sourdis hastily made
his escape.1 A dignitary of the church who was not only
guilty of murder but of an unpardonable affront to the king
sojourning within the walls of his episcopal city, could scarcely
be expected to pronounce the blessing of heaven upon that
king's nuptials.2
The departure of Louis the Thirteenth from Bordeaux was
closely followed by an incident that may seem somewhat whim
sical to any one at all conversant with the desire felt by the
judges of the kingdom to restrict the exercises of Protestant
worship within the narrowest possible limits. Scarcely had his
majesty started northward on his way to Paris when, for some
TheProtes- reason or other, the municipal authorities ordered a
tants of Bor- general disarming of the Protestants of the place. The
deaus com- o o ±
mandedto measure created wide-spread alarm and led the consis-
ious services, tory, through fear that this might be the prelude of a
fresh massacre after the example of the butcheries of the pre
ceding century, to order the suspension of all public religious
services. Now the parliament in turn took alarm. A cessation
of worship both evidenced and was calculated to spread dis
trust. Nothing remained for the judges to do but to compel
the consistory to withdraw its obnoxious order, and on the fifth
of January, 1616, the Parliament of Guyenne issued a peremp
tory command enjoining upon the two Protestant pastors of
Bordeaux, both of them Scotchmen, Cameron and Primrose by
name, at once to resume their intermitted functions, under pain
1 The story is told by Bernard, i. 59, 60, and more fully by Gramond, 103-
106. The president of the parliament of Toulouse is even more outspoken in
his denunciation of the crime than the official historiographer, and does not
hesitate to assert that Cardinal Sourdis went to the prison with the express pur
pose of setting free his friend, and that his satellites accompanied the episcopal
cross with the view of breaking into the prison if need be. " Inauditum in
hanc diem," he writes, " damnatum reum dum patibulo imminet, presbyteri
ansu vi armata tortori ereptum." The question whether parliament did right in
ordering the ecclesiastic's arrest, instead of referring the matter for trial to the
pope, is one which Gramond declines to answer. He states the arguments
alleged on both sides.
2 The indignation of the historian De Thou at the impunity with which the
culprit finally escaped, is all the more startling from the fact that Archbishop
Sourdis seems to have been a connection of his by marriage. See De Thou s
long letter in the appendix to Bouchitte, Conference de Loudun, pp. 689-691.

1615 POLITICAL ASSEMBLY OF NISMES 121
of being punished as guilty of high treason ! As it was, the
clergymen in question having fled from the place, the Protes
tant worship, despite the desire of the Roman Catholic judges,
could not be resumed until after the return of more peaceful
times.1 Meanwhile the Prince of Conde and his associates had effected
little worthy of mention. Unable to shake the resolution of
Duplessis Mornay to keep aloof from a quarrel in which his
clear discernment saw that the Reformed churches had no con-
The assembly cern' *ne confederates were more successful with the
coSies a political assembly of Nismes, which, with inferior dis-
™,?„^ ™-«, cretion, allowed itself, on the tenth of November, 1615,
conde. to conclude a treaty of union with Conde accompanied
by very material reservations. If the churches Avhich the assem
bly represented contributed little actual strength to the prince's
forces, the moral effect was of importance. The queen-mother
took the alarm, as well Avhen she learned that Marshal Bois-
dauphin had not been able to prevent Conde from advancing
southward to await the king on his return, as when the army of
the latter was reinforced by the troops of Soubise, when the
Duke of Sully, after long hesitancy, espoused the side of revolt,
and when Rohan, Sully's son-in-law, though poorly supported,
made the important capture of Lectoure in Gascony, and in
duced the city of Montauban to declare itself for the confeder
ates.2 Hence it was that, on the very day that the assembly at
Nismes gave in its adhesion to Conde, the king at Bordeaux was
made to publish a long "declaration" intended to destroy the
effect of any such action, by renewedly confirming all previous
legislation in favor of the Huguenots.3
It was not long before both parties showed that they were
tired of the profitless contention. Marie de' Medici had effected
the matrimonial alliance on which her heart was set, and only

1 See Benoist, Histoire de l'Edit de Nantes, ii. 188, etc. Unfortunately the
sequel was less amusing, for the incident led to internal dissensions, as well as
to a conflict between the ecclesiastical and civil jurisdictions, of which the re
sults were as usual disastrous.
2 Benoist, ii. 184 ; Memoires de Rohan, 129, etc.
3 See the text of the royal Declaration of November 10, 1615, in Benoist, ii.
pieces just., 35-39.

122 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. II
desired quiet. Conde and his associates having convinced
themselves and others that they had little to hope for from a
continued resort to arms, were quite willing to obtain at once
the large concessions which, in view of the fact that they were
made at the cost of the national purse and not of her OAvn, the
queen-mother was certain in the end to grant. The general
assembly of Nismes, having discovered its OAvn impotence to in
duce the great mass of the Protestants to embroil themselves in
a needless quarrel, addressed the king (on the third of January,
1616) an earnest plea, the burden of which Avas, from beginning
to end, a recapitulation of the reasons that should move him to
give France peace, and to put an end to a Avar which menaced
the state and diminished his own authority.1 The conferences
took place at Loudun, in Poitou. When the assembly, in order
to be near at hand, asked the permission of the king to remove to
it removes to ^a Rochelle, the request was cheerfully granted. In
La Rocheiie. ^is wav a new anc[ singular feature was added to the
history of a political body whose character and antecedents were
sufficiently strange and paradoxical. For whereas by its Avith-
drawal from Grenoble and its refusal, in obedience to the royal
command, to take up its quarters at Montpellier, the Protestant
assembly had from an authorized become an illegitimate gather
ing ; so by receiving the gracious permission of his majesty to
come from Nismes to La Rochelle, the deputies had no sooner
set foot within the Protestant seaport than they became once
more the members of a regular and lawful convocation. For
such sudden transformations a parallel could scarcely be found
elsewhere. I need to give no account of the long negotiations that ended
in the arrangement which bears the name of the Peace of Lou
dun, and was promulgated in the royal declaration
Loudun. signed at Blois, in the month of May. As the Protes
tants, or such portion of them as recognized the action
of the political assembly, came into alliance with Conde tardily
and reluctantly, so their interests were little consulted.2 The
1 Harangue derniere des deputez de l'assemblee de Nismes au roy, prononcee
par la bouche du sieur de Breteuille, si la Rochefoucault, le 3 Janvier 1616.
Bulletin de la Soc. de 1'hist. du Prot. franc., xiv. (1865) 51-3.
2 See Bouchitte, La Conference de Loudun, a large quarto volume published

1616 PEACE OF LOUDUN 123
discussion of the terms of pacification, so far as they were con
cerned, had been by no means completed, when the Prince of
Conde" happening to fall sick and being resolved to close the
matter at once, hastily appended his signature to the document
by which his own interests were well provided for, and left the
Huguenots no choice but to follow his example. Inasmuch
as the prince had solemnly pledged himself to enter into no
arrangement without their consent, his Protestant friends
gained from the transaction only new confirmation of the utter
untrustworthiness of the political allies with whom they were
led from time to time to make common cause. The illusory
promises of the court, including the addition of thirty thousand
crowns annually to the allowance made to the Protestants for
the maintenance of the garrisons of their cities of refuge and
for the salaries of their ministers, were little compensation for
the struggle. They were not even relieved from the necessity
of coupling the opprobrious epithet " pretended " with the desig
nation of their religion. Thus with singular inconsistency a
concession amounting to nothing more than the toleration of a
form which ordinary courtesy might have dictated, was denied
to a party which had been able to maintain its rights at the
point of the sword.1 On the other hand, as if previous declara
tions to that effect had been insufficient, the king was made,
shortly after, not only to give to the world a new and definite
assurance of his intention to maintain his Huguenot subjects in
their rights, but distinctly to assert that he had not intended to
comprehend them in the oath he had taken at his coronation to
drive out of his kingdom the heretics denounced by the church.2
It was with extreme reluctance that Henry of Rohan had
espoused the quarrel of the late confederates. Soon after
Conde's menacing withdrawal from court the duke had
the nuke of written a paper to be submitted to the queen-mother
full of sound advice respecting the course which she
ought to pursue. In this document he insisted that if she re-
by the French government as a part of its magnificent collection of inedited
documents bearing upon the history of France. Also, Benoist, ii. 199, etc., and
documents, 39, etc.
1 See the remark of Bouchitte, p. Ixiii.
2 Declaration of Paris, July 20, 1616. Text in Benoist, ii. pieces just., 43, 44.

124 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. II
solved to go forward with the journey to consummate the Spanish
marriages, she must at all hazards destroy the existing or pos
sible apprehensions of the foreign allies of France by drawing
closer to Savoy and to England, and prove by her good treat
ment of the assembly of the Protestants that she was sincere in
her purpose to protect her Reformed subjects in the enjoyment
of their rights. He assured Marie de' Medici of his resolution
to serve her faithfully against the Prince of Conde, and not only
to advance the Avelfare of the realm to the utmost of his power,
but to exert himself to bring the French Protestants to do the
same. " But," he frankly added, " should they, through the ha
tred entertained against them and through evil counsel, be
treated as they were at Saumur, I declare that I shall never dis
associate myself from the public resolutions which may be taken
by our assembly." 1 The entire disregard of his advice, the re
fusal of the court to grant him according to promise the rever
sion of his father-in-law's government of Poitou, which he
construed as a personal slight, and the urgent solicitations of
his more impetuous brother Soubise, were powerful motives
inclining him to adopt a course to which he was at first averse.2
They Avould, however, have been inoperative, had they not been
reinforced by the insincere promises of the Prince of Conde of
the help he would render the Protestant cause, and by assur
ances of support in infantry and horse of which scarce a tithe
ever made its appearance.3 The Duke of Rohan had made a
blunder, as considerable as that which the assembly of Nismes
committed. This he himself admitted in a caustic reply which,
thirteen years later, he addressed to the Prince of Conde, at a
time Avhen the latter, now in command of a royal force to reduce
the Protestants, taunted him with the crime of rebellion. " I
acknowledge," he said, " that upon one single occasion I took
1 " Mais si, par passion qu'on ait contre ceux de la religion et par mauvais con-
seil, on les traite comme a, Saumur, je declare que je ne me disunirai jamais des
resolutions publiques que notre assemblee prendra ici." Discours sur le voyage
du roi en juillet 1615. Memoires de Rohan, i. 161-166.
2 Memoires de Rohan, i. 127, 128.
3 Instead of the six thousand foot and five hundred horse that were promised,
barely six hundred of the former and fifty of the latter came to the first rendez
vous ; and there were at no time more than two thousand men in all under
arms. Ibid., i. 128.

1616 PEACE OF LOUD [IN 125
up arms unseasonably, because I did it not for the concerns of
our rehgion, but for the interests of your person, who promised
us to obtain the reparation of the infractions upon our edicts,
and did nothing in the matter, having made up your mind to
a peace before receiving tidings from the general assembly."
" From that time," he adds, with pardonable pride, " all men
know that I have had arms in my hands only of sheer necessity,
in order to defend our estates, our lives, and the freedom of our
consciences." J
It was one of the curiosities of the struggle of which I have
just been speaking that during its course a young Roman Cath-
Ephemerai onc nobleman of the first rank, the Duke of Candale,
ttenuke off eldest son of the Duke of Epernon, came over unex-
candaie. pectedly to Protestantism. The conversion of the heir
of the most virulent of the enemies of the Reformed faith Avas
due simply to a quarrel with his father, and was as short-lived
as it was superficial. None the less was it for the time esteemed
of great importance. It contributed much to the resolution
adopted by the Nismes assembly to adhere to the Prince of
Conde. Great were the rejoicings of the Protestants, who looked
for momentous results from this accession to their ranks, but
received far more damage from the desertion of the Count of
Saint Pol, who after having invoked Rohan's assistance, treach
erously deserted his associates and accepted the invitations of
the court before the Duke had time to arrive.2
With the conclusion of the treaty of Loudun, the brief and
unfortunate association of the Huguenots with Conde comes to
an end. When again he appears upon the stage of action, it
will be in his more natural character of an enemy of Protes
tantism and a willing instrument in effecting its humiliation.
Meanwhile his sudden arrest by the queen-mother's order (on
the thirty-first of August, 1616), concerns us in this study as
little as does the signal revolution in public affairs in the fol
lowing year (the twenty-fourth of April, 1617), when Marshal
d'Ancre and his wife were hurled from power to be succeeded by
1 Henry de Rohan au Prince de Conde, Alais, November 6, 1628 ; Colbert
M.SS. Nat. Library of France, printed in Bulletin de la Societe de l'histoire du
Prot franc., vi. (1858), 56.
2 Mercure francois, iv. 276-79. Benoist, ii. 181, 182.

126 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Cn. H
a favorite, little, if at all, exceeding them in merit, in the per
son of the Duke of Luynes. When we read, however, that
Louis the Thirteenth exultingly exclaimed, as soon as apprised
of the death of the detested Italian whom he had himself
planned to overthrow, if not to put out of the way, " Now I am
king ! " we seem to be transported once more to the time of the
Valois, and to witness the ignoble triumph of Henry the Third
over the butchered Duke of Guise.1 The base indignities with
Avhich the corpse of Marshal d'Ancre was treated by the popu
lace, and the judicial murder of his wife, a few days later, on the
foolish and baseless charge of sorcery, would not unnaturally
lead the reader to imagine that from the seventeenth century he
had been carried back to the most cruel and superstitious por
tion of the Middle Ages. The remark of Cardinal Richelieu
well characterized the period in which a woman could be sen
tenced to death by a tribunal of justice on such flimsy pretexts
as those on which Leonora Galigai Avas killed : " There is no
such a thing as assured innocence at a time when men wish to
find culprits." 2

1 The Memoires of Pontchartrain, ii. 222, state that the young king sent word
to his mother " que c'etoit lui qui avoit fait tuer le dit marechal ; " while those
of the Marshal d'Estrees, 327-8, assert with equal positiveness that Louis was
often heard to say that he had never intended to have him killed. It is not im
probable that his majesty at first expected merely to arrest Ancre, but was not
sorry that Vitry, too readily construing the marshal's first impulsive motion as
an attempt to resist, promptly put him to death. Gramond makes Louis, stand
ing in open sight at a window of the Louvre, exclaim that the deed was done by
his order — "Jussu, inquit, meo transaotum opus.'' Hist. Gall., p. 158. For
Louis's remark to the assassin — " Je vous remercie, Vitri, je suis maintenant
Roi " — see Le Vassor, ii. 343.
2 Memoires du Cardinal de Richelieu, 166.

1617 THE REDUCTION OF BEARN 127

CHAPTER III
THE REDUCTION OF BEARN
From the time when Henry of Navarre abjured the Protes
tant faith in the abbey church of Saint Denis, the clergy had
not ceased from insisting upon the complete re-establishment of
the Roman Catholic rehgion in his ancestral domain of Beam.
Henry did his best to satisfy them, by reinstating the bishops
of Lescar and Oleron in their sees, as well as bringing back
and pensioning a certain number of curates. The ecclesiastics,
however, refused to be content Avith anything short of the re
covery of their former ascendancy, and were persistent and
hopeful of success. To this end the periodic assemblies of the
importu- clergy °f France urged the present monarch to per-
Er'eTOh116 form what they represented as an act of signal piety.
clergy. jn ^g]^ Upon the very day on which the prelates
reneAved for ten years their annual grant of one million and
three hundred thousand livres to meet the wants of the crown,1
their representative, Francois de Harlay, coadjutor of the Arch
bishop of Rouen, implored Louis, in behalf of the afflicted
Catholics of Beam, " that he would restore the immunities of
their bishops, and return to the Church a little of the oil which
he received of her hands at his coronation, to heal her wounds
in those poor and persecuted quarters." 2
But Harlay's appeals were cold and unimpassioned in com-
'See " Contracts faits par le clerge de France avec les rois et les receveurs
generaux du clerge pour l'imposition et levee des decimes," which are given at
full length and occupy more than 250 pages folio in the Recueil des Actes,
Titres et Memoires concernant les affaires du Clerge de France, Paris, 1673, iv.
387, etc. They begin with the famous " Contract of Poissy," October 21, 1561,
made for six years. See Rise of the Huguenots, i. 543. The contract agreed
upon August 8, 1615, was for ten years, expiring December 81, 1625. (Recueil,
etc., ubi supra, iv. 499, etc.)
2 Remonstrances du clerge, in Recueil des Actes, etc., v. part 2, pp. 261-269.

128 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. Ill
parison with those of Gaspard Dinet, Bishop of Macon, who, two
years later, undertook a similar office of intercession. Calling
upon the monarch to emulate the zeal of Louis the Ninth, he
exclaimed : " We ask you not, in imitation of the saintly king
Harangue whose blood, whose name and whose sceptre you have
f 'o/jku" inherited, to cross and recross the seas, for the pur-
con? pose 0f driving from the Orient the enemy of the
Christian name, or of recovering the holy places Avhich he un
justly occupies ; but, Sire, we invoke your religion, we call upon
your justice, that you permit not the Catholic subjects of your
sovereign state of Beam 'to be treated worse than are the ad
herents of the Protestant religion in this your kingdom— I say
it with shame, and yet Avith truth, worse than the poor Chris
tians under the domination of the infidel." Waxing more ex
cited as he advanced, the prelate declared that after all that
Henry the Fourth had done for the Roman Catholic Church
in Beam, there still remained more than a hundred places-
towns, villages, or parishes — destitute of priests or religious
worship, although fully twenty-five of every thirty souls Avere
Catholics.1 But what incensed him most was that, not only
had the majority of the inhabitants been deprived of their
churches and the exercises of their religion, but the ecclesiasti
cal revenues, contrary to all justice, divine and human, were
employed for the maintenance of the enemies of the church,
for the salaries of ministers, for the support of a large number
of scholars that were reared in Calvinism with the intention of

. ! On the other hand, Lescun, the Protestant deputy from Beam, maintained
that there were ten Protestants to one Roman Catholic, especially among persons
of consideration. Benoist, ii. 246. If the latter estimate should not be taken
as literally exact, neither can the bishop's figures be accepted as even an ap
proximation to the truth, in view of the fact, recorded by the historian of the
Edict of Nantes, that even ten years before he wrote, or on the eve of the Eevo-
cation, after all the political changes aud toward the close of a long period of
seduction by threats and promises, there yet remained about seven thousand
Protestant families out of the thirty-three thousand families that constituted
the entire population of the principality of Beam. Ibid., ii. 234. The histori
ographer Bernard states what is probably the precise truth, when he asserts that
there was a difference between Lower or French Navarre and Beam in a relig
ious point of view: "Lower Navarre was strongly Catholic, and Beam had
fewer Catholics than Huguenots." Histoire du Roy Louis XIII., i. 189.

1617 THE REDUCTION OF BEARN 129
scattering them throughout France, and for other profane pur
poses. And here the example of King Belshazzar and his
sacrilegious feast were advantageously held up as an awful
warning. " To use the property of the Church for the main
tenance of her enemies, what else is this than to cause the con
cubines to drink from the vessels of the Lord's house ? " As if
this were not enough, the orator returned to the somewhat
trite subject of the contents of the sainte ampoule. "Saint
Remy, first spiritual father of our Christian kings, who by his
prayers obtained that celestial liquid with which you were
anointed and consecrated, predicted in his testament that never
should this kingdom be destroyed save by the destruction and
change of the Catholic religion. Such are the punishments
Avherewith God visits the kings and kingdoms that profane His
service and the holy things devoted to and intended for it."
It may be imagined how deep an impression was made upon
the mind of a king so weak intellectually as Louis the Thir
teenth, by this dire com ruination.1
In view of the demands of the clergy of France, it is perhaps
not improper at this point to glance at the history of Beam
during the sixteenth century, in order the better to judge what
ground there was in fact for the frequent accusations made
against Queen Jeanne d'Albret, grandmother of the reigning
French monarch, of having established Protestantism in her
dominions at the foot of the Pyrenees by a violent and tyran
nical use of power.
The reformed doctrines made their way into Beam (as well
as to the west of Beam, into the scanty remains of the old king-
rrojrress of dom of Navarre retained by its titular monarchs) dur-
Satom lng tiie reign of Henry, husband of Margaret of Angou-
Beam. \&me, sister of Francis the First. If Margaret never
openly embraced Protestantism, she scarcely disguised her cor
dial sympathy with its tenets, and extended to its professors as
hospitable a welcome as her husband would permit her to offer.
The more rapid progress of the reformation dates from the reign
of Margaret's daughter, Jeanne d'Albret, and indeed from the

1 The harangue of the Bishop of Macon, June 2, 1617, may be read in the
Mercure francois, v. 45-50, and in the Recueil des Actes, etc., v., part 2, 272-76.

130 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. ni
latter part of that reign. For, at first, the new queen of Navarre
exhibited less inchnation to forsake the Roman Catholic faith
than did her husband, the impetuous, but inconstant,
Jeanne Antoine of Bourbon. A striking change occurred la
ter, when husband and wife appeared to pass over
each to the opposite side, Antoine falling in with the plans
of the " triumvirate " so far as to become an ally of perse
cution, just at the moment that Jeanne avowed herself dis
tinctly a friend of the persecuted. Not until after Antoine's
death, in 1562, however, did the Protestants of Beam experi
ence the full benefit of her favor.
Meanwhile the change involved no persecution of the Roman
Catholic clergy or of their followers. The two forms of religion
were equally protected, but the queen, taking account of the
altered state of things, made provision for the new religion
by the side of the old. It was ordered that the churches should
be used by the adherents of both communions, and that Roman
Catholics and Protestants should equally be free from molesta
tion during their possession of the sacred edifices. The re
formed pastors received a stated salary, as did also the parish
priests.1 Thus it was that in her brave reply to the Cardinal
of Armagnac, when the latter endeavored by menaces to induce
her to abandon her course of reform, she was able to affirm
truthfully : " I do nothing by violence, since there is no resort
to imprisonment, condemnation or death, which are the sinews
of violence."2
The queen's equity did not, however, shield her from the as
saults of her enemies. Not to speak of conspiracies against her
small but coveted dominions from the side of France, the car-

1 The salary of a pastor at Pau was two hundred and ten livres, elsewhere one
hundred and fifty. This was in 1560. Histoire de Jeanne d'Albret, Reine de
Navarre, par Mile. Vauvilliers, i. 177. If this statement be correct, it would
seem that the salaries were soon found to be inadequate ; for the Ordinances of
1566 fixed the compensation of ministers that were married men at three hun
dred livres, of those who were single at two hundred and forty. Bulletin de
la Societe de l'histoire du Protestantisme franQais, xl. (1891) 294.
2 The letter of the cardinal was dated at Belle-Perche, August 18, 1563 ; the
queen's admirable reply was sent back by the courier that had brought the pre
late's missive. Both are given textually by Olhagaray, in his Histoire de Foix,
Beam et Navarre (Paris, 1609), 536-551, and both merit a careful perusal.

1617 THE REDUCTION OF BEARN 131
dinals of the Holy Office, in 1563, formally cited her to Rome
and threatened her with deposition as a heretic,1 and,
of her ene- two years later, the Duke of Alva entered into a plot
to kidnap Jeanne and her children and hand them
over for trial to the Spanish Inquisition.2
It has been commonly represented that as early as in 1563,
the mass was abolished on pain of death, all ecclesiastical prop
erty was confiscated, and the images and altars were destroyed.3
Even Olhagaray, a well-informed historian, falls into this mistake,4
through an apparent confusion of dates. But so far is the state
ment from being correct that, in the very year in question, the
States General of Beam petitioned the sovereign that every one
be permitted to worship God according to his own faith ; and
Jeanne, acknowledging the justice of the request, issued at once
a " perpetual and irrevocable edict " by which the Roman Cath
olic and Reformed religions were publicly recognized and per
mitted to exist side by side.5 Three years later (in 1566), the
States of Beam issued a mandate enjoining the ministers, rec-
Mutuai toier- tors, and vicars to abstain from interfering with each
other in the exercise of their respective functions, and
this was followed by an order of Bernard d'Arros, lieutenant-
general of the queen of Navarre, fixing the hours for Protestant
preaching and for the celebration of the Roman Catholic mass
in the churches held in common by the two religions. For six
months, from April to October, the Reformed were to hold their
services from six to eight o'clock in the morning ; for the other
half of the year, from seven to nine o'clock. The Roman Cath
olics were to control the sacred edifices for the rest of the day.6

¦Mile. Vauvilliers gives, iii. 221-262 the text of the papal " Monitorium et
citatio Officii sancta? Inquisitionis contra illustrissimam et serenissimam dominam
Ioannam Albretiam, reginam Navarrae," both in the original Latin and in
translation. It is dated Rome, September 28, 1563.
2 Rise of the Huguenots, ii. 150, 151.
3 See Bulletin, ubi infra.
' Histoire de Foix, Beam et Navarre, 535.
6 The edict was registered February 2, 1563, in the sovereign council and be
fore the seneschal, on the motion of the syndics of the states. Memoires du
Due de la Force, i. 122.
6L. Cadier, Les Pasteurs du Beam au Siege de Navarrenx, published in
Bulletin de la Societe de l'histoire du Protestantisme francais, xxxiv. (1885) 260,

132 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. HI
This same year (1566) Jeanne published an important laAv,
wherein, so far from " abolishing the mass on pain of death,
ordering the destruction of images and confiscating eccle
siastical property," the queen reneAved her provision
dfnanceeaofr" for the coexistence of the two religions, and guaranteed
the free exercise of their worship. If doubt on this
point were previously excusable, none is possible since the
recent discovery and publication of the text of the ordinance it
self.1 It is true that the queen distinctly expressed her hope to
accomplish the extirpation of the "papal idolatry," but with
equal distinctness she announced her purpose to adjourn the
attempt to a time when the greater part of her people should
have renounced all idolatry and embraced the word of God.
It is also true that Roman Catholic preaching was altogether
forbidden. This measure, if incapable of justification, is at
least easily explained in view of the seditious character of the
customary sermons of the priests and monks. Otherwise, how
ever, the proper and orderly celebration of the public worship
and sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church was not inter
fered with. In the interest of good morals and of the pubhc
peace, rehgious processions outside of thew sacred edifices were
suppressed, and blasphemy, licentiousness, games of chance,
dissolute dances, mendicancy, whether by begging friars or by
other able-bodied persons, were strictly forbidden. Renewed
proA'ision was made for the support of the Protestant ministers,
and, more particularly, for the education at the public expense
of promising youth in the college which the queen had founded
at Orthez.
Meanwhile the Roman Catholic priests were enjoined not
to return to and officiate in places where the services of their
religion had been intermitted, and bishops and others, save lay
patrons, were ordered in future not to confer vacant benefices
upon any one, since it was the queen's purpose to unite the
261. Mr. Cadier's statement is based upon a document in the communal
archives of Laruns. See also Memoires du Due de la Force, i. 123.
1 " Reglement de Jeanne, Reine de Navarre, Duchesse d'Albret, concernant la
R. P. R. pour le Beam," dated July, 1566 ; published, from a copy found in
the library of tbe city of Auch by M. Soulice, in the Bulletin of the French
Protestant Historical Society, xl. (1891) 292-95.

1617 THE REDUCTION OF BEARN 133
revenues of such benefices to the provision already made for
the poor of the Reformed Churches of the principality.
A revolt that arose as the consequence of the promulgation
of this law in Lower Navarre was promptly put down. Not so
the more formidable rebellion which broke out when arms were
taken for the third time to crush the Huguenots of France.
m. de Ter- The Roman Catholic party despatched M. de Terride
theeprincl- *° co-operate with the insurgents of Beam and to seize
paiity. ^e qUeen's territories for the benefit of the king of
France. The entire principality fell into his hands with the
exception of the city of Navarrenx. The clergy and their ad
herents played into the hands of the invaders, opening the gates
of the walled places and becoming the cause of numerous mas
sacres and other excesses, in which, it must be confessed, the
professors of the traditional faith were frequently involved in
the same ruin Avith their Protestant fellow-citizens. The brill-
jeanne'sau- ian^ generalship of the Count of Montgomery, sent
established by Admiral Coligny at Jeanne's request, freed her
sToSgom- fr0131 this new danger by the reconquest of her states.
ery- Montgomery's campaign of scarcely a score of days
well merited the praise of his opponent Marshal Montluc, who
said that no finer action had been seen in the wars of the six
teenth century.1 The queen's clemency was displayed in a gen
eral amnesty which she published soon after (from La Rochelle,
on the thirty-first of May, 1570). Even this was not sufficient
to secure the loyalty of a portion of her unruly subjects. A
fresh uprising took place in Lower Navarre, and the siege of
Rabastens by the pitiless Montluc was attended by scenes of
unparalleled cruelty. Even yet Jeanne clung to the path of
conciliation and religious toleration. It was not until the States
of Beam, now become thoroughly Protestant, through the flight
of those whose persistent attempts to rob their princess of her
1 ' Car lever un siege contre forces esgalles, vaincre et forcer une ville, pren
dre le lieutenant du roy dans une bonne ville en trois jours, presque a la teste
d'ung mareschal de France et d'ung lieutenant de roy comme j'estois, et bref,
en tois jours conquerir tout ung pal's, cela semble estre ung songe. II fault con-
fesser, que de toutes noz guerres, il ne s'est faict ung plus beau traict de guerre
que cestuy-cy." Memoires de Blaise de Monluc [Montluc] (Ed. of the Soc. de-
l'hist. de France, by Alph. de Ruble), iii. 285.

134 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. Ill
domains had met with signal failure, addressed their queen an
nrgent plea for the establishment of the religious affairs of the
principality on a permanent basis, that Jeanne d'Albret enacted
The eccie- (on tne twenty-sixth of November, 1571) those Ecclesi-
dfnances°of astical Ordinances under which the territories at the
157L foot of the Pyrenees had, at the time of which I write,
been governed fqr nearly half a century. Even then, however,
no reign of persecution was inaugurated, and the queen of Na
varre confined herself to ordering the formal suppression of a
religion which had to her become the synonym of rebellion, and
whose clergy declined to avail themselves of her offers of par
don.1 It was in keeping with her exalted character that Jeanne
did not confiscate the ecclesiastical revenues which Count Mont
gomery acting by her authority had sequestered two years before
(on the second of February, 1569), for the purpose of augment
ing her own wealth or of bestowing them, either wholly or in
part, as rewards upon her favorites. The Ordinances committed
them intact to a council, to be elected by the national synod of
Beam, with the stipulation that they be applied to the main
tenance of the ministers of the Gospel, to the support of public
schools, and to the relief of the truly poor — widows, orphans,
strangers, prisoners, young children, and unmarried women, un
able by their toil to meet their necessities and solicitous to con
ceal their destitution from the public notice.2 So wealthy, how
ever, was the church of Beam, that the revenues which had
been fully consumed by the former clergy, were found far more
than sufficient to sustain the Protestant pastors and meet all the
educational and charitable ends Avhich Jeanne d'Albret had in
vieAv. The surplus was therefore applied to such uses of state
as the necessities of the time dictated.3
The author of this legislation did not long survive its institu
tion. Her son and successor maintained it in full vigor during

1 The seventy-one articles <5f the Ecclesiastical Ordinances of 1571 are fully
analyzed and discussed by Mile. Vauvilliers, Histoire de Jeanne d'Albret, iii.
97-116. M. de Rochambeau has, I believe, published the text of these ordi
nances in his Galerie des hommes illustres du Vendomois, pp. 187-213. (See
Bulletin, xl. 288, note.)
2 Ordinances, ubi supra, Vauvilliers. iii. 104, 105.
8 Memoires du Due de la Force, i. 125, 126.

1617 THE REDUCTION OF BEARN 135
his reign of eight-and-thirty years. For if Henry of Navarre
so far yielded to the importunities of his clerical advisers as,
Maintained after his abjuration at Saint Denis, to authorize the re-
Hefn°ryCofby introduction of the Roman Catholic religion into Beam,
Navarre. w^jj j^s bishops of Lescar and Oleron and a considera
ble number of inferior clergy, he steadfastly refused to annul the
conclusions reached by his mother Avith the co-operation of the
Estates of the principality. Both Jeanne d'Albret and Henry
of Navarre regarded the representatives of the people of Beam
as clearly within their right Avhen they undertook to designate
the purposes to which the ecclesiastical revenues should be ap
plied. Those revenues Avere the property not of the hierarchy,
but of the Christian people for whose benefit churches had been
built and religious exercises Avere held. The people alone were
competent to decide what teachers they Avould listen to, what
shepherds they would have to care for the interests of their
souls. A change that had been effected not by violence or con
straint of the sovereign, but by the solemn decision of the com
monwealth, duly expressing itself in the deliberations of the
three orders of the principality, must be respected as the consti
tution of Beam, which could not be altered except in an equally
solemn manner by the common consent of the people and the
sovereign.1 Therefore it was that when Henry the Fourth
deemed it but just to confer upon the Roman Catholics of
Beam similar rights to those Avhich he granted to the Huguenots
of France bv the Edict of Nantes, he took pains in the
Confirmed J . ,.r.
by his "per- new law, to which he gave the same designation as to
petual and ° . °
irrevocable that more famous document of an " edict perpetual and
cdicti" forever irrevocable," to confirm in express terms his
mother's ordinances.2 Besides re-establishing the two bishops
of Lescar and Oleron, with salaries drawn from the king's own

1 M. N. Weiss has ably discussed this entire question in his paper entitled
" L'intolerance de Jeanne d'Albret," in the Bulletin de la Soc. de 1 hist, du Prot.
franc., xl. (1891)261-292.
2 " Entendons neantmoins que nosdits reglements et de nos predecesseurs de-
meurent en leur forme et vigueur, pour les articles auquel [aux quels] n'est deroge
par cestuy, nostre present Edit." See Mercure francois v. 174; Benoist, His
toire de l'editde Nantes, i. 285; Olhagaray, Histoire de Foix, Beam et Navarre,
706. Memoires du Due de la Force, i. 127, 128.

136 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. in
treasury, he provided for the reintroduction of the Roman
Catholic worship in twelve parishes, as well as in other places,
not already occupied, which had lay patrons of the Roman
Catholic faith. Roman Catholics and Protestants Avere to be
admitted without discrimination to all offices and dignities, but
the number of the former was not to exceed the number of the
latter. Not unnaturally did the reintroduction of the clergy
into Beam create considerable excitement,1 and the Duke of La
Force tells us that at Pau, " he had all the trouble in the
world," to secure the registration of the edict in its favor. In
the end, the States of the principality Avhich he took care to
assemble, acquiesced without complaint in the new order of
things, on receiving from the newly appointed bishops and their
friends the positive promise that having obtained the free exer
cise of their religion they would make no further demands.2 In
fact, there seemed to be good reason to expect that under the
beneficent sway of the edict, the reign of quiet and order would
be as fully assured in Beam, as under the Edict of Nantes in
the neighboring provinces of southAvestern France, where peace
was so well cemented that " no longer were there heard among
the people those names of ' Papists ' and ' Huguenots ' that
had been current since the reign of the second Francis." 3
Any expectations of the kind, however, were evanescent.
Scarcely had the bishops been admitted to the principality,
Henr re- w°en, despite their engagement, they broached their
*ei theProt plan 0I securing the expulsion of the ministers. For
fs?™4 mta" ^his end, they followed Henry from Lyons to Cham-
bery, from Chambery to Montmeillan, where they pre
sented to his majesty their formal demand for a writ of replevin
to recover all the ecclesiastical property unjustly withheld from
them, and for the re-establishment of the Roman Catholic relig
ion in every part of Beam. This met with a direct and posi-

1 As it did, also, in some parts of Foix into which it was contemporaneously
introduced. At Mazeres, in that county, however, there being scarcely any
Roman Catholic inhabitants, not a soul was present when the mass was per
formed, except the suite of the commissioners sent to put the edict into execu
tion. Olhagaray, ubi supra.
2 Memoires du Due de la Force, i. 128.
3 Ibid, i., 130.

1617 THE REDUCTION OF BEARN 137
tive refusal. About the same time (1601), it is true, Henry
acceded to the petition of the bishops to be admitted to the
Council of State of Beam with a deliberative voice. But the
uneasiness inspired by the new pretensions of the Roman Cath
olics was allayed by a positive assurance given by the monarch
that he had had no intention of introducing any change in the
ecclesiastical situation or in the ordinances of the queen his
mother, and that these ordinances should be maintained in
full force and vigor.1 The matter did not end there. For several
years, what with the importunity of the prelates and the cor
responding excitement on the part of the Bearnese Protestants,
Avho turned to their French brethren for support,2 Henry the
And rebukes Fourth and his vigilant governor, the Duke of la Force,
ttyafthe1*0" enjoyed little quiet. The king was at last wearied
bishops. beyond endurance with the pertinacity of the bishops,
and absolutely forbade them to speak to him again on the sub
ject of any modification of his edict. And when, in spite of
this, they undertook to reopen the matter, he made a retort
more frank than courteous. " You would do better," said he,
" to remain at home and preach in your churches than to tor
ment the people of your dioceses and to be perpetually coming
from Beam to the court and driving me distracted by your im
portunity.3 Louis the Thirteenth had very different views from those of
his father, as he was surrounded by very different counsellors.
It was no difficult matter to persuade him that the " States " of
Jeanne d'Albret were no States of Beam at all, since the clergy

1 Memoires du Due de la Force, i. 133-35. Nevertheless it should be noticed
that some part of the ecclesiastical revenues were diverted. ' ' Neanmoins il
etoit retenu une partie des deniers ecclesiastiques [in 1599], qui de longue main
etoient affectes aux pasteurs de ceux de la religion et autres charges du pays."
Ibid., ii. 85.
2 Henry IV. was determined that the Huguenots of Beam should not be repre
sented in the National Synods of the kingdom of France without a special per
mission from him. See his letter to La Force, April 27, 1607. Ibid., i., appen
dix, 455.
3 " Cependant, au mois de decembre, les Eveques ayant voulu encore en re-
parler a sa Majeste, le Roi leur repartit qu'ils feroient mieux a demeurer
precher dans leurs eglises, que de tourmenter les peuples de leurs dioceses, et
de s'en venir toujours du Beam a la Cour lui rompre la tete. Ibid., i. 211, 212.

138 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IH
who should have constituted the first order were absent, and
their place was but usurped by Protestant ministers; that
Henry the Fourth had year by year granted larger concessions
to the Roman Catholics of his principality, and would have
done still more for them had his life been spared; and, in
answer to the plea of prescription, that the fifty years of Prot
estant possession was but an insignificant space of time com
pared with the period of fifteen hundred years of which the
Roman Catholics boasted.1
The blow fell on the twenty-fifth of June, 1617, when an
order from the king in council was issued granting the demands
Louis xnx °f the clergy both as to the re-establishment of the
re-estaDnsh- Roman Catholic church throughout Beam and as to
Eomanfcath- the restoration of the ecclesiastical revenues to their
one religion, original destination.2 Of his own authority, and quite
disregarding the fact that the solemn decisions of the sovereign
States General of Beam could constitutionally be repealed
only by an equally solemn decision of the same body, Louis the
Thirteenth by one stroke of the pen overturned the entire
fabric Avhich his father and he himself had repeatedly promised
to uphold. The boldness of autocratic and arbitrary govern
ment could no further go. Against a ruler to whom pledges
so often repeated were of no binding force, no usages, no
"fors," such as those upon which the Bearnais relied as upon
an impregnable defence, could be of any avail. Yet, since the
semblance of justice must in a measure be preserved, it was
somewhat ostentatiously provided that the king's Protestant
subjects should be maintained in all their rights both of relig
ious worship and of the pecuniary support of their ministry
and institutions. The king undertook to supply all the funds
compensa- necessary for the salaries of the ministers and of the
made to the professors of the colleges, for the needs of the poor,
Protestants. an(^ jn generai; f or a]i tne other purposes for which the
ecclesiastical revenues had been employed, from the income of
the royal domain of Beam, and, in default of that, from the in-
1 These are among the reasons alleged in the answer made to the "Discours"
published by the Protestants of Beam in 1618. See Mercure francois, v. 181-191.
2 Mem du Due de la Force, ii. 104 ; Benoist. ii. 243 ; Mercure francois, v.
52-54, where the text of this important document is given.

1617 THE REDUCTION OF BEARN 139
come of his other duchies, counties, etc. If assurances passed
current for deeds, the Protestants had no reason to complain of
any financial damage that the change would effect. On only one
point Avere the demands of the clergy not, indeed, denied but
adjourned: the king deferred until after the return of the com
missioner who was to be sent to Beam with the document any
action upon the request that the clerical order should again be
admitted to the States General of Beam and to the Council of
the principality, with seat and deliberative voice.
Three months later, a formal edict gave the force of perma
nent law to the provisions of the king's order in council, and left
no room for doubt in the minds either of Roman Catholics or of
Protestants respecting the fate of Beam.'
It proved no easy matter to bring the little territory at the
foot of the Pyrenees to acquiesce in this violent action of the
crown. A country proud of its traditions and tenacious of its
o osition ancestral rights and privileges, however narrow its
of the Bear- limits, does not yield instantly even to the pressure of
overwhelming force. The injustice was aggravated in
the present instance by the bad faith of the court in issuing
the order in council without awaiting the return of the special
envoy of Beam, as had been promised, and by the mendacity
of the document itself, which asserted that the arguments and
documents submitted by the Protestant deputies had been duly
heard and examined.2 So far from receding from its position,
moreover, the king's advisers had even gone farther, in response
to new demands made by the assembly of the clergy before its
final adjournment, drawing back from nothing except the pre
posterous suggestion of the prelates that the king should grant
them four cities of security in Beam. Inasmuch as they were
backed by the whole authority and military establishment of the
crown, and claimed that the Roman Catholic population out
numbered the Reformed in the proportion of six to one, the

: Edict du Roy Louis XIII. du mois de Septembre 1617, portant restablisse-
ment de la Religion Catholique en Beam, et main-levee des biens des Bcclesias-
tiques saisis dSs le temps de la Reyne de Navarre. Recueil des Actes, Titres et
Memoires concernant les affaires du Clerge de France, vi. 42, 43.
2 Benoist, ii. 243.

140 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. HI
absurdity of the proposition prevented the royal council from
entertaining it seriously.1
The struggle against the arbitrary course of the government,
however just it might be, Avas from the beginning hopeless,
Yet Beam exerted itself with a courage and determination
worthy of a far different issue. Louis the Thirteenth, having
once committed himself, was resolved to execute the promise
given to the clergy, and Avould not listen to reason. It was no
difficult matter for the Protestant deputies to prove that their
immemorial usages had been violated, or that the Roman
Catholics of Beam could complain of no great ill-usage, inas
much as they boasted of three hundred priests in Beam, with
out taking into account the bishops, canons, and preachers, as
against only sixty ministers of the Reformed Religion.2 But
nothing came of their remonstrances. In their perplexity the
Bearnese sought the advice of their neighbors, and, availing
themselves of the system not long since introduced,
sembiyV s invited a political assembly of three adjoining prov-
asejaonx. jnceg ^Q meet ^n ^e town of Castelj aloux. No secrecy
had been observed, since no treasonable plans were contem
plated. Consequently, before the assembly had time to come
together, the consuls of Castelj aloux received warning from the
king not to admit the delegates into the town, and from Bor
deaux came a parliamentary order to treat them as rebels and
disturbers of the public peace. The gates Avere shut in their
faces. When they turned their steps to Tonneins on the Ga
ronne, a similar rebuff awaited them. They were constrained to
retire quietly to Orthez in Beam itself, whence they wrote
letters to the king, which he not only declined to receive, as
emanating from an unauthorized meeting, but answered by
publishing a declaration against all that might take part in their
deliberations.3 The highest judicature of the little principality,
meanwhile, availed itself of its time-honored privilege of remon
strance, and delayed to register the obnoxious edict until its
reasons should have been heard by the crown. A royal com
missioner was sent to hasten the execution of this formality,

1 Benoist, ii. 247. 2 Ibid. , ii. 246.
3 May 21, 1618. Benoist, ii. , pieces justiflcatives, 45-47.

1618 THE REDUCTION OF BEARN 141
but met with scanty respect at the hands of the excited Bear-
nese, and was even insulted, it is said, by the students at
Orthez.1 Louis now met and attempted to silence all further
opposition by a lettre de jussion — a peremptory command, " for
the first and last time," addressed to the procrastinat-
a- lettre de ing judges of Beam, in which indeed he condescended,
contrary to the ordinary practice, to argue the case
and state the motives of his action as dictated by conscientious
considerations.2 Months passed, and yet the court, while unwilling to recede,
did not, in the unsettled condition of public affairs, deem it pru
dent or convenient to enforce its will by force of arms. Mean
while judicious men among the Protestants exerted themselves
to the utmost, on the one hand, to restrain their felloAV-be-
lievers from suffering themselves to be hurried by pardonable re
sentment at the injustice with which they were treated into acts
that might lead to deplorable outbreaks and possible war ; and,
on the other, strove to induce the government, if it must carry
out its determination respecting the restoration of the ecclesias
tical revenues of Beam to the Roman Catholics, to place the
compensation to be made to the Protestants upon so firm and
unquestionable a basis as to quiet all their reasonable apprehen
sions.3 Such, above all, was the course of the veteran Duplessis
Prudent ad- Mornay, who, if his untiring efforts did not meet AA'ith
piessisMor- *ne success they deserved, yet earned unstinted praise
nay- for his candor and disinterestedness. " You may be
assured," wrote to him one of the king's secretaries of state,
" that the freedom you use to express your thoughts on this
subject needs no excuse, but rather earns for you praise and
esteem, in addition to the satisfaction you experience from hav
ing done the duty of a good Frenchman, and of an old and
1 Mercure francois, v. (1618)159-161. Memoires du Cardinal de Richelieu, 183.
2 " Lettre de Jussion au Conseil de Pau du 25 Juillet 1618," from St. Germain.
Mercure francois, v. 162-66. Recueil des Actes, etc., du Clerge, vi. 45-47.
3 In a letter to Lesdiguieres, November 3, 1618, Duplessis Mornay insists that
the compensation on the royal domain " ne soit point par forme de pension qu'il
faille aller requerir tous les ans, mais de charge locale affectee sur ledit do-
maine, non revocable sous aucune cause ny pretexte, et qu'en eas qu'ils [the
Protestants] y fussent troubles, iis puissent avoir recours sur l'Ecclesiastique,
nonobstant la susdite mainlevee." Memoires, iv. 87.

142 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. HI
worthy servant of the kings our masters. Grow not weary
therefore of rendering services to the public." x
Too clear-sighted to dream of the possibility of successfully
opposing the power of the French king, too sensible of the hor
rors of even a justifiable war, if such war there were, the aged
governor of Saumur counselled his fellow-believers to adopt the
course dictated by prudence. " In such a difficulty as this," he
wrote to La Force, " I believe that if we are able to secure the
free course of the Gospel, the seminary for the training of its
ministers, and the safeguards of those that profess it, we ought
to commit the rest to God, who holds in His hand the hearts of
kings, and who knows the times and the seasons for advancing
and completing His work." 2 Meanwhile his advice to La Force
and the Beamese was to consent promptly to the registration
of the king's edict of replevin, but to introduce such modifica
tions as the parliaments of France were accustomed to make,
and thus gain time.3 He would indeed have preferred to have
the States of Beam regularly convened, so that whatever
change was necessary to be made should be effected in an or
derly manner and in accordance with the immemorial usage of
the land ; but the government rejected the plan as an insult to
the royal authority.4
Not that the court was altogether averse to conciliation. The
political assembly originally appointed for Casteljaloux, but
forced to take up its abode in Orthez, had made a
My goes to further move to La Rochelle, and that city, with char-
Orthez, then .... .„ ,. n n -, .
toLaEo- acteristic self-confidence, took under its protecting
wing the body upon which the indignation of the king-
rested.5 From its new shelter the assembly soon took occasion
to depute some of its members to court, to give to Louis assur
ances of fidelity and devotion which were more than usually

] M. de Seaux to Duplessis Mornay, Paris, December 8, 1618, Memoires de
Duplessis Mornay, iv. 107.
8 Letter of April 28, 1618, Memoires, iv. 25.
3 Letter to the Duke of Rohan, July 13, 1618, ibid., iv. 47.
4 Ibid., iv. 51, 52.
6 ' ' Cependant La Rochelle a receu l'Assemblee absolument en sa tuition : ce
sont les mots." Duplessis Mornay to Marbault, January 21, 1619. Memoires,
iv. 130.

1619 THE REDUCTION OF BEARN 143
welcome at a time when the kingdom had again been thrown
into confusion and the Protestants were strongly urged to take
sides with Marie de' Medici against her son. Grateful for the
assembly's expressions of loyalty, the king by a fresh declara
tion (Amboise, the twenty-fourth of May, 1619) not only re
newed his profession of an unshaken purpose to observe the
Edict of Nantes and the other laAvs given for the benefit of the
Protestants, but graciously relieved such as had taken part in
the unlawful assembly held in Orthez and La Rochelle of all the
pains and penalties they had incurred by reason of his previous
mandate.1 The moderation shown by this unauthorized gathering of the
Protestants, which, while striving to make with the king the
best terms for the Bearnese, sent decided letters to the latter,
calling upon them to come to an amicable arrangement, and to
the French provinces, urging them to inviolable loyalty
to the king's service — which, in fact, declared that any who
might abandon that service were deserters from the union of the
churches2 — seemed likely to effect the desired result. It in
duced Louis, on the very day that he granted pardon for the
assembly convened without his permission, to authorize another
assembly to be held a few months later at Loudun.
This new convocation, which began its sessions on the twenty-
sixth of September, 1619, and did not suspend them until the
Political as- eighteenth of the ensuing month of April (1620), was
Loudun0* destined in its ulterior consequences to be of extra-
1619-20. ordinary and almost fatal importance to the political
fortunes of the Huguenots. Many grievances pressed upon the
consideration of the Protestants. Not to speak of the matter of
Protestant Fearn, flagrant injustice had been done them by the
grievances, -weakness or the criminal connivance of the govern
ment in various quarters of the kingdom. Lectoure, an impor
tant place of security of the Huguenots, had been left in the
1 Declaration du Roy, confirmative des edits de pacification, et les assemblies
de Casteljaloux et Orthez approuv6es. Benoist, ii., pieces justificatives, 47-49.
A detailed account of the history of the political assembly, which ended its ses
sions April 22, 1619, or more than a month before the issue of the king's am
nesty, may be read in Anquez, Histoire des Assemblees politiques des Reformes
de France, 311-315. 2 Anquez, ubi supra.

144 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. Ill
hands of its governor, Fontrailles, after he had signified his con
version to the Roman Catholic faith. In fact, he was believed
thereby to have purchased the support of the court as against a
rival contestant for the office. The Parliament of Paris had
stubbornly refused to permit two Protestant judges to take the
places to which they were entitled, and the royal ministers Avho
were so determined to secure obedience to the king's commands
in distant Beam, showed a strange indifference when his au
thority was defied by the chief tribunal of the realm and under
their very eyes.1 There were towns belonging to Protestants
unlawfully seized, Protestant places of worship torn down.
There were towns and entire districts from which Protestant
ministers and even Protestant laymen had been expelled. From
a score of places, where, according to the edicts, Protestant wor
ship was permitted, it was excluded by the malice of ill-disposed
officers or judges. Protestant children were abducted, to be
brought up in a religion different from that of their parents.
Protestant patients were expelled from the hospitals, or were
tormented by importunate attendants, in order to compel them
to abjure their faith. In some places the Protestant dead were
denied a burial ; in others, having been buried, were disinterred
and cast out of consecrated ground. It was a long list of acts
of injustice, some grave, others petty, all vexations.2 In addi-

1 The matter was of five or six years' standing. Two of the Roman Catholic
counsellors having been converted to Protestantism were expelled from parlia
ment by their colleagues, who to the reiterated commands of the king replied
through the first president that they could not receive more than the six Prot
estants provided for by the Edict of Nantes. When the treaty of Loudun was
alleged, which specifically ordered the reception of the two judges that had been
excluded, the reply was made that no account could be taken of a compact
made when men were in arms. Duplessis Mornay to M. de Seanx, February
22, 1618, Memoires, iv. 12. Of the temper of the parliamentary judges the fol
lowing incident, which occurred six months later, enables us to form a correct
notion : '' The king had commanded the reception of our counsellors very per
emptorily, and had sent Sieur de Deagen to insist upon it ; so much so that our
deputies [general] had good hopes of success. Nevertheless, on the twenty-third
inst., parliament having come together, behaved worse than ever. The judges
said that it was a question of religion, and that the king had authority over their
bodies but not over their consciences. There were seventy-seven votes against
thirty-four " Duplessis Mornay to Henri de Rohan, August 31, 1618, Memoires,
iv. 64, 65.
a It is given at great length by Benoist, Histoire de l'Edit de Nantes, ii. 276-78.

1619 THE REDUCTION OF BEARN 145
tion to redress for these, the Huguenots had some requests to
prefer, especially in reference to the lengthening of the term of
the tenure of their hostage towns.
Graciously as the assembly had been granted and as its depu
ties were at first received by the king, it was not long before the
spirit of mutual distrust manifested itself. The assembly wished
to present a preliminary budget of complaints, and obtain an
answer to this, before proceeding to hand in the remainder.
The crown not only insisted upon receiving the whole at once,
but demanded that the Huguenots should select their six candi
dates for the office of deputy-general, and adjourn at once upon
receiving an intimation from Paris of the two whom Louis had
chosen from the number, without waiting to be in-
Th.6 3,SS6H1~
biy ordered formed of the fate of their petition. As both sides
were disposed to stand their ground, the struggle was
prolonged. Five times did deputations traverse the ground
from Loudun to Paris and back, but little advantage accrued to
the assembly or its constituents. Except that no resort seems
to have been made to bribery, the course of the government was
much the same as it had been, eight years before, at Saumur ;
even to the peremptory command at length issued to the Prot
estants to disperse within a given time, and the covert menace
that in case a minority alone should comply with the royal com
mand and make a nomination of deputies-general, the crown
would recognize their action as that of the whole body, and
choose therefrom the official representatives of the Reformed.1
In the end the not unnatural reluctance of the Huguenots to
adjourn Avithout some very definite reply to their petition was
overcome by means of a ruse on the part of the government.
Such of their requests as could most easily be disposed of
were conceded. The tenure of the places of security was
lengthened by one year — the Huguenots were to retain them

'The similarity is striking. " Enfin." said the king, " si ceux de ladite as
sembled qui obeiront a nosdits presents commandements, en quelque nombre que
ce soit, avant que se separer d'icelle, font nomination des deputes qui auront &
resider a notre suite, nous entendons recevoir ladite nomination, et permettre a
ceux que nous aurons choisis sur icelle, de faire la f onction de leurs charges pres
de nous." Anquez, Histoire des Assemblees politiques des Reformes de France,
324. 10

146 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. HI
for four years, instead of three years more, and within that
period be permitted to hold another political assembly. A
liberal sum of money was pledged to defray the expenses of the
present session. Respecting the most important of their com
plaints, the Huguenots were promised satisfaction before six
months should have elapsed.1 In fact, the Prince of Conde,
who received the assembly's deputies at the Louvre, in the
presence of the king's favorite, the Duke of Luynes, on
ances given Saturday the first of February, 1620, and who de-
by the Prince J ^ , .
of conde. clared that the duke and he were well acquainted
with the king's intentions, proceeded to assure them that in
case the promises made to them were not redeemed within the
half year, the Protestant deputies should be permitted to come
together again, to renew their complaints to his majesty and
obtain reparation. Whatever attempts were subsequently made
to deny that these engagements were entered into, there can be
no rational doubt on the point. The memorial sent by the
Assembly of Loudun to Duplessis Mornay, about a week later,
gives a circumstantial account of the interview with Conde and
Luynes containing the impugned statement.2 Lesdiguieres in
an " instruction " given to his envoy Bellujon whom he de
spatched to the assembly, claims the credit of having himself
secured the promise from the court.3 And we have it
dorsedby upon the word of Duplessis Mornay that he received
on the part from the king, through the Duke of Montbazon who
visited him at Saumur, the command to assure the As
sembly of Loudun that everything that had been promised should
be executed, the Duke of Luynes adding that since his word had
1 Escrit envoye par Messieurs de Lesdiguieres et de Chastillon a l'Assemblee
de Loudun, du 20 Mars, 1620. Memoires de Duplessis Mornay, iv. 338, etc.
2 " Et que si dans les six mois on n'avoit fait executer ce que dessus, nous
pourrions nous rassembler." Memoire envoye It M. Duplessis par l'Assemblee
de Loudun, 9 fevrier, 1620, Memoires, iv. 303.
3 He says even more explicitly : " Ou ladite restitution de Leitoure [Lectoure],
la reception desdits conseillers, et 1' expedition dudit Brevet ne seroyent par
effet accomplies et de bonne foy dans six mois au plus tard ; en ce eas mesdits
Seigneurs le Prince et Due de Luines procureront avec effet envers sadite
Majeste a ce que les Deputes, qui sont en ladite Assemblee, ou autres a eux su-
broges par les Provinces se puissent r'assembler pour representer a sadite Majeste
leurs griefs et plaintes, et en obtenir la reparation. " Instruction de M. de Bel
lujon, Paris, February 9, 1620, Memoires de Duplessis Mornay, iv. 314.

1620 THE REDUCTION OF BEARN 147
intervened, he would make it as good as royal letters (valoir bre
vets), both as regarded the parliamentary counsellors, and the
restitution of Lectoure and the new assembly to be held within six
months, should the pledges not be redeemed.1 Moreover the
Duke of Montbazon, when subsequently reminded of the mes
sage, so far from stooping to utter a falsehood in order to save the
honor of a king and his counsellors who had broken faith with
the Protestants, protested with an earnestness that cannot but
carry conviction to every reader, that he had brought Duplessis
Mornay no word from the king or from the Duke of Luynes that
he had not been repeatedly commanded to utter, by the mouth
of his majesty and in the presence of the Prince of Conde.2
It is true indeed that this frankness of a true Frenchman and
brave follower of Henry the Fourth was too damaging to the
reputation of the king and to that of Montbazon's own son-in-
law, the Duke of Luynes, to be allowed to pass unnoticed. A
second reply was therefore soon set in circulation of quite a
different tenor, but purporting to emanate from the same pen.
It affirmed that Luynes had merely pledged his own word that
he would use all his influence with the king to secure the ends
referred to.3 The paper was a clumsy forgery that deceived
nobody. Contemporaries ascribed it to the pen of the king's
Jesuit confessor, Pere Arnoux, an adept in a species of casuistry
found convenient by men who Avould relieve themselves of the
obligation of troublesome engagements.4
' Duplessis Mornay to the Duke of Montbazon, Saumur, October 23, 1620.
Memoires, iv. 452 ; Mercure francois, vi. 443, etc.
2 The Duke of Montbazon to Duplessis Mornay, Paris, November 1, 1620.
Memoires, ubi supra ; Vie de D. M., 546. This letter, so creditable to the manli
ness of its author, breathes a spirit of sadness because of the degeneracy of the
times upon which he had fallen.
3 " Je ne dis pas qu'il ne leur ait promis de moyenner de tout son pouvoir
envers sa Majeste ladite permission, au eas que les choses promises ne fussent
executees." The forged letter is dated Paris, December 10, 1620, and signed
" H. [Hercules] de Rohan." Mercure francois, vi. 448-454 ; Memoires de Du
plessis Mornay, iv. 482-86. The reply of Duplessis Mornay to this strange pro
duction is calm and dignified. Letter of December 22, 1620, Me'moires, iv. 492.
etc., and in Vie de D. M. , 549-552. See Mercure francois, vi. 57, 58.
4 On receipt of Duplessis Mornay's answer, the Duke of Montbazon informed
the bearer that he had written the first letter but not the second, as could be
seen from the difference of style. Vie, p. 552. This work is my authority for

148 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. Ill
The adjournment of the political assembly came at an oppor
tune moment. New disturbances had arisen to claim the king's
civil com- attention, deserving particular notice here because
motion. Qf their incidental bearing upon the fortunes of the
Huguenots. The escape of Marie de' Medici from the castle of
Blois, where she had been kept under close surveillance since
the death of Marshal d'Ancre and his unfortunate wife, led to
commotions in which the queen-mother, although assisted by
Epernon and other powerful nobles, proved inferior in power,
and a reconciliation between mother and son was effected on
the thirtieth of April, 1619. But only a few months elapsed be
fore the restless Marie set on foot a more formidable movement.
The Prince of Conde, released from his tedious confinement of
three full years in the Castle of Vincennes, had, it is true, so
far from taking part with her, thrown himself into the arms
of his captor. But the Count of Soissons and the Dukes of
Longueville and Epernon, not to speak of La Tremouille and
even Rohan, were allies of no mean account. With such sup
port and Avith strong places holding for her from the shores
of the English Channel to the distant south, the ambitious
princess seemed to be in a fair Avay to regain her lost ascend
ancy in the councils of France and reduce the king to the
necessity of once more accepting her tutelage. Yet the whole
fabric of opposition to the royal power fell at the first touch,
as easily as a house built of cards. Scarcely a show was made
of resistance to the king's armies. A single engagement was
fought deserving to be called a battle ; and the defeat of Marie
de' Medici's forces at the crossing of the Loire near Les Ponts

the statement that Pere Arnoux was commissioned by the king to compose, in
Montbazon's name, the second letter (page 548). So also Benoist, ii. 312. The
duke did not dare to disavow it. Arnoux was accused of being the author of the
specious argument by means of which Louis XIII. was convinced that he was not
bound to keep the promise, given shortly after this, to make no innovations at
Navarrenx : The promise is either one of conscience or one of state. It cannot
be a promise of conscience because it is opposed to the interests (le bien) of the
church. Being therefore a promise of state, your Majesty ought to believe his
counsellors who say that for the good of your service the place should not be
any longer in the hands of a Huguenot. Declaration des figlises reformees de
France et Souverainte de Beam, de l'injuste persecution qui leur est faicte, etc.
Mercure framjois, vii. 394-447.

1620 THE REDUCTION OF BEARN 149
de Ce led to a prompt and unexpected pacification, on the
tenth of August, 1620. A struggle had been hopeless from the
beginning in which the Bishop of Lucon, the future Cardinal
Richelieu, who was all powerful in the queen-mother's party,
was not too loyal to play into the hands of the enemy and to
reveal to the Duke of Luynes any important movement which
she was about to make, in time for the latter to counteract it.
As for the people, so unconcerned were they respecting the
issue, that Louis, on entering Ponts de Ce, to his great surprise
saw the shops open and the inhabitants as quiet as in a time
of the most profound peace. They rightly judged the question
to be simply, whether, under a feeble king, his mother or his
favorite should hold the reins of government.1
Finding himself at the head of an army and with no enemy
to fight, Louis conceived the idea of pushing on toward the
south of the realm in order the more firmly to establish his
authority in the provinces where it had of late been disputed.
Beam was foremost in his thoughts.2
Despite all the prudent advice received by the sovereign coun
cil of Pau, the judges had persisted in a course that could have
but one issue. Where the responsibility for this rested, it is not
altogether easy to decide. Regnard, the royal commissioner,
in disgust at his poor success, accused La Force of
governor of being the chief cause. So absolute was the power
of the governor in Beam, said Regnard, that had it
been La Force's desire, the edict would long since have been
officially spread upon the judicial records.3 The other Roman
Catholics at Pau were of the same opinion as Regnard, and
it is probable that they were substantially correct. Had La
Force from the first exerted his influence to secure prompt
obedience to the royal command, he would doubtless have suc-

'Le Vassor, Histoire du regne de Louis XIII., iii. 631.
2 Although in his long and interesting letter to Duplessis Mornay (from Pau,
October 20, 1620) Louis states his first object in going to Guyenne to have been
to satisfy the Protestants by placing a Protestant, M. de Blainville, in command
of the city and the castle of Lectoure, the object which he puts second — to
secure the verification and execution of the edict of replevin (mainlevee) doubt
less interested him most. Memoires de Duplessis Mornay, iv. 440.
3 Memoires du Due de la Force, ii. 106.

150 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. Ill
ceeded. But Jacques Nompar de Caumont, the same nobleman
who, when a boy of twelve, had narrowly escaped death in the
Massacre of Saint Bartholomew's Day, and whose romantic ad
ventures at that memorable period have obtained a world-wide
currency,1 was a politic statesman, who, in his desire to obtain
the support of each of the religious communions, was in danger
of losing the confidence of both. A brave and trusty follower
of the fortunes of Henry of Navarre, by whom he was held in
affectionate esteem, he was riding in the coach with that mon
arch when the king fell by Ravaillac's knife, and it was his sad
privilege, as he held the form of the expiring monarch in his
arms, to address him the last words that fell upon Henry's
ears : "Ah! Sire, souvenez-vous de Dieu !"2 Had Henry hved
but a few days longer, La Force would have received, before the
monarch left Paris for his projected campaign, the baton of
marshal of France, for which, as it was, he Avas compelled to
wait impatiently for many a year. MeanAvhile in his adminis
tration as governor of Beam and French Navarre, an office to
which he had been appointed as far back as 1593, La Force
had been an enemy of extreme measures. In the present
struggle he had, on the one hand, been denounced as a traitor
by the more violent Protestants, because of his suggestion that
the king's will should be obeyed; while, on the other, Louis
did not hesitate, in more than one letter, to reprimand him for
his failure to punish the " unheard-of audacity " of the members
of an assembly at Orthez who had declared they would oppose
the monarch's order even at the expense of their lives.3 Such
odium as La Force now incurred is the common lot of moder
ate men. Duplessis Mornay was unpopular at more than one
period of his life. About the time of which I am speaking, he
could write from his castle of Saumur that alone in these
quarters he had stood firm in his duty, "barked at on every
side, by the adherents of both religions." 4 But between the

' Rise of the Huguenots, ii. 473.
2 Memoires du Due de la Force, i. 222.
3 Ibid., ii. 105, and the letters of Louis XIII. to La Force, of July 5 and 27,
1618, ibid. ii. 465, 467.
4"Moy particulierement, comme vous aurez sceu, seul demeure dans les
termes du devoir en tous ces quartiers, abbaye de toutes parts, tant d'une que

1620 THE REDUCTION OF BEARN 151
two Huguenots there was a conspicuous difference. The course
of Duplessis Mornay not only proved that the point at which
he principally aimed was that he might make it clear that
"true Rehgion is concerned only where the service of God is at
stake, and that the king can have no more faithful subjects than
those that are truly religious " x — but exhibited the Protestant
statesman for all future generations to admire as a man of
sterling integrity. The subsequent career of La Force, on the
contrary, was not so distinctly above reproach as to relieve his
memory of the suspicion that, after all, his cautious movements
were dictated rather by a prudent regard for his own advance
ment than by unselfish interest in the side which he had
espoused. At Bordeaux, Louis summoned La Force and the first presi
dent of the Sovereign Council, or Parliament, of Pau, and sent
them back with a peremptory order to that body once for all to
register his edict for the restitution of the ecclesiastical revenues
of Beam to the Roman Catholic clergy. The weakness of the
Bearnese, who knew neither how to obey nor how to defend
themselves, sealed their fate.2 Instead of complying with the
command, the judges again refused, nor was it until they be
came convinced that the king was in earnest in his threats that
they reassembled and hastily passed the verification of the
hated law.3 It was too late. Louis was already on his way.
r . On the fifteenth of October he reached the gates of Pau
Louis pro- . °
ceedsto and entered as a victorious enemy, rather than as a
gracious king. The proffer of the customary canopy
was declined. He would accept no honors, he said, at the hands
of a city that contained no consecrated church in which he
might worship God according to the rites of his religion. Mak
ing but a brief tarry in the capital of the principality, he has-
d'autre religion.'' Duplessis Mornay to Du Maurier, August 27, 1620, Me
moires, iv. 416.
' " Le gain que j'y ay pretendu gist a faire tousjours voir, que le vraye Reli
gion ne s'interesse que la ou il va du service de Dieu, et que le Prince ne peut
avoir subjets plus fideles que ceux qui sont vraiment religieux. " Ibid., ubi
supra. '•'Memoires du Due de Rohan, i. 183.
3 Arrest de verification de l'edit . . . au Conseil de Pau, du 8 Octobre,
1620. Recueil des Actes, Titres et Memoires du Clerge, vi. 47.

152 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. Ill
tened to visit Navarrenx, ostensibly for the purpose of inspecting
the one stronghold of Beam, the single fortress which had
triumphantly withstood the forces of Terride in the third civil
war. The aged and venerable officer in charge, M. de Salles,
The Protes- nac^ keen studiously assured of Louis's kindly inten-
tant govern- tion an(j made no attempt to hold by force a place
orputoutof ' -t t A
Navarreux. that might easily have defied hostile assault. Count
Schomberg preceded his majesty by a short interval of time.
This he spent to such good advantage as to convince the garri
son Avhom he found under arms within the walls that, as it was
usual to do a monarch honor by going forth to meet him, they
would acquit themselves but poorly of their duty should they
act otherwise. " So great is the influence," somewhat cynically
observes a royal historiographer, " which the authority of a re
spectable person exerts." Both governor and garrison paid a
dear price for their loyal confidence. When the Bearnese sol
diers returned escorting the king into Navarrenx, they found
their places already occupied by four companies of the royal
guards, stanch Roman Catholics, who showed no disposition to
vacate the quarters into which their kind hosts had thoughtlessly
afforded them the opportunity of insinuating themselves. And
when De Salles, soon after Louis's arrival, came to do homage
to his majesty, he was politely informed that, in view of the
danger of surprise, whether from the side of Spain or from the
envious nobles of Beam, so important a fortress could not be
any longer left with safety in the hands of an octogenarian. No
choice was left him but to accept as gracefully as he might the
loss of his honorable office, involving the forfeiture of the re
version, to which his nephew was entitled. It was poor com
fort to receive a pecuniary recompense of one hundred thousand
francs and the honorary title of a marechal de camp.1 The
Baron de Poyanne, a zealous Roman Catholic and a man of
a quite different stamp, succeeded to the guard of Navarrenx.
" Immense was the damage sustained by the Huguenot sect, in
the loss of the citadel," writes President Gramond. " There is
1 1 follow Bernard's account. Histoire du Roy Louis XIII., i. 166. The story
of Schomberg's trick comes therefore from no unfriendly pen. Benoist would
seem to be mistaken in asserting (ii. 294) that De Salles received no compensa
tion for his governorship.

1620 THE REDUCTION OF BEARN 153
not in Beam, there is not in France," he admiringly adds, " a
stronger fortification, whether the nature of the site be consid
ered, or the defences which art has erected. Its stores of
poAvder and of all kinds of ammunition filled the spectator with
surprise and admiration." 1
It is a perilous thing for a monarch or for a statesman to
learn that there are methods of compassing his ends which, if
they be not so honorable, are easier than a straightforward
dealing with antagonists. A first success is wont to encourage
to new attempts, and greater prospective gains seem to justify
more flagrant breaches of good faith. Of this Louis was to give
proof in the matter of the Protestant political assembly and, still
later, in the appropriation of the castle of Saumur.
Having secured himself against the possibility of resistance
on the part of a people jealous of its rights, and having Avit-
nessed the celebration of mass in his chamber at Navarrenx, on
the fiftieth anniversary, it was said, of the session of those
States which, under Queen Jeanne d'Albret, overturned the
Roman Catholic religion in Beam, Louis returned to Pau to
engage in the congenial work of restoring that religion to its an
cient pre-eminence.
The states of Beam had been summoned to assemble. In
then presence Louis now took, according to the ancient practice,
T . ,rrrr the solemn oath to observe the rights and customs of
Louis xm. . ° .
oyertams the country, and in turn received the oath of allegi-
his grand- J . .
mother's ance of the members. This done, he deliberately ap
plied himself to setting at naught the laws and usages
sanctioned by his predecessors.2 The bishops and abbots were
reintroduced into the States, and an edict which the king caused

"Gramond, Historia Galliae ab excessu Henrici IV., 333. "Immensa Sectae
jactura fuit ab arce amissa. Non in Benearnio, non est in Gallia fortius muni-
mentum, seu loci genium spectas, seu qua? arte parantur propuguacula : his
accedebat pulveris tormentarii, globorum, hastarum, scloporum, aliorumque id
genus armorum copia ingens, qualia asservantur armentariis regiis ; tormenta
bellica supra viginti centena numerabantur, pars magna regii modi."
2 " Ce fut la oil l'on commenca a, se moquer de tenir sa parole," observes the
Duke of Rohan ; " car, apres avoir ete promis de maintenir les Beamais en leurs
privileges, le lendemain on les leur ota en faisant la reunion de Beam avec la
France, et, contre la foi donnee on changea le gouvemeur de Navarreins."
Memoires, i. 183.

154 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. Ill
to be verified in his own presence assigned them seats in the
chief judicial court, inferior only to those of the presiding offi
cers. In his presence, also, the favorable answer which had,
three years since, been given to the clergy of France was for
mally registered. A day later, a still more important edict was
issued and placed upon the records. By this law the separate
existence of Beam and its neighboring territories at the foot of
the Pyrenees came to an end, and the very regions to the main
tenance of whose particular privileges and ancestral rights Louis
had just solemnly pledged his word were by a stroke of the pen
stripped of their independence and merged in the alien territory
of the kingdom of France. So lightly do the most solemn en
gagements rest upon the consciences of some monarchs ! By the
same edict a neAV French parliament of Pau was created, to re
place the former Sovereign Council and other superior judica
tures.1 Nor was the change one of form alone. Soon the re
ality of the alteration was evidenced by an order to substitute
in all judicial proceedings the French for the old Basque tongue
spoken by the people of the region. That there might be no
doubt respecting the intention of the monarch to destroy all
signs of a separate national existence, Louis abolished the cap
tains of the Parsans, as they were called, an efficient local mili
tary organization boasting of an antiquity rivalling that of Beam
itself, by means of which a force of five or six thousand men
could, in case of need, be assembled within a few hours' time,
to repel the incursion of an enemy. In short, the whole fabric
of government and of civil and military administration, endeared
to the people by the traditions of centuries, was overturned in a
moment by a young king just entering upon his twentieth year,
who in his innovations thought it unnecessary to take counsel
of any others than his favorite, the Duke of Luynes, his Jesuit
confessor, Father Arnoux, and Du Vair, Keeper of the Seals.2
The cherished religious institutions of the people were de
stroyed in a manner no less arbitrary. The Protestants — ac-
1 Edit portant reunion de la Navarre, du Beam et des pays d'Andorre et
Damezan a la couronne de France, et creation du parlement de Pau, October 19,
1620. Isambert, Recueil des anciennes lois franchises, xvi. 140. Mercure fran
cois, vi. 354.
2 Benoist, ii. 294.

1620 THE REDUCTION OF BEARN 155
cording to the historiographer Bernard's admission, constituting
a majority of the population — were turned out of the churches
The Frot- where they had worshipped, were deprived of the cem-
ed'out^rfthe e*eries in which for a half-century they had buried
churches, their dead, and their sworn enemies took possession of
Avhatever they pleased. A Jesuit college was founded in Pau
itself. The great "temple " of that city, having by this time been
pompously purified of all taint which it might have incurred by
reason of fifty years of Reformed worship, again resounded to the
unwonted chants of priests and monks. Louis himself took
part in the procession, following the host with uncovered head,
and, in the words of an admiring chronicler, with as much
humility and submission toward God as he was himself
exalted in rank above his people.1 Then mass was said, and at
vespers on the same day, Father Arnoux preached before the
king in the same place an ardent sermon, taking the exclamation
of the patriarch Jacob for his text : " Quam terribilis est locus
iste ! Non est aliud nisi domus Dei, et porta coeli " — "How
dreadful is this place ! this is none other but the house of God,
and this is the gate of heaven." 2
It would have been hard to endure so complete a revolution,
affecting alike the civil and the religious, the judicial and the mili
tary constitution of the country, even had it been executed with
calmness and good order. On the contrary, it was accompanied,
insults and we are told, by insulting words and by acts of violence.
™ience. j shall not, however, pause here to relate these occur
rences in detail. Nor indeed do they deserve extended mention
in comparison with the more systematic outrage to which the
Huguenots were subjected when the attempt was made under
the next king to subject not a single district alone, but the en
tire kingdom, to the religion whose chief claim to acceptance was
made to consist in the fact that it was the religion which the
sovereign desired to be universally accepted.3
1 Bernard, Histoire du Roy Louis XIII., i. 177.
2 Both Bernard (ubi supra) and the Mercure francois (vi. 353) are at the pains
to record the Jesuit's text.
3 The particulars may be read in Benoist, Histoire de l'Edit de Nantes, ii. 195,
196. — Besides the account of this writer, the reader may consult upon the royal
visit to Beam, Gramond, Historia Gallia? ab excessu HenricilV., 332-35 ; Ber-

156 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. Ill
Meantime, before undertaking to trace the disastrous con
sequences for the peace of the kingdom and for the welfare of
the Huguenots in particular resulting immediately from the de
spotic and faithless course of the monarch in the settlement of
the civil and religious affairs of Beam, it is necessary that we
should glance a moment at the fortunes of the French Prot
estants elsewhere.
Two national synods of the Reformed Churches had of late
been held, which are reckoned the twenty-second and twenty-
third in the series of these memorable bodies. Important,
however, as were their discussions and the settlements of doc
trinal and disciplinary matters which they effected, the full
treatment of such topics would clearly be out of place here, and
to only a few points of general interest can a reference be made.
The national synod of Vitre in Brittany, which met on the
National eighteenth of May, 1617, and continued its sessions
vitrllMay, just a month, was called upon to consider such timely
161T' but unexpected questions as the reception of the
Moriscoes lately driven out of Spain by the suicidal fanaticism
of Philip the Third. On account of the number of these poor
exiles who Avere found wandering from church to church, ap
pealing to the Christian sympathy of those whose faith they
professed to have embraced, the exercise of care was enjoined
in instructing them, and great caution in recommending them
to others. The delicate question as to the account which was to
be made of the rite of baptism administered by Roman Cath
olic priests without suitable instruction to " Moors and other
infidels removed from their native lands and brought within the
bounds of Christendom," was answered with tact and consist
ency. The sacrament was not to be repeated, but the lack of
clue preliminary teaching must be remedied by the assiduity
with which the truths of Christianity should subsequently be
imparted.1 The synod both wrote and sent a deputation to
court. The speech delivered by Pierre Hesperien, pastor of
the important church of Sainte Foy, and spokesman for his
nard, Histoire du Roy Louis XIII., i. 164-170; Memoires duDuc de la Force, ii.
110-118; the Mercure francois, vi. 353, etc.; Le Vassor, Histoire du regne de
Louis XIII., iii. 672-74.
1 Aymon, Tous les Synodes, ii. 96, 97.

1617 NATIONAL SYNOD OF VITRE 157
associates when they were admitted to an audience, is too
characteristic of the attitude of the Protestants at this time to
be passed over. They were and prided themselves upon being
the most loyal subjects of the crown. The assassination of
their great friend Henry the Fourth by a murderer believed to be
instigated by the Jesuits, the defence of the crime of regicide
orally and in doctrinal treatises by casuists belonging to that
order, the determined opposition made by the clergy and, at
their request, by the Roman Catholic noblesse, to the adoption
of the famous first article of the petition of the Tiers Etat in
the States General — these and other incidents led the Protes
tants to repeat on every occasion, and with what seems to us
unnecessary emphasis, and in exaggerated terms, an unlimited
submission to the royal authority, the bitter fruits of which they
might be the first to taste. Thus it was that Hesperien ad
dressed to Louis the Thirteenth these words : " Our con-
sciences and our religion teach us to submit to the
loyalty of higher Powers, and that to resist them is to resist the
Hesperien s . ...
address ordinance of God, who has raised your Majesty to the
throne, and has placed the crown upon your head, the
sceptre in your hands, and all heroic virtues in your royal heart,,
Therefore it is, Sire, that, after God, we recognize your Majesty
to be our only sovereign ; and it is an article of our creed that
there is no intermediate power between God and kings. It is
among us a damnable heresy to call it into question, and it is a
capital crime among us to dispute it. This lesson, Sire, we have
learned from our predecessors. We are persuaded of it, and
we publish it everywhere. We preach this doctrine in the pul
pit of our churches. We wish to live and to die in these senti
ments, to the end that our posterity may learn to practise them
by following our example."
If we can scarcely pardon the Protestant orator's excess of
loyalty it is still more difficult to excuse the language in which
he indulged when referring to the recent overthrow of Marshal
d'Ancre. The deputies had come, Hesperien said, to express to
Louis their satisfaction at seeing his authority well established,
his sacred person fully liberated. " After God," he exclaimed,
"we owe this happiness to the firm resolution your majesty
adopted and so generously executed in punishing that great dis-

158 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. Ill
turber of your realm, who had overturned your authority, and,
what was worse, had exposed your sacred person to very immi
nent dangers. Your majesty acted therein in a manner altogether
extraordinary, and the enterprise was purely divine and miracu
lous ; inasmuch as in a moment it caused calm to follow storm,
peace to follow war. Our fears were changed into assurance, our
dangers into safety ; and our government, which was tyrannical,
became a mild and. just government. It is for this reason that
it is now seen (as if your majesty had but just ascended the
throne), that we have a king indeed, and that the Avhole earth
confesses that the king of France is very worthy to rule and
govern." In expressing the universal joy felt at the fall of the
insolent upstart, Hesperien forgot, or found it convenient to
ignore, the coAvardly murder of the favorite by which Louis's
triumph Avas achieved. Such flattering words were as unseemly
in the mouth of a Protestant minister as they would have been
in the mouth of a Roman Catholic bishop. The king's reply to
Hesperien's petition for the continuance of his good favor
toward the Protestants was brief and, as it proved, illusory.
He promised that if they continued to serve him faithfully, they
might be sure that they would find they had a good king in
him, and he would protect them according to his edicts.1
In reference to the Synod that met three years later at Alais,
in the Cevennes mountains, and held twice as long a session
The synod (from October to December, 1620), the most interesting
°i62o)?en- circumstance that may claim our attention was the
canons'of heartiness of its endorsement of the great convocation
Dort that had taken place at Dort. The French Huguenots
had gladly accepted the invitation extended to them to take
part in what AAras intended to be an oecumenical council of the
churches holding the Reformed faith ; but the deputies commis
sioned by the Synod of Yitre were overtaken at Geneva on their
way to Holland by an order from the king strictly forbidding
them to proceed.2 It would have been difficult for the most
suspicious to explain what precise dangers could arise to the
1 '' Harangue faite au Roi le 27 de Mai l'an 1617 par les deputes du synode
national des Eglises Reformees de France, avec la reponse de sa Majeste." Ay
mon, Tous les Synodes, ii. 105-107 ; Mercure francois, v. 28-31.
2 Benoist, Histoire de l'Edit de Nantes, ii. 299.

1620 SYNOD OF ALAIS 159
French monarchy from the representation of its Protestant sub
jects in a religious gathering that was to pronounce upon the
doctrines of grace. But the idea that Calvinism naturally led
to revolution, and that if the French Protestants had not set up
one or more cantons or republics, it was only because they had
not enjoyed opportunities such as had fallen to the lot of their
Swiss or Dutch fellow-believers, was a notion that created a
bugbear out of the most innocent association between the Hu
guenots and foreigners. Not having been permitted to partici
pate in the discussions of the Synod of Dort, the French
Reformed churches set the seal of their approval upon its con
clusions. The canons of Dort were publicly read and approved
by the unanimous vote of the members present ; after which
not only did all the delegates " swear and protest, each by
himself, that they consented to this doctrine and that they
would defend it with all their ability to their last breath," but a
formula was prepared to be signed and sworn to in like manner
by every member of future national and provincial synods.1
In only one point did the Synod of Alais disappoint expecta
tion : the very cautious party succeeded in preventing the more
ardent from engaging the body in a decided expression of
opinion respecting matters in Beam and the convocation of the
political assembly at La Rochelle of which I shall shortly speak.
Many gave a sinister interpretation to this timidity, and posi
tively asserted that a considerable number of the members had
been bought with royal gold. The deputies from Beam who
were at Alais cried aloud that they were betrayed by their
French brethren ; and the populace of the town taking their
side of the dispute, with the characteristic ardor of the Cevenols,
nearly created a public disturbance.2
I shall not enter at length upon that copious subject of com
plaints respecting infractions of the edicts given in favor of the
Huguenots, with which the chronicles of the times abound.
Such infractions as seem to deserve more particular mention at
this point may be regarded as due not so much to any settled

1 Aymon, Tous les Synodes, ii. 145, 183-85. " The doctrine of Arminius" was
directly condemned.
* Benoist, ii. 299, 300.

160 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. HI
purpose on the part of the government, as to its weak complai
sance for those whose support the court desired or whose enmity
Proposed i* feared. The matter of the proposed Protestant
r2i?TCrsitntat academe, or university, at Charenton illustrates the
charenton. state of affairs. For a long time the Protestants re
siding at the capital had contemplated the erection of an insti
tution of higher learning which should be able to exert influence
over the men of rank and social standing who congregated at
Paris. Since they could not hope to have the school in Paris
itself, they proposed to erect it in the village of Charenton,
where stood the great "temple," and whither the Protestants
of Paris went every Lord's day to enjoy the privilege of worship
and of listening to preachers of whose eloquence Charenton
boasted. Their right to have such an institution at Charenton
Avas clear and unassailable. According to the Edict of Nantes,
the only limitation affecting the educational establishments of
the Protestants was that they must be confined to the places
Avhere their public worship Avas permitted.1 None the less were
the first attempts of the Huguenots checked by the strenuous
opposition of the University of Paris, which once and again
protested against permitting the ministers to call from all parts
of the kingdom the professors who should instil their poisonous
teaching into the minds of the young. The most dramatic scene
was enacted in the month of July, 1619, when, the legal ob
stacles having been removed, the Protestants were reported to
be on the point of starting at least two classes, the one in phi
losophy and the other in theology, in a building which had
opposition been reared close by their great church edifice. The
verrityof1" rector of the university, attended by sundry doctors
Paris. 0f tne Sorbonne, by the procurators of the four " na
tions," and by all the chief academic dignitaries, presented him
self successiArely before the Count of Soissons, whom Louis had
left to command in Paris while himself going to meet his
mother in Touraine, and before the first president of Parliament
and the attorney-general. The sum of the rector's appeal was
that the university, that eldest daughter of the kings, was over-

1 See the thirty-seventh of the secret, or particular articles. Edits, Declara
tions et Arrests, pp. lxxi., lxxii.

1619 PROPOSED PROTESTANT UNIVERSITY 161
whelmed with grief at seeing a seminary of heresy established
so near her, at the gates of the royal city, the capital of a king
dom the most Christian in the world. For this reason she
threw herself at his Majesty's feet, bathed in tears and piteously
extending her arms in supplication, and begging him not to per
mit that the heretics should busy themselves in the new college
with devising methods of combating the Church, his holy and
sacred mother. That was a thing which the university could
not suffer with patience, nor tolerate without groaning, nor wit
ness without speaking.
The rector's vehement address was well received by the Count
of Soissons, who promised his influence with the king to pre
vent the establishment of the hateful college, and the incident
developed so intense an opposition that the Protestants of Paris
resigned themselves to their fate and made no farther attempt
to satisfy their long-cherished hope. For nearly two hundred
and fifty years — until 1867 — Protestant theology was the only
science that remained untaught in the great schools of the
French capital.1
It might be urged that in endeavoring to protect herself
against the foundation of a Huguenot college or university in
her neighborhood, the great Parisian school was doing no worse
by the Protestants than she had done by the Jesuits, whom she
had been striving to prevent from encroaching upon her exclu
sive scholastic privileges. But as between the Jesuits and the
Huguenots, the government took no impartial course. In fact,
Father Ar- ^ was m *he evident favor shown to these capital ene-
Ss Father m^es OI *ne Protestants that lay, as shrewd observers
royal con- judged, the most tangible cause of apprehension. The
feasor. Duke of Luynes, jealous of Father Cotton's influence,
substituted for him as royal confessor Father Arnoux ; thus
proving that a favorite's power might go to the length of not

1 See the long account in the Mercure francois, vi. 289-291. " A seminary of
errors, a school that depraves God's words, corrupts the Testament of Jesus
Christ, and teaches the method of ruining the doctrine of the apostles, the creed
of the fathers, and the universal faith of the ancient, true, and catholic church "
— such was the description given of the projected college. See also Benoist, ii.
281, and Athanase Coquerel's article in the Bulletin de la Societe de l'histoire
du Protestantisme francois, iv. 36-40, xvi. 586, 587.
11

162 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. Ill
merely shaping the king's conduct in civil and political matters,
but of dictating the religious views that were to be instilled into
his mind. But Arnoux, like Cotton, was a member of the Com
pany of Jesus and intent upon the advancement of that society.
His imprudent attempt at controversy, when he attempted to
prove the Reformed Churches guilty of the fraud of garbling
the proof texts affixed to their Confession of Faith brought him
no credit. Du Moulin, the learned and skilful pastor of
Charenton, was not slow in preparing a justification of his
maligned fellow-believers, under the title of "Defense de la
Confession des Eglises Reformees de France contre les Accusa
tions du sieur Arnoux, Jesuite," which being too masterly to be
refuted by honest argument, it was thought best to crush, if
possible, by an appeal to the strong arm of the law. Du Moulin
and his three colleagues, Montigny, Durand, and Mestrezat,
whom he had associated with himself as joint authors of the
work, had been so bold as to prefix to it a letter addressed to
Louis the Thirteenth, in which neither the good services ren
dered by the Huguenots nor the past actions of the Jesuits were
passed over in silence. Most offensive, because most true, was
the intimation the writers gave that to his Protestant subjects
the present king was indebted for his sceptre, since it was they
that had carried Henry the Fourth, his father, to the throne at the
point of their sivords.1 This was too much for the patience of
ex-Leaguers and Roman Catholics of doubtful loyalty, and an
order of council was secured by which all persons were hence
forth forbidden to dedicate any book to the king without his
express permission. It was on this occasion that Richelieu,
still bishop of Lucon, and at present living in enforced
wshop of' retirement from political life, endeavored to conciliate
the good-will of allies who might be very useful to him
in the future, by contributing one of the many controversial
tracts which the Jesuit attack called forth. Neither the learning
nor the dialectic ability displayed by the future cardinal was
beyond reproach, and the prevalent feeling was of contempt for
1 " Les zelez se recrierent seulement sur ce que les Ministres avoient dit que.-
ceux de leur Religion avoient porte le feu Boi sur le throne d la pointe de lews
epees. Cela est trop audacieux. crioit-on." Le Vassor, Histoire du regne de
Louis XIII., iii. 36. See also Mercure francois, v. 40-43.

1618 PROPOSED PROTESTANT UNIVERSITY 163
the prelate who having made scant use of the opportunities af
forded him to labor for the spiritual good of his little western
diocese, had turned theologian and controversialist only when
the course of affairs deprived him of the pleasure of exercising
a faculty for political intrigue wherein lay his chief delight.1
The ascendency of the Jesuits was undeniable. In February,
1618, a year before the university's successful attempt to pre
vent the erection of the Protestant college at Charenton, that
Jesuit prog- venerable seat of learning was chagrined to see the
ress- Jesuits opening their schools, despite her protests, in
the College de Clermont within the walls of Paris. The favor
was due to the intercession of the Duke of Luynes with the
king, and included the right to teach all the sciences. When
the university resisting issued a decree forbidding its scholars
to frequent the Jesuit classes, the king in council promptly de
clared the action null and void. Thus an insignificant favorite
obtained with ease for these children of fortune privileges which
Marie de' Medici had in vain endeavored to secure for them.2
Their greatest triumph was the permission which the Jesuits
sought and gained to preach in the Protestant cities of security.
Knowing but too well the character of their sermons, the Hu
guenots in a petition which they presented to Louis in 1611,
begged " that it be not permitted to the Jesuits to establish any
college, seminary, or house of residence, nor to preach, teach,
administer confession, or live in the places held by the Protes
tants." And the king had replied that " no college of Jesuits
could be established at any spot in the realm but by his
majesty's permission, and that he would so arrange as to pre
clude any occasion for complaint." 3 The meaning which these
1 Memoires du Cardinal de Richelieu, 173, 174 ; Mercure francois, v. 43 ;
Bernard, Histoire du Roy Louis XIII., i. 148 ; Benoist, ii. 231, 232 ; Le Vassor,
iii. 29-38. "On se mocqua," remarks the latter, "d'unprelat qui avoit neg
lige de faire le theologien dans son diocese, et qui aprSs s'e'tre donne tout entier
a la politique, s'avisoit d'ecrire sur la controverse, quand il n'avoit plus le moien
de s'intriguer."
2 Arret du conseil qui retablit les Jesuites dans le droit de faire des lecons
publiques au college de Clermont, Paris, February 15, 1618. Isambert, Recueil
des anciennes lois franchises, xvi. 112 ; Mercure francois, v. 6 ; Memoires du
Cardinal de Richelieu, 182 ; Benoist, ii. 256.
3 " Qui y scaura bien pourvoir en sorte qu'ils n'ayent aucune occasion de se

164 ' THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. Ill
words were intended to convey was certainly clear enough, and
the Protestants rested secure in the confidence that ample pro
vision was made for their cities of refuge. But before six years
had passed, the Jesuits obtained access, despite all opposition,
to one of the most important of the places — the city of Mont
pellier. With the view of silencing Protestant protests, the
king in council declared that he had not meant in his previous
orders to deprive his Roman Catholic subjects, residing in
towns held by the Reformed, of the right to enjoy the services
of such preachers, secular or regular, as the bishop of the dio
cese might choose to send them. Had freedom of interrogating
his majesty been one of the privileges kindly granted to the Hu
guenots, they might humbly have asked him, what then he
had meant them to understand from his previous assurances.
In point of fact, the order of council whereby the Jesuit
preachers gained admission to Montpellier may justly be re
garded as the first of a long series of interpretative or-
tive ordi- dinances Avhich, under the guise of explaining, were
dishonestly intended to annul the most solemn pledges
and sanctions contained in the royal edicts.1 A little more
than two years later, when the political assembly of Loudun
published a paper enjoining upon the municipal officers of the
Protestant cities of refuge to permit no Jesuit or monk sent by
the bishop to preach within their walls, the Parliament of Paris
retaliated by declaring that all persons who should refuse them
admission rendered themselves liable to the penalties pro
nounced against disturbers of the public peace and traitors.2

plaindre." Royal note to the fifty-third article of the petition of the Assembly
of Saumur, among the documents appended to Benoist, Histoire de l'Edit de
Nantes, ii. 23.
1 The decision of the council of state was dated November 10, 1617. See
Benoist, ii. 235.
2 January 14, 1620. Mercure francuis, vi. 311.

1620 ASSEMBLY OF LA ROCHELLE 165

CHAPTER IV
THE LA ROCHELLE ASSEMBLY — FIRST HUGUENOT WAR — THE
SIEGE OF MONTAUBAN
The violent measures to Avhich Louis the Thirteenth chose to
resort in solving the difficulties respecting Beam precipitated
a recourse to arms. The six months had elapsed at the expi-
Hu uenot ration of which the Huguenots were authorized in ad-
grievances. vanCe to reassemble, in case the royal promises should
not be fully executed. Little sincerity had characterized such
pretence of carrying them out as was made. The parliamentary
counsellors were indeed admitted to their seats at Paris, but it
was with vexatious conditions. The restitution of Lectoure to
the list of Protestant places of security was scarcely more than
nominal. If the usurping Roman Catholic governor Fron-
trailles was removed — his consent being purchased by a gratuity
of fifty thousand livres — the Protestant whom the king ap
pointed his successor was not the choice of the churches, but
one of those pliant officers upon whose obedience the royal
ministers could count with assurance. Besides, had he been
disposed to act otherwise than as they might desire, his Roman
Catholic subalterns and the Roman Catholic garrison that was
to guard the Protestant hostage city, would suffice effectually to
thwart any effort at resistance put forth by him. The promised
payment of the wages of the garrisons of the places in Hugue
not hands was equally nugatory : the order Avas ostensibly given,
but no money was forthcoming.1 Worst of all, the very time at
which a wise and conciliatory policy Avas expected in the settle
ment of the delicate question of the relations of the rival churches
to each other in Beam, had been chosen for a brutal display of
superior force ; and a people of independent instincts and the
1 Benoist, Histoire de l'Edit de Nantes, ii. 310, 311.

166 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IV
more jealous of its ancestral privileges that these were all that
remained to it to testify to a long and honorable past, had been
compelled to witness the instantaneous and reckless overthrow
of its civil order, of its religious institutions, of its native mili
tary organization, at the bidding of a beardless prince, or, rather,
of his two or three upstart counsellors.
The city of La Rochelle had been entrusted by the political
assembly of Loudun with the duty of convening it anew in
case of necessity. After mature deliberation the city
Political as-
sembiy of availed itself of this authority, and invited the Prot-
-Nov. 25, estant deputies to reassemble within its walls on
1620 the twenty-fifth of November, 1620. To Viscount
Favas, one of the deputies-general selected by the crown from
the list submitted by the Protestants in the preceding spring,
is attributed, apparently with good reason, the predominant in
fluence that led the Rochellese to come to this determination ;
and Favas must share with the dukes of La Force and Chatil
lon the responsibility of subsequently encouraging and incit
ing this unfortunate convocation to persist in its dangerous
course.1 At the first intimation of the Huguenot purpose, the king sig
nified his disapproval. When the meeting was definitely agreed
upon, he issued a formal declaration prohibiting the
The Hugue- . ....
not gather- meeting as an unlawful one, forbidding the citizens
den by the of La Rochelle to admit the delegates within their
walls, and threatening the most severe punishment to
the disobedient.2 It is characteristic of the spirit of independ
ence, not to say arrogance, of the Rochellois, that when the
bailiff had duly served a copy of the royal mandate upon the
mayor, for all answer he is said to have received the curt
1 Viscount Favas had been chosen deputy-general from the "noblesse," and
Chalas, a lawyer of Nismes, from the Tiers Etat. Mercure francjois, vi. 57.
The selfish motives of Favas are told without exaggeration by Rohan (Memoires.
i. 183, 184). Nor does Rohan use too strong language with reference to Favas
in his Discours sur les raisons de la paix faite devant Montpellier, when he desig
nates him as "celui qui a fait convoquer a contre-temps l'assemblee generale,
qui, convoquee l'a fait affermira la subsistance, qui, affermie, l'a trahie, et qui,
apres son traite a, la cour, n' a laisse de contre-pointer la ville de La Rochelle
contre 1' assembh e. "
- Declaration of Grenade, October 22, 1620. Mercure francois, vi. 455-58.

1630 ASSEMBLY OF LA ROCHELLE 167
direction : " Since you have discharged your commission, you
may depart as soon as you will." '
It was at this juncture, when Louis the Thirteenth was de
nouncing the La Rochelle assembly as unlaAvful and criminal,
was denying his promise and falsely putting forward the resti
tution of Lectoure to Protestant hands as a chief motive of his
southward progress, that Duplessis Mornay addressed to Mont
bazon the appeal to Avhich reference has been made and which,
together with the duke's reluctant, but sufficient, admission, was
soon sown broadcast over the land as ample justification for the
Huguenot convention. How under the Duke of Montbazon's
name a letter forged by Father Arnoux, the Jesuit, was shortly
after circulated with anxious haste by the court, has also been
stated. But neither this shabby performance nor the paltry
quibble by which the Prince of Conde and the Duke of Luynes
strove to make the world believe that they had not absolutely
pledged the king's word, but had merely pledged their own, to
secure permission for such a gathering from his majesty, had
any appreciable effect in removing from men's minds the con
viction that both Louis and his closest counsellors had forfeited
all claim to be regarded as honorable men.
There was less unanimity respecting the advisability of hold
ing the assembly than there was as to the righteousness of
. summoning it. The Duke of Rohan and his brother,
It is opposed ° '
soubi8eaand Duke of Soubise, opposed the convocation, and,
Duplessis when it convened, exerted themselves to have it break
Mornay. _
up.2 Duplessis Mornay advocated delay and would
have preferred that the two deputies-general formally call upon
Conde and Luynes to fulfil their admitted engagements.3 But,
when the members of the assembly had once come together,
Duplessis Mornay could not bring himself to admit that it was
incumbent upon him to recommend the delegates to return to

1 "Puisque vous avez faict vostre charge, vous vous en irez quand vous
voudrez." Mercure frangois, vi. 459.
* " Les due de Rohan et de Soubise son frere, qui s'etoient opposes a la tenue
de 1'assemblee generale, et s'etoient efforces de la faire scparer, voyant une telle
deroute, se resolurent de n'abandonner le parti." Memoires du Dae de Rohan,
i. 185.
3 Vie de Duplessis Mornay, 546.

168 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IV
their homes, at a time when, not to speak of other grievances,
the troops constituting the garrisons of the Protestant hostage
towns had not received a franc of their wages for nearly fifteen
months.1 And Rohan frankly wrote to the king that the irregu
larity at La Rochelle, if irregularity there Avas — he could not
tell from personal knowledge, not having been employed in the
previous negotiation at Loudun 2 — was an insignificant matter
and ought to be condoned in view of the prevalent alarm.
Throughout the broad province of Poitou, of which he Avas
governor, the minds of the Protestants were disquieted by re
ports of seditious sermons preached on the public places and in
the markets of the towns with the view of stirring up strife,
Avhile Roman Catholic gentlemen were raising troops of armed
men and openly apportioning among their followers the prop
erty, the honors, and even the very lives of their Huguenot
neighbors, precisely as though these had already been given
them in plunder.8
It was not until nearly Christmas, 1620, that the delegates
reached La Rochelle in sufficient numbers to organize their as
sembly. On the second day of the ensuing year they gave to
"Remon- the.world the formal apology that was to justify their
theorem? aPParent disobedience to the commands of the king,
h]y- in the form of a "Remonstrance" addressed to the
monarch himself. It would be tedious to repeat the arguments,
most of them already stated, that Avere here alleged in defence
of the Huguenot action. Much was made of the message con
veyed to the deputies at Loudun in the king's behalf, that, as
the promise he now gave his subjects of the Reformed faith was
the first he had given them since taking the helm of state, so they
must regard it not only as inviolate, but as forever inviolable.
They represented their coming together as authorized and based

1 Duplessis Mornay to M. de Seaux, secretary of state, November 22, 1620.
Vie de D. M., 551.
2 " Bien sais-je," he adds, however, " que tons les deputez retournerent dans
ces provinces avec creance qu'on leur permettait de se rassembler dans six mois,
si les choses permises n'estoient executees."
3 An important and, I believe, hitherto inedited letter of the Duke of Rohan
to Louis XIII., from Saint Jean d'Angely, November 8, 1620, published in the
Bulletin de l'histoire du Protestautisme francais, vi. (1858) 363.

1621 ASSEMBLY OF LA ROCHELLE 169
upon the king's sacred word. " At all events," they exclaimed,
" we are held guilty only because of having believed the word
of the first prince of your blood and the word of a lord whom
your majesty holds more dear than all others." They empha
sized the fact that they were assured that the order of replevin
(main-levee) would not be executed in Beam until the expira
tion of seven months, and that one month after all the matters
promised them were executed they would be heard in respect
to their remonstrances on this point also. Instead of Avhich,
Louis had been induced to anticipate the expiration of the time
and to proceed to Beam before the execution of his promises.
And now they were pronounced criminals and La Rochelle was
threatened with a siege merely because they took the king at
his word. Meantime the delivery of seditious discourses, and
the dissemination of prints appealing to the passions of the
multitude, were everywhere permitted. Huguenots were com
pelled to submit to outrageous violence ; their dead were ex
humed, their places of worship burned, their ministers expelled.
At Moulins, at Bourges, at Baux in Provence, at Lyons, at
Dijon, their divine worship had been violently suppressed, and
no justice had been done them. The commissioners that Avere
to have been sent throughout the kingdom to redress their
wrongs had never been despatched.1
The paper was a vigorous plea and ended with an incisive at
tack upon those— the Jesuits were thus covertly designated —
who not content with emasculating the edicts of the king given
for the protection of the Reformed, were busily paving the way
for fresh persecution. Of the answers which it called forth the
most notable was a letter addressed by the Duke of Lesdig-
. uieres. The great Protestant captain, already medi-
eres an- fating the apostasv which was to secure him the ad-
swsrs vancement for which he longed and the ultimate pos
session of the constable's sword, still professed himself a devoted
friend of the Huguenots, and declared that his words emanated
1 " Remonstrance au Roy par les Deputez des Eglises reformees de France et
Souverainete de Beam, assemblez a la Rochelle. " (January 2,1621.) Mercure
francois, vi. (2d cont.) 2-13. The document is signed by Bessay and Clemen-
ceau, as president and adjunct president, and Maleray and La Milletiere, as
secretaries.

170 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IV
from one who would never wish the deputies anything but
honor and prosperity in their just designs. But he main
tained that they had erred in not first applying to Chatillon
and to himself to intercede with the king to redeem his prom
ises, most of Avhich, indeed, he claimed, had already been ex
ecuted. It Avas significant that the duke's warmest indignation
was apparently kindled by the charges which the deputies had
made against the Jesuits, and in particular by the assertion
that those worthies now boasted that they had gained the ab
solute control of his majesty's conscience.1
The remonstrances of Lesdiguieres, however, could not move
the Huguenot delegates. The duke was, in fact, as they them
selves subsequently informed him, their "irreproachable wit
ness " as to the fact that the promises he sent them at Loudun
had been confirmed at Fontainebleau by his majesty's own
mouth to the Protestant envoys when they came to announce to
him the assembly's adjournment.2 "We do not esteem," they
added with a touch of quiet sarcasm, " that it Avould be alloAvable
for us to desire or to imagine any other permission more valid,
or any ground of assurance more firm, than the sacred word
of the king ! "
In course of time both the sturdy determination of the assem
bly of La Rochelle and the weakness of its resources revealed
themselves. Convinced of the righteousness of their cause, the
delegates turned a deaf ear to the good advice of friends, while
exhibiting a resolute countenance to the enemy.
From the great nobles of their party it soon appeared that
little help was to be looked for. The Duke of Lesdiguieres,
while still pretending to be a Protestant, had already promised
to become a Roman Cathohc. His private life had long been
a scandal. His relations Avith Marie Vignon were notorious.
1 Mercure frangois, vi. 13-23.
- The passage is of capital importance : ' ' Nostre bonne f oy a este encore de
plus appuyee sur la parole expresse de la propre bouche de sa Majeste de laquelle
vous nous estes tesmoin irreprochable, quand vous nous le representez par vostre
premiere du premier dudit mois, nous disant en ces mots, que ce que vous nous
avez promts de sa Majeste a este continue & Fontainebleau par sa Royale bouche
aux Deputez de l'Assemblee de Loudun, lorsqu' iis l'advertirent de sa separa
tion." The Assembly of La Rochelle to Lediguieres, March 18, 1621. Mercure
francois, vii. 212.

1621 ASSEMBLY OF LA ROCHELLE 171
That he had been privy to the murder of her husband was more
than suspected. And now that the man who stood in the way
indifference of the union had been taken out of the way, the guil-
ftotestant' ty pair had been married according to the rites of the
nobles. Roman Catholic church. Although the duke had gone
through the form of seeking the pardon of the religious body
Avith which he Avas still nominally connected, the proceeding
was little more than a farce in the case of a man who, within a
year and a half from the time of which I am now Avriting, was
ostentatiously " converted " to the king's faith.1 The Count of
Chatillon, Gaspard de Coligny, inheritor of the name but not of
the abilities nor of the A'irtues of his renowned grandfather, the
great victim of St. Bartholomew's day, was an untrustworthy
ally of whose eccentric movements I shall have occasion to
speak later. As his great show of zeal had made him foremost
in pubhc estimation, his culpable indifference to the interests of
his fellow Protestants at a time when he could have been ser
viceable soon made him rather the object of their execration.2
The Duke of Sully seemed long since to have lost any active
interest in Huguenot affairs, and indeed, soon after this, to
gether with his son the Marquis of Rosny, signed at the order
of the government a declaration by which he engaged to hold
no intercourse with the La Rochelle assembly and disavowed
their acts.3 The Duke of Bouillon, never a disinterested parti-

' The pompous rites with which this event was celebrated are described at
full length in the contemporaneous Mercure francois, viii. 683-707, under the
title of " Les ceremonies qui se firent a, Grenoble a, la Conversion du Due de Les
diguieres." They occupied four days, beginning with Sunday, July 24, 1622.
The motive of the " conversion" was so little a secret to the public, that when
Lesdiguieres had been admitted to hear mass and the announcement of his ab
juration had been made by the officiating prelate, the bishop of Embrun, Mar
shal Crequy handed him upon his return to the " grand' salle " of the parlia-
ment the royal patent for his military promotion, with the words : " Sir. since
yon are a Catholic, the king confers upon you the charge of Constable." Ibid.,
viii. 688.
' Regarding his failure to relieve the town of Vals or Wals in Vivarais, sur-
named indifferently because of its strength " La Pucelle " and, because of its
Huguenot population, " la petite Geneve," see Benoist, ii. 323, and Haag, La
France protestante (2d ed., iv. 223, etc.), where his indolent and temporizing
character is well delineated.
3 Benoist, ii. 267, 359.

172 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IV
san of the Reformation, and now weighed down with age and
racked by disease, preferred to remain at Sedan in the quiet
possession of his wealth and dignities, rather than imperil both
by a violation of the neutrality which he seemed to affect.1
Among the great Protestant lords, Rohan, Soubise, and La Tre-
mouille alone remained, the last two very young men. And
these, as they strongly opposed the convocation of the assem
bly, had until now with equal decision urged its immediate ad
journment. A sudden impulse, a prompting of personal honor,
or a feeling of genuine loyalty to the Protestant cause, led them
to espouse the weaker side.
In the beginning of March, 1621, a conference Avas held by
royal permission at Niort, on the borders of the province of
conference Poitou, between the Reformed noblemen of the region
of Niort. an(j env0TS from the assembly and the municipality of
La Rochelle. The former were still in favor of the disbanding
of the assembly, but when they undertook to convey their ad
vice to the RocheUe emissaries, these proudly informed them
that they had not come for counsel — it was too late for that,
their minds were made up — but to secure co-operation in the
struggle for the common defence and especially for the salvation
of the city of La Rochelle, now threatened Avith a siege. The dis
cussion grew hot. Rohan and La Tremouille, who Avere spokes
men for the Poitevin nobles, urged their view, and pointed out the
danger impending over all the Huguenots. They exhorted the en
voys to persuade the assembly to submit and thus avoid making
shipwreck of their hopes. In the heat of the moment they even
suggested the risk that the Rochellese ran of being abandoned
by the rest of the French Protestants. " If that be so," calmly
replied the envoys, " we shall maintain ourselves Avithout your
help."2 The thought of permitting the bulwark of the cause to
fall into the hands of the enemy touched to the quick the
gallant youths that heard them. Soubise and La Tremouille
ended by offering themselves to the succor of the imperilled
1 Benoist, ii. 267, etc.
2 " J'oubliois de vous dire que ces messieurs [Rohan and La Tremouille] voy-
ant l'opiniastrete des deputes leur dirent qu'ils se jouoyent a estre abandonnez
et eurent force autres paroles fortes : a quoy iis respondirent que si ainsi estoit,
qu'ils se conserveroyent bien sans eux."

1621 ASSEMBLY OF LA ROCHELLE 173
city, Avhatever might be the issue. To the disgust of the Hu
guenots of a cooler temperament — of Parabere, governor of
soubise, La Niort, and others — Henry of Rohan himself followed
ant BohS? *he example set him by his younger brother, and defi-
cluseofLa nitely espoused the assembly's cause.1 The Poitevin
Rocheiie. nobles sent word to La Rochelle still recommending
that the assembly disband, but assuring them "that they were
determined to depend ever upon the holy resolutions of the
assembly." 2
Beam, restless and impatient under the severe measures
adopted in the preceding year, had shown some disposition to
La Force is reassert its old independence, and the Protestant gov-
to'deffrom ernor, the Duke of La Force, alarmed by the aggres-
Beam. gjve deportment of his neighbor, De Poyanne, the
new commandant at Navarrenx, even began to fortify the city
of Pau. To the king's expressions of displeasure he replied in
conciliatory terms. When Louis bade him disarm, meantime
assuring him of his continued affection in case he should merit
that affection by his actions, the duke responded that he Avas
ready to turn over the office with which he was entrusted to
whomsoever it might please his majesty to direct him to turn it
over, meantime, while still holding it, he could not suffer himself
to be at the mercy of Poyanne, nor expose himself to the danger
of being constrained to abandon his province in a disgraceful
manner. " I can do no less," said he, " than consider hoAv to
preserve my life and maintain the authority which it has
pleased your majesty to confer upon me."3 The rejoinder
came in an order sent from the court to the Duke of Epernon,
who was waiting at Bordeaux, to advance upon the recalcitrant
1 See the interesting letter of Jacques des Nouhes, sieur de la Tabariere, to
Duplessis Mornay, from Sainte Hermine, March 6, 1621, printed in the Bulletin
de l'Histoire du Protestantisme francais, xxiv. (1875) 552.
2 Du Fraixe to La Force, May 10, 1621. The news letters and reports sent by
Du Fraixe, a gentleman of Beam and deputy of La Force, to the assembly at
La Rochelle, are a valuable source of information. They are printed among
the pieces justificatives of the second volume of the Memoires du Due de la
Force, 495, etc.
3 " Je n'ai pu faire de moins que de songer a conserver ma vie et maintenir
Pautorite qu'il a plu a V. M. me donner." La Force to Louis XIII., April 11,
1621. Memoires du Due de la Force, ii. 538, 539.

174 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. TV
nobleman. The old favorite of Henry the Third had lost none
of his former fire and impetuosity. So rapidly did he collect
his troops and so formidable Avas the force which, in conjunc
tion with the soldiers of Poyanne, he was able to put into the
field, that La Force was compelled to give himself to precipi
tate flight, in order to escape capture. In the course of a few
weeks all Beam fell into the hands of the invader, and La
Force, deprived of his honors and dignities, was a fugitive from
the region which he had so long governed under tAvo successive
kings.1 While Epernon was completing his brief and satisfactory cam
paign in Beam, Louis was preparing to take the field in person
Louis xm. against the Huguenots of the south. The way was
field noper- prepared by a fresh publication of his unaltered pur-
son- pose to observe all the edicts and declarations issued
by his predecessor or by himself in favor of his subjects of the
Reformed religion.2 It was, however, a striking commentary
upon the sincerity of the king's words, and upon the special
guard into Avhich he pretended to take all the Protestants that
remained steadfast in their obedience, that the Duke of Longue
ville was straightway sent to disarm all the Huguenots of the
province of Normandy. For this purpose he chose his time.
As, for instance, at Dieppe, the worshippers were no sooner
engaged in divine service in their spacious " temple " outside
the walls, on Sunday, the ninth of May, than the gates were
closed, the walls manned with soldiers, and every house searched
for arms. If the doors were closed, the locks were picked or
broken. Such conduct was not reassuring, and many of the
Huguenots, fearing that worse things were in store for them,
fled across the British Channel.3
As acts are wont to be more influential than mere words, the

'Memoires du Due de la Force, ii. 127, seq. ; Bernard, Histoire du Roy Louis
XIII., i. 198; Gramond, Hist. Gallia? ab excessu Henrici IV., 353; Benoist,
ii. 344-346.
2 Declaration du Roy, Fontainebleau, le 24 jour d' Avril, 1621. Text in Benoist,
ii., pieces justificatives, 53-55 ; Mercure francois, vii. 186 ; Gramond, 349.
3 Histoire de la reformation a Dieppe par Guillaume et Jean Duval, i. 210 seq. ;
Floquet, Histoire du parlement de Normandie. iv. 387 seq. ; G. H. Overend,
Strangers at Dover, in Proceedings of the Hug. Soc. of London, iii. 129 seq.

1621 ASSEMBLY OF LA ROCHELLE 175
severe punishments inflicted by Louis while on his march
southward upon certain persons who had been guilty of a riot-
He redress- ous outbreak against the Protestants of Tours, had
wrongs of even grea* er effect than was expected, in quelling the
tantf of68" apprehensions of the Huguenots of the central parts of
Tours. France and in leading them to view the king's formi
dable armament rather as passive spectators than as interested
parties. The zealous Roman Catholics, emboldened by the
rumors of an approaching annihilation of Protestantism, had
taken occasion of the burial of a convert to that faith to indulge
in excesses not uncommon in that age, including the digging
up of the corpse, which they tore in pieces with every form of
insult, and the burning of the great "temple" where the Re
formed met for worship.1 They had renewed the popular ex
citement when the government, fearful of the possible effect of
the outrage, sent a commissioner from the Parliament of Paris,
who, after investigation, condemned several of the culprits to
death. The judge who had passed the sentence was com
pelled to hide from the violence of the mob. It was a happy
thought of the king, or his advisers, to stop at Tours on the
way from Fontainebleau to the Garonne, and order that the five
most guilty persons should be sent to the gallows during his
stay in the place. Accustomed for a full century to be treated
with scant justice, the slightest appearance of a desire to deal
fairly by them was received by the Reformed as conclusive
evidence of a settled purpose on the part of the croAvn to carry
out honestly the provisions of the Edict of Nantes. And thus
it was that the vast majority remained at home and suffered
their fellow believers of Guyenne to feel the undivided force of
the storm that broke upon them. The Huguenots had well
earned a reputation for uncommon suspiciousness; contempo-
ary Roman Catholics were at a loss to know whither that trait
of their character had vanished, and were amazed at the result.
" Certainly," observes with some quiet glee the president of the
'The news of the outrages at Tours produced a great sensation at La Rochelle.
It required all the exertions of the mayor to prevent the populace from setting
fire to the Roman Catholic church and hurrying to the prisons all the adherents
of the Roman Catholic faith that could be found. Du Fraixe to La Force, April
24, 1621 ; Memoires du Due de la Force, ii. (doc.) 518.

176 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IV
parliament of Toulouse, a Roman Catholic historian who rarely
has a favorable Avord to speak for the other side, "it.is not sur
prising that the common herd, whose passion is bhnd, should
have been caught by this artifice ; but I can scarcely express
sufficient AA'onder that the leaders, the nobles and the magis
trates of the Sect, Avere deceived by this empty snare, men Avho
up to this day had all enjoyed the reputation of being skilled
in the affairs of state." 1
Not merely from without, but from within the Huguenot
ranks, came the influences which tended to weaken the Protes
tant cause. Liberty was wounded in the house of its professed
friends. A scholar of no mean pretensions had but recently pub
lished to the world a defence of the royal prerogative which must
have satisfied the most ardent admirer of despotic institutions.
Daniel Tilenus, pastor and professor of theology in the Aca-
demie of Sedan, under the protection of the Duke of Bouillon,
„ . . „., was, as has been seen, a trained disputant who, in an
Daniel Tile- ' ' . -1 _ .
nus- age much given to disputation, received more than his
share of applause. He was the champion that was chosen to
sustain the Protestant side and refute the arguments of one Du
val, a doctor of the Sorbonne, at a time when Henry the Fourth,
desirous of marrying his sister to the Duke of Bar, left no stone
unturned to induce that resolute princess to imitate his own ex-
Hi ntro- ample OI apostasy. The trial of dialectic skill, held,
versies. singularly enough, in the very chamber of Catharine
of Bourbon, she herself being hidden away from sight in her
bed, was as barren of result as Avere wont to be the struggles of
1 " Certe eo hamo eaptum vulgus haud est mirabile, cujus caeca libido est : vix
miror satis vanitate ejus aucupii deceptos primores, nobilitatem, et Secta? magis-
tuatum, qui in banc diem pro politicis audierant omnes." Bartholomaeus Gra-
moudus, Hist. Gallia? ab excessu Henrici IV., 360. The Tours incident is told
simply, but fairly, by this author, pp. 356-358, and in great detail, but with an
an ti -Huguenot bias that reveals itself in every line, by Bernard, Histoire du Roy
Louis XIII., i. 208-211. The comparison between the accounts of the two
writers, both strong Roman Catholics, is interesting and instructive. Benoist,
ii. 346-348, is, as usual, accurate and straightforward. Bernard recalls the cir
cumstance that the Huguenots were, according to the common story, first so
called, at Tours, from the local hobgoblin, "Le roy Huguon." See also the
letters of Duplessis Mornay to the king and to Lesdiguieres, both of April 20,
1621, as well as the letter of the mayor and echevins of Tours, of the same
date. Memoires de Duplessis Mornay, iv. 627 seq.

1621 ASSEMBLY OF LA ROCHELLE 177
such practised athletes, each side claiming for itself the victory.
The Duke of Sully, who came in at the close, and to whom the
friends of both the contestants began eagerly to rehearse the
arguments of their respective champions, playfully begged them
to save themselves the trouble ; adding the gratuitous advice
not to meddle henceforth in such idle undertakings until such
time as the Holy Scriptures, on the one hand, and, on the other,
that heap of books written by the doctors, with all the canons
of the popes and all the decrees of the councils which agreed
among themselves as well as do cats and rats, should either
have been wholly suppressed or amicably reconciled.1 Tilenus
had not failed to use his pen as well as his voice in opposition
to the Roman Cathohc church, and had published a " Manifes
tation of Antichrist." 2 But his most notable encounter had
been that one with the Charenton pastor Pierre Du Moulin,
which has already occupied us.3
It was Tilenus who, somewhat soured by his contests, and the
more decidedly leaning to the views of Arminius that Du Moulin
was the great advocate in France of the canons of the Synod of
Dort, now addressed a pungent letter of advice and remonstrance
to the political assembly of the Huguenots at La Rochelle.4
It is always an easy thing for the apologist for tyranny
to construct a plausible argument in favor of bhnd
strateswith submission to royal authority. The patriot who,
WyofLaEo- while contending for his rights as a free man, still
desires to retain his loyalty, finds himself at best in a
difficult position, honoring the monarch in his professions and
yet compelled to oppose sturdily some of the acts done in the

1 " Vous les suppliastes de ne prendre point cette peine, ny de s'entremettre
jamais de disputer de la Religion, que la Saincte Escriture ou cet amas de livres
escrits par tant de Docteurs, tous les Canons des Papes, et tons les Registres des
Conciles qui s'accordoient comme Chats et Rats, n'eussent este suprimez ou bien
conciliez." -Memoires de Sully (ed. of Rouen, 1663), ii. (chapter 90), 248.
!Lestoile's Journal, under November 11, 1607, apud Bulletin, iii. 446.
3 Supra, page 81.
* It was published, according to the Mercure francois, which inserts it, vii.
223-243, at the beginning of March, 1621, the author's name being given as
Abraham Minim (an anagram of Tilenus). The Roman Catholic editor is not
unwilling, under the circumstances, to describe him as "un sgavant ministre
qui a fort escrit contre le Ministre du Moulin."
12

178 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IV
monarch's name by counsellors whom the monarch has him
self deliberately chosen, and whose advice he willingly follows.
The conflict of powerful motives has been the weakness of
many a revolution in its initial stage. It proved the weakness
of the present Huguenot uprising, which never went beyond
that initial stage. The writer of the "Advertisement to the
Assembly of La Rochelle " made effective use of weapons lying
ready at hand ; and, not without a show of reason, likened the
insurgent Huguenots, in their professed obedience and practical
defiance of Louis's commands, to Pilate's soldiers, who, indeed,
knelt before our Lord and saluted him, "Hail, King of the
Jews ! " but, at the same time, crowned him with thorns and
spat in his face. Nor did he fail to draw attention to the
fact that the assembly undertook to exact of the poor peasant
an obedience to its commands which the members themselves
refused to pay to the commands of their sovereign. And
here, indeed, the author was led by his zeal for the royal au
thority to urge a plea of which the historians of the period of
now under consideration do not seem to have taken sufficient
notice, for the right of the king of France to recall and abro
gate any law, even to the precious ordinance given by Henry
the Fourth at Nantes, the palladium of Huguenot liberties.
" You wish him," says Tilenus, " to be bound to observe his
predecessor's Edict in every point ; but you do not consider
that you owe him all obedience by an obligation divine, natural,
and civil. Bear in mind that no king is bound by the ordi
nances of his predecessors, nor even by his own. . . . By
the laws of God and of nature he is undeniably bound : never
theless should he chance to contravene them, he has no other
judge but God." For this astounding assertion the writer
finds his principal proof in the fifty-first psalm, wherein David
having grievously offended, exclaims : " Against Thee, Thee
alone, have I sinned ; " because, forsooth, it was God alone
that possessed the right to judge and punish him.1
1 " Advertissement a l'Assemblee de la Rochelle," Mercure francois, vii. 223-
243. I find Tilenus's letter reprinted, because of its utility to the royal cause,
in the "Histoire des deux derniers sieges de la Rochelle, le premier soubs le
Regne du Roy Charles IX. en l'annee 1573. Et le second soubs le Roy Louys
XIII. a present heureusement regnant, es annees 1627 et 1628," Paris, 1630.

1621 LOUIS AT SAUMUR 179
On the twelfth of May Louis the Thirteenth reached Saumur.
For thirty-two years had Duplessis Mornay faithfully dis-
Louis at charged the trust reposed in him by Henry the Fourth.
saumur. Loyal himself, he had so wisely augmented the fortifi
cations of the place, that, in the disorders of a tumultuous period,
Saumur had never been taken nor even threatened by any in
surgents. Lying on the southern bank of the Loire, and con
nected by a long bridge with its fortified suburb, La Croix
Verte, upon the opposite side of the river, it was, as I have
already remarked, the most important of the hostage cities of
the Protestants ; and this, not more because of its great strength
than from its opportune situation at a principal crossing of the
great stream which nearly divides France in two.1 Malevolent
courtiers, judging Duplessis Mornay's intentions by the stand
ard of their own morality, gave the governor credit for no
higher purpose than to play into the hands of the partisans of
the La Rochelle assembly, and, so soon as the king should have
passed southward, to make it a formidable stronghold to threaten
his rear.2 Thus much is true, that the Duke of Bouillon, an
experienced general, saw at a glance the importance of garrison-

In his first letter, Tilenus exhibits his animosity against Du Moulin and the Prot
estants of the capital, by declaiming against the luxurious display made by the
brides at marriages celebrated in the "temple" of Charenton. In a second,
written as a rejoinder to the answer — a feeble production — made by the former
deputy general La Milletiere, the ire of the Sedan professor is particularly
aroused by the absurd, but annoying, assertion of his opponent, that the Armin-
ians had been gained over by the pope for the purpose of troubling religion in
Holland. See La Milletiere's paper (in synopsis and extracts) and Tilenus's re
plies, Mercure frangois, viii. 155-220.
1 Bernard gives a good account of the natural advantages of Saumur, as well as
of the advantages for which it was indebted to art. Histoire du Roy Louis
XHL, i. 212-216. It could put under cover from the enemy 8,000 or 9,000 troops.
Jodocus Sincerus, who seems to have visited the place a few years earlier — the
dedication of his itinerary is dated 1616— describes the citadel as very strong,
and divides his admiration between the charming view of the broad plain
through which the Loire flows and the extremely elegant " temple " where the
Protestants worshipped. Itinerarium Gallise (edition of Geneva, 1627), 99.
s Cardinal Richelieu in his memoirs (p. 241) asserts that the king, while at
Tours, received ' ' certain advice " that such had been the suggestion made to
Duplessis Mornay by the assembly of La Rochelle, and he affirms that the king
had little confidence in him " because it was known that he had an understand
ing, although a secret one, with the assembly." See Bernard, i. 211.

180 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IV
ing Saumur with at least six thousand fresh troops,1 but Du
plessis Mornay never seriously entertained the thought of re
fusing admission to the king, should he come that way ; least of
all in a struggle that did not command his hearty approval.2
And yet there was something alarming in the king's visit.
The usual road from Tours to La Rochelle, which was believed
to be the objective point of the royal expedition, did not run
through Saumur, but by Chatellerault and Poitiers. But what
ever doubts might be entertained by the Huguenot governor re
specting the object of the circuitous route chosen by the king,
they were set at rest by the assurances which Duplessis Mornay
received. The Duke of Luynes, the monarch's favorite, who,
without previous experience, had at one step been elevated to
the highest military position to Avhich an officer could aspire,
and had been named, to the amazement of the realm entire,
Constable of France,3 declared with positiveness that his
majesty was as well satisfied with Duplessis Mornay as with any
gentleman of the realm. Several times he repeated the promise
that no alteration would be make at Saumur. He gave his
Avord for it that it should no more be touched than the apple of
his eye.4 The king said the same thing with his OAvn mouth.
The Duke of Lesdiguieres confirmed the statement. It might
have been regarded as a bad omen that these were the very
three relying upon whose veracity the assembly of Loudun ac-

1 Benoist, Histoire de l'Edit de Nantes, ii. 354.
3 Vie de Duplessis Mornay, 594.
3 " Iturus in Aquitaniam, Rex Luynseum ex tyrone Gallise Comestabilem fecit
. . . rem portento baud procul . . . Mirabitur setas seqnens progressum
fortunae in homine, qui (quanquam ex nobilium ordine) nec virtnte bellica, nec
dotibus animi supra reliquos valuit." Gramond, Hist. Galliae ab excessu
Henrici IV., 358. The president of the parliament of Toulouse can afford to be
less guarded in his expressions than the historiographer Bernard (Histoire du
Roy Louis XIII., i. 199 seq.), who prudently confines himself to the narration
of the facts, and to a record of the conflicting sentiments of men respecting the
revival of the dangerous office of Constable. Bernard, however, musters up suf
ficient courage to describe the manner in which the veteran Lesdiguieres, the only
man qualified for the position by age and experience in arms, was induced not
only to acquiesce in, but actually to solicit the royal favorite's preferment.
4 " Au reste luy reitera par plusieurs fois qu'il ne seroit rien innove a Saumur,
en ces mots : qu'il n'y seroit non plus touclie qu'd la pnmelle de Vceil." Vie de Du
plessis Mornay, 598.

1621 LOUIS AT SAUMUR 181
cepted the assurance that they would be permitted to convene
again under certain circumstances, and that two of them at least
had forfeited their honor in the matter.
The issue was such as might have been expected. In grap
pling with duplicity and intrigue, manly probity is often put to
He breaks ^6 worst. Constable Luynes had asseverated that
Lnd drives *^e king's occupation of the city and castle of Saumur
Duplessis would be merely a formal affair : no sooner had the
Mornay of . "
hisgoyer- garrison come out to do the king honor, than thev
norBhip. . . , °. ' J
would be reinstated, and everything would proceed
exactly as before. Instead of this, the royal guards assumed
the places of the old and trusty soldiers of Duplessis Mornay ;
the king was lodged inside of the castle and not in the spacious
buildings which had been ample for the accommodation of
Henry the Fourth, as Avell as of Marie de' Medici and of the
present monarch himself on the occasion of previous visits ; l the
Protestant governor and his family Avere virtually turned out of
house and home. His costly furniture, the interesting gallery
of paintings with the long list of portraits chiefly of the men
who, in a period of heroic strife, distinguished themselves for
their advocacy of truth and high principle,2 the precious library,
with the still more precious stores of manuscripts, the fruit of a
correspondence coextensive with the civilized world — all these
were left, for the most part, at the discretion of a brutal soldiery,
to be destroyed or dispersed beyond the hope of recovery.3
When Duplessis Mornay remonstrated Avith dignity and frank
ness against the violation of sacred pledges, he was met with a
significant hint that the present was in reality the luckiest mo
ment of his life.4 The hint took specific form in the tempting
1 Vie de Duplessis Mornay, 599. Bernard (i. 211) admits that Henry IV. was
accustomed to lodge in the town, when he passed by Saumur, " because the cas
tle is on the height of the mountain, and on a site of sufficiently painful access."
2 The selection of pictures in Duplessis Mornay's collection well illustrates the
quaint remark ascribed to Urbain Chevreau : " My taste leads me to want the
portraits that bear me company in my study to have the countenances of friends,
for it is not pleasant for me to be eyed askance even in paintings." See a de
lightful article by Benjamin Fillon, of which the Bulletin de la Societe de 1' his
toire du Protestantisme francois (xxviii. 473 seq.) gives a summary.
3 Bulletin de la Societe de l'histoire du Prot. franc., x. 17 seq.
4 "Dites-luy, que se sera la plus heureuse heure desavie," were the words

182 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IV
offer of a reward of one hundred thousand crowns, in addition
to the payment of the large sums of money that were owed to
~ , him, and of the baton of a marshal of France.1 The
nnplessis ' t -i -r
Mornay re- acceptance of the bribe would have relieved Louis
JCCE8 CHG *- _ _ „
otter of a the Thirteenth and the constable oi a world ot per-
pecumary
reward. plexity. They would then appear to have taken pos
session of Saumur by virtue of a private understanding with
its Huguenot guardian. The veteran counsellor and follower of
Henry the Great Avould seem to have betrayed his post and
bartered for personal advantages one of the cities of refuge en
trusted to him for safe-keeping.2 By the defection and conse
quent loss of credit of so eminent a man, the Huguenots would
have suffered a moral defeat in comparison with Avhich any one
of the numerous losses of toAvns and strongholds, that were soon
to ensue, would have seemed of paltry account. Unfortunately
for Louis the Thirteenth, now, as ever, Duplessis Mornay proved
himself unselfish and incorruptible, a man whom flattery could
not deceive nor gold buy. The proffer was at once rejected.3
The king's own historiographer informs us that a meeting of
the royal council was held in which the grave question was dis
cussed, hoAV Saumur might be retained by his majesty
council's de- without giving the Huguenots reason for asserting
that they had been robbed of one of their cities, and
that the old adage that no faith need be kept with heretics was
once more exemplified. And he tells us that " the king himself,
with which his nephew received from the constable an appointment for Duples
sis Mornay to meet him to arrange terms. The Duke of Luynes was one of
those who believe that every man has his price.
' Vie de Duplessis Mornay, 603.
5 Both Bernard, in his history, and Cardinal Richelieu, in his memoirs, deny
in almost identical words that Saumur was actually a Huguenot city of refuge.
It had originally been placed in the hands of Duplessis Mornay by Henry the
Fourth, when as yet simple King of Navarre, and its tenure had from that time to
this remained unchanged. This was a mere quibble. Every list of the number
©f soldiers to constitute the garrisons of the hostage cities, and of the sums of
money to be drawn from the royal treasury for their support, comprised a pro
vision for Saumur. Indeed, Saumur, as I have shown, had much the largest
garrison and called for a greater sum of money than any other place. See An
quez, Hist, des Assemblees politiques, 162, 163.
3 Memoire de ce qui s'est passe au changement fait par le Roy a Saumur, le 17
May, 1621, in Memoires de Duplessis Mornay, iv. 654.

1621 LOUIS AT SAUMUR 183
as he was a prince of a prompt intelligence and ingenious in his
expedients, discovered the means that were necessary." This
was to place in temporary command of the place the Count of
Sault, son of Crequi and grandson of Lesdiguieres, a young
nobleman who, like his grandfather, still made profession of
the Protestant faith which both were soon to renounce ! This
was the device which Louis, who affected, above all other
epithets, the title of The Just, prided himself upon suggesting,
for the purpose of robbing the Protestants of a city Avhich was
theirs, while appearing to leave it in their hands. The garrison
which the pseudo-Protestant was to command consisted of an
hundred picked men of the guards — it is almost needless to say,
all stanch Roman Catholics.1
It was a marvellous triumph of the king's ingenuity thus to
have possessed himself of the Protestant stronghold ; the ser
vants and low hangers-on of the court contrived to make it the
occasion also for a signal victory of the church over
make havoc error. In rummaging the castle, the night before the
Momay's king's departure, a guard chanced to discover in one
of the rooms a large number of copies in fine bindings
of Duplessis Mornay's famous book, " The Mystery of Iniquity,"
with its equally famous frontispiece representing the fall of the
Papal Tower of Babel. The motley crowd of attendants and
others, " the vilest and most miserable men to be found," needed
no better opportunity for the display of their zeal, and all the
books upon which they could lay hands, including the greater
part of the collected stores of learning treasured on the shelves
of the library, were earned down to the court-yard and there
burned in a bonfire amid the wild glee of the spectators. The
volumes that escaped the flames were torn to pieces and scat
tered about the streets, where, in the extravagant language of
a contemporary chronicler, nothing was seen but books and
papers.2 Meanwhile the king put off Duplessis Mornay with renewed

'Bernard, Histoire du Roy Louis XIII., i. 215, 216. Gramond, Hist. Gallise
ab excessu Henrici IV., 380.
2 Bernard, i. 216. Extract from the Journal of Louvet, clerk of the presidial
court of Angers, in Bulletin de la Soc. de l'histoire du Prot. franc., x. 18, 19.

184 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IV
promises. As Louis left Saumur, the constable and Lesdigui
eres gave him documents in which they pledged his majesty,
Louis makes an(* at Thouars, on his southward journey, the king
mentTfncT himself duly signed a formal engagement, in which, al-
breaks them, though he asserted that, for certain matters which he
thought might thereby be facilitated, he wished to be accom
modated with the city and its castle, he promised to restore
them within three months from the seventeenth day of May,
or earlier should the matter referred to have been arranged.
Furthermore, he gave " his royal word" to the effect that, not
withstanding the fact that the term for which the Reformed
held their cities of security Avould expire in three years or there
abouts, he would continue the office of Avhich Duplessis Mornay
was possessed to him for his natural life, and in case of his
death, would confer it upon his son-in-law, M. de Yillarnoul.1
Not one of these and other engagements, so plentifully sup
ported by the oaths and asseverations of the king's chief ad
visers, did Louis the Thirteenth ever make even a pretence of
fulfilling. When the set time passed and the promised restitu
tion was deferred, Duplessis Mornay wrote to solicit it. There
upon the king repeated, with an appeal to heaven to testify to
his sincerity, his purpose to effect it in due season. " A little
patience," he assured the brave soldier whose old age he was
making doubly burdensome, " a little patience will secure you
this blessing, and you shall receive other blessings also from
me in accommodating yourself to what I am forced to do. . . .
God knows what is my intention, to whom I commend you." 2
When nearly a year had elapsed, he again wrote : "I pledge my
word anew, with all the scrupulous exactness you could desire
therein."3 And so the matter dragged along, the grand old
Huguenot bemoaning less his own personal loss and the in-

'The brevet, dated at Thouars, May 17, 1621, signed by Louis XIII. and
countersigned by the secretary of state Antoine Potier, Sieur de Seaux, is given
in full in the Vie de Duplessis Mornay, 609-611, and in the "Memoire de ce
qui s'est passg au changement fait par le Roy a Saumur," in the Memoires, iv.
660, 661.
2 Louis XIII. to Duplessis Mornay, from the camp before Montauban, Sep
tember 18, 1621, Memoires de D. M., iv. 693.
3 The same to the same, April 17, 1622, ibid., iv. 776.

1623 LOUIS AT SAUMUR 185
dignity done to his long and meritorious services, than the in
delible stigma which his sovereign was affixing to his own fair
name. " I do not doubt," he wrote to Lesdiguieres from the
quiet retreat of La Foret-sur-Sevre, " that if Father Arnoux's
word be taken, he will find in the affair something out of Avhich
to make a case of conscience. Yet know I well, also, that I
have to do with a great king who makes a singular profession of
justice, and Avho, if he do me the honor to listen to himself or
to take council of all good Frenchmen whom he has near him,
will not consent thus to afflict my old age. Saumur is of little
account to me, sir ; but his majesty's word given for the restitu
tion of Saumur ought to be dear to him." 1
Duplessis Mornay might have spared himself the trouble of
many letters and much solicitude for the honor of his master.
That master had no care for his own. Out of his own mouth
let him be judged. "Monsieur Duplessis," he had at one time
written, " you are right in saying that your re-establishment in
my town and castle of Saumur concerns as much my service as
your private interests, and still more right in not calling it in
question and in relying upon my word. For you will see the
performance in its season. And as I have great occasion to be
content with you, you will also have every reason to be satisfied
with me. . . . You must believe me that these are matters
which I have always before my eyes, and that I shall not forget
to seize the proper time to bring them to pass." 2 Yet when
two years of delays and shuffling had elapsed, Louis coolly in
formed Duplessis that he had made up his mind to change
the existing arrangement, remove Count de Sault, take Saumur
into Ms own hands, and send an ensign of a company of his oivn
guards to take charge ofit!3 That was the end of the matter.
Less than six months later the broken-hearted old patriot
died. The request which he had forwarded, some time be
fore, to his son-in-law Villarnoul to present to the king in case
1 "Saumur, Monsieur, m'est peu de chose ; mais la parole de Sa Majeste
donnee pour la restitution de Saumur, luy doit estre chere." Duplessis Mornay
to Lesdiguieres, November 10, 1621, Memoires, iv. 701, 702.
2 Louis XIII. to Duplessis Mornay, July 29, 1621, Memoires, iv. 686, and Vie
de D. M. , 624, etc.
'Louis XIII. to Duplessis Mornay, May 20, 1623, Memoires, iv. 881, etc.

186 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IV
of a positive refusal to restore Saumur — that he be permitted
to leave the kingdom with his entire family, taking with him
the bones of his kindred, that they might not be ex-
nupiessis posed to the insults of an ungrateful people1 — was
veSber'n,0 never pressed, and Duplessis died on his native soil.2
Otherwise the pathetic words of the epitaph which he
had composed for himself were appropriate and expressive of
the truth : " Here lies one who at the age of three score and
thirteen years, after having employed forty-six of them without
reproach in the service of two great kings, was constrained, for
having done his duty, to seek a burial-place outside of his
fatherland. Judge, reader, and deplore, be it his misfortune or
the malice of the age." 3 Among the burdens he had found
most difficult to bear was the censure of some of his fellow-Prot
estants, Avho found fault with the guilelessness of his character
that led him to trust a perfidious court. Alluding to the ex
perience of the aged governor of Navarrenx a year earlier, one
such Avrote from La Rochelle : " Monsieur Duplessis refused to
be wise at Monsieur de Salles's expense. Consequently he has
received like treatment ; he is in despair about it." 4 But
honorable men, then as now, acquitted him of all blame, and be
lieved that in him France lost the very choicest flower of its no
bility. As for Louis the Thirteenth, the verdict of history must
stand for all time, that the seizure of Saumur was effected " not
by a ruse of war, but by an act unworthy of a king, still less of
a gentleman." 5
Meantime the political assembly of La Rochelle held on its
1 The petition sent to Villarnoul is dated February 14, 1622. See Memoires,
iv. 744.
2 At his manor of La Foret-sur-Sevre, November 11, 1623. A few days be
fore he had consented (now that all hope of the recovery of Saumur was lost) to
receive from the king a sum of one hundred thousand livres to cover the losses he
had sustained. As the ecu, or crown, was at this period reckoned to be worth
three livres or francs, the damages allowed him amounted to only one-third part
of the bribe which had been previously offered to induce him to acquiesce in
the seizure of a Protestant hostage city. See the Vie de D. M. , 702 seq.
3 Memoires, ubi supra.
'Du Fraixe to La Force, May 21, 1621, Memoires du Due de la Force (docu
ments), ii. 519.
5 The words are those of a French historian of our own times, Leonce Anquez,
Histoire des Assembles politiques, 438.

1621 MILITARY ORGANIZATION 187
course with fearlessness and resolute purpose. It had some
weeks since given to the world the declaration of the objects
Articles of ^ Ba(^ ™ view) in the form of articles to be presented
ofeLa5E™bly *° *ke k"1*? kv the two deputies-general at court.
cheiie. The articles were seven in number, and it is worth
while to examine them individually. The first was a request
to be relieved of the necessity of speaking of themselves as be
longing to the Pretended Reformed Religion, a designation to
which they objected both as contrary to the freedom of their
consciences and to an answer given to the first article of the
petition of the assembly of Loudun. The second and the
seventh articles called for the restoration of the civil and relig
ious institutions of Beam to the state in which they were in
1616, and for the withdrawal of the troops now quartered in
that region. The third article pointed to the unfulfilled prom
ises given to previous convocations respecting places of security
in the province of Dauphiny. The fourth sought the erasure of
the humiliating conditions with which the Parliament of Paris
had seen fit to admit the Protestant counsellors to their seats.
The fifth pressed a prompt and favorable answer, such as had
been promised, to the demands of the last assembly. The sixth
urged better and more trustworthy provision for the payment
of the salaries of pastors and of wages of the garrisons of the
hostage cities, often greatly in arrears.1
And now, a day or two before Louis by his flagitious breach of
faith rendered himself master of Saumur, the assembly formally
adopted a military organization for the conduct of the struggle
into which it saw, or thought it saw, itself unavoidably hurried.
The situation of affairs had completely changed since the six
teenth century. From the first abortive uprising of La Renau-
NeceBsityof °^e> iQ *Qe reign OI Francis the Second, until the mo-
t&n or^ani- men*: when Henry of Navarre ascended the throne of
zation. France, the Huguenots had always claimed as their
head a prince of the blood, who during a great part of the time
was also the heir presumptive of the crown. Their struggle
1 Articles dresses en l'Assemblee general de la Rochelle et envoyes ... a
MM. de Favas et Chalas, deputes des flglises Reformees de France et Souverain-
ete de Beam, pour etre presentes par eux aux Roi. They were sent with letters
dated March 18, 1621. Memoires du Due de la Force, ii. 505, 506.

188 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IV
consequently wore in their own eyes, if not in the eyes of all
men, the appearance of a war waged not against the royal au
thority, but, rather, in its defence, by that kinsman of the mon
arch who was most concerned in preventing the stability of the
crown from being imperilled by the injudicious conduct of the
present occupant of the throne, blinded by his own passions or
misled by the suggestions of interested advisers. Whether the
alliance of the Reformed churches with a political power thus
forced upon them was an advantage rather than an injury, may
well be doubted. It certainly entangled the Huguenots in con
tests that were neither of their own seeking nor carried on in
their interests. The " Guerre des Amoureux" was a signal ex
ample of the kind. It also well illustrated the difficulty experi
enced in persuading the churches and their most intelligent and
thoughtful members to take part in needless quarrels. Noaa',
however, there was no longer a prince of the house of Bourbon
under whose authority the Huguenots might act. The present
king, author of the oppression of which they complained, was
the degenerate son of their old " protector " — as papal in senti
ment as the Florentine mother from whom he seemed to have
derived all his intellectual and moral qualities, and as com
pletely under the influence of Spain as his celebrated father had
always been antagonistic to the policy of Philip the Second.
The character of the representative of the younger branch of
Bourbon, the Prince of Conde, to whom alone the Huguenots
could have looked for leadership, was as untrustworthy as his
pedigree was suspicious. He possessed the steadfastness of pur
pose neither of his grandfather nor of his reputed father. More
over, he was in rehgion a Roman Catholic, who never desired
the alliance of the Protestants save to further designs of his
own, and who openly repudiated it the moment his ends were
accomplished. In default of leaders that might be regarded as in some sense
natural protectors, the Protestants, if fight they must, were
clearly compelled to select generals of their own, and whatever
measures of organization were necessary to render their conduct
effective found their justification in this very circumstance.
The extraordinary document drawn up by the assembly of
La Rochelle on the tenth of May, 1621, divided up the king-

1621 MILITARY ORGANIZATION 189
dom, or at least that part of the kingdom which contained the
mass of the Protestant population, into eight districts, very un-
The plan equal in territorial extent, and placed them under the
May 10? special care of as many of the great nobles professing
im- ' the Protestant faith. To the Duke of Bouillon, first
marshal of France, were assigned the provinces of Normandy,
Isle de France, Berry, Anjou, Maine, Perche, and Touraine ; to M.
de Soubise, Brittany and Poitou ; to M. de la Tremouille, Sain-
tonge and Angoumois ; to the Duke of la Force, Lower Guyenne ;
to his son the Marquis of la Force, Beam ; to the Duke of Rohan,
Upper Languedoc and Upper Guyenne; to M. de Chatillon,
LoAver Languedoc, the Cevennes, Gevaudan, and Vivarais ; to
the Duke of Lesdiguieres, Dauphiny, Provence, and Burgundy.
The city of La Rochelle was by a previous arrangement made
independent of all these departments and recognized no head
but its mayor. The general command was intrusted to the
Duke of Bouillon, with authority to assume supreme control in
whatever province he might happen to be present. The " coun
cils " already existing in each province were continued. The
commander-in-chief was authorized to appoint most of his sub
ordinate officers, with certain named exceptions where the ap
pointment was reserved for the assembly itself, and was to be
assisted by a council of the principal lords of his army, with
whom three deputies chosen by the assembly were to sit and
vote. A similar council was given to each of the other gen
erals in his own province, and the three deputies of the assem
bly who were admitted to its deliberations were to be changed
four times a year. Detailed provision was made for the conduct
of hostilities, the assembly retaining for itself such important
functions as the right to elect governors in case of vacancy in
places now held by the Protestants, and to agree to a truce or
conclude treaties of peace. Several articles respected the morals
and religion of the officers and private soldiers. Both officers
and private soldiers were exhorted to " such Christian and dis
creet deportment in their actions, that God might be honored
thereby." Pastors were to be provided for the troops, whether
cavalry or infantry, to preach and offer prayers on the accus
tomed days ; and all chiefs, captains, and soldiers were to be
subject to the order of evangelical discipline practised by the

190 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. TV
churches of the realm. Blasphemy, being the most common of
vices among soldiers, was strictly forbidden. The private sol
dier was to be fined for a first offence the small silver coin
known as a teston, the officer a crown. For a second offence
the penalty was doubled. The incorrigible offender was to be
dismissed from the service. Plundering peasants of their cattle,
or men and women of their clothing, was forbidden on pain of
death ; the freedom of trade was guaranteed even in the camp,
special immunities were promised to millers in the towns.
They Avere enjoined to continue their occupation without fear
of molestation from soldiers quartered upon them.
The most essential articles were those in which the assembly
ordered that all the royal revenues throughout France should
be seized, in order to defray the great expenses incident to the
maintenance of armed forces and for other public ends. These
funds, as well as the income of benefices and other ecclesiastical
property, were to be received and administered by officers ap
pointed for the purpose by the assembly.
Such were some of the notable prescriptions of this important
document, facetiously styled by the Roman Catholics " the fun
damental laws of the Republic of the Pretended Reformed." i
Excepting the department of justice, which was doubtless re
garded as sufficiently provided for by the " chambres mi-parties,"
of royal institution, there was no part of the service of the state
with which it did not deal more or less closely.. Had the plan
thus projected been as fully executed as was contemplated by
those that drew it up, there would scarcely have been any part
of France, with the exception of that central portion consisting
of Nivernais, Bourbonnais, Auvergne, Lyonnais, Marche, and
Limousin — an extensive region scarcely affected by Protestant
ism at any period of its history — where the conflict of authority
between the Huguenot forces and those of the king would not
have made itself known in vigorous and decisive warfare.
As it was, however, the results fell far short of the expecta
tions of those who devised the scheme. Of the eight leaders
selected by the assembly, Rohan and Soubise alone threw
themselves with their whole soul into the movement. Tho
1 Anquez, Histoire des Assemblees politiques, 348.

1621 FIRST HUGUENOT WAR 191
Duke of Bouillon was, as has already been stated, too much
broken with age and chronic gout to accept the dangerous office
of commander-in-chief, and declined even to assume
generals the direction of the department committed to his
Kohan'and charge. Lesdiguieres, so far from leading the Hugue-
serve with nots of the south and east against the king, openly re
pudiated the cause with which he had been identified
for little short of half a century, and gave his undivided support
to the royal side. Chatillon did not, indeed, decline the honor
conferred upon him, but discharged his duties in a manner so
negligent and half-hearted, if not positively treacherous, that
not many months elapsed before a resort was necessary to the ex
treme measure of deposing him from his command. As Beam
was completely in the power of the enemy, the Marquis of la.
Force found little or nothing there to do for the Protestant as
sembly. If his father the duke was more serviceable, it was
rather' outside of the department assigned to him than within
it, and as an auxiliary rather than as a leader. La Tremouille,
who aspired to act as mediator rather than frankly to embark in
the perilous undertaking in which the more ardent of his f elloAv-
believers had engaged, disappointed the hopes that had been
conceived of him.
But, in fact, the dissensions and divisions that reigned in the
assembly had alienated from it the support of the great mass of
the Protestant population, and the statement is virtually correct
that of the Huguenots scarcely more than an eighth part
took any share in the struggle.1 The assembly might issue its
The Hugue- manifestoes^ ZTght give plausible arguments for a gen-
not seal. eraj uprising, might send out its commissions authenti
cated by the new seal which it had adopted, with the motto Pro
Cheisto et Rege — Foe Christ and the King.2 It was unsue-
1 Benoist, ii. 355.
5 The seal represents a female winged figure erect, holding in the left hand an
open book (the Bible), resting the right arm upon a cross, and treading under
foot a prostrate form. The whole signifies the victory of true Religion over Death
and the Grave. It is an emblematic representation often found on the title-
pages of Huguenot Bibles and Psalm-books. There has been some doubt ex
pressed as to the device that surrounded the figure. The Mercure francois (viii.
338) and Gramond (page 341) say it was Pro Christo et Rege, but Gramond adds
that some read Pro Christo et Grege ("for Christ and his Flock"). Benoist (ii.

192 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IV
cessful in persuading a people to join the movement, in Avhom
an exaggerated conception of the royal prerogative had, as Ave
have seen, for many years been constantly taking deeper root,
a conception fostered, to no small extent, by the extravagant
professions of obedience and homage which fell from the lips
even of the ministers of religion in their pulpit discourses.
This the issue soon made manifest. From Saumur Louis ad
vanced to Thouars, to Parthenay, to Niort. Place after place
opened its gates at his approach. Governors of cities
of many vied with one another in their eagerness to accept a
cities* pecuniary reward for the surrender of the trusts com
mitted to them. The stalwart integrity of Duplessis Mornay
found few imitators during the present war among the noblemen
who had offices readily convertible into current funds or distinc
tions. The first delay that the king met with, and the only
notable opposition he encountered, was from Soubise, who threw
himself into Saint Jean d'Angely, determined to stand a siege if
necessary. Meantime, Louis had, at Niort, published a new
proclamation, warning all the Protestants of the kingdom
against any recognition of the assembly of La Rochelle and its
military organization. The city of La Rochelle, the seat of the
uprising, and the town of Saint Jean d'Angely, which was
known to be preparing to resist the king's arms, as well as all
other places that might folloAV their examples, were declared to
have forfeited their municipal privileges, the gift of previous
monarchs. All Protestants of whatever station were com
manded to repair at once to the nearest royal judge, and make
an explicit declaration of their loyalty to the crown and of their
repudiation of the assembly and of all other unlawful gather
ings.1

356) asserts that the latter is the true reading, and accounts for the other read
ing by supposing the first letter of the word Grege to have been imperfectly cut
and to have made an indistinct impression upon the wax. He is mistaken,
however, as is proved by a discovery of a wax imprint of the original seal, which
is reproduced in the Bulletin de la Societe de Vhist. du Prot. franc., iv. 472.
1 Declaration du Roy, par laqnelle tous les habitans et autres personnes qui
sont de present es villes de la Rochelle et S. Jean d'Angely, et tous qui les favo-
riseront, sont declarez criminels de leze-majest6, etc. Niort, May 27, 1621.
Benoist, Hist, de l'fidit de Nantes, ii. (documents) 56-58.

1621 FIRST HUGUENOT WAR 193
The siege of Saint Jean d'Angely lasted three weeks. At
tacked vigorously, the brave little place defended itself reso-
siege and h^ely. But the struggle Avas unequal, and the inhabi-
Sean Vai? tan*s> short of provisions and having seen themselves
se'y- compelled, through the giving out of their lead, to
melt up whatever vessels of pewter or of silver they had, in
order to provide themselves with balls for their fire-arms, suc
cumbed to the perils of the situation and agreed to surrender
their battered walls.1 The king granted them terms, not, as he
said, by way of treaty, but in answer to the very humble sup
plication of his subjects that dwelt there. Soubise and his as
sociates were received not ungraciously by his majesty, and
promised, on bended knee, never again to bear arms against the
king. The king promised protection of life and property to
all classes of persons. Neither promise was kept over well.
Soubise soon found some specious pretext for regarding him
self as absolved from his engagement, and for reneAving war
against the king ; and the inhabitants of the toAvn, and espe
cially the Protestants, suffered not a little from pillage.2
After the fall of Saint Jean d'Angely, there was little or no
resistance. The whole fabric of the assembly's plans seemed to
fall of itself. The king's advance resembled a trium-
The king's
triumphant phal progress. Pons, Castillon, Sainte Foy, Bergerac,
Tournon, Monflanquin, Tonneins, and other places al
most to the gates of Montauban, opened their gates without a
blow, and at the first summons. Clairac alone, trusting in its
1 June 23, 1621. See Laugel, Le Due de Rohan, 110.
2 Benoist, ii. 369. Bernard and Gramond give very full accounts of the siege
of Saint Jean d'Angely, and comment upon the circumstance that the capitula
tion of the town took place upon the day consecrated to its patron saint, whose
hand they see in the fortunate issue. Both mention the death of Cardinal
Guise from a fever contracted in his over-zealous exertions in arms at the storm
ing of one of the suburbs. While Gramond condemns the prelate not only for
the contempt he showed for the purple of his holy office by drawing the sword
and shedding blood, but for the luxurious life with which he had spent at court
his immense revenues, and dwells upon the grief and repentance of his last
hours, Bernard excuses the inconsistency of the cardinal's action by the re
mark that there are plenty of instances in which men wearing a like dignity
have borne arms justly and usefully. Bernard makes light of the injury done
to the Protestant temple, limiting it to the destruction of a few benches and a
few books of devotion. 13

194 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IV
good fortifications and ample garrison, instituted a resistance
that threatened to be stubbom, but surrendered in less than a
fortnight.1 There were places quite out of the course of the
king's line of march that sent to give in their submission, and
Rohan mentions it as a " prodigious " circumstance that the
deputy-general Favas, who was at the time in the assembly at
La Rochelle, and who, more than any other, was the true author
of the war, ordered his son to surrender Casteljaloux and Cas-
tets, two of the Protestant hostage cities, situated twelve or fif
teen leagues from the route by which Louis the Thirteenth was
to pass.2 With this general submission, the jealousy of the
nobles had perhaps as much to do as their cupidity. Pardaillan
had been unwilling to recognize La Force as general and induced
a score of towns to submit.3 Meanwhile Beam, the prime occa
sion of the entire commotion since La Force's expulsion by
Epernon, sent to court to assure the king of its loyalty and in
structed its representatives in the assembly to leave La Rochelle.
" Thus it is," exclaimed Duplessis Mornay, " that those who
begin the dance are the first to break it up." 4 The star of Louis
the Thirteenth was in the ascendant, and nothing seemed capa
ble of withstanding the fortune of his victorious arms.
The approval of the pope came to reinforce his efforts and
to spur him on in his prosperous course.5 In the brief which
Gregory the Fifteenth despatched to the French king in the
first year of his pontificate, that sagacious pontiff, ignoring the
attempts made by Louis to clear his enterprise so far as possible
i The Mercure francois gives a great number of contemporary accounts of the
capture of these places, and sometimes plans or bird's eye views of their fortifi
cations, occupying a good part of vol vii. Some of the views, as, for instance,
of Saint Jean d' Angely and Monheurt, are of interest.
2 Memoires du Due de Rohan, i. 189.
3 Benoist, ii. 372.
1 Duplessis Mornay to Chalas, May 31, 1621, apud Anquez, Hist, des Assem
blees politiques, 355.
5 It has frequently been remarked that a strange fatality appears to attend the
pontifical blessing or the gift of the Golden Rose. I do not know whether the
historiographer Bernard has this in mind, when, immediately after his reference
to Gregory XV.'s brief, he makes this observation : " Indeed until then his maj
esty had seen Fortune only wear her best and most smiling countenance ; the
siege of Montauban somewhat changed this gentle aspect and put a stop to the
uninterrupted course of his prosperity." Hist, du Roy Louis XIII., i. 269.

1621 FIRST HUGUENOT WAR 195
of any appearance of a war waged against Protestantism, chose,
on the contrary, to regard it chiefly as a pious undertaking for the
Brief of overthrow of heresy. He viewed it as a manifestation
tortfe^n/" °^ *ne counsel OI God, by whom kings rule, that Louis
of France, na(j engaged in so great and arduous an undertaking
just at the entrance of youth, and that the dangers and difficul
ties that had deterred others only kindled the more the invin
cible courage of his soul. He urged him, while enjoying the
renoAvn he had gained, to follow on after the Lord who was bat
tling for him, to the end that, as he now appeared to be the
thunderbolt and buckler of Israel, so he might shortly be held
to be the praise of Israel and the glory of the whole earth. The
pontiff's chief hope for the king's continued success in the future
lay in the fact that Louis had come to a comprehension of the
truth, that the only foundations on which kingdoms rest is
the orthodox faith ; for unless the Lord guard the city, no sov
ereignty will ever enjoy secure repose. " How faithfully will
those men fight in defence of the king's throne who have cast
out the saints from their temples, and have striven to expel
them from heaven and from the number of the blessed ; who
with impious cruelty condemn the institutions of our ancestors,
the customs of kings, the decrees of pontiffs, the ceremonies of
priests ? God, the King of kings, has reserved it for that glori
ous youth of yours to restrain and to extinguish these sources of
disturbance to the Christian commonwealth, of disgraces to
France. Think that now all Europe, hanging in suspense at
the issue of your battles, is awaiting to see how quickly, under
your leadership, the onset of safest war shall navigate the ocean,
to the end that what is at present an asylum of heretical sol
diers and their bulwark of defence may be displayed for the en
tire memory of posterity as the most glorious monument of your
victories." In such grandiloquent terms did Gregory encourage
Louis to undertake the siege of La Rochelle, adding that a
prince acting in behalf of religion would have as fellow-com
batants the saints themselves whose dignity was vindicated, and
that in these waters he would certainly find his helper to be
God, under whose feet the waves once became hard as dry
land, for whose hosts the water was divided asunder and, be
coming Hke unto a wall, furnished them a way of approach.

196 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IV
" Then shall we be led to the most certain hope," exclaimed the
pontiff in conclusion, " that when your kingdom shall have been
well ordered and impiety have been subdued, you will some
time be able by French victories to join the Orient and the Occi
dent, emulating the glory of your ancestors who revered the ex
hortations of the pontiffs not otherwise than as the commands
of God. To this does the most saintly Louis encourage you,
whose name you bear and whose actions you imitate ; to this
the authors of your race, who laid the firm foundation of your
royal house by Apostolic authority in the advancement of re
ligion. Follow, dearly beloved son, honor of the globe, the
heavenly commands; pour out your anger upon the nations
that have not known the Lord, that you may procure everlasting
treasures of mercy for your majesty, upon whom, by Apostolic
authority, we most lovingly pronounce a blessing. " 1
The belief of the pope that nothing short of the destruction
of the Huguenots was contemplated by the king and his ad
visers was shared by the Duke of Rohan. Slow and reluctant
as he had been to take up arms, Rohan noAv threw himself with
all the ardor of self-devotion into a contest which
Eohan's seemed to him to be for life or death. His previous
hesitation arose from the hope that the undeniable
grievances under which the Protestants labored could be settled
peaceably, and that the final resort to extreme measures needed
clearer justification. His present resolution sprang from his
1 The historiographer Bernard gives a synopsis, Hist, du Roy Louis XIII., i.
269 ; but the full text of the brief may be read in the original Latin in Gramond,
Hist. Gallia? ab excessu Henrici IV., 439-441. The president of the parliament
of Toulouse, who wrote this part of his history, as he tells us (p. 408), in 1642,
makes at this point some judicious observations. The pope was not alone in re
garding the war as aimed at the very existence of Protestantism in France.
Other foreign princes surmised the same thing, and chafed at their inability to
render assistance. But on account of the civil war raging in Germany, the king
had nothing to fear from the princes who would naturally favor the Huguenots.
Their head, the Elector Palatine Frederick, had lost not only Bohemia but the
Palatinate itself. James I. of Great Britain, immersed in his books, cared little
for military affairs. On the other hand the Spaniard was so short-sighted that
he failed to perceive that nothing else could reasonably be predicted than that
Louis would set about the foreign contest, as soon as the domestic strife was
ended by the subjugation of the Calvinistic sect. The ruin of the Huguenots
was a menace to Spanish prosperity.

1621 FIRST HUGUENOT WAR 197
observation of the treatment meted out to the places that fell
into the king's hands. When, one after another, the hostage
cities of the Huguenots were appropriated with the evident pur
pose of never restoring them to those to whom they had been
conceded by solemn edicts ; when the disobedience of La
Rochelle and of the assembly in session there was made the
pretext for depriving of their securities those Huguenots that
had taken no part with either, and indeed had repudiated their
decisions ; when in this respect no discrimination was made
between towns that resisted and towns that voluntarily admitted
the king — then the war that at first appeared to be uncalled
for became a war of self-preservation, and the later occurrences
transmuted minor acts of injustice that might have been passed
over with little notice into significant tokens of a settled plan
of persecution. And thus it Avas that Henry of Rohan, at first
half-hearted and averse to a resort to the sword, was suddenly
transformed into an enthusiastic leader, the very soul of the en
terprise. Thus it was that he was seen to deserve, as no other
deserved it, the appointment of commander-in-chief, which, on
the declinature of the Duke of Bouillon, the assembly of La
Rochelle conferred upon him. Of the considerations that had
effected this change and of the high and determined purposes
with which Henry of Rohan was animated, we have a glimpse
in a letter which he Avrote to Constable Luynes, whose marriage
with the daughter of the Duke of Montbazon had made him a
connection of the house of Rohan, and who had despatched a
letter to the Huguenot general denouncing him as a man with
out honor or natural affection.
" I do not believe," replied Rohan, " that those who know me
well accuse me of this, nor that I have ever done an action that
should induce men to believe that I am such. You
the nuke of tell me that I leave my brother to settle my quarrel,
while I withdraw from the strife. But be pleased
to consider the matter carefully, and you will find that the
quarrel is not mine, but that of three or four hundred thousand
souls who are persecuted for their religion's sake. For as to
Saint Jean [d'Angely], if I were purely and simply its governor,
or it were a city belonging to me, I should deserve every kind
of punishment did I not tear down a part of the wall, in case the

198 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IV
gates were not found broad enough to admit the king. But
you know better than I, sir, that this city was given as a security
to the members of the [Reformed] religion, and that I am but
the guardian. How can I in good conscience, Avith the example
before me of ten or twelve places of like kind which, after having
opened their gates, have been retained, act in similar fashion ?
Would to God that you would consent to consider these matters
attentively ! As to the danger with which my brother is threat
ened, I hope that God will shield him from the perils of war,
and that the king will never be advised to begin either with him
or with anyone else to practise severity unheard of and unex
ampled in this kingdom, a severity to which resort has scarcely
ever been made among Christian princes but they have been
the worse for it. For in the matter of religion, the most vio
lent measures, instead of producing terror, beget desperation.
I knoAV that you term our defence a rebellion ; but the despoil
ing of their offices and governments even of those that did not
side with the assembly, and the disarming of the Protestants
in Normandy, testify sufficiently that it is not against the as
sembly nor against La Rochelle alone that ill will is cherished,
but against all who profess our religion. I beg you, sir, to re
member that the city of Saint Jean is the worst of fifty cities
that must be taken, the one after the other, and that it Avere
better to employ the lives of so many men, and the munitions
and money of France, in making our king formidable to foreign
nations, than use them to destroy his subjects and ruin his
kingdom. And do not judge what the issue will be by a
glimpse of the start. ' Car ce qui rit au commencement, cuit sou-
vent a la fin.' For myself, you know in your conscience whether
I tried to procure peace. I want no other witness than you.
I long for peace more passionately than ever, and I offer to do
the very thing which it seems that you invite me to do. Let
the king grant peace to all his subjects, and, if he so desire, I
am ready to withdraw from his kingdom for so long a period as
he may prescribe. I say this to show that in what regards only
myself personally, I breathe nothing but entire obedience." 1

1 Letter of the Duke of Rohan to Constable Luynes, Tonneins, June, 1621.
.MS. Nat. Lib. Printed in Anquez, Un nouveau Chapitre de l'hist. politique

1621 THE SIEGE OF MONTAUBAN 199
Thus determined either to conquer nobly or to die gloriously
in a cause to which he had devoted his life and his fortunes,
Henry of Rohan had left his brother Benjamin of Soubise to
hold Saint Jean d'Angely as long as possible against the enemy,
and had himself hastened southward to put everything in readi
ness against the time when that bulwark should have fallen.
Disappomted in his hopes by the treachery of mercenary
nobles, who sold their trusts or played the coward at the king's
approach, and finding that in all Lower Guyenne, the " depart
ment " assigned to La Force, there was not one place that held
out, the duke strained every nerve to meet the coming flood in
his own province of Upper Guyenne and Upper Languedoc,
thus left unprotected and alone. It was evident that the great
shock of arms must occur in the neighborhood of the city of
Montauban. To the work of providing for the present
vides for and the future needs of that stronghold of Protestant-
the doiViiOP ^~^
of Montau- ism in the south of France he gave himself with un
tiring assiduity. And now for the first time had
Rohan the opportunity to display that clear comprehension of
the exigencies of the situation, combined with rare energy and
extraordinary fertility of imagination, that stamped him as a
military leader of conspicuous merit. His first thought was for
the defences of the city. These he undertook to strengthen by
means of new works. His second was for the troops that were
to man the fortifications. The soldiers brought by Francois de
Bethune, Count of Orval, younger son of the Duke of Sully —
faithful to the Huguenot cause and constant in his profession
of the Reformed faith, while his elder brother, Maximilian,
Marquis of Rosny, had proved recreant to both — was formed
des Reformes de France. App., 350-352. Referring to an expression similar to
that contained in the last two sentences given above, occurring in a letter of
Rohan to the Duke of Sully, written from Milhau, August 27, 1621, Auguste
Laugel observes that " we see here appear for the first time that idea of volun
tary exile, of the sacrifice of his person for his party, which thenceforth did not
leave Rohan's mind and which he was later to put into execution ; a thought
well worthy of his generous soul, that gives him a place by himself in a world
consumed by ambitions high or mean. Rohan already dreamed of becoming an
expiatory victim and of purchasing, by his renunciation of his fatherland, the
right for his coreligionists to live in peace and under the royal protection." We
here find Rohan making the same disinterested offer at least two months earlier.

200 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IV
into ten companies ; the inhabitants of Montauban into thirty
more. When everything had been put in order, to enable the
place to sustain a prolonged siege, Rohan placed Orval in com
mand. He himself issued forth to encourage the downcast, to
procure assistance from every available quarter. He took his
course first to Castres, thence to Lower Languedoc and the
Cevennes. Before his return, the Duke of la Force with two of
his sons, who had hitherto been of little service to the Hugue
not cause, threw himself into Montauban, and assumed the di
rection of affairs.1 To his experienced generalship, and to the
wise forethought and resolution of Dupuy, the first consul of
the city, Rohan generously ascribes a great part of the honor
of having preserved a place of which impartial history has
nevertheless inscribed Rohan himself as the principal deliverer.2
Rich as was the region in the midst of which. Montauban was
situated — the richest, some said, in France ; proud of the
strength of its position, which had enabled it to stand three
sieges in the civil wars of the sixteenth century ; lately en
larged by the extension of its walls to the " new town " on the
same side of the river Tarn, and by the addition of the settle
ment on the left bank founded by Henry the Fourth, to which
in his honor the name of Ville Bourbon had been given ; 3 with
fourteen great bastions and a deep moat, and with crescent-
shaped outworks at the most vulnerable points, it was yet a
daring undertaking for Montauban to oppose itself to the united
armies of a king flushed with unbroken success. But to threats
and entreaties alike the brave townsmen were deaf. And when
the Duke of Sully, coming by royal permission, accompanied
by a number of persons who assumed to be deputies of all the
surrounding towns, entreated them to avert the destruction

1 Memoires du Due de Rohan, 189, 191 ; Memoires du Due de la Force, ii. 133-
160. The Count of Orval was La Force's son-in-law. Subsequently, with
Orval's help, La Force secured to the Protestants Figeac and Capdenac, the lat
ter a hostage city which the Duke of Sully was at the time treating with the
king to surrender. Sully was, as may be imagined, greatly annoyed at his son,
but the latter replied to his complaints and threats, that he owed more respect
to God and to his conscience than to father or mother. Ibid., ii. 161, etc.
2 Memoires du Due de Rohan, i. 198.
5 Bernard, i. 271.

1621 THE SIEGE OF MONTAUBAN 201
which would be their inevitable doom unless they followed the
example of submission set to them by all the places through
which the king had journeyed, the answer they made
The citizens *-> «j •/ ¦» j
turn a deaf to the old friend, Avhom they scarcely recognized in
ly's soiidta- the new part he was playing, Avas short and decisive.
" We shall have respect to the Union and Association
of the Reformed Churches, and to the promise that we have
given not to treat separately. We cannot negotiate except in
conjunction with the entire body and with the consent of the
Duke of Rohan." l
Of the long and disastrous siege that ensued there is no need
that I should speak in detail. The attack was vigorous and
well sustained. At no point was it more vigorous than on the
quarter of Ville Bourbon where the Duke of Mayenne
ot Mayenne was in command, and sought to distinguish himself
not less by the boldness than the incessancy of his at
tacks. The death of this valiant warrior, who was shot in the
head while explaining to his cousin of Guise his designs for
further movements, was regarded with some justice as the most
severe loss sustained by the royalists. The son of the famous
chieftain of the League, he had been repeatedly urged by his
father to avoid the dissensions which the latter bemoaned, yet
had he taken a part in nearly every one of the civil disturbances
that had afflicted France during the present reign.2 None the
less was the grief at his decease almost universal throughout
France. Preachers likened him to another Judas Maccabaeus,
and uttered over him David's lament at the death of Abner.3
On receipt of the mournful intelligence, the populace of Paris,
not quite Aveaned from the League and its principles, avenged
itself for the slaughter of a prince of so beloved a stock, by
seditiously attacking the innocent Protestant worshippers on
their return from divine worship, and then proceeded to Cha
renton itself, where the costly temple of the Huguenots was con-
1 Bernard, i. 273, 274. Le Vassor is in doubt whether this action, which does
no credit to the old Huguenot captain, was the result of Sully's desire to clear
himself in the king's eyes of all responsibility for his son's actions, or proceeded
from a mistaken conviction that Montauban would not be able to stand out
against the forces brought against it. Histoire du regne de Louis XIII., iv. 248.
5 Bernard, i. 281. 3 Gramond, 492.

202 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IV
signed to the flames, pulpit, benches, and all, while the shops
of the book-venders of Protestant literature and other houses
connected with the sacred edifice were eagerly plun-
ans avenge dered. The connection between the unoffending devo-
burntog the tees of the Reformed faith in the north and the destruc-
of charen- tion of the life of the popular prince of the Lorraine
family in the distant south could not be made out
very exactly ; but in some way or other the adherents of what
was still persistently styled by its enemies " the new religion "
were held by the common people to be the authors of every
disaster occurring on French soil. The pestilence was regarded
as a punishment sent from heaven for their offences. It was
they that occasioned the prevailing dearth. The conflagra
tions, somewhat more frequent than usual at this time, were
traced to their more direct agency. It was currently reported
that the piles supporting the bridge over the Seine which fell a
prey to the devouring flames were found to be smeared with
some unctuous or slimy substance, presumably Avith the intent
of facilitating the combustion. Intelligent men might scout the
idea as absurd,1 but there was no charge too absurd to be laid
by the rabble to the account of those for whom, in lack of a
more opprobrious name, the new and singular desig-
nots oppro- nation of Parpaillots began about this time to be ap-
caiied"Par- plied. For ridicule demands necessarily novelty of
expression. The word Huguenots had now been in use
close upon three-quarters of a century. Through haA'ing been
constantly applied to some of the best citizens of the country,
not to speak of a king whom, especially now that he was dead,
all delighted to honor, the appellation had itself become to some
extent an honorable one, and was even accepted by a goodly
part of the population as a badge of distinction. Not so as yet
with the new-fangled nickname, the use of which the govern
ment soon undertook to suppress by means of penalties as se
vere as had ever been pronounced, and occasionally inflicted,
for the injurious employment of the words " Christaudins,"
" Lutherans," or "Huguenots." 2
1 Gramond, 494 ; Bernard, i. 281, 282.
' Louis XIII. at his entry into Montpellier is said to have ordered, or permitted,

1621 THE SIEGE OF MONTAUBAN 203
Of the origin of the new name of opprobrium little more was
certainly known than that, in the language of the region, the word
parpaillot was a dialectic form for the more correct papillon, and
signified a " butterfly "or " moth." Some suggested that it was
applied to the Protestants in arms against their king, because
these were as surely fated to destruction as the moths that are at
tracted to a candle and fall a prey to the flames which they court.
But the Toulouse president, although he mentions the derivation,
regards it as too subtle and refined for the intelligence of the
vulgar. He prefers to regard the designation as having arisen
from the light color of the linen clothing which the besieged
wore by preference, and in which they were readily descried
from a distance, as they flitted hither and thither.1 The Hu
guenots, the royal historiographer notices, retaliated savagely
by nicknaming the Roman Catholics Bavaillacs, after the mur
derer of Henry the Fourth.2
On the other hand, the most notable loss of the besieged was
of Daniel Chamier, one of the pastors of Montauban; who,
despite his profession, was justly credited by his en-
Dantei cna- emies with being one of the mainstays of the Hugue
not party. A scholar of prodigious learning, a theo
logian who, as we have seen, had written in his Panstratia
Catholica perhaps the ablest and most complete work touching
the dispute with the Church of Rome,3 a professor holding high
rank at Montauban, and sought for in vain by the Academie of
Saumur, an eloquent preacher, a public controversialist who ba~d
crossed swords with Father Cotton and his fellow Jesuit Gaul-
one of his soldiers to be hung for having called the citizens parpaillots. An
quez, Un nouveau Chapitre, 41. The use of the word had already oreated a
serious outbreak in Lyons, on St. Michael's day and the following Sunday. See
" L'esmotion qui se fit a Lyon sur le mot de Parpaillau," in Mercure francois,
viii. 827-829. The riot is said to have arisen from a Protestant striking a boy who
had applied the nickname to his son. In the ensuing commotion, the canaille
not only plundered the houses of the Protestants, burning their furniture before
their eyes, but planned to set fire to the "temple." In the end the Protestants
of Lyons were disarmed, on the ground that it was not reasonable that they
should fare better in a Roman Catholic city than Roman Catholics in towns held
by the Protestants.
1 Gramond, 432 ; Bernard, i. 264, 265 ; Benoist, ii. 401.
3 Bernard, ubi supra.
3 Haag, La France protestante, iii. 1035.

204 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IV
tier and had not been put to the worst, a clergyman whose
merits had been twice pubHcly recognized by the Reformed
Churches when the National Synod of Gap (in 1603), and again
that of Privas (in 1612), elected him for moderator,1 "the
great Chamier," as he came to be familiarly designated, in con
tradistinction to his less famous kinsman, did not take refuge in
scholastic or ecclesiastical pursuits from the onerous burdens of
the life of a patriotic Frenchman in troublous times. More than
once he Avas deputed to court. He did not shrink from enter
ing the political assemblies the history of which constitutes so
interesting a page in the chronicles of the times. He was vice-
president of the famous assembly of Saumur where Duplessis
Mornay presided. Clear sighted, stanch in the assertion of
his views, inflexible in his decisions, and perfectly incorruptible
at a time when many men could be bought by offers of money
or preferment, he was as heartily loved and trusted by his
friends as hated and feared by his adversaries. Nor does the
circumstance tend to lower him in our estimation that both the
Parliament of Toulouse and the Chamber of the Edict at Cas
tres had, a few months since, made diligent efforts to arrest him.
Their zeal may serve as a measure of the royal estimate of his
importance to the Huguenot cause.2
It was on a Sunday afternoon (the seventeenth of October),
as he was praying and encouraging the garrison to a successful
resistance of the furious attack made upon the walls under the
very eyes of the king, that Chamier met with unexpected but
not unwelcome death. And it was noted by the curious as a
singular circumstance that the ball that struck him in the chest
and then fell spent at his side, bore upon it the initial of his
name. " He was walking on the bulwark Paillas," writes his
quaint biographer Quick, "when the messenger of death saluted
him. That messenger, the cannon-ball, was marked with the
letter C, a letter superscribed and directed unto Monsr. Chamier.
He must read it and receive it, and no one else." 3 The death of
1 Pierre Merlin in the sixteenth and Michel Berauld in the seventeenth cen
tury were the only other persons honored by a second election to that high office.
3 The fact was unknown until accidentally discovered by M. Charles Read,
who publishes the writs in his " Daniel Chamier," 387.
a Daniel Chamier's Icon by John Quick, minister of the Gospel in London, is

1621 THE SIEGE OF MONTAUBAN 205
the great Protestant was as sincerely mourned by the inhabi
tants of the city to whose preservation he had greatly contributed,
as it was celebrated with unseemly glee by the would-be wits of
the other party throughout France.1 He had died almost with
the words of assured victory upon his lips. Preaching in his
turn, the day before, in the " temple " before an audience of ter
rified worshippers, to the deafening sound of the incessant dis
charges of the king's artillery, he chose for his text the words of
the ancient prophet to king Hezekiah respecting the boast
ful Sennacherib. Likening his beloved Montauban to Jerusalem,
again and again, in the course of an address which is said to
have been of a peculiarly moving character,2 he exclaimed as with
prophetic certainty : " No, no, he shall not come into this city,
he shall not come into this city ; but by the way that he came
by the same shall he return, and shall not come into this city,
saith the Lord. For I will defend this city to save it for my
OAvn name's sake." The prediction was verified, and in a man
ner not altogether unlike the strange melting away of the army
of the Assyrian king.
The help of Rohan was not inconsiderable. That active
nobleman had carried out his plans in almost every particu-
Eohan's ac- ^ar* -^-e sen* *° *ne Cevennes to obtain troops, and
tivity. finding his own presence to be necessary, himself went
in quest of them. Making light of the jealousy of Chatillon,
who, after inviting him to an interview, apparently changed
one of a series of seventy biographies of the most celebrated Protestant professors
pastors, etc., of England and France, composed by the well-known author of the
"Synodicon," under the title of " Icones sacra? gallicana? et anglicana?." M.
Charles Read has printed this account of Chamier's life with a French transla
tion in his "Daniel Chamier. Journal de son voyage a, la cour de Henri IV. en
1607 et sa biographie " (Paris, 1858), 75-200.
1 In default of anything better suited to their purpose, the obesity of the Mon
tauban pastor and professor was made a special object of merriment. In one
poem of doggerel verse that obtained a wide circulation, Death is represented as
unable, on account of Chamier's corpulence, to cut his life short with his sickle
and as consequently compelled to resort to the cannon-ball. Mercure francois,
viii. 605.
2 Quick's Icon, ubi supra, 184. So too Gramond, who only mistakes the day :
" Postquam eademmet die concione in templo pathetice habita, de regiis loquens,
finierat in hasc ipsa verba, quae distincta ter voce repetierat, Non ingredientur."
Hist. Gall, ab excessu Henrici IV., 502.

206 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IV
his mind and forbade Rohan to enter the " department " as
signed to him, he succeeded after some difficulty in raising four
thousand troops of the brave mountaineers and their neighbors
of the plains on the south. With these, and with one thousand
men paid from his own private purse, he started westward.
But he took the precaution of having his conduct approved by
a political assembly of representatives of five adjoining prov
inces — Lower Languedoc, Cevennes, Vivarais, Upper Langue
doc, and Dauphiny — lest after his departure the disaffected
Chatillon should avenge himself by recalling the forces under
Rohan's command. A portion of these met with an unlooked-
for disaster, through the ill-timed impetuosity of one of the
Duke's lieutenants, and Rohan not only lost a number of his
soldiers in an unfortunate engagement but was deprived of the
services of almost the whole of the friendly nobles of the dis
trict of Albigeois and Lauragais, Avho Avere forced to surrender
their arms and to pledge themselves not to bear arms for six
months. Most of his troops fared better. A thousand or
twelve hundred men undertook the hazardous enterprise of
throwing themselves into Montauban. Beaufort was their
leader. Although so unfortunate himself as to be captured, he
had the satisfaction of knowing that seven hundred of his men
got in safely to strengthen the hands of La Force and Orval. It
was a marvel that an auxiliary force composed exclusively of foot
soldiers, after traversing eighteen leagues of territory almost
every foot of which was hostile, and after fording two con
siderable rivers, the Tarn and the Aveyron, should have
threaded its way between two royal armies lying in wait for its
destruction.1 What the Constable of Luynes could not accomplish by force
of arms, he tried to compass by bribery, In an interview which
he sought with Rohan, shortly before the abandonment of the
siege,2 he plied him with every argument which might have per
suaded a weak and selfish man after his own pattern. If Ro
han would only relinquish the thought of a general peace, to
1 Memoires du Due de Rohan, i. 190-194. The duke rather understates than
exaggerates the distance.
- "Sub finem mensis Octobris, desperata Montalbani expugnatione." Gra
mond, 502.

1621 THE SIEGE OF MONTAUBAN 207
which Louis the Thirteenth, he assured him, would never con
sent, there were no personal advantages he might not obtain.
Professing warm interest in the duke as his own ally
Luynes by marriage, Luynes offered him everything he might
vam to se- wish to ask for the benefit of Castres and other places
in his " department." For the Huguenot leader him
self it was " la carte blanche" he had but to name his price.
This was about what he said ; this mingled with certain phrases
to show how little Rohan could count upon help either from
within or without the kingdom. " Whatever aid the Prince of
Conde, may promise," he said, "I shall always be able to se
duce him from you Avith a piece of money." He significant
ly hinted that though he, the constable, had thus far suc
ceeded with some difficulty in preventing the confiscation of
Rohan's property and governments, he would no longer have
the ability to ward off the disastrous blow, and complete ruin
must be the reward of continued obstinacy.
In reply to all which, Rohan firmly, though courteously, de
clined to avail himself of benefits to be purchased by a sacrifice
of the general interests of the Huguenots. Their ruin was not
so near as Luynes imagined. The wars against the Protestants,
he reminded him, had generally begun with great disadvantages
incurred by them, but the restlessness of the French mind, the
discontent of those who aspired to the government but were ex
cluded from power, and the assistance of foreigners, had set
them on their feet again. " You have gathered in the full har
vest that promises mingled with threats could secure for you.
What remains of the Huguenot party is fighting for a religion in
which it believes. For myself I have contemplated in imagina
tion the loss of my possessions and offices. If you have de
layed the realization on account of our alliance, I am obliged
to you. But I am quite ready to suffer since that is resolved
upon ; for this I have solemnly promised, and this does my con
science command me, to listen to nothing short of a general
peace." 1

1 Memoires du Due de Rohan, i. 195-198. I am not aware that any one has called
attention to the fact that we have another and somewhat fuller report of this
conference between Luynes and Rohan in Gramond, Hist. Gall, ab excessu

208 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IV
Meantime a more terrible enemy than the besieged Huguenots
had met the royal army encamped about the walls of Montau-
Pesai nee ban, an(^ ^s summons *° abandon the siege could
invades the neither be refused nor adjourned. For weeks the loss
camp of the J
besiegers. 0f tne king's troops by disease had become more and
more alarming, and death made no distinctions between rich
and poor. In the form of a pestilence such as is wont to be
engendered by the fatigues and hardships of war among those
who breathe the contaminated air of contracted and uncleanly
quarters, the new malady daily carried off a rich tribute of vic
tims. The excessive heat of the summer, to which the soldiers
from northern France Avere unaccustomed, the very abundance
of the autumnal fruits, of which they ate imprudently or inordi
nately, contributed to the fatal result. The whole military force
succumbed to the mightier hand of the infliction of heaven.
According to one account, eight thousand men, according to
another, twenty thousand of the common soldiers and one
thousand of the nobles, are said to have died.1 The sick were
carried in crowds to Toulouse. That friendly city paid a dear
price for its hospitality. The hospitals being far too small to
contain the new-comers, they were distributed among the pri
vate dwellings and scattered the germs of pestilence far and
wide. Ten thousand of the citizens died in consequence that
autumn, as the judge of the Toulouse parliament tells us, who

Henrici IV. , 502-505. What lends special interest to it is that the historian states
that he had it from the lips of the Huguenot leader himself : " Referam dicta
utrinque, qualia ab ipsomet Rohanceo accept." The differences in phraseology
and even in shades of thought deserve notice. There is, for example, nothing
corresponding to this in the French of the Memoires : "Ex quo reformatorum
suscepi defensionem, credidi fore me causae niartyrem, quae ut justa est, ita
sine perfidia abdicari nequit."
1 " Le roi avoit perdu plus de huit mille hommes de son armee." Le Vassor,
iv. 270. " Feralis Montalbani obsidio cui accingor : non alias expeditio tristior,
si csesorum numerum e vulgo, viginti hominum miUia : si prosapiam et stemma
spectas periere ferro, aut peste, mille nobiles." Gramond, ubi supra, 470.
Luynes himself, in an interesting letter to the Prince of Conde, dated October
31st, recently published by the Due d'Aumale from the archives of Chantilly,
speaks of an army of forty-five thousand men reduced to five or six thousand,
and represents two-thirds of those that remained as faithless, the other third as
prostrate from fatigue and cold, and most of the time without food. Histoire
des Princes de Conde, iii. 159-160.

1621 THE SIEGE OF MONTAUBAN 209
made the computation from an official census.1 In the royal
camp, both church and state were represented among the illus
trious dead. The archbishop of Sens, primate of France, and
three of his episcopal colleagues who had hke him come to wit
ness a signal defeat of the heretics — the bishops of Carcassonne,
Marseilles, and Valence — all members of the council of state,
met the same end as Pontchartrain and Potier de Seaux, secre
taries of state, and Pierre Matthieu, royal historiographer, whose
works have not been without their value to students of the reign
of Henry the Fourth.2
Against so remorseless a foe it Avas impossible to contend,
especially Avhen the demoralized troops were daily forsaking
their standards and there seemed to be a rivalry among
monk those that remained who should be the first to violate
hi"snsgthe ° his oath and desert.3 To no purpose had the services
royai camp. ^^ eane(j {^ 0f the Spanish barefoot friar of the
Carmelite Order, Dominique de Jesus Maria by name. The
monk, after obtaining at home a reputation for extraordinary
sanctity, had been invited to Rome by the pope, had visited the
emperor at Rome, had accompanied the Duke of Bavaria in his
Bohemian campaign, and was credited not only with foretelling,
but with having by his prayers and exhortations been the actual
cause of the victorious issue of the battle of Prague. Perhaps
the emperor believed it ; for he is said to have sent a croAvn of
gold and pearls to the church of the monk's order in Rome.
At Paris the friar was almost worshipped, and Avhile enlightened
Roman Catholics could not suppress their scorn and disgust, the
people pressed about him to obtain his blessing and deemed
themselves happy if they could surreptitiously cut off a frag
ment of his robe or his scapulary to keep as relics. At the
royal camp he was well received by Louis, who gladly heard

1 "Unde tanta in oppidanos pestis ex contactu et aeris pestilentia, ut sub
finem ejus Autumni ex censu publico compertum habeam desiderata niunicipum
decern miUia." Gramond, ubi supra, 507, 508.
2 Bernard, Histoire du Roy Louis XIII., 290. This author was appointed, as
he himself informs us, to the place left vacant at Matthieu's death. " Le Roy
ayant sceu son decez, et ayant eu agreable que je luy succedasse dans sa fonction,
me commanda d'avoir soin de l'Histoire, et me fit pourvoir de sa charge."
3 The language is Gramond's, p. 508.
14

210 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IV
mass sung by him, and he distributed a great number of rosaries
and of the Agnus Dei to the nobles and others avIio were present.
When a grandee ventured to suggest that he might very well
repeat his predictions and inform his Majesty what would be
the issue of the siege, Ave are told by a bystander that he cau
tiously refrained from satisfying the curiosity of his interlocutor.
But he was not so Avise a little later, it would appear ; for in
answer to Constable Luynes's appeal for help, he plainly gave
out that the inhabitants of Montauban Avould surrender as soon
as four hundred discharges of cannon had been fired upon the
town. At the king's command Marshal Bassompierre hastened
to try the experiment. Montauban, ho Ave ver, Avas no Jericho,
and the friar Dominique de Jesus Maria was no Joshua. The
crowds that looked to see all the bastions of the rebels crumble
into dust and their forces melt away Avere doomed to disap
pointment.1 The king broke up his camp before Montauban about the
middle of November. He had wasted almost three months in
The siege *ne attempt to take it.3 There is a pleasing story that
abandoned, the besieged gained their first certain intimation that
Louis was about to withdraw his forces, from one night hearing
a Huguenot soldier in the royal camp play upon his flute the
familiar air of the Protestant battle psalm (the sixty-eighth) —
" Que Dieu se montre settlement."3
If anything could have induced Louis the Thirteenth to
prosecute his undertaking to the bitter end, it would have been
the exhortations of his spiritual advisers. The Assembly of the
Roman Catholic Clergy of the kingdom met in Paris in June,
and transferred its sessions first to Poitiers and then to Bor
deaux. A month before the end of the siege of Montauban (on
1 My authority is Roman Catholic — Bernard, Hist, du Roy Louis XIII. , i. 282,
283. See also Le Vassor. iv. 254 ; Benoist, ii. 379, etc.
2 According to the Memoires du Due de Rohan, 191, 198, the siege lasted from
August 21st to November 18th ; but the dates given by different authors vary con
siderably. Von Polenz, v. 229, states them as August 17th and November 11th.
3 1 find the anecdote in Benoist alone (ii. 377), but I have found him so uni
formly conscientious and well informed, that I do not hesitate to accept upon
his sole authority a story the narration of which Von Polenz somewhat cavalierly
ascribes to that author's fondness for the romantic. Geschichte des franzo-
sischen Calvinismus, v. 228.

1621 THE SIEGE OF MONTAUBAN 211
the eighteenth of October), the bishop of Rennes, accompanied
by the cardinals of Retz and La Yalette and by many other
prelates, presented himself before the king iu his
Address of . , , . . °
the bishop camp, m order to make to his Majesty, in the assem
bly's behalf, the very liberal offer" of a million livres.
His oration on this occasion was earnest and passionate. The
speaker expressed in clear and unmistakable language the feel
ings of the clergy toward the Huguenots and the royal edicts
given for their protection. In view of the importance of his
utterances as bearing upon the history of the Revocation of
these edicts, I am constrained to accord to a discussion of the
address of the bishop of Rennes a much larger space than I
should otherAvise deem necessary or appropriate.
In flattering terms the prelate instituted a comparison be
tween Louis the Thirteenth and good king Josiah, but con
trasted the two sovereigns to the decided advantage of the
former. Unlike the Jewish monarch, Louis had not waited
until the twelfth year of his reign to begin the pious work of
crushing irreligion and revolution, twin sisters that generally go
hand in hand. Hence he augured that, having in six months re
established the true worship of God in Beam, from which it had
been banished for half a century, the French king would find
a single year sufficient time in which to compel all the remnants
of presumption and hardened pride to bow before his invincible
courage. It were to be desired that the end might be com
passed by other and gentler means, but there are chronic and
malignant maladies upon which oil and mild medicines have
no effect. Forgiveness Avould be out of place in the treatment
of men who had committed the horrible outrages of which
he took care to give a harrowing catalogue.1 At this point
the bishop went through the farce with which the world has
by this time become only too familiar, of repudiating any re
sponsibility for the resort to arms, while, at the same time,
' Of course every insult or outrage done to a place or an object sacred in the
eyes of a devout Roman Catholic was attributed to the hated Protestant, and the
excesses of any miscreant or body of miscreants, inflamed with wine or with
the passion of wanton destructiveness, were magnified into religious offences.
Many, if not most, of the instances given are not above suspicion in respect to
authenticity.

212 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IV
strenuously advocating that resort. "It is not, sire, that we
ask for war ; on the contrary, we desire peace. The God whom
we serve and proclaim every day to your people is a God of
peace, not of dissension. . . . But to have a good peace, it
must sometimes be'cemented by war."
After dwelling upon the king's " miraculous " successes, the
orator reached the main injunction of his speech. Let Louis
make God's cause his own, and complete what has been so
well begun, making against irreligion and revolt but one and
the same contest. If the Israelites has pursued the Canaanites
into the mountains instead of remaining content with the pos
session of the plains, they would have secured the whole of the
promised land. If king Joash had smitten the ground with
his arrow repeatedly, and not stopped with three times, then
Syria would have been wholly subdued. Now, in an undertak
ing in which his Majesty daily exposed his life, it would be in
decorous for the church not to do her part. For this reason
it was that the speaker had been charged by the deputies of
the Clergy of France to make the proffer of one million of gold,
" Avhich," said he, " we devote to the perfecting of that master
piece by you so gloriously commenced, and particularly to the
siege of La Rochelle, in order that, as that city has been the be
ginning of the rebellion, she may also be its end." In this
connection, there were two points upon which the bishop of
Rennes insisted as prominent in the petition of his brethren.
The first had reference to the maintenance of the clergy's rights
to its lands. Let the king suffer no exercises of " the pretended
religion " — so he affected to style Protestantism — upon any of
them. The other called for an entire revolution in the methods
hitherto pursued in the treatment of the Huguenots. " May it
please you, Sire, not to lay this tempest by the same means
that have been employed in the past. And, indeed, when the
rights of heaven are set over against those of the earth, when hu-
He advo- man Iears> considerations, and appearances are weighed
of'ttaedicts1 in *ne scales with celestial power and assistance, when
thefaprotel- one measures the honor of God by a comparison
tants. with one's own rest or private advantage, everything
built thereupon is as uncertain as its foundation, which is
the world. Every Edict that divides the Faith also divides

1631 THE SIEGE OF MONTAUBAN 213
kingdoms. This is the peace that is no peace, but only retains
the name. . . . Not that we would turn away your majesty's
clemency from individual persons who repent and have re
course to your goodness. But all the advantages thus far con
ceded to them in the edicts of pacification, have only made them
more obstinate in their error against God and their rebellion
against you." What then ? Shall the king undertake to eradi
cate the errors of the Huguenots by force ? Oh no, the clergy
"recognize the liberty naturally graven in man's spirit," they are
aware " that what is introduced into it by force scarcely ever
lasts long, and is of even less merit in respect to the Faith,
for this faith ought to be free and to enter in gently, by divine
inspiration, by patience, by exhortations and every sort of good
examples." And, in truth, it is by this " gentle constraint," the
orator adds, " that we hope to see heresy flee the bounds of
your kingdom."
Unhappily the honeyed assurances of the love and kindliness
of the clergy were rarely anything else than the prelude to war
like and sanguinary injunctions ; as the voice which gave over
the heretic to the secular arm with the prayer that the latter do
nothing tending to the victim's bodily hurt was the same that
would have pronounced sentence of excommunication upon any
judge so ill advised as to construe the request with ordinary
literalness. It is not strange, therefore, that the orator immedi
ately proceeded to tell the king that, knowing the root of the
evil, Louis Avas in duty bound to cut it off. As the rebels had
Their cities proved their unworthiness and made use of the cities
shouiabe7 0I security — granted to them not by edict but by a sim-
taken away. p]e pafenft an([ for a term of years that had already
expired — for the purpose of indulging in disobedient courses
and in every sort of severity against ecclesiastics, he ought to
demolish those cities. As Israel was prospered in razing the
strongholds of the Canaanites, as, in France itself, Philip Augus
tus and Saint Louis were prospered in the attempt to destroy
the cities of the heretical Albigenses, so would the present
monarch soon see the accomplishment of his designs. And
this not only with regard to haughty Montauban, whose resist
ance would only draw down upon it a greater ruin and afford
greater glory to the king, but with regard to all other rebel

214 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IV
cities and, particularly, La Rochelle. Upon La Rochelle the
bishop next poured out the vials of his vituperative eloquence,
as the centre from which every line of rebellion ran to the cir-
La Rochelle cumf erence, as a city that had grown simply by the
duceYto a misfortunes of others, as the sink of error and vice, a
village. c^v ft^i 0f blasphemy and ingratitude toward God
and toward the king who had loaded it with benefits, a place
therefore that justly deserved not merely to be deprived of its
privileges, but even to be stripped of the very name of city and
reduced to a village. Here too the prelate had salutary histori
cal examples to point to. " The means by which the Emperor
Constantius," said he, " got the better of the idolatrous gentiles
was that he compelled them to dwell in places not enclosed by
walls, whence they came to be knoAvn as pagani ; and without
any farther harsh treatment, as soon as the worship of false
gods ceased in the cities, the Roman Empire straightway be
came wholly Christian." '
The pomp with which Louis was received in Toulouse was
but a poor compensation for the tears of chagrin which he is
reported to have shed at quitting the camp before Montauban.
Kings had of late rarely come this way. The last
into Tou- roval entry was that of Charles the Ninth on his ex-
louse pedition to Bayonne, and before that no monarch had
been welcomed since Charles the Seventh.2 In the circum
stances some extravagance of loyalty might have been expected,
but the adulatory lines adorning the seven triumphal arches
under which he was to pass, each bearing the name of one of
the "seven planets," and each dedicated to one of his majesty's
supposed virtues, were calculated to turn his head, if any
praise could accomplish such a result. Let it suffice to say, that
the prince whom the bishop of Rennes in his recent address
had exalted above Alexander the Great in prowess, inasmuch as
it was not his years, as with the latter, but his days that were
counted by his victories, was here represented again and again
'The "remonstrance" of Pierre Cornulier, bishop of Rennes, maybe read
in the Recueil des Actes, Titres et Memoires concernant les affaires du Clerge
de France (Paris, 1673), v. part 2, 286-296. Also, in the Mercure francois,
viii. 118-142.
2 Bernard, Histoire du Roy Louis XIII., i. 291.

1321 THE SIEGE OF MONTAUBAN 215
as the peerless miracle of kings, the king whose exploits made
him the equal of the gods.1
Only one siege of note occupied Louis on his northward
journey, the siege of the small but well-fortified Monheurt, and
Monheurt, although stubbornly defended, Avas at last forced to
submit. Its capture had less effect upon general history than
the single death of the Constable of Luynes, Avho fell
constable a prey to the all-devouring pestilence shortly before
the surrender. Ignoble as had been the origin of this
strange child of fortune, small as were his intellectual abilities,
and unworthy as were the means by Avhich he had elevated him
self to the highest place below the throne, it had yet been his
lot to open the road, which it was reserved for Cardinal Riche
lieu so soon to tread, of humbhng the pride of the great nobles
and breaking down the political power of the Huguenots as a
party.2 It was a part of Luynes's good fortune that he died
before losing the external marks of royal favor. Thus was a
prince, who had already become tired of his assumption, freed
of the possible necessity of devising means to rid himself of
Luynes similar to those that had been employed in the case of
the Marshal of Ancre.3 The Huguenots were not sorry to
learn that one of his last exercises of the inordinate power he
possessed had been quietly, and much to that worthy's surprise,
to remove the king's confessor, Father Arnoux, hitherto sup
posed to be well-nigh omnipotent at court and known to be
one of the bitterest enemies of Protestantism.4
It was just after the new year that Louis returned to the
capital which he had left seven or eight months before. The
pomp with which he had been received in Toulouse was quite
eclipsed by the ovation extended to him by his good city of
Paris. Amidst the loud Te Deums and the praise lavishly

1 The Mercure francois, vol. vii. , devotes more than thirty pages to this mag
nificent reception, and gives the inscriptions at full length. See especially
pages 899, 902, 921.
2 See Von Polenz, v. 232. On his rise to power see Bernard, i. 300.
3 On this point see Le Vassor, iv. 195 seq.
1 Bernard gives a long and interesting account of the dialogue between Luynes
and Arnoux, when the latter was summarily dismissed. Histoire du Roy Louis
XIII., i. 292-294.

216 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IV
poured out in honor of a conqueror who was said to have re
duced his rebel subjects to the farthest extremities of his king
dom, Montauban and the losses of the army before the Avails of
Montauban were quite forgotten. And now the true time for
concluding an honorable pacification had come. The advocates
of peace made their voices heard even in the royal council.
The queen mother was opposed to the prosecution of a war
in which she had nothing to gain, Chancellor Sillery, Marshal
Crequi, and Bassompierre seconded her representations. The
President veteran minister President Jeannin was outspoken in
Jnaadvo te ^s a(lvocacy 0I a timely and wholesome settlement
of peace. with the Huguenots.1 In more than one dispassion
ate paper, he weighed in the balance the arguments advanced on
either side, and showed hoAV much the reasons for concluding
peace preponderated. A professed Protestant could scarcely
have set forth more strongly than did this wily statesman, of
unimpeachable Catholicity, the grievances which must infal
libly drive even such peaceably disposed Huguenots as had
hitherto avoided the strife to take an active part in it. "Since
these have now discovered," said Jeannin, " that the obedient
have been as badly treated as those who took up arms ; since they
have heard that the first and principal members of the council "
— here he clearly pointed out the Prince of Conde and his sup
porters — " have been loudly publishing that the king intends
no longer to tolerate any other worship than that of the Cath
olic religion which he professes, and that the preachers fill
their sermons with these sentiments, endeavoring to persuade
the people that all advice of a different tenor is profane and im
pious, there can be no doubt that the Huguenots have changed
their minds, and that henceforth they will regard the present
contest as a true war in defence of religion, a war that will in
volve all alike in the same danger, unless they be strong enough
to ward it off by force of arms." 2 Further on, touching upon
the history of the past, President Jeannin all but conceded in
1 Le Vassor, iv. 356.
2 Paper entitled " S'il est plus expedient de faire paix avec ceux de la religion
pretendue reformee que de continuer la guerre." In QSuvres melees du Presi
dent Jeannin. Petitot, Coll. des Memoires de France, xvi. 78, 79 ; Michaud et
Poujoulated., 692, 693.

1622 FIRST HUGUENOT WAR 217
so many words that it was not the fault of the Huguenots that
they had, for more than a half-century, seemed to form an im-
perium in imperio. The very hostage cities which
Hon of the afforded their enemies a ground for an accusation of
* " ' a lack of patriotism and of insubordination, he showed
to have been rendered a necessity because of the faithlessness of
those who sought the destruction of the Calvinists. He recalled
the disgraceful story of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew's Day
Avith its countless innocent victims, and the siege laid imme
diately afterward to the city of La Rochelle, fruitlessly attacked
because bravely and obstinately defended. The consequence
was, he added, "that we Avere obliged again to grant them
peace, and to increase the number and the term of occupation
of the cities which had been left in their guard to secure them
against our perfidy and treachery." 1 In another memoir ad
dressed to Louis himself, Jeannin gave fresh utterance to his
reprobation of the policy pursued for the past sixty years, with its
dreary alternation of needless war and "insidious peace," dur
ing which " whenever the lion's skin did not suffice to inflict
damage upon the Huguenots, resort was had to the fox's skin,"
but during which also " violence, cunning and deceit," so far
from reaching their object, always led in the end to treaties of
pacification that only increased the strength of the Protestants.
He appealed to the memory of others who, like himself, had fre
quently heard' Henry the Fourth declare that, when head of the
Huguenot party, there was nothing that he so much feared, be
cause there was nothing that so weakened his faction, as a last
ing peace religiously observed.2

1 "Qu'on fut contraint de leur accorder derechef la paix, et d'accroitre le
nombre et le temps des villes qui leur avoient ete laissees en garde, pour les as
surer contre notre perfidie et deloyaute." Ibid., Petitot ed., xvi. 82, Michaud
et Poujoulat ed. , 694. It is singular that the historian Von Polenz, after stating
briefly the fact that Benoist cites this important memoir of President Jean
nin, should add the remark that he has himself found the document quoted no
where else ("Ich bemerke hier nur, diese Schrift sonst nirgends augeftihrt
gefunden zu haben "). Geschichte des franzosischen Calvinismus, v. 236. Le
Vassor's history, which Von Polenz had in his hands and of which he made
great use, contains extended passages taken from President Jeannin's paper.
Histoire du regne de LouisXIII., iv. 349-357.
2 " Ecrit fait par M. le president Jeannin, environ le mois de fevrier 1622, lors

218 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IV
It will, I think, be conceded by every fair reader that the his
torian of the Edict of Nantes, Elie Benoist, is quite justified in
his assertion that President Jeannin's paper is one of the most
authoritative documents that can be produced in justification of
the Protestants, and that it effectually disposes of the excuses,
based upon the pretended rebellion of the Protestants, which
Avere made for the attempt to exterminate them.1
There was much, both in the internal affairs of the Huguenots
and in matters abroad, to corroborate the assertions of the pru
dent counsellor of Louis the Thirteenth, and it is quite imma
terial to us whether, in the expression of his opinion, he was in
fluenced rather by considerations of policy than of justice, and
Avas more afraid of the too complete success of the French mis
sion to Germany which he had himself recommended, than of
the disasters which the continuance of Avar with the Huguenots
might entail.2 The Huguenots were by no means crushed. The
Rochellese and restless Soubise had shoAvn AArhat they could do
at sea, and how inadequate the king's maritime forces were to
check them. A fleet of twenty-five vessels sent out by La Ro
chelle had for months ruled the Bay of Biscay and seized many
of the enemy's ships. The island of Oleron was captured by
them, and since Soubise (apparently not so much oblivious of
the obligation he assumed at the capitulation of Saint Jean
d'Angely, as regarding himself absolved from his promise not
to bear arms against the king by the latter's frequent breaches
of faith) had made himself master of Rovan, at the
Souljiss
takes Eo- mouth of the Gironde, the power of the Protestants
along the shores of the ocean was rather growing than
diminishing.3 To this must be added the circumstance that
many of the king's conquests of the year before proved very
du retour du Roi en cette ville, contenant ses raisons pour faire la paix." Ibid.,
Petitot ed., xvi. 116, 117 ; Michaud et Poujoulat ed., 704.
1 Benoist, ii. 386.
2 " Le vieux Jeannin, effraye du succes trop complet de l'ambassade francaise
en Allemagne, qu'il avait, naguere, vivement conseillee, fut fidele a la politique
de bascule qu'il avait longtemps pratiquee d'accord avec Villeroi, et presenta au
roi un memoire pour appuyer l'opinion de Marie de Medicis." Henri Martin,
Histoire de France, xii. 434.
a Bernard, Histoire du Roy Louis XIII. , i. 290, 338 ; Laugel, Le due de Rohan,
111.

1622 FIRST HUGUENOT WAR 219
worthless. If his attack had resembled a fierce blast, at whose
advent everything boAvs without resistance ; it was also true
that as the prostrated grasses rise again when the storm has
ue passed, many of the Protestant places resumed their
nots recover former allegiance to the Huguenot party before the
their lost king's back had long been turned upon the south.
Some towns that had been sold to the king by their
mercenary governors came back almost of themselves. La
Force recovered Sainte Foy and other places in the same re
gion ; and further to the south, Tonneins and Clairac by their
defection showed that the monarch might have to do over again
a great part of what he had so prided himself upon accomplish
ing the year before.1
Abroad, if the unwillingness of James the First to aid sub
jects engaged in a struggle with their king, seemed to preclude
the hope of effective help from the crown of Great Britain, the
sympathy of the people was so undisguised as to constrain even
the government, or the state church, to order collections in be-
coiiections ¦aan? 0I the Huguenots. Such a collection was made
£in1na'he5" thronghout Scotland in the winter of 1622. It was a
behalf. circumstance worthy of notice that the poor were as
zealous as the rich, for " the servant maids and boys " brought
in of their scanty means about one-eighth part of all that Avas
raised. Nor is it surprising that the sturdy Presbyterians who
scouted the authority of James's bishops, and refused to conform
to the hated articles of Perth, far surpassed the rest in their lib
erality toward the adherents of a church similar in faith and
disciphne to their own.2 In the southern kingdom the benefi
cence of the people took the form of a collection, ordered (in
September, 1621) by the Archbishop of Canterbury, at the re
quest of the privy council, for the benefit of the refugees from
' Benoist, ii. 388.
2 "About this time there was a collection through the countrie for the Kirk of
France. It began in Edinburgh upon the twelf, and endit upon the twentie-
sixt of Februar [1622]. The Nonconformitanes exceedit all others verie farre in
their liberalitie. The servants maids and boyes were not behind for their part,
for they contributed foure thousand merks. The summe of the whole amounted
to threttie or threttie-five thousand merks. The ministers were forced to con-
fesse that the Nonconformitanes were the honestest men in their flocks." David
Calderwood, History of the Kirk of Scotland, vii. 543.

220 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IV
Dieppe and other places in Normandy, to Avhom not only had
the inhabitants of Dover extended a hearty welcome, but had
thrown open St. Mary's church for the tAvo ministers who
accompanied them to preach tAvice on Sunday, before and after
the charitable rector, and once on Thursday.1
Rohan and Lesdiguieres had for some time been endeavoring
to settle upon a practicable basis of pacification. It was the de
sire of President Jeannin and the other friends of peace to de-
. tain Louis at Paris until the arrival of the envoys
takes the whom they shortly expected with the results of the
negotiations of the dukes. Greatly to their disap
pointment, those that were in favor of pushing Avar to the
bitter end — the sanguinary Prince of Conde, Cardinal Retz,
Count Schomberg, and others — induced the king to slip out of
the back door of the Louvre, on Palm Sunday, quietly and
almost stealthily. Without waiting for the queen mother, Louis
posted to Orleans and thence to Nantes and southward to Guy
enne, that he might complete the Avork of the preceding year.2
It is needless to rehearse in detail the successive stages in his
campaign. Again Henry of Rohan was the central figure in
the opposition to the royal plans, the solitary heroic man
whose determination and energy enabled him to hold his own in
the midst of adverse circumstances and almost to compensate
for the weakness and treachery of some and for the dissensions
and divisions of others. Chatillon, having proved
thiness of utterly worthless, and indeed a positive injury to the
Protestant cause, had been deposed from his general
ship of the " department " of Lower Languedoc and the Ceven
nes, not a day too soon, in the autumn of the preceding year.3

1 Strangers at Dover, by G. H. Overend, a monograph full of rare and valu
able information, published in the Proceedings of the Huguenot Society of
London, iii. 129 seq. The Commons were at this time much exercised over
the failure of the king to maintain his son-in-law, the Elector Palatine.
2 Memoires du Due de Rohan, i. 213 ; Le Vassor, iv. 356, 379.
3 The " desauthorisation " of Chatillon was issued by the assembly of the
" circle " of Lower Languedoc, November 20, 1621. The document declares him
to have forfeited all charges and dignities that he has held in the name of the
churches, including the post of governor of Montpellier, and assigns sufficient
reasons. Mercure francois, vii. 686-693. Of course Chatillon replied, but his

1622 FIRST HUGUENOT WAR 221
Even the members of the political assembly that discarded him
did not know at the time, as we now know from a letter of
Louis himself, that his majesty, when he started on his original
expedition for the reduction of the Huguenots, had received
satisfactory assurances that he would encounter no obstacles in
any place to which Chatillon's influence extended.1 La Force
had done much better, and indeed had been, as we have seen,
the intrepid defender of Montauban. But when, in
The Duke de
ia Force ac- his second campaign, Louis the Thirteenth reached
Sainte Foy, the duke, tired of the contest, perhaps, I
ought rather to say, perceiving that the right moment had
arrived for making the most advantageous terms for himself, sur
rendered the place without consulting either the assembly at
La Rochelle or any of his comrades in arms. It is true that the
king received him very graciously and that Count Schomberg
exclaimed, " Sire, your nobles are all covered with tinsel, but
Monsieur de la Force is covered with honor." The world will
hardly believe him, and will recall the fact that his surrender of
one of the Huguenot hostage cities to the king secured him not
only a large pecuniary compensation for the offices which he had
once held, together with the post of governor of Sainte Foy and
Monflanquin which he betrayed, but the baton of a marshal of
France.2 As Chatillon was rewarded in the same way, the
present war had this singularity to distinguish it from every
other Avar on record, that, during the course of a campaign un
dertaken to crush the Protestants, two Protestants were raised
to one of the highest military dignities which the croAvn could
confer.3 " If by their conduct," proudly remarks Henry of
Rohan, "each of them has gained the baton of a marshal of
" Apology" contains little more than bitter and unreasonable invective. Ibid.,
viii. 86-114.
1 " Je m'acheminai en Languedoc, assure dela fidelite du sieur de Chatillon
et des lieux ou son credit s'etend." Louis XIII. to the Duke of Nevers, Novem
ber 7, 1621. MSS. Nat. Lib. Printed iu Laugel, Le due de Rohan, 123.
2 The duke probably makes the best defence of himself possible under the
circumstances in his Memoires, ii. 200 et seq. See Mercure frangois, viii. 619-
624. 3 " Cela faisoit, avec la marquis de la Force, deux reformes faits marechaux
dans une campagne entreprise contre eux." Memoires du Cardinal de Riche
lieu, 266.

THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IV
France, and by mine I have lost my governments, I am not en
vious of their good fortune. I admit that they are more prudent
than I am." l
The contest wras marked not so much by feats of prowess as
by deeds of savage cruelty. Negrepelisse was a small town on
the Aveyron, a few miles distant from Montauban. The beauty
of its situation in the midst of a district rich in fields
Nigrepeiisse of grain and vineyards claims the admiration of the
royal historiographer, not less than the symmetry of
the streets laid out as by rule, and the neatness of the build
ings. At one end stood the castle belonging to the Duke of
Bouillon, its feudal lord ; at the other the stately " temple " of
the Huguenots, constructed with the benches for the Avorship-
pers rising like the seats of an amphitheatre about the Avell-pro-
portioned pulpit of the minister.2 The toAvn had been surren
dered to the king in his last campaign, and on leaving Guyenne
and Languedoc he had placed in the castle a body of four
hundred soldiers. A little later (in December, 1621), a party of
Protestants from Montauban in open day attacked and took Ne
grepelisse, which was but negligently guarded, killing a great part
of the garrison, but sparing the lives of those who submitted.3
To reduce a town so poorly fortified was no difficult task for
Louis when he returned to the south, but the question was,
Avhat disposition he should make of the inhabitants. It is grat
ifying to read that in the council held in the rude cabin where
cardinal the king lay ill of a violent cold, the Cardinal of Retz en-
for human- tered a plea for gentleness and humanity. Great kings,
fty- he urged, should resemble majestic rivers dispensing
help and nourishment far and wide, and not violent torrents
bearing damage and disaster whithersoever they go. In nothing
1 Discours sur les raisons de la paix f aite devant Montpellier (Petitot ed. ), page
234. 2 Bernard, i. 376.
3 Charles Garrisson, in his monograph entitled " Une erreur historique : les
deux massacres de Negrepelisse en 1621 et 1622," in the Bulletin de la Soc. de
l'hist. du Prot. fr., xliii. (1894) 113-121, proves that the story of a nocturnal
surprise and massacre by the Protestants. December 14, 1621, which served as a
pretext for the historical massacre by the king's army during the next summer
(June 10 and 11, 1622), was untrue. The contemporary manuscript references
which he quotes are conclusive.

1622 FIRST HUGUENOT WAR 223
do they more closely resemble the divine grandeur than in the
benignity with which their hands dispense benefits among all
that are subject to them. But the Prince of Conde was anxious
that Louis should not follow salutary counsels, and pressed him
conde advo- *° ma^e OI such obstinate rebels as the people of Ne-
ptaryesev«- grepelisse an example of condign punishment. The
itr- king had just been hearing mass said at his bedside.
The prince took up the breviary that lay by him, and turning to
the lesson of the day — it was the ninth of June, and the lesson
included the fifteenth chapter of the first book of Samuel — read
from it the injunction of the Lord given by the mouth of Sam
uel to King Saul to destroy utterly the Amalekites, and the
punishment incurred by Saul because of his disobedience.
Louis, we are informed, while apparently approving the sugges
tions of the Prince of Conde, resolved to temper justice Avith
mercy, on the ground that the things written occurred in a time
of rigor and not of grace.1
Wherein that mercy consisted, it was difficult in the sequel to
perceive. For when the town's slight defences had been suffi
ciently battered, a general assault was ordered, and in the wild
Brutality of scene of confusion that ensued, the worst passions of
the troops. fae so]_rjjery found play in acts such as history Avould
gladly consign to oblivion. The sword spared neither age nor
sex, save as lust reserved victims for a worse fate than death.
Such of the unfortunate citizens as had found a temporary
refuge in the castle fared scarcely better than the rest. When,
being unable to defend themselves further, they asked and were
denied terms of capitulation, and were compelled to surrender
at the discretion of their assailants, those were perhaps not the
most unhappy that were hanged as having been found a second
time in arms against the king. Yet in the midst of the shame
less display of the vilest passions to which man can give the
rein, there were also some signal instances of virtuous integrity
and of pity to the weak and defenceless. The brave Pontis
has left us a touching picture of the pains that he took to
deliver a young girl, the daughter of the minister of the place,
who threw herself at his feet and implored his aid. Claude de
' Bernard's account is graphic. Hist, du Roy Louis XIII., i. 378, 379.

224 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IV
Lorraine, Duke of Chevreuse, is said to have exhibited on this
occasion a magnanimity of which there were not wanting ex
amples in the previous history of his house, source though it
had been of countless disasters to France. His purse was
opened liberally to purchase immunity from violence for such
unfortunates as he found in the hands of the troops. Roger,
one of the first gentlemen of the king's bedchamber, was able to
rescue a larger number, for seeing a band of about forty of the
feebler sex whom brutal soldiers were leading off, he was so
moved with compassion that hastening to the spot he redeemed
them all, paying to their captors as much as each asked, to one
one pistole, to others two or three pistoles. Louis, it is alleged,
had issued strict orders that the honor of captive women should
be respected. I should be glad to be able to record that he put
forth any of his royal exertions to secure the observance of his
mandate.1 Negrepelisse was consigned to the flames.
The frightful story of the massacre of the inhabitants is
relieved by one incident of a fighter character. I have already
noticed,2 that the Huguenots of this region with rough pleas
antry avenged themselves upon their neighbors for coining for
them the new and opprobrious nickname of Parpaillots, by
calling the latter after the murderer of Henry the Fourth. It
would seem that the Protestant children, from hearing the name
so freely emploj^ed, regarded it as the true designation of the
Roman Catholics. At least, the story is told that, when the
sword was sparing neither women nor their offspring at Ne
grepelisse, a company of fifteen children, trembling for their
lives, disarmed the anger of the soldiers, elsewhere so merciless,
by falling upon their knees before them and crying out : "We
will not be Parpaillots any more : Ave will be Ravaillacs ! " ,
The Avords, although not constituting a confession of faith in
the forms, was accepted as a binding promise to live "after a
Catholic fashion," and the hves of the suppliants were spared.3
1 Bernard, ubi supra, i. 380, 381. Gramond (whose account is meagre), 538.
Le Vassor, iv. 416, 417. Benoist, ii. 389. Mercure francois, viii. 637. Me
moires de Bassompierre (Michaud and Ponjoulat edition), 207. Memoires de
Pontis (same ed.), 492. Memoires du cardinal de Richelieu, 365. Bazin,
Histoire de France sous Louis XIII., ii. 193.
- Above, p. 203. 3 Mercure fran ois, viii. 220.

1622 FIRST HUGUENOT WAR 225
The fate of the town of Saint Anthonin, which next fell, was
little more tolerable. Among the ten or twelve who were sent
saint An- to the gallows, when the place surrendered at the
thomn. mercy of the king, Avas the Huguenot minister.1
Louis now pursued his way with little or no further opposi
tion to Toulouse, and thence to Carcassonne, Narbonne, and
Beziers. Finally he encamped before the walls of Montpellier.
Meanwhile he had had double good fortune on the side of
Germany. The Huguenots had at one time good reason to
expect such help as more than once came to them
mercena- from beyond the Rhine; for Ernest, natural son of
the Count of Mansfeld, and the Protestant bishop of
Halberstadt, of the House of Brunswick, with a considerable
army of horse and foot, had broken into Lorraine with the
view of an incursion into Champagne and a possible approach
to the neighborhood of the French capital itself. But the
Duke of Nevers had the tact and good fortune to divert these
dangerous visitors from France to the Netherlands. On the
other hand, Louis received a substantial reinforcement of three
thousand German soldiers, who were brought down the Rhine
to serve under his banner in Languedoc.2
Although in the negotiation into which Lesdiguieres had en
tered with the king's full approval, the very terms were agreed
upon which became the basis of the subsequent treaty of pacifi
cation,3 Louis appeared to be in no mood for making any con
cessions. In the west the affairs of the Protestants were not
promising. Soubise having lost in a single day all the fruits of
his earlier success, and Royan having been retaken by the
king's forces, the Huguenot nobleman betook himself to Eng
land. There he did not indeed succeed in inducing James the
1 Mercure francois, viii. 649. Bernard, i. 381-388, gives a very full account.
The minister, of course, figures as "a turbulent and seditious man ;" but the
circumstance that he was a Protestant minister and, especially, a monk who had
thrown aside the cowl, had more to do with his execution than his so-called
sedition. 2 Mercure francois, viii. 708-773; Bernard, i. 392-395; Le Vassor, iv. 441
seq. 3 See the documents in Dom VaissSte, Histoire du Languedoc, v. 365-372,
and especially the " Avis donne au roi par M. le connetable d'Esdiguieres sur le
fait de la paix," dated August 17, 1622.
15

226 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IV
First to assist the French Protestants, but obtained sufficient
help from the people to fit out a fleet of ten or twelve vessels
intended for the relief of La Rochelle. This armament was
completely destroyed by a storm before leaving harbor. An
army of ten or eleven regiments of infantry and ten squadrons
of cavalry, amounting in all to nearly ten thousand men, under
the command of the Count of Soissons, had been detailed to
commence the siege of La Rochelle. No signal success had
indeed as yet accompanied their arms, but a work destined to
become famous had been begun. The foundations of
near La Eo- Fort Louis were laid near La Rochelle at a spot com-
chelle. manding the long channel that forms the approach to
that city, and convenient for the protection of a stockade which,
in accordance with the plans of the engineer Pompee Targon,
it was proposed to construct in order to prevent the entrance
of ships.1
It is needless to describe at length the siege of Mont
pellier, which, if not so fiercely pressed, or so stubbornly re-
siege of sisted, as that of Montauban in the previous year, was
Montpellier. scarceiy more fortunate for the assailants. The valor
of the inhabitants was not inferior to that of the Montalbanese,
and the name of Americ, the wise and energetic first consul" of
Montpellier, is deserving of a fame quite equal to that of Du-
puy, the first consul of Montauban. He it was, who, wisely co
operating with the Duke of Rohan and with Calonges, whom
the duke had placed as his lieutenant to command the forces in
the city, fully supplied the place in advance with provisions
and arms. And his was the stout heart that directed the erec
tion upon the public square of two gallows bearing the ominous
inscription, " Here will be hanged the bearers of evil tidings
and the escarlambats ! " By the latter designation, a term pe
culiar to Languedoc, were not obscurely pointed out such pro
fessed Protestants as might prove recreant to the cause of their
rehgion.2 Before long the unsatisfactory progress made by his
'See Bernard, i. 399.
2 On the siege of Montpellier, besides the Memoires of Rohan, and the his
tories of Gramond, Bernard, etc., see particularly the monograph of P. Cor-
biere on Americ referred to below, as well as that writer's valuable Histoire de
l'Eglise reformse de Montpellier (Montpellier, 1861), chapter xiii.

1622 PEACE OF MONTPELLIER 227
arms induced the king to order the troops that had for a month
been besieging Briatexte to join him, and that brave little town
was delivered from an enemy which it had held at bay at great
odds.1 A month later the king consented to a general peace.
On the nineteenth of October, 1622, he affixed his signature to
the Declaration which gave it the force of law.
This document, commonly known as the Treaty of Mont
pellier, Avas more favorable to the Huguenots than the great
losses they had sustained during the two campaigns
pacification through which they had passed might have led one to
tier, octo- expect. Again was the Edict of Nantes confirmed,
Avith all its dependent legislation. The exercise of the
Protestant religion was restored in all places where it had pre
viously existed. The courts of justice were re-established, with
the exception of the Chamber of the Edict of Guyenne, which
the king announced his intention of removing to such place as
it might hereafter please him to designate. All the new fortifi
cations erected by the Huguenots in their towns and castles
were to be torn down 2 and hostages of the leading citizens were
to be given to this end. The old works were allowed to subsist.
This permission extended to all towns that should open their
gates to the king within a fortnight. The holding of any form
of political assemblies, " circles," or " councils," without the
king's express permission, was strictly forbidden on the pains
of treason ; but the religious gatherings, such as consistories,
colloquies, and synods for the transaction of purely ecclesias
tical business were recognized and permitted. There was the
ordinary provision for an amnesty and the restoration of all
dignities, offices, and property forfeited by reason of the war.
These were the chief points of the public document.3 Accord-
1 The siege of Briatexte is told very simply but impressively in a contemporary
account entitled, "Relation de ce qui se passa durant le siege de Briatexte,
etc.," printed in the Bulletin of the French Protestant Historical Society,
xxvii. (1878) 108-113.
2 One of the patents to which reference will be made later, preserved the
entire fortifications of La Rochelle and Montauban, and one-half of those of
Nismes, Uzes, and Milhau. Anquez, Un Nouveau Chapitre, 20.
3 Declaration du roy, sur la paix qu'il a donnee a, ses sujets de la Religion
pretendue Reformee, confirmant les precedents Edits de Pacification. Donnee
au Camp de Montpellier, le 19 Octobre, 1622. Benoist, Histoire de l'Edit de

228 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IV
ing to the pernicious usage of the times, some grants intended
to be more or less secret, and therefore affording almost of ne
cessity matter for future doubt and contention, Avere added in
the form of special patents. These documents were circulated
by the press in France at the time in a very divergent form,1
and to the present day it has been difficult to ascertain exactly
what they contained.
It is certain, hoAvever, that even Cardinal Richelieu, than
whom no other statesman might have been expected to be
better informed, has in his Memoires blundered respecting no
less important a point than the Huguenot cities of refuge.
Not only does he make the king's Declaration — Avhich says not
a word upon the subject — diminish the number of these safe
guards of the Protestants, but he asserts that the provision ran
" that La Rochelle and Montauban alone should remain cities
of security, there being no others either of security, or hostage
cities, or ' of marriage.' " 2 In point of fact, the general patent,
of even date Avith the formal Declaration, contained the follow
ing clauses pointing to a retention of all the cities of refuge
which the Huguenots had not lost in the course of the vicissi
tudes of war : " His majesty moreover grants to them, that the
places that remain in their hands from among those contained
in the list of the late king, signed and agreed upon at Rennes,
on the fourteenth of May, 1598, shall continue there for three
years, dating from this day, to serve for them as a retreat, in
case of oppression contrary to the will of his majesty, of which
places a special list shall be draAvn up ; it not being his inten
tion that the other places which he has reduced or restored to
his power,3 or which have continued obedient to him, should be
or be claimed to be places of security." 4 Rarely had a higher
Nantes, ii. (documents) 60-63. Gramond gives a summary, 571-573, as do the
Memoires de Rohan, i. 231, 232. See, also, Bernard, i. 419.
1 " Quant aux articles particuliers accordez audit sieur Due de Rohan, il s'en
est veu d'imprimez de divers faijons." Mercure francois, viii. 845. The Mer-
cure's own summary is evidently both faulty and incomplete.
5 Memoires du cardinal de Richelieu, 268.
5 "Qu'elle a rednites ou remises en son pouvoir." Under this last description
was, of course, comprehended Saumur, out of which Duplessis Mornay had been
cheated by Louis himself.
4 Anquez, Histoire des Assemblees politiques, 442.

1622 PEACE OF MONTPELLIER 229
premium been placed upon stalwart resistance to the king's
commands ; rarely has swifter punishment been meted out to
men who through cowardice betray the cause of their conscien
tious convictions.1
Contrary, therefore, to the representations that have been cur
rent, the Huguenots retained, by the treaty of Montpellier
The cities nearly one-half of their cities of refuge — they lost
of refuge, about eighty of the number — not, indeed, under the
name of " places of security," but as " a retreat in case of op
pression contrary to his majesty's will." But the tenure of the
places previously held as pledges of the king's plighted word,
Avas made uncertain because dependent upon the monarch's
good pleasure.2 In this mutation was not involved, as it was
supposed by some,3 the withdrawal of the support of the garri
sons of the places left in Huguenot hands, nor of the grant for
the support of the Protestant ministry.4
Equally contradictory are the representations respecting the
particular treatment pledged to the city of Montpellier. While
President Gramond, a historian generally well informed and
conscientious in his statements, declares that it was distinctly
provided that one-half of the consuls of the place
Terms ¦"¦
granted to should hereafter be Roman Catholics and one-half
Protestants, whereas heretofore they had all been Prot
estants,5 Benoist and other historians of the Reformed faith are
equally positive in the assertion that, beyond the demolition of
the fortifications, the king promised that no change should be
made in the existing order of things.6 This is not the first
occasion I have had to refer to the scrupulous exactness of the
author of the History of the Edict of Nantes, and I shall have
1 See Duplessis Mornay to Villarnoul, January 4, 1623. Ibid. , ubi supra.
2 " Gratuita concessione permissum, ut urbes quas in hanc diem possederant
Sectarii, mutato possessionis nomine retinerent ; transiitque in titnlum precarim
concessionis titulus urbium quas matrimonii, securitatis, quas fidei datse obsides
appellabant.'' Gramond, Hist. Gall, ab excessu Henrici IV., 573.
3 " Pensiones pastoribus, militi in urbibus Sectariis stationario, nec non et
prsefectis pendi de fisco solitse penitus abrogantur." Ibid., 573, 574.
4 Anquez, Un Nouveau Chapitre. 21. M. Anquez himself formerly believed
otherwise. See his earlier work, Histoire des Assemblees politiques, 442.
6 Gramond, 573.
¦ Benoist, ii. 408.

230 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IV
many other opportunities in future to point out statements of
his that have been called in question, but have been proved to
be correct by the discovery of documentary evidence. The
king's patent, still preserved, is found to order " that hereafter
there shall be neither governor nor garrison in Montpellier, nor
shall a citadel be built ; but," it adds, " his majesty wishes and
intends that the guard of the city shall remain in the hands of
the consuls, and there shall no innovation be made except for
the razing of the fortifications, according to the instructions that
will be given to the commissioners deputed for this purpose." 1
Of the other provisions of the king's letters patent, that Avhich
was destined to be fraught with most important results prom
ised the demolition of all the works which his armies had
erected in the neighborhood of La Rochelle, looking to the
reduction of the Protestant stronghold upon the shores of the
Ocean.2 For the relief of the leaders who in their eagerness
for success had deeply involved themselves in debt, consider
able sums of money were given or promised. Two hundred
thousand livres were to be paid to Rohan in ready money,
and six hundred thousand livres more were promised upon the
security of the revenues of the duchy of Valois, in order to in
demnify him for the loss of the governments of the province
of Poitou and the city of Saint Jean d'Angely. His brother
Soubise was to receive the same pension as before the war.
Calonges, the brave defender of Montpellier, was to be rewarded
Avith six thousand livres. Rohan was to be governor of the
cities of Nismes and Uzes.3
Both sides were sick of war. The siege of Montpellier had
indeed afforded a rare opportunity for the display of the valor
and self-devotion of the Protestants — women giving themselves
to the labors and dangers incident to their situation as cheer
fully as their brothers and husbands, donning the military cap,

1 See the text of the patent in P. Corbiere's monograph, " Americ d'Estienne
d' Americ, premier consul de la ville de Montpellier, pendant le siege de 1622,"
based on inedited documents, in the Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du Prot.
franc., xii. 219. Most of the special patents are in the National Library of
Paris. See Anquez, Un Nouveau Chapitre, 22.
8 Anquez, Un Nouveau Chapitre, 20.
3 Gramond, 573 ; Anquez, Histoire des Assemblees politiques, 389.

1622 PEACE OF MONTPELLIER 231
laying hold of the sword, and forming themselves into a regi
ment under the command of Madame de Bonneterre, whom they
elected capitainesse.1
But the same siege had also exhibited the dissensions of the
men who should have been united in the common defence.
Rohan declared, in view of the embarrassments under which
he labored and the great reserves upon which the king could
call, that were the investment of Montpellier protracted the sal
vation of the city was impossible without a miracle from
heaven.2 On the other hand, Cardinal Richelieu informs us
that disorder reigned supreme in the royal army, that discontent
was universal, and that there was an extraordinary prevalence
of disease — things that deeply touched the king and led him
the more readily to listen to propositions of peace.3 As to the
poor people of southern France, they vented their disgust at
unpopularity tne long continuance of a war in imprecations upon
of the war. the heads of those whom, according to the party and
religion to which they belonged, they held to be its guilty
authors. Some of the poetical diatribes aimed at the Hugue
nots are not destitute of a certain vigor and pungency.4
' Anne Rulman's First Narrative, in Anquez, Un Nouveau Chapitre, 13.
2 Memoires du Due de Rohan, i. 230.
3 Memoires du Cardinal de Richelieu, 268.
4 Of this character is the piece entitled " La priere du Gascon,'' in which the
refrain of each of the first twenty-one stanzas is in the form of an ecclesiastical
response in the dialect of Gascony — " Au diable soit lou huguenaux ! " Bul
letin de la Societe de l'histoire de France, i. 167-169. The peril incurred by
Montauban is alluded to. Montpellier's famous medical school will not save her ;
the king's surgeons will be more than a match for her physicians.
Si elie a de bons medecins,
Nous avons des chirurgiens
Pour tirer du sang de leurs peaux.
R. Au diable soit lou houguenaux !
The designs of Mausefert (Mansfeld) have been discovered and will be foiled.
La Rochelle will not escape. Les Rochellois seront punis
Comme nos plus grands ennemis ;
On leur donnera les fronteaux.
S. Au diable soit lou houguenaux !
Da voudront f uir par la mer,
Mais on les f era abismer

232 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IV
Avec leurs chaloupes et basteaux.
B. Au diable soit lou houguenaux !
Monsieur le conte de Soissons,
Se vengeant de leurs trahisons,
Les envoyera ad infernos.
R. Au diable soit lou houguenaux !
For a few, the least obstinate, the prayer goes up that they may be converted,
but perdition is the goal the rest should reach.
Convertissez-en quelques uns
De ceux qui sont moins importuns ;
Jettez le reste ad infernos.
R. Au diable soit lou houguenaux !

1622 THE CITADEL OF MONTPELLIER 233

CHAPTER Y
THE CITADEL OF MONTPELLIER, FORT LOUIS AND THE SECOND
HUGUENOT WAR
The restoration of peace to France was a source of universal
rejoicing. Even beyond the British Channel the friends of the
Huguenots raised their voices in gratitude to heaven that a war
at one time threatening the entire destruction of Protestantism
in a neighboring land, had come to no more disastrous a conclu
sion. The particular supporters of the crown would have been
glad to magnify the share of King James in hastening this con
summation, although that prudent monarch had contributed
only cheap advice and showed no disposition to help subjects
in arms against their lawful sovereign. And the Bishop of
Saint Andrews holding a diocesan synod at Edinburgh,
Thanksgiv- . . . . .
ing in scot- it was ordained, the Scotch historian Calderwood in
land for the . . di .
French forms us, that "in all the kirks of the diocie there

sail be publict thanksgiving of God upon the twenty-
second of November, for the peace concludit betweene the King
of France and the Protestants ; speciallie for that God had made
our king an happie instrument to bring it to passe." "But,"
adds the writer, someAvhat sceptical of the precise value of his
Britannic majesty's intercession, " it was commonlie talked, that
the King of France was driven to peace through necessitie,
having spent much money, and lost manie noblemen and gentle
men in the warre." x
From the struggle of the past eighteen months the Duke of
Rohan alone had come out with glory. Reluctant as he had
been to enter upon a war, and conscientiously as he had striven
to avert the resort to so desperate a remedy for the cure of the
political malady, it was his untiring persistence and the clear-
>' David Calderwood, History of the Kirk of Scotland, vii 565.

234 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. V
ness of his military insight that prevented an early and over-
Avhelming calamity. Especially had his sagacity in discovering
and turning to immediate account the advantage which the
Huguenots possessed in the command of the Cevennes Moun
tains, inhabited by a sturdy race of men, inured to toil and
hardship, and equally serviceable in attack and in defence, been
fully justified by the event.1 The popularity of his address,
and the manifest earnestness and disinterestedness of his char
acter, had accomplished all, perhaps, that it was in the range of
possibility to accomplish for the reconciliation of discordant ele
ments and the unification of a party rent asunder by internal
dissensions. It Avas otherwise with the assembly that sat at La Rochelle,
and concluded its existence on the nineteenth of November, af
ter a session of one year, ten months and eighteen
assembly of days.2 Instead of winning favor and gaining strength
during this long period, the assembly had steadily de
clined in influence, and, Avhat with disputes between its own
members, quarrels with the very municipality upon whose con
sent it depended for a home, and desertion of outside allies, had
lost so much ground as scarcely to count for anything in the
final settlement. Originally proud and defiant in its bearing,
in the end it accepted with eagerness the peace which Rohan
and Montpellier concluded ; and it ratified without a murmur
the selection made by the duke (for this time only, and not to
serve as a precedent) of the six candidates from whom Louis
chose Montmartin of the Noblesse and Maniald of the Tiers
Etat to be the deputies general of the churches.3 Meantime its
membership had dwindled down until there were only some
thirty persons in attendance to vote an adjournment.4
An interval of a little more than two years of comparative
quiet ensued. The insincerity soon exhibited by the court in
its professions, and some positive infractions of the edict of
pacification, sowed the seeds of future discord. So early as in
the engrossing of that document itself, the government showed

' See Laugel, Le Due de Rohan, 152, 153.
2 Anquez, Hist, des Assemblees politiques, 390.
= Ibid., 389. "Ibid., 390.

1622 THE CITADEL OF MONTPELLIER 235
that it had not forgotten its old habit of overreaching. Three
considerable alterations were made in the text of the law by the
order, or with the connivance of Herbaut, Secretary of State,
before it was forwarded to the parliaments for registration ; and
Rohan regarded these changes as so material that he hesitated for
a day or two whether he should let them pass unchallenged.1 The
administration cannot, it is true, be made responsible either for
the over-preciseness of the Parliament of Paris, which, in regis
tering, Avould not let pass any words that seemed to imply that
the Protestants could have " ecclesiastical affairs," or for the ill-
concealed hostility of the sister court at Bordeaux, which would
have it imderstood that it verified the edict without any appro
val of another religion than the Catholic.2 But the government
must certainly be held to account for the trickery of subordinate
officers which it either instigated or abetted.
The stipulations in favor of the Protestant city of Montpel
lier were explicit. There was to be no change made in respect
to it, save as to the destruction of the walls. There was to be
neither garrison nor governor. No citadel was to be
The citadel
ofMontpei- erected. Not one of these provisions was honorably
executed. The first was boldly violated, when it was
required that the citizens proceed to the election of a body of
consuls of whom the one half must be Roman Catholics. To
secure the acquiescence of the citizens in the abrogation of the
second, stratagem was used. The edict provided that, pending
the demolition of the defensive works of the cities, hostages
should be given by the inhabitants to insure against revolt or
disobedience. The citizens of Montpellier expected that at
most two or three hostages would be called for ; their surprise
was great when the king required them to deliver into his
hands a very great number, and these men of the highest stand
ing and men who had been most prominent in the recent strug
gle. Fearful for the lives of the persons selected, the influ
ential families to which they belonged and their friends were
not slow in begging his majesty to release the city from the
necessity of furnishing hostages, and to send them a garrison

1 Anquez, Un Nouveau Chapitre, 48, 49.
'Benoist, ii. 408, and documents, 63, seq. Mercure francois, ix. 436.

236 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. V
instead. Louis graciously consented, and introduced into
Montpellier the regiments of Normandy and Picardy, under the
command of Valencay, a " mestre de camp." 1 When Montpellier
had thus been induced to accept both garrison and governor, it
would yet have seemed difficult, if not impossible, to persuade
the city to petition that, in the lieu of the former, the king
Avould be pleased to order the erection of one of those hateful
instruments of oppression, a citadel, that should keep them in
perpetual fear ; — especially as, with all the delays that might be
interposed, the work of tearing down the walls must sooner or
later be ended, and the time must ultimately arrive for the gar
rison and its commander to depart. Indeed, the proper time
for the evacuation had long since passed. Rohan had again
and again called upon Louis to fulfil his engagements, first
when the court Avas at Montpellier itself, and subsequently
at different stages of the homeAvard journey. Louis had actu
ally written at the duke's suggestion an order to Valencay to
withdraw so soon as tAvo-thirds of the circuit of the walls of
Montpellier should be levelled to the ground and he should
hear that the similar work at Nismes, Castres, and Milhau was
in a good state of forwardness.2 Yet in less than eight months
from the date of the king's letter, Valencay by his shrewdness
and tact accomplished his extraordinary purpose, and brought
the people to a decision of which the royal historiographer re
cords, with evident surprise and satisfaction, that a parallel in
stance could scarcely be found anywhere in the records of popular
resolutions.3 Such of the inhabitants as were Roman Cath
olics were more than willing to have a fortress and a permanent
garrison domiciled within it. Bernard is probably not mis
taken in saying that the adherents of the Roman Church
dreaded the removal of the two regiments and hated the
very idea of a renewed supremacy of the Huguenots. Happily
for Valencay, a part of the latter were more open to persuasion
than could have been anticipated. They were weary of the
1 Bernard, Histoire du Roy Louis XIII., i. 423, 424.
2 See Anquez, Un Nouveau Chapitre, 46, 47, and the King's letter to Valencay,
Lyons, December 18, 1622, in the Appendix, 356.
3 " Ce fut une resolution de peuple qui n'en avoit gueres de semblable pour
luy estre mise en parallele." Bernard, i. 458.

1623 THE CITADEL OF MONTPELLIER 237
annoyance and the expense of entertaining, each in his own
house, the officers and soldiers of the royal army, insolent and
dangerous guests at best, who had already been there too long,
and against whose violence their wives and daughters were not
safe.1 When the right moment came, Valencay called an ex
traordinary meeting of the citv council, and offered to
Trickery of .
the govern- relieve the citizens of the soldiers quartered upon
them, if the members would consent to the erection of
a citadel for the accommodation of the garrison. He baited his
proposal with several tempting morsels — such as that the office
of first consul should be alternately held by members of the two
religions, that the Protestants should obtain by reprisal the
value of their confiscated property, that the debts contracted
by the city during the late hostilities should be borne by the
entire diocese of Montpellier, and that the salaries promised to
the Protestant ministers should be paid with regularity. FeAv
of the Protestants had been notified of the important purpose
for which the meeting was to be held, and the attendance was
consequently small ; there Avere but tAventy-six burgesses as
sembled in all. Some were absent, so it was said, not from
indifference, but from apprehension of danger. It was in vain
that a few sensible men stood out, and protested against the
new timidity of those who had not long ago so stoutly de
fended their city against the king himself. If earnestness
approaching true eloquence could have awakened from their
delusion men whom the hope of securing immediate material
advantage had made willing to fall in with Valencay' s plan, then
the address of Saint Esprit Audiffret might have effected this
end. For he set forth, in forcible words full of native fire, the
almost inconceivable folly of a town which, to rid itself of the
present annoyance of the officers and soldiers of a regiment
' "Or, depuis que les regiments de Picardie et de Normandie avaient ete re-
Cus dans Montpellier, on ne pouvait, de l'aveu de 1'evSque de cette ville, etre
assure de la vertu des femmes et des filles." Anquez, Un Nouveau Chapitre, 93.
The growing license of the soldiers is referred to by Gramond, who records
without contradiction the complaints made by the citizens to the king. They
alleged the violence of the soldiers of the garrison, with whom just and unjust
measures were regarded as indifferent; they said " ferro ad jugulum adacto
virgines ad stuprum cogi, matronas adulterio pollui." Hist. Galliae ab excessu
Henrici IV., 590.

238 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. V
quartered upon it, possibly for a brief time, should consent to
the permanent establishment of an armed force in a fortress
commanding it for all time — as though, said he, in order to
draw a thorn from the foot one should be desirous of sending an
arrow into one's own heart. So in the fable had the frogs peti
tioned for a king.1 But the majority, swayed by fear of oppos
ing the governor, or by the desire to please him, accepted his
wily suggestions, greatly to the disgust of all their coreligion
ists elsewhere. It may well be believed that Valencay was not
slow in communicating tidings of his good fortune to the court,
nor the court dilatory in sending orders for the instant com
mencement of the projected citadel and for the most vigorous
prosecution and completion of the work before the inhabitants
might have time to repent of their bargain. Despite the pro
test of Maniald, the deputy-general, and the remonstrances of
several towns in Languedoc, the citadel which was to insure
permanently the predominance of the Roman Catholic party
was nearly completed by the close of the ensuing year (1624).
Valencay's trick robbed French Protestantism for all time of
one of its three principal bulwarks in the south. The suicidal
petition of the Protestant city of Montpellier, very humbly sup
plicating the king, notwithstanding, his promise of the contrary,
to have a fortress built at one of the corners of the town, has
fortunately come down to us. It merits to be preserved for all
time as one of the rarest curiosities of Huguenot history.
Nor is it undeserving of notice that, as if conscious of their
own pusillanimity and the betrayal of the common interests, its
authors inserted in the document a proviso that their action
should not serve as a precedent as against the other churches of
the kingdom, and uttered a timid suggestion that his majesty
might, if it Avere his good pleasure, make compensation to those
churches, whenever any suitable occasion offered, for the volun
tary surrender on the part of Montpellier of the privilege ac
corded to it by the king's patent.2

1 Laugel, in his excellent biography, Le Due de Rohan, 159-163, has re
produced the remarkable address of Audiffret almost entire.
2 " Sa Majeste pent, si e'est son bon plaisir, compenser cette faculte avec ses
bienfaits aux autres eglises du royaume, lorsque les occasions s'en offriront

1623 INFRACTIONS OF THE PEACE 239
It was a cleverly executed trick, for the success of which,
properly speaking, the whole body of the Huguenots was not
responsible, but which may serve the purpose of exhibiting with
Royai com- sufficient clearness the insincerity and finesse with
missionere. which they Avere continually treated. It is needless to
multiply examples. In dealing Avith the Protestants the old
policy of suspicion and duplicity was kept up. Now for the
first time a royal declaration was issued (Fontainebleau, the
seventeenth of April, 1623), providing that no ecclesiastical
gathering of the Reformed should be held composed of other
members than ministers and elders, and none at Avhich there
should not be present a royal commissioner belonging to that
communion. The avowed purpose of the law was that the com
missioner might see and report to the king whether any matters
other than those permitted were introduced for consideration.1
A long list of grievances under twenty-two articles presented to
the king by the new deputies-general, Montmartin and Maniald,
was answered article by article, after the old fashion, sometimes
with a curt refusal, more frequently with an evasive reply,
scarcely ever with a frank concession. It would, for example,
have been the dictate of ordinary justice to grant the request
made by the Protestants residing in the capital, for an
of charen- appropriation of money to rebuild their "temple" at
Charenton, burned by the Parisian mob in its anger at
hearing of the death of the Duke of Mayenne, during the siege
of Montauban. For whatever their brethren elsewhere might
have done, the Huguenots of Paris had certainly obeyed his
majesty's orders to the letter and by their loyalty merited his
promised protection. They received for all answer to their peti
tion the marginal note appended to their request : " His majesty
commits to the care and diligence of the petitioners the rebuild-

. . . Auxquels [articles secrets, declarations et brevets] iis n'entendent pre-
judicier en autre chose, ni que la presente deliberation puisse etre tiree a con
sequence contre les autres eglises de ce royaume.'' The document is in the
MSS. of the National Library, and the most essential portion is printed by
Anquez, Un Nouveau Chapitre, Appendix, 358. See ibid., 91-94, Bernard,
Hist, du Roi Louis XIII., i. 457, 458, and Benoist, Hist, de l'fidit de Nantes, ii.
426, 427.
1 Text in Mercure francois, ix. 462-64 ; Benoist, ii. (documents) ; 73, 74.

240 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ca V
ing of the temple to which reference is made." It was so of
the rest.1
Of infractions of the treaty of peace the name was legion.
In the endeavor to prevent, or to put an end to these infractions,
the Duke of Rohan did not forget the part of leader of his op
pressed coreligionists Avhich had rather been forced upon him
by the stress of circumstances, than assumed by his voluntary
act. Thus it Avas that, in February, 1623, he visited Montpellier
in order to prevent the consummation of Valencay's audacious
scheme of compelling the citizens to elect a body of consuls
half of whom should belong to each communion. Valencay,
hearing that Rohan had been invited to come, forbade him to
enter Montpellier ; he even went so far as to order the duke's
arrest when no notice was taken of the prohibition. Valencay
Avas, indeed, soon commanded to release his noble prisoner, but
meantime he had effected his unlawful purpose.2
The letters which Henry of Rohan wrote to Louis the Thir
teenth remonstrating upon the course of affairs are among the
best that emanated from his truly virile pen, and show that he
could wield that instrument in as masterly a manner as the
e h n's 1 1 swor(l- In one letter in particular — no unfavorable
infection's example of his skill in the epistolary art — he dwelt
of the peace. chiefly upon the re- establishment of the "chambre
mi-partie " of Castres, upon the demolition of the Fort Louis at
the gates of La Rochelle, and upon the Avithdrawal of the gar
rison from Montpellier. And he begged Louis, at the start, to
pardon him if, instead of resorting to the style of a servile flat
terer, he adopted a style taught him by the frankness of a faith
ful servant. " I assure myself," said he, " that you will not
regard it as a disagreeable thing to be prayed, to be solicited, to
be pressed, even to be challenged to the observance of the
peace which you were pleased to grant us." Frankly and touch-
ingly did he set forth the despair which the prospect of seeing
1 The text of the ' ' cahier-gene>al " of the Protestants and of the replies given
thereto by the king in council, March 4, 1623, are in the Mercure francois, ix.
449, 461, and in Benoist, ii. (documents) 64-72.
2 " Recit des causes de la detention du Due de Rohan dans Montpellier." «.
contemporary account, in the Mercure francois, ix. 432 seq. Memoires du Due
de Rohan, i. 245.

1623 INFRACTIONS OF THE PEACE 241
the tribunal erected for their protection removed to the inimical
town of LTsle, was engendering in the minds of the Protestants
of Languedoc. They saw in this transfer the loss of all secu
rity for life or property. " All conditions in life are tolerable to
men, hoAvever scanty the resources may be, if only they be
secure. But nature teaches man to protect his life and his
property by all sorts of lawful means. The acts of injustice
experienced, since the peace, at Toulouse and in all your Cath
olic seats of justice of this province, have been so frequent that
but for the hope of the re-establishment of the chamber, the
people would not have waited so long to throw themselves at
your feet and beg you to make provision for their safety. This
they now do, and I am confident that your majesty will grant
their request, by giving them justice in a place where they can
demand it." i
And how did Louis the Thirteenth reply to these noble re
monstrances of a kinsman in whose veins coursed as much of the
blood royal of France as ran in his own veins — a kinsman
whose utterances were as similar in tone to those of Henry the
Fourth as those of Henry's son were in the strain of those of
his Italian mother. In an epistle betraying in every
courteous line the annoyance he felt, he plainly informed the
Duke of Rohan that he would have none of his of
ficious meddling in the matter of the observance of his pledged
word. " Albeit I am willing to believe that your devotion to
my service gives you the liberty to set forth to me what you
claim should be done in this matter, yet I desire you to know
that I am so religiously determined to maintain the things
which I have promised, and so open to hear the complaints of
my subjects, that I am better pleased to hear the remonstrances
that may be made by means of their petitions or by their living
A'oice, than through any other medium." Yet, although he did
not regard himself as called upon to answer the duke's letter,
Louis condescended to tell him that he had already sent out
commissioners throughout the provinces to see to the execution
of the peace, and that, at the urgent request of the judges of the
¦Letter of Rohan to Louis XIII., June 8, 1623. MSS. National Library.
Printed in Auquez, Un Nouveau Chapitre, Appendix, 359-361.
16

242 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. V
" chambre mi-partie," he had appointed its next sessions to be
held in Beziers, a large town of convenient access, with a Prot
estant population and with Protestant Avorship. He even vol
unteered the information that having learned that the Duke of
Guise, in command of some vessels despatched to the Levant,
had touched at the Isle de Re (near which he was driven by stress
of the weather) because he had heard of some movements in
jurious to his royal master's service, his majesty had immedi
ately sent to wrarn the duke not to employ his troops in any un
dertaking of a revolutionary character, and indeed had bidden
him to return at once. But the refrain of the entire letter, to
which the writer returned, was that the king had no need of
such frequent reminders, and that the direct representations of
the Protestant deputies-general had a more agreeable sound to
the royal ear.1
All this was very plausible ; but unfortunately the king's
promises were as negligently observed as his open commands
Avere boldly disobeyed. It Avas one thing to hear that
dersdts- an order had been issued bv Louis the Thirteenth —
whether it referred to the fort that threatened La Ro-
chelle's safety or the removal of the troops from Montpellier or
from wretched Negrepehsse — and quite another to have good
ground for confidence that the thing ordered Avould be done.
Of the relief of the last-named place the Duchess of Bouillon
wrote at one time to her sister : " Word has indeed come to us
from Paris that the king has commanded it, but men are not
prompt in rendering obedience to the king, Avhen that obedience
turns to the advantage of those of the Protestant religion." 2
The most signal illustration of this characteristic feature of
the reign of which I Avrite, was in connection with the offensive
. work near La Rochelle to which the name Fort Louis
Fort Louis, i t i • .
had been given in honor of the reigning monarch.
Not much over half a mile from the walls of the city, and but a
few hundred feet from the northwestern shore of the bay lead-

1 " Letter du roi au due de Rohan pour lui def endre son entremise sur l'exeeu-
tion de l'edit de paix." Saint Germain en Laye, July 13, 1623. Vaissete,
Histoire du Languedoc, v. (preuves) 372 seq.
'' The Duchess of Bouillon to the Duchess of La Tremouille, Sedan, March 6,
1623. Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du Prot. franc., xxiii. (1874) 355.

1622 FORT LOUIS 243
ing up to the entrance of the inner port, was an eminence which
the engineer of the Count of Soissons, Pompee Targon, pointed
out to him as the best place for the erection of a fort intended
to annoy the besieged. Here, accordingly, a few months before
the conclusion of peace, the foundations of a quadrangle had
been laid, with bastions projecting from the four corners. At
first the attention of the Rochellese was diverted by a ruse to
another spot, and the builders saw with satisfaction the waste
of many a cannon-shot upon the place where a feint of activity
had been made. Subsequently discovering their mistake, the
Rochellese attacked the rising work, and, in a sortie, overturned
what had been laboriously reared. But in the ensuing months
this damage was repaired, and substantial progress Avas again
made. When the Count of Soissons, receiving orders from the
king to publish the peace concluded before Montpellier, dis
missed the rest of his army, he left the regiment of Champagne
with its full complement of twenty companies and fully provi
sioned, as a garrison of the incipient fort, and appointed the
" mestre de camp," or colonel, Pierre Arnauld, to take charge of
it. No better selection could have been made. Pierre Arnauld,
Amauid du better known as Arnauld du Fort, by which designa-
Fort- tion he has passed into history, although he assumed
the profession of arms late in life, was a soldier by temperament
and by natural endowment. He was sagacious, patient, ener
getic, inflexible in the pursuit of his object. He treated his
troops with a firmness not unmingled with benignity, and by
personal magnetism of character succeeded in bringing them to
submit to a discipline almost as systematic and rigorous as the
discipline of the Roman legions of antiquity, after the model of
which he desired to form them. He at once set himself to the
completion of what Targon had well begun. He had been
about a month in command, when the Rochellese made their
appearance with an order from the king for the destruction of
the work upon which he was engaged. It seems to have been
the letter which Louis wrote from Lyons, when urgently pressed
by the Duke of Rohan and the deputies of La Rochelle to fulfil
his engagements.1 The terms could scarcely have been more
1 Memoires du Due de Rohan, i. 244.

244 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. V
explicit. The king, satisfied that the Rochellese had under
taken to perform their duty under the treaty, professed himself
resolved to discharge his own obligations, by effecting the demo
lition of the forts erected in the neighborhood of their city, and,
in particular, the fort lying nearest to their walls. He com
manded Arnauld, within eight days after the new Huguenot
fortifications on the islands of Oleron and Re should have been
levelled with the ground, to begin the destruction of the forts in
question. Arnauld was to prosecute the work of destruction
Avith the utmost diligence until it should be completed.1
Unfortunately, the document which the Rochellese handed to
Arnauld was not the original, but a transcript of the king's let
ter. The officer received it with a smile and answered their re
quest with a jest. " This copy," he said, "is a sufficient warrant
for the razing of the copy of the fort, not of the place itself." 2
The crestfallen delegates were compelled to retire without ac
complishing their purpose, while Arnauld applied himself with
unabated vigor to his self-appointed task. It cannot be affirmed
with positiveness that what the Duke of Rohan asserts is true,
namely, that Louis wrote Arnauld another letter of the same
date with that of which a transcript had just been submitted to
him by the Rochellese, and that in this second despatch his
majesty gave him secret instructions to disregard the commands
contained in the first. But all the circumstances of the case
point to this supposition ; neither Gramond, president of the
Parliament of Toulouse, nor the loyal historian of La Rochelle,
denounces as false and calumnious, or even rejects as improb
able, a report so injurious to the French monarch's honor.3
A week later the Rochellese again presented themselves, this
' Louis XIII., to Pierre Arnauld, Lyons, December 18, 1622. MSS. National
Library of Paris. Printed in Anquez, Un Nouveau Chapitre, Appendix, 358,
359, where the date is erroneously given as 1623.
1 Mercure francois, ix. 438.
" " Mais ledit Arnaud en recut une autre de mime date, qui lui ordonnoit de
n'en rien faire." Memoires du Due de Rohan, i. 244. " Arnauld n'executa pas
les ordres du prince, soit qu'il eut recu des ordres secrets de la part de ses minis-
tres, soit qu'il fut persuade que les interets de l'6tat exigeoient que le fort sub-
sisfcit.'- Ancere. Histoire de la ville de La Rochelle. ii. 193. " Arnaldus pro-
crastinare, verbis obscuris et inflexis illudere oppidanis, incertum sponte, an
jussus." Gramond, Hist. Gall, ab excessu Henrici IV., 590.

1623 FORT LOUIS 245
time bringing with them the original of the king's letter.
Arnauld on reading it declared himself altogether disposed
to obey its injunctions, but said that he must have a good
and valid discharge, and for this he must communicate with
the court. Pending the settlement of this matter, it was not
hard for him to start a host of new difficulties, and mean
time he kept his troops busily at work, night and day, and
without intermission on Sundays and feast-days. The walls,
which were but Ioav when he entered them and scarcely fur
nished shelter for the occupants, grew apace. The indignant
Rochellese getting little satisfaction either from him or at court,
took matters into their own hands. A storm fortuitously put
them in possession of a vessel laden, Ave are told, with two
thousand great stakes for a palisade which Arnauld contem
plated erecting. The Rochellese declined to give them over
to him, alleging that it was no part of their duty to permit the
further strengthening of a Avork that subsisted despite the king's
orders. But Arnauld soon brought them to terms ; for, reckless
of consequences, or relying upon the secret instructions of the
king for immunity from punishment, he boldly sent out parties
of soldiers who seized a great herd of cattle belonging to the
citizens, and took a number of prisoners of note whom he re
fused to release until the restoration of the cargo had been
effected. Nor did the Rochellese fare better with their just
complaints when the commissioners arrived for the execution
of the peace in Poitou and Saintonge. The commissioners sent
to a province were always, as we shall see, two in number, a
Roman Catholic of prominence and sagacity and a Protestant
not infrequently of inferior rank and little force, selected be
cause of his easy-going and docile character, the choice being
generally left to his colleague.1 From such envoys the court
could depend upon obtaining the kind of information that it
desired. In the present instance the king had announced his in
tention to defer action respecting Fort Louis until the commis
sioners should have made their report.2 When called upon by

1 Benoist, ii. 432.
' Answer made March 4, 1623, to the fourth article of the petition presented
to Louis XIII. Ibid. ii. (doc.) 66.

246 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. V
these functionaries to justify himself, Arnauld answered the
Huguenot complaints with the pertness and effrontery of the
bully who knows that he has no retribution to fear. He affected
to understand that the two chief grievances alleged Avere that
he kept his soldiers perpetually at work even on feast-days, and
that he had called upon the neighboring parishes to assist him.
The latter allegation he denied in toto ; the former he met by
maintaining that he was merely training the troops under his
command as he would do were he in Paris itself, and he
laughed at such a complaint in the mouths of men who do not
rest even on the anniversary of Christ's birth, unless it happen
to fall upon a Sunday. As for himself, he pretended that he
had reared no works but such as were needful to shield his
troops from the cannon — twenty-two in number — that frowned
upon them from the walls of La Rochelle. He dwelt upon the
care he had taken to prevent his soldiers from harming even
the cattle of the Rochellese, and asserted that it was not the
damage they did, but the sole fact that they were there, that
aroused the animosity of the citizens. Why then, he insolently
asked, did they not hasten to satisfy the king and accomplish
the peace, in order that the king might be able to expedite the
razing of the fort and forAvard to him his necessary discharge?
Of course the Rochellese wanted the destruction of that which
diminished the means at their disposal for plunging France
anew into confusion, while they themselves had not returned
the ships of Nevers, nor fully re-established the Roman Catholic
religion within their walls, nor ceased from daily marching to
their work to the beat of the drum and Avith flags flying, nor
taken doAvn the trophies displayed in the town-hall, in the shape
of flags captured from the enemy, nor removed from the top of
the walls the ghastly heads of men executed because of their
fidelity to their monarch, but were receiving and expecting to
receive powder and cannon from the Netherlands and were daily
laying in store wheat and provisions of all kinds.1
While Arnauld thus boldly worked on, regardless of the king's

1 See the full account in the Mercure francois, ix. 438, 439, and briefer ac
counts in Bernard, i. 456, and Gramond, 590. See also Anquez, Un Nouveau
Chapitre, 95 seq.

1624 FORT LOUIS 247
published commands and the promises the king had made, and
incited by the prospect of the baton of a marshal of France as
the ultimate reward of his apparent disobedience, there was lit
tle to encourage the Huguenots to look for fair treatment at the
hands of Louis the Thirteenth. When Arnauld, succumbing to
disease, the direct result of his exposure and incessant labors,
fell sick and died (September, 1624), their hopes revived for a
moment. The relief Avas short-lived. Jean de Saint-Bonnet,
better known by his territorial designation as Sieur de Toiras,
succeeded to the post left vacant by Arnauld, and Louis the
Thirteenth who, to use a contemporary historian's words, had up
to that day given doubtful answers, now" distinctly announced
his determination that Fort Louis should stand.1
The Protestants were not believed. And yet they spoke the
truth respecting both Fort Louis and Montpellier when, by the
lips of their deputy-general, they said to Louis the Thirteenth :
"For a single fort which your majesty shall tear down, you Avill
build more than a hundred thousand forts in the hearts of your
subjects. For one garrison of mercenaries that you disband,
you Avill find entire legions, and armies of volunteers to serve
against the enemies of your state." 2
Even in their religious convocations the Protestants felt the
effects of the jealousy of the government. The twenty-fourth
of their national synods, meeting at Charenton, in the
T^'1 tioni.1
synod of month of September, 1623, was the first to experience
(September, the galling restraint imposed by the king's recent dec
laration, through the presence of a royal commis
sioner.3 It was true that Auguste Galland was not only a Prot
estant, but a man of broad literary and antiquarian acquirements,
whose character and reputation entitled him to respect. But

1 Gramond, 591 ; Bernard, i. 457; Mercure francois, x. 784 ; Arcere, Hist.
de la ville de la Rochelle, ii. 200 ; Anquez, Un Nouveau Chapitre, 101 : "lis en-
voyerent les uns et les autres vers le Roi ; et enfin le courage d'Arnauld prevalut
de la foiblesse des ministres, qui de prime abord lui avoient mande qu'il fit de-
molir cette place." Memoires du Cardinal de Richelieu, i. 273.
2 Harangue du sieur Maniald, l'un des Deputez gen6raux des Eglises Reformees
de France. S. Germain en Laye, September 14, 1623. Mercure francois, ix.
692. 3 Above page 239.

248 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. V
inasmuch as he was there for the express purpose of watching
that the synod did not transcend its powers and treat of any
matters that were not purely ecclesiastical, his very presence was
an insult to the body upon whose deliberations he was thrust.
Nor was this the only point which gave offence to the Protes
tants. The government soon took occasion to signify the king's
objection to the employment of any but native-born Frenchmen
as pastors in the Protestant churches, as well as the king's dis
approval of action taken by the preceding national synod, held
at Alais, in pursuance of which a declaration was required of all
members of provincial synods to the effect that they received
and approved the canons of the Synod of Dort, held in a foreign
country. If his majesty protected the Reformed religion, he
wanted it well understood that he did not intend to be the pa
tron of a new and strange creed. The point was easily and sat
isfactorily met by the Synod of Charenton, which, while remov
ing from the formula any reference to the conclusions adopted
at Dort, reaffirmed the views of the famous synod relating to
election and the connected doctrines at great length and in
language that could by no possibility be construed as favoring
the tenets of Arminius. As regards the other matter, when
it had been explained to the king that if all persons of foreign
birth should be deprived of their pastoral charges, a very great
number of the churches must of necessity remain destitute of
spiritual leaders, he expressed himself content that the rule
should apply to the future alone, and that the present incum
bents should not be disturbed. It is not unworthy of notice,
that, during the course of the sessions, Louis recognized the
necessity of future " political assemblies " of the Protestants, to
be held with royal approval, by sending to the synod a letter
strictly forbidding that any ministers, save the pastors of the
city where they were held, should sit as members.1
Meantime the political power in France had at last fallen into
the hands of a statesman who was to hold it for the rest of his
natural life, that is, to within about five months of the close of

'Louis XIII. to the Commissioner, St. Germain en Laye, September 25, 1623.
Aymon, Tous les Synodes, ii. 270. This collection contains the full account of
the meeting, which lasted from September 1 to October 1, pages 233-324.

1621 CARDINAL RICHELIEU 249
the reign of the present monarch. The contemptible Marshal
d'Ancre and the upstart Constable of Luynes were succeeded,
at a very brief interval, by a favorite far abler than either,
from whom the last nineteen years of Louis the Thirteenth
. have humorously, but not inaptly, been styled " the
of cardinal Reign of Cardinal Richelieu." Luynes, as we have seen,
Richelieu." _. " . , „ J ' '
died just after the unfortunate issue of the siege of
Montauban, for which public opinion held him chiefly answera
ble, happy in this, at least, that by his decease he forestalled the
dire results of his waning favor with a fickle sovereign. This
was in the month of December, 1621. In September of the en
suing year, while with the king's army in the camp before Mont
pellier, Richelieu, until now merely Bishop of Lucon, received
notice that the cardinal's hat had been conferred upon him bv
Pope Urban the Eighth. In April, 1624, he was called to the
royal council — if we may believe his own assertions, not only
contrary to his desire, but in spite of vigorous protests, based
upon the slenderness of his health and upon other considera
tions J — and entered upon the course that speedily led to the
complete control of the government. It does not delong to this
history to describe the intrigues, so well characterized in the
Memoirs of Rohan, by which the Marquis of La Vieuville sup
planted Chancellor Sillery, by whom he had been advanced to
the Superintendence of the Finances ; nor the artifices by which,
in turn, La Vieuville was not only disgraced but thrown into
prison, to give place to Cardinal Richelieu. " So faithfully,"
quietly observes Rohan, " do all these favorites serve one
another." 2 Meantime the changes in the policy and tendencies
of the courts of western Europe were as sudden and difficult to
follow as the changes of a kaleidoscope. The adventurous
Prince of Wales, having passed through France in disguise, had
crossed the Pyrenees before Louis had heard of his advent, and
unexpectedly presented himself at the court of Madrid, in com
pany vrith the Duke of Buckingham, as a suitor for the hand of
the Infanta. His welcome was a warm one, and when, after a
prolonged stay, he returned to England, the preliminaries of his
1 Memoires du Cardinal de Richelieu, i. 286.
* Memoires du Due de Rohan, i. 249-251.

250 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. V
marriage with the Spanish princess were fully settled, and little
remained but to secure the dispensation which, in view of the
extraordinary concessions offered by James the First, Rome Avas
not unwilling to grant.1 And yet barely was Prince Charles
back upon his native island, when his own ardor and that of his
father sensibly cooled. It was not many months, before to the
Spanish alliance succeeded a matrimonial arrangement accord
ing to which Henrietta, the daughter of Henry the Fourth and
sister of Louis the Thirteenth, was to become the bride of the
future unfortunate king of England. The change indicated a
reversal of the political affinities of France, which, from looking
on with indifference, under Sillery and Puisieux, while Spain
was strengthening itself by a new connection across the British
Channel, had begun under La Vieuville to cast about for means
of adding to the resources of the states that were opposed to the
overgrown power of the Hapsburgs. While a member of the
council under La Vieuville, Cardinal Richelieu had strongly
supported the policy advocated by his chief, and after his own
accession to the post of leading statesman, he followed out and
developed the plans that had but partially been put into execu-
His great tion. How far the grand projects to which he devoted
projects. his subsequent exertions had as yet been matured in
his mind is perhaps uncertain ; but that he very soon con
ceived the idea of the threefold mission of his life we can
not doubt. A clergyman to whom ecclesiastical matters were
of little concern in comparison with affairs of state, a cardinal
and a prince of the Roman Church who subordinated the inter
ests of that organization to the interests of the country over
which he was placed, he had linked his own ambitious designs
to schemes for making France a power of the first magnitude in
Europe, and for compassing this end by rendering the royal
authority in the first instance supreme in France. Thus it was
that his line of conduct inevitably led to a close alliance be
tween the monarchy of the very Christian King and the Protes
tant princes of the German Empire, as well as Avith the United
Netherlands not only Protestant in religion but republican in
form of government ; while it placed him in opposition to the
1 Ranke, History of the Popes, 300, 301.

1625 CARDINAL RICHELIEU 251
pope and the most strongly Roman Catholic nations of Europe.
But, at the same time, it brought him at home into a direct con
flict with the great feudatories whose insubordination weakened
the king's hands, tending to make a successful foreign war im
possible, and with the Huguenots, whose formidable political and
military organization conflicted with his conception of national
unity by presenting the appearance of an imperium in imperio.
It is only with the latter conflict that we have here to do.
Open hostilities, which had been rather suspended than ter
minated by the Treaty of Montpellier, were resumed, after an
interval of a little over two years, in the month of
war— janu- January, 1625. The war has been ascribed to the
ill-regulated ambition of the Duke of Rohan and the
inconsiderate restlessness of his brother Benjamin de Soubise.
It was due primarily to neither.
If, as the great Athenian orator seems to imply, those may
with propriety be said to be the objects of offensive warfare
against whom the means necessary for a successful assault have
long been in process of preparation, then certainly the Hugue
nots must not be regarded as having begun hostilities ; unless,
indeed, it be in the sense that he may be styled the originator
of strife who places himself in the attitude of repelling unau
thorized aggression. The cause of the second Huguenot war
under the reign of Louis the Thirteenth was simply, as the Duke
of Rohan puts it, the infraction of the preceding peace at every
point.1 So defiant a disregard of obligation argued a settled
purpose to deal treacherously with the Huguenots. The king's
flatterers might call him Louis the Just, and the monarch
might complacently appropriate the ill-earned epithet ; but he
who had cheated De Salles out of the possession of Navarrenx,
he who had tricked Duplessis Mornay out of the town and
castle of Saumur, he who upheld Valencay in his knavish arti
fices for introducing a garrison, and erecting a citadel, and alter
ing the consulate at Montpellier, he who while ostentatiously
ordering by letter the destruction of Fort Louis, to which his
word was pledged, encouraged the officer in charge underhand to
proceed with its erection, might be esteemed an honorable man

Apologie du Duo de Rohan sur les derniers troubles. Memoires, i. 447.

252 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. V
among saArages Avith whom craft passes current for the highest
of manly virtues, but can scarcely be regarded as deserving to
be accorded that title at the hands of civilized men.
The Duke of Rohan asserts — and there is no reason to ques
tion his veracity — that, at the time the war broke out, his do
mestic affairs bound him only to the continuation of
Rohan averse . . . . . .. n-j.ii.ii £
to a recourse peace ; his persecutions had ceased with tne loss ot
'"" favor of Chancellor Sillery and M. de Puisieux, and
good security had been given him for the payment of the
sums promised to him as a compensation for the loss of his
governments of Poitou and Saint Jean d'Angely. While his
personal interests thus pointed to quiet and repose, the Rochel
lese had recourse to him in relation to the naval equipments
in progress at Blavet, which were known to be intended for the
further prosecution of the blockade and reduction of their city.
His brother, the impetuous Soubise, came to see him and sub
mitted the daring project which will next receive our attention,
undertaking to execute it at his own expense and at the risk
of his life, with the sole condition that, if successful, Rohan
should assist him, if he failed, Rohan should disclaim all
responsibility. " I scarcely know any one of my censors," sub
sequently wrote the duke, " that Avould have consented to take
such a risk. The perfidy of some of the Protestants rendered it
very perilous, and was the cause that it was but half successful." J
Upon the southern side of the peninsula of Brittany, the
river Blavet empties into an estuary and port of the same
name, one of the largest and most convenient of French harbors,
and particularly well adapted to serve either as a
starting-point for expeditions directed toward the
Bay of Biscay and Spain, or as a base of attack from that
quarter. It Avas here that, in 1590, Philip the Second landed
an army of five thousand troops, who, with the help of the
Duke of Mercosur, took Hennebon, at the head of the harbor,
described by Froissart, as in his time " the strongest town,
without comparison, in all Brittany." The Spanish king re-
luctanctly evacuated Blavet, after a possession of eight years,
in accordance with the treaty of Vervins. The narrow outlet
1 Memoires, i. 447, ubi supra.

1625 SECOND HUGUENOT WAR • 253
was provided with a small fort, erected upon a tongue of land
projecting farthest toward the sea, by Francis, Duke of Bur
gundy, second of the name, and this fulfilled the double pur
pose of a light-house for mariners and a defence of the harbor.
The now important dockyards of Lorient, whose site is a few
miles up the estuary at the mouth of the river Scorff, were not
yet in existence ; for it was not until about forty years after
the date of the events that I am describing that the " Com-
pagnie des Indes Orientales " selected the spot as the place of
departure for its wide-spread commercial ventures, and gave to
it the name of " the Port of the East "— " Le port de l'Orient." 1
The plan of Soubise aimed at nothing less than seizing by a
bold moA'e the vessels that had for months been in course of
souWse at- preparation for an expedition against La Rochelle, and
seSe'the'roy- leading them off in triumph to the Huguenot city.
ai fleet. Having with great secrecy equipped five small ships
the young Rohan started from the Isle de R6, early in January,
1625, haA'ing Avith him the meagre force of three hundred sol
diers and one hundred sailors to man his craft. Unfortunately
the treachery of one Noailles, in whom he reposed entire confi
dence, prematurely disclosed the object of his movement to the
court and made the execution more difficult. In spite of this,
however, Soubise persisted in his plan. He boldly sailed into
the port of Blavet and attacked the vessels, beginning with the
largest, La Vierge, carrying eighty guns. Boarding it, sword in
hand, at the head of his men, he secured possession of this ship
first, and afterwards of all the rest. He was less successful in
his attempt to master the fort at the entrance of the harbor, into
which by the traitor's advice a reinforcement of men had been
thrown. Meantime the governor of the province, the Duke of
Vendome, natural son of Henry the Fourth, had taken vigorous
steps to shut up and capture the venturesome Soubise in the
port of Blavet — the king's flatterers began about this time to
call it the Port Louis, a name which the fort and the adjacent

1 Bernard, Histoire du Roy Louis XIII., i. 461 ; The Huguenots and Henry
of Navarre, ii. 273, 421 ; Froissart, i. chap. 67. The grant of territory in this
part of Brittany, including the site of Lorient, was made to the company in
1666. See Martin, Histoire de France, xiv. 660.

254 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. V
settlement have retained until this day — and for this purpose
had gathered a force of two hundred of the Breton gentry and
two thousand common soldiers. By way of preparation he had
suspended a great iron chain and a cable of the thickness of a
man's thigh across the narrow entrance. This entrance was,
moreover, commanded by the guns, fifteen or sixteen in number,
of the neighboring fort.1
No one that heard of Soubise's bold measure and of the
plight in AA'hich he now was, doubted for a moment that he was
lost beyond hope of salvation.2 Hence, with a haste
The Huffue-
not leaders that amounted to precipitation, the Huguenot leaders
and. cities
disclaim re- vied with one another in disclaiming all responsibility
for Soubise's actions. On the twenty-fifth of January,
or just eight days after the surprise of Blavet, the tAvo deputies-
general at Paris, Montmartin and Maniald, handed in an excul
patory paper. They claimed to act in the name of the churches
of the entire kingdom, and by advice of Marshals La Force and
Chatillon and of the consistory of the church of Paris, as well
as in accordance Avith the express instructions of the city of
Montauban, in disavoAving all Protestants that by arms or other-
Avise should disturb the tranquillity of the realm. The noble
men above mentioned and La Tremouille also wrote for them
selves. Nismes, Uzes, some places in the Cevennes, and La
Rochelle itself, signified, in one way or another, their disappro
bation.3 It had been better had they waited a little longer. The

1 Memoires du Due de Rohan, i. 252 ; Bernard, i. 463. The figures of these
two authorities are irreconcilable, the former giving Soubise, as in the text, but
three hundred fighting men, the latter, four or five times that number. Mer
cure francois, x. 849, 850. Compare Anquez, Un Nouveau Chapitre, 123 seq.;
Martin, Histoire de France, xii. 475.
2 Benoist, ii. 433.
3 " Desadveu et protestation des deputez generaux des Eglises pretendues re-
formees de France contre ceux de leur dite Religion qui par armes ou autremeiit
voudroient troubler la tranquillitS publique." Paris, January 21, 1625. Mer
cure francois, x. 858-S60. The same collection contains, x. 860, 861, a letter
of the Protestant inhabitants of Uzes, and the king's declaration against Soubise
and his adherents, of Paris, January 25, x. 861-68, refers to assurances received
from the dukes of La Tremouille, La Force, and Chatillon, the deputies-general
and the Protestants of Charenton, La Rochelle, etc.

1625 SECOND HUGUENOT WAR 255
Duke of Soubise was not lost after all. When he had been for
three weeks imprisoned in the port of Blavet, exposed to the fu-
souMse's sillade of the troops on shore and to the artillery of
escape. ^g fort — the ship La Vierge on a single day receiving
over one hundred and twenty shot — the Avind, which had blown
steadily from the south or west, suddenly veered and became
favorable. At once Soubise despatched a few boats, manned by
brave soldiers, aa4io, under a heavy fire from two thousand
muskets, went courageously to work and in a few minutes broke
or cut both cable and chain by the heavy blows of the axes
which they Avielded. The way thus opened, Soubise sailed out,
and with such singular good fortune that he led fifteen or six
teen vessels safe to the Isle de Re", having lost but two, which
were stranded before getting to sea.1
The success of Soubise was robbed of the greater part of the
advantage it might have conferred upon the scheme of his
brother, by the inconsiderate precipitancy with which
Richelieu the Huguenots had pressed forward to disclaim all
connection with it. To Cardinal Richelieu, on the
other hand, with the prosecution of whose plans of opposition
to the House of Hapsburg, in the Valteline, the outbreak came
as an ill-timed and unwelcome interference, its author stood in
the light of a marplot whose mad antic he could never forgive.
Even when at a later time composing his " Memoirs," with
as much calmness of spirit and absence of passion as so ran
corous and unforgiving a writer may be supposed to have been
able to command, the prelate styled Soubise's achievement in
famous, and compared Soubise himself, setting the kingdom on
fire at the moment when the king was busy in the defence of
his allies, to the ignoble Herostratus who applied the torch to
the Ephesian temple of Diana while that goddess was absent
forwarding the birth of Alexander the Great.2 It is not strange,
therefore, that in a letter indited while the grievance was yet
fresh, he stigmatized the Huguenot revolt as one that was stirred
up by the devil and other personages of no greater worth.8
1 Memoires du Due de Rohan, i. 253 ; Mercure francois, x. 854-58.
5 Memoires du Cardinal de Richelieu fliv. xvi), i. 326 (Edit. Mich, et Pouj.).
3 Cardinal Richelieu to Marquemont, January 27, 1625, apud Anquez, Un
Nouveau Chapitre, 125.

256 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. V
The war of a little over a year's duration whose outbreak was
precipitated by Soubise's enterprise upon Blavet, unlike both
the war which preceded and that which followed it, was marked
by no single events of striking interest, by no great engage
ments by land or sea, by no sieges worthy of riveting general
attention, such as the sieges of Montauban and Montpellier, on
the one hand, or those of La Rochelle and Sainte -Affrique, on
the other. Yet war in some of its most repulsive features was
never more real and more terrible. The conflict of large bodies
of armed men, arrayed against each other in deadly strife, may
be attended with more immediate loss of human lives, but it
does not necessarily entail a greater amount of human misery
than folloAvs in the path of the predatory bands of marauders
sent out purposely to lay waste whole districts of country, to
destroy the huts and cabins of a peaceful peasantry intent only
upon the pursuits of an honest industry, and as averse to war
fare as it is for the most part indifferent to the objects for which
the conflict is waged. The sufferings of the poor toilers in the
fields of Languedoc and Guyenne during the twelve months of
The suffer- the second Huguenot war reached almost the extreme
'"jacques point of human endurance, and " Jacques Bonhomme,"
Bonhomme." as ne yiewed the smouldering remains of his modest
home, the Avanton dissipation of the little store of savings laid
up for the time of sickness or old age, his empty barn and his
ruined crops, must frequently have wondered, while from a dis
tance he Avatched the rough bands of " gasiadours," pushing for
ward to repeat their devilish work elsewhere, what the religion
might be that claimed to be of God and yet was professed by
such advocates.1
The Huguenots entered the present short and uneventful con
flict with little spirit or hope of materially advancing their
Division cause. Whatever justification may be found in the
smi°hfrnlie ^ad faith of the court for the ill-advised undertaking of
Huguenots, Soubise, its imprudence was manifest. Rohan, having
involved himself in the contest as a result of his brother's per
suasion, soon found that he had before him no insignificant task
when he tried to persuade the Protestants of the south to re-
1 See Anquez, Un Nouveau Chapitre, 168, 169, 178, 179.

1625 SECOND HUGUENOT AVAR 257
sume arms. Disinclination to a resort to the arbitrament of
the sword was general, almost universal. The middle classes,
especially the thrifty burgesses of the Protestant cities, assumed
an attitude of decided opposition. They stoutly refused to lis
ten to the emissaries of the duke. The city of Castres, his own
customary residence, at first declined to admit them at all.1
Nor were the Protestant ministers, the usual guides of public
sentiment, at all favorable to a resort to hostilities. Montauban,
then as now a theological centre of Protestant France,
tanbanpas- presented an unedifying spectacle of division and dis
cord. Four of its pastors — Cameron, Charles, Oilier,
and Delon — strongly dissuaded the church from supporting the
standard of revolt. Pierre Beraud alone favored it. The former
in their sermons maintained that there was an absence of perse
cution, the only cause that could have justified a resistance to
the king. The supreme dominion of God remained unassailed,
freedom of conscience Avas permitted throughout the whole
kingdom, and not a single persecuted or afflicted church,
groaning beneath the cross, had implored their succor. But if
pacific counsels could boast a decided majority among the pas
tors of Montauban, the populace was all for war. Its violence
unfortunately did not confine itself even to simple threats, but
vented itself in open acts of outrage. The learned and virtuous
Cameron was set upon and so roughly handled by the mis
creants with whom his views were unpopular, that, although he
escaped immediate death, through the devotion of a heroic
widow of his flock, he did not long survive the effects of his
maltreatment.2 Despite difficulties, however, the resolution of Rohan, whom
no rebuffs disheartened, enabled him to make substantial prog
ress. Anxious as was the court to convey the impression that
the struggle had no religious significance, the duke was no less
determined to convince the people that he was, above all else,
the champion of Protestantism. It was for this purpose that he
did not disdain, if the report be true, to resort to means which
1 Benoist, ii. 472.
5 ' ' Histoire veritable de tout ce qui s'est fait et passe dans la ville de Montau
ban, durant et depuis les derniers mouvemens jusqu' a present," in Nicholas,
Histoire del'ancienne academie protestante de Montauban (1598-1659), 160-163.
17

258 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. V
his enemies represented as artifices to ensnare the imagination
of the ignorant. Whenever he entered a toAvn, so the story ran,
he had a large copy of the Sacred Scriptures carried conspicu
ously before him, much as it Avas customary for the leader of a
crusading army to be preceded by an ecclesiastic bearing aloft a
large cross of gold, to attract the notice and kindle the devotion
of the vulgar. He made long prayers in public, and these he
uttered in a tone calculated to move the hearers. He travelled
from city to city accompanied by several ministers. And he
made it his practice to alight first at the door of the principal
Protestant church, refusing to talk on any secular or political
matters until he had worshipped God on bended knee.1
In his wife, a daughter of the Duke of Sully, Rohan had an
assistant scarcely less untiring than he was himself. In her
hurried journeys to Nismes, to Uzes and elsewhere, undertaken
in the hope, often a vain one, of enlisting the help of the Prot
estant citizens for her husband's enterprise, she rested
joumeyings neither by day nor by night. Clad in deep mourning
Duchess of because of the recent death of her sister-in-law, she
travelled in a state that was as singular as it was
startling. Her carriage, draped in black, was drawn by eight
black horses and escorted by retainers clothed in sombre gar
ments and carrying lighted torches to show the way. The pea
sants, unaccustomed to such displays of grief, were terrified at
the sight.2
After all, only a small portion of the Protestant cities could
be induced to espouse the side of Rohan and Soubise. Strange
to say, it was not found altogether an easy matter to secure the
adhesion of La Rochelle itself, the very city in whose defence
Soubise had taken the venturesome step that brought on the
war. We have seen that the municipal officers at first took the
pains to send an envoy to the capital to " disavow " the attempt
upon the fleet in the harbor of Blavet. But the lower class of
the population soon showed its sympathy with the young
Huguenot leader, and a riot was imminent when the council of
1 Le Vassor, v. 187 ; Benoist, ii. 445. The former justly regards these af
fectations as unworthy of one whom he himself does not hesitate to regard as
both truly religious and a veritable hero.
2 Mercure francois, xi. 207.

1625 SECOND HUGUENOT WAR 259
burgesses repaired to the town-hall and compelled the reluctant
officers to declare in his favor.1 Even then in the solemn treaty
of union into which the citv entered with Rohan and
Treaty" of
union be- Soubise, the jealous city stipulated with great care that
Eocheiie none of her privileges should be infringed. It was
expressly provided that Soubise should exercise no
military authority either in La Rochelle itself or on the Isle de
Re ; while, in case of siege, not a lieutenant of Soubise, but the
mayor of the city Avas to act as supreme head, determining the
movements of the troops, granting commissions in accordance
with which the booty and the prisoners should be distributed,
and allotting their quarters to the soldiers.2
The adventurous character of Soubise had not allowed
him to remain quiet after the bold action with which the war
commenced. When Epernon laid waste the neighborhood of
Montauban with fire and sword, and Themines undertook to
emulate his example by ravaging the environs of Castres, the
younger Rohan planned and skilfully executed an enterprise
against the fertile territory of Medoc, between the Garonne
and Dordogne, which served a double purpose, in striking terror
into the hearts of the inhabitants of Bordeaux and in making a
powerful diversion in favor of the distressed Protestant cities.
Hastening back to the vicinity of La Rochelle, he found a fleet
of the king reinforced by the accession of a number of Dutch
vessels. For the obligation of treaty engagements had seemed
to compel the Netherlands to come to the support of the very
Christian king. By the compact signed at Compiegne, in the
previous year, the States had bound themselves to furnish
twenty vessels to the French monarch whenever he should be
attacked; and, despite the remonstrances of the Duke of
Rohan, they responded effectively, if somewhat reluctantly, to
the summons of Cardinal Richelieu that they should fulfil their
promise.3 " I shall never believe," the Huguenots had written,
1 See Laugel, 180.
2 See the text of the document, May 17, 1625, printed from the MSS. of the
National Library, in Anquez, Un Nouveau Chapitre, App. 367-370.
3 While calling for the vessels, France, under threats of otherwise withhold
ing the money promised to the league, insisted upon replacing the Dutch cap
tains with Frenchmen. It was Richelieu that urged this arrangement, and, in

260 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. V
on the twenty-eighth of April, 1625, " that your lordships will aid
or consent to the ruin of the churches of France, and that you
„ ,. , will not rather consider that, as is evident, the artifice
Rohan's ap- _
peai to the by which they Avish to bring these two fleets into
Holland. collision is more pernicious not alone to the adherents
of our religion, but also to France and to the purpose of the
matters that you have undertaken, than if it had been drawn
from Rome or Madrid. For in whichever direction victory
may turn, it will be a battle gained by the Spaniard without
the loss of a single man, it will be the ruin of the Italian cam
paign, for which the naval forces are necessary, it will be the
dissipation of all the plans of the league." x
More resolute in their Protestant views, if not more en
lightened than the Dutch, the English sailors refused point-
blank to help to overwhelm the Huguenots. James the First,
too, had agreed, when entering into alliance with Louis,
^•sailors re- to aid him by the loan of ships. His son, Charles the
against the |^Mn, who had just succeeded to the throne, rec
ognized and carried out the deceased monarch's en
gagements, sending Louis " the Vanguard, a principal ship of
the royal navy, with seven merchant ships of great burden and
strength." The vessels were ostensibly to be employed against
the republic of Genoa, but no sooner Avas the Vanguard in the
harbor of Dieppe, than officers and crew were fully convinced
that they were in reality to be used in the reduction of La
Rochelle. The indignant sailors, being determined not to be

the end, not only carried his point, but secured that there should be one hun
dred Frenchmen upon each vessel. Thus, also, with the eight English ships.
According to the cardinal, Chevalier Saint Julien, in a subsequent engagement,
compelled a reluctant Dutch captain to attack a ship of the enemy by putting a
sword to his throat. After the victory over Soubise, both the English and the
Dutch, rather displeased than gratified at their success, tried their best to recover
their vessels, but were prevented by the same means by which their help had
been obtained despite their unwillingness. Their importunity would be incon
ceivable, remarks Richelieu, did we not know that the English parliament im
puted the succor given to the king of France as a crime to the Earl of Bucking
ham, a circumstance that made him the more eager to get back the ships.
Memoires du Cardinal de Richelieu, i. 331, 332.
1 Rohan to the States of Holland, April 28, 1625. Nat. Library of France, in
Laugel, Le Due de Rohan, 188.

1625 SECOND HUGUENOT WAR 261
accomplices in the ruin of their brethren in the faith, de
clared " that they would rather be hanged at home than sur
render the ship or be slaves to the French and fight against
their own religion." They flew to the anchor, which they
raised, their captain, Pennington, making no opposition, and
sailed back to England. NeAv orders received from Buck
ingham, lord admiral, induced Pennington with his little fleet to
return to Dieppe. A rumor which was purposely spread, that
peace had been concluded between the French king and the
Huguenots, is said to have furthered the duke's design. When
the sailors found out that they had been deceived, the mer
chantmen undertook to leave the harbor, but most of them de
sisted from their attempt when a shot was fired by the Van
guard. Sir Ferdinando Gorges alone, in command of one of
the vessels, held on his way and returned to the Downs. But,
with a single exception, all the officers and crews of the remain
ing ships declined to remain with the French, despite the
tempting offers that were made them, and instantly abandoned
the service. The exception was of a gunner, who was afterward
killed while loading a cannon at the siege of La Rochelle.
" The care which historians have taken to record this frivolous
event," observes Hume, " proves with what pleasure the news
was received by the nation." x
The story of the Dutch fleet was not destitute of incident.
Upon its arrival the Rochellese sent a deputation consisting of
conflict be- two ministers and as many merchants. These ex-
bTBeeand°the plained to the officers that, in rendering the French
Dutch fleet, jj^g assistance in an attempt to crush his Protestant
subjects, the Netherlands were pulling down with one hand
what they had long been endeavoring to build up with the
other. To destroy in France a religion in defence of which
the patriots of Holland had battled at home for long years
against their Spanish oppressors, was an inconsistency that
could be reconciled neither with their conscientious convictions
nor with a due regard to their reputation among men. The
efforts of the Rochellese were so far successful that, notwith-

'Rushworth, Historical Collections (London, 1721), i. 174-176. See, also,
Hume, History of England, chapter 50.

262 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. V
standing the opposition of the French officers whom he had
with him in his vessels, the Dutch admiral consented to a truce
while he should hold communication with the court and find
out whether the negotiations that were known to have been in
progress there between the government and the Protestant
deputies, had resulted in peace or in definite war. Meantime
hostages were exchanged. Thus far all accounts substantially
agree. Not so from this point on. It has been commonly re
ported that, taking advantage of the security into which the
enemy had been lulled, Soubise dishonorably violated the truce
by making an attack upon and burning the flag-ship of the
unsuspicious admiral. Bayle, no unfriendly critic, is compelled
reluctantly to write regarding the accusation : "I have seen no
author yet that makes a solid answer to those who say that the
Duke of Soubise broke his word to the Dutch admiral." I
cannot, however, assent to the sentiment expressed by the great
author of the "Historical and Critical Dictionary," when, after
a brief reference to a vindication of the conduct of the dashing
young Huguenot, a figure more than usually attractive in the
warfare of the seventeenth century, he observes : " This is
something, but I could wish a better discussion and a more
exact verification." :
The fact is, that, although later historians, following in this
the lead of the Cardinal of Richelieu, always bitter and unfor
giving where the Duke of Rohan and his brother are concerned,
have not hesitated to stigmatize Soubise's action as a breach of
faith, the salaried historiographer of Louis the Thirteenth, as
Le Vassor has already pointed out, supplies us with the means
of refuting their assertion. For when Bernard admits that
before the duke sallied out with his fire-ships to compass the
destruction of as many of the Dutch vessels as he could reach,
the hostages had been restored on either side, he virtually con
cedes that the truce was at an end, whatever claim he may
advance that an understanding existed that the suspension of
hostilities should still continue.2 Nor is the argument of Le

1 Bayle, Dictionnaire, s.v. Benjamin de Rohan, Due de Soubise.
2 " Lors que les gens de la flotte de la Rochelle et le sieur de Soubize, ayans
acheve ce qu'ils avoient envie de faire pendant la suspension, envoyerent de-

1625 SECOND HUGUENOT WAR 263
Vassor of little weight, based upon the reticence of the king or
his ministers ; for Avhen writing to the assembly of the clergy
of France, respecting Soubise's subsequent disaster, that by
his flight the Huguenot leader had made it evident "that not
one of the elements can be favorable to him who violates the
oath of loyalty which subjects owe to their king," Louis would
scarcely have failed to add, if such had been the fact : " nor to
him who breaks his promises solemnly given and confirmed by
the interchange of hostages." 1
However this may be, the advent of Soubise and his fire-
ships struck consternation in the enemy, who did not succeed
in getting out of his way before he had set in a flame and alto
gether consumed the great vessel of the Dutch admiral himself.
Four or five other vessels fell into the hands of the Huguenot,
including that of the Vice Admiral of Zealand, and more than
fifteen hundred men were killed. But if the victory of Soubise
Avas great, still greater was the reverse which he sustained two
months later (September, 1625), when his fleet, commanded by
the brave Rochellese admiral Jean Guiton, encountered the
Duke of Montmorencv in the neighborhood of the Isle
Soubise is, J ° ..
defeated by de Re. The royal squadron was far superior in num-
Montmoren- bers and had received an important accession in the
Cy. . L
seven Enghsh vessels, now manned by new crews
serving under new officers. Three days the struggle lasted, and
there was no lack of courage and determination on either side.
But everything went against the Huguenots. Here the great
ship La Vierge, taken by them at Blavet, came to a tragic, but
glorious end. Of its defenders all had forsaken the ship but
five men, intrepid souls, under Durant, an intrepid leader, who,
mander leurs ostages, est Admiral ne fit point de difficulty de les rendre. sous cette
condition neantmoins que la suspension ne finiroit point encore, aucuns advis
n'ayans pu estre aportez de la Cour. comme il n'en avoit point receu. . .
Aussi incontinent apres la reddition des ostages, Ton veid que l'armee des
ennemis ne taschoit plus qu'a, surprendre celle du Roy, ce qui fut cause que
deslors l'on commenea d'envoyer des vaisseaux a la garde." Bernard, Histoire
du Roy Louis XIII., i. 483, 484. It can scarcely be imagined that the Dutch
admiral or his advisers could have been so simple as not to know that with the
return of hostages all the obligations of an armistice which they were given to
secure terminated ipso facto.
1 Le Vassor, Histoire du regne de Louis XIII. , v. 202.

264 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. V
seeing four vessels of the enemy approaching, waited only for
the moment to come when the assailants had made fast and be
gan to swarm on deck, to leap into the magazine with lighted
match in hand and apply the flame to the store of powder. All
five of the ships were bloAvn up, and over seven hundred men
perished in a moment. Twenty-two of Soubise's fleet escaped.
He himself found refuge in England.1
This signal victory raised the spirits of the royalists as much
as it depressed the inhabitants of La Rochelle. There Avere the
customary Te Deums sung in, Paris. Louis in his gladness
Avrote at once to the assembly general of the clergy : " Truth
having triumphed over Falsehood-, and Justice over Rebellion,
I hope uoav to see those regions blossom again with Piety and
Obedience. As a king I ardently desire the latter, and as a very
Christian King I much more vehemently desire the former."2
Discouraged though they were, the Huguenots were not
crushed by their naval disaster. The resoluteness with which
thev defended Mas d'Azil against the forces of the
Heroic de- . .
fence of Mas Marshal of Thymines proved this. It is true that the
place was small, almost contemptible in size, and the
paltry garrison consisted but of seven hundred men, mountaineers
of the county of Foix. But it was all the more to their glory
that, so few in number and so destitute of military experience,
they stood their ground against a royal army consisting of seAren
thousand foot and six hundred horse, and provided with artil
lery. The fortifications were not strong and the attack was
vigorous. Such a thing was scarcely to be looked for, as that a
handful of men should not only withstand the furious and long-
continued cannonade, but even repulse three times, with great
loss to the besiegers, a general assault made through the
breaches caused by the unintermitting fire of several successive
days. The event proved that the Huguenots had lost none of
their ancient skill in the defence of towns, and that Saint Bran
card and Dusson, in the seventeenth century, were captains
worthy of ranking beside La Noue and many another Protestant

1 Memoires de Rohan, i. 268-270. Mercure francois, xi. 889-91 ; Bernard,
i. 486, 490-492.
2 Letter of September 21, 1625. Mercure francois, xi. 892, 893.

1625 SECOND HUGUENOT WAR 265
of the sixteenth ; so fearlessly did they expose themselves, so
ably did they conduct every part of the task committed to
them.1 The king had lately congratulated himself that all the ele
ments of nature Avere banded together to overthrow the impious
rebels that dared conspire against their sovereign. Now, how
ever, a very loyal servant of his was forced to apologize for the
ill success of his majesty's arms by alleging that it was the
severity of the season that caused the abandonment of the siege
of Mas d'Azil and that seemed to be warring in behalf of the
Huguenots.2 The fact was that, so far as the outcome of hostilities by land
was concerned, the Duke of Rohan, by reason of his energy and
of that intense earnestness of word and deed by which he suc
ceeded in enlisting under his banner even those cities that had
at first been either lukewarm or positively opposed to a resort
to arms, had prevented the enemy from making any headway in
the broad territory of Languedoc. The time had come for clos
ing the war by negotiation.
It had been said in the sixteenth century that no sooner did
a war spring up between the crown and the Protestants, than
there began also a series of conferences with a vieAv to
Negotiations °
of peace. the restoration of peace. The same phenomenon Avas
repeated in the present struggle. But the terms which the
court would offer and the Huguenots accept, varied in accord
ance with the fluctuating character of the war ; and Avhat Louis
Avas Avilhng to grant after a temporary reverse of his arms, he
quite refused when failure was followed by success. In the
month of July, the budget of demands handed to the king at
Fontainebleau in the name of the Protestants, received so favor-

! Memoires de Rohan, 265, 271. See especially the monograph of Napoleon
Peyrat, " Le capitaine Dusson et les defenseurs du Pays de Foix, ses compag-
nons, 1625," in the Bulletin de la Societe de l'histoire du Protestantisme
francais, v. (1856) 78-114. Gramond, who always appreciates valor even in a
foe, has a good word for the Huguenot defenders of Mas d'Azil : " Magnum
sibi in ea obsidione promeruere nomen San-Blancardus et Valeta ; ille vir natal-
ibus nobilis, multumque Rohan ajstimatus, hie viii ex stirpe, bellica virtute
illustris," etc. Hist. Gall, ab excessu Heurici IV., 642.
2 Mercure franc.ois, xi. 910.

266 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. V
able a reply to most of its articles, that it was generally supposed
that the terms of peace were virtually settled. Even the request
for permission to hold their general assemblies every three years
was not directly rejected, but the petitioners were assured that,
Avhen the set time for the convocation should have arrived, their
deputies general at court might ask permission, and his majesty
would provide therefor.1 On only two points was the court in
flexible in its refusal. To the demand made for the demolition
of the Fort Louis, in connection with which the king was re
minded of his unfulfilled promises, the reply was, that this
article respected the city of La Rochelle in particular, whose
citizens, in case they behaved toward the king as they ought,
Avould receive entire satisfaction. And when, by another article,
the Protestants demanded justice for the violence by Avhich the
inhabitants of Montpellier had been forced to come and ask for
the erection of a fortress, and when they humbly made request
that the king's patent whose provisions were violated by this
erection should be carried into effect, the court would not hear
of the matter, basing its refusal upon the assertion that authen
tic documents and special deputations showed that the obnoxious
citadel had been sought for by the advice and consent of Roman
Catholics and Protestants alike for their common protection.2
The terms which the Huguenots had been in no haste to ac
cept in midsummer, Avere more welcome three or four months
Attitude of la^er- Soubise's defeat had dashed their hopes of suc-
Louis. cess Upon the sea, and an assembly of the provinces
of Upper Languedoc, Upper Guyenne, and Gevaudan, which
Rohan convened at Milhau, resolved, on the first of NoA^ember,
to send deputies to the king and accept his offers of peace.
But the more anxious they were, the less gracious was Louis,
especially toward the city of La Rochelle. " I am sufficiently
inclined to peace," he said. " I will grant it to Languedoc and
the other provinces as I offered it, if they will accept it. As
for La Rochelle, that is another matter." And when the depu
ties of La Rochelle, a few days later, prostrated themselves at

1 Reply to the twenty-first and last articles.
2 Cahier general de ceux de la Religion pretendue reformee, presente a Fon
tainebleau au mois de juillet 1625. Mercure frairois, xi. 862-873.

1625 SECOND HUGUENOT WAR 267
the king's feet, all of them men above seventy years old and
with hair blanched by age, begging pardon in the name of their
unhappy city, they met with scant respect or consideration.
"You have behaved yourselves badly and insolently toward
me," was Louis's brief reply, "but I forgive you and grant you
peace upon the conditions which my chancellor will announce
to you." x
Even more noteworthy than the haughty attitude of the mon
arch is the unqualified submission, amounting almost to servil
ity, that characterized the words of the Protestant deputies, and
disfigured their most forcible and just pleas. " None of your
subjects, Sire," said one, " have so much interest as we in the
maintenance of your majesty's absolute authority. Inasmuch as
Ave live under a special law of your realm, contained in your
edicts, whose soul and support is your mere authority against
the violence of the multitudes that hate us, who is more deeply
interested than are we, not only in the maintenance, but in the
increase and extension of that authority by which alone we sub
sist ? " 2 The same strange admixture of excessive humility
Maniaid-s Wltn a manly assertion of right is found in the words
behalf ofnLa of tne deputy general Maniald in behalf of the inhabi-
Kocheiie. tants of La Rochelle. "For three years," he said,
" contrary to your majesty's intention, they have continually been
treated as rebels. They have been shorn of their privileges,
their buildings have been torn down, their vineyards have been
uprooted, a stop has been put to the cultivation of their fields
and to all the trade of the city except the traffic in arms.
AVnile your other subjects have slept in their beds under the
public guarantee of the peace, these men have watched on your
walls in order to repel the injuries of a war of which they were
the only objects. - They have indeed raised then arm to ward off
ruin, and practised the law of necessity, which is the most just
and inviolable of all. This we say not for the purpose of justi
fying them. On the contrary, we have only words of execra
tion for subjects that dare, no matter on what pretext, to take
' Mercure francois, xi. 926.
2 Harangue faite au Roy par les Deputez du Due de Rohan et du Sieur de
Soubise, et des habitants de la Rochelle, Montauban, Castres et Millau, le 5
Juilletl625. Ibid., xi. 860.

268 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. V
up arms to the disadvantage of their prince. We say it only to
show your majesty that they thought that they were of necessity
acting aright while doing wrong, and that they are deserving
rather of compassion than of punishment." 1
While we cannot but feel surprise at such expressions, and
trace in them the fatuous policy by Avhich the Huguenot orators
furthered the growth of those ideas of the royal prerogative
that led to their own undoing, it is only right that we should
notice that these sentiments were common to men of all relig
ious views. The action of Louis the Thirteenth in taking part
in the war of the Valtehne, against the pope's commands, had
this year called forth a virulent libel in which the writer
proved, to his own satisfaction, that the league into Avhich
Cardinal Richelieu had caused France to enter was foul and
unjust, and that the impious war in Avhich she was involved
could not be prosecuted with a good conscience.2 The tractate
industriously circulated throughout the realm was burned by
public authority and was duly censured by the Sorbonne.
Still further, the general assembly of the clergy, being then in
session at the capital, commissioned the Bishop of Chartres
to draw up in reply a lengthy " Declaration " vindicating the
rights of the crown. Of this document I may be permitted to
give a sentence or two, illustrative no less of the style of the
Biblical exegesis in vogue, than of the current notions of the
limitless prerogative of the crown. "Kings," said the prelate,
" are subject to the judgment of God alone. . . . For this
reason David, defiled with adultery and murder, did not ac
knowledge that he had sinned, save against God only, because
he was a king, feared no other, and as king was subject to no
other ; inasmuch as kings are exempt from the punishment of
crimes and do not incur the penalties imposed by the laws, be
ing under cover of the majesty of their dominion. David did
1 Maniald's address, delivered at S. Germain en Laye, November 21, 1625.
Mercure francois, xi. 915, 916.
2 " Admonitio . . qnabreviteret nervose demonstratur Galliamfoede et
turpiter impium foedus iniisse, et injustum bellum hoc tempore contra Catho-
licos movisse, salvaque religione prosequi non posse. Augustae Francorum,
anno M.DC.XXV." Said to be falsely ascribed to the old Leaguer Dr. Boucher,
who was still living in Flanders, the real author being a Greek Jesuit, Eudemon
Joannes by name. Mercure francois, xi. 1058.

1625 SECOND HUGUENOT WAR 269
not therefore regard himself as having sinned against man, to
whom he Avas in no respect subject. For who can say to a
king : Why doest thou thus ? " 1
At last peace was concluded early in the course of the en
suing year (on the sixth of February, 1626), and the terms Avere
published to the world in a formal edict a month later.2
Peace con- ±n .....,__
eluded Feb- The European powers with which France had en-
' tered into league — England, the Netherlands, Venice,
and Savoy — were urgent that Cardinal Richelieu should con
sent to an arrangement with the Huguenots, and England
pressed the Huguenots to accept the terms offered to them.
As the king's unwillingness to give La Rochelle the pledges
she desired was the great obstacle to the peace, the ambas
sadors extraordinary of Charles the First, the Earl of Holland
and Sir Dudley Carleton, with the consent and indeed by the
direction of their sovereign, not only urged the peace but be
came active instruments in forwarding it. When the Huguenot
deputies protested that their instructions made it impossible
for them to consent to the continued existence of the military
work that threatened the peace of La Rochelle, Lord Holland
and his colleague removed their scruples by giving
envoys make them a written declaration making Charles in effect a
Charles a p i • />
warrantor of warrantor of the pacification.3 Thev were not content
the peace. . , . . . . J
with certifying to the general assurance given by the
chancellor, in the presence of Louis the Thirteenth, that by
continued obedience the Huguenots might expect from the
king's goodness what they could never have obtained by treaty,
" even in the things which they esteemed most pressing, wherein
their entreaties, humbly and respectfully made, might be heard
at a convenient time." They went farther and declared that

1 The bishop's declaration was approved by the assembly of the clergy, No
vember 13, 1625. It is given in full, together with the Sorbonne's censure, etc.,
in the Mercure frangois, xi. 1063-1097.
2 March, 1626. The text of the edict is in Benoist, Histoire de l'fidit de
Nantes, ii., pieces just, 81-86, and Mercure francois, xi. 127-137.
3 " Ecrit donne par les Ambassadeurs d'Angleterre aux Deputez des Eglises,
pour rendre le Roy de la Grande Bretagne garant de la paix." Dated Paris,
February 11, 1626. In Mercure francois, xiii. 144-46, and Benoist, Histoire de
l'Edit de Nantes, ii. 80, 81.

270 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. V
his majesty and his ministers had more definitely explained
their meaning, by indicating that the words referred to the
Fort Louis before La Rochelle, Avhich was therefore to be torn
down in due time. They pledged the king of Great Britain to
labor by his intercessions, joined to their own very humble
supplications, to abridge the time for the destruction of the
obnoxious fortification.
In these circumstances the peace was concluded. Again
Louis by solemn edict confirmed the Edict of Nantes. Again
provision was made for the exercises of Protestant worship in
the places where it had been allowed. Pardon was extended to
those Avho had so lately been in arms against the king. While
the synods and other convocations of a purely religious char
acter were permitted, all political assemblies of whatever name
were strictly interdicted, unless held by express and official
grant of the crown.
The peace took the form of an amnesty graciously accorded to
a rebellious minority of the king's Protestant subjects ; for the
edict presumed, and, indeed, asserted that the larger and bet
ter part of the adherents of the Reformed religion had not
swerved from their loyalty to the crown. La Rochelle had
little reason to congratulate herself upon the articles that related
specially to her. She Avas compelled to receive a royal com
missioner to see to the execution of the peace, and he was to
remain at La Rochelle during the king's good pleasure. She
was to cease from maintaining ships of war. The ecclesiastical
property once belonging to the established church was to be
restored. The services of that church were to be restored.
While Fort Tadon, erected for the purpose of strengthening the
city's defenses, was condemned to be torn down, the king an
nounced his inability to accede to the desire of the citizens for the
destruction of Fort Louis. In the face of so direct a denial,
royal promises to give such order both there and in the fortifi
cations on the neighboring islands of Re and Oleron, as that the
Rochellese Avould not be disturbed, were not calculated to dispel
apprehension or to inspire much confidence.1
1 See the articles granted to La Rochelle at the Louvre, February 5, 1626, and
approved by the mayor and other municipal officers of the city on the 6th of
March. Mercure frangois, xi. 124.

1625 SECOND HUGUENOT WAR 271
Meanwhile the astute churchman who, for reasons that he
dared not yet give to the world, had induced Louis the Thir
teenth to consent to a peace with the Huguenots, had prepared
himself to sustain the Aveight of obloquy that must fall to the
lot of a Roman cardinal accused of having betrayed the cause
of religion by making terms with heresy. What Richelieu's
secret purposes were, Ave know from his own memoirs. In con-
Eicheiieu's eluding a treaty with the Protestants of France, he no
purpose. more renounced his purpose of reducing La Rochelle
and completing the overthrow of the Huguenot party, than he
was at heart untrue to his plan of putting an end to the over
bearing supremacy of the House of Hapsburg when, a month
later, he published to the world the peace which he had quietly
concluded with Spain. In both cases he was but biding his
time. So far as the Huguenots were concerned, he tells us him
self that there was no other way of reaching the goal. His
cardinal's robes rendered him an object of suspicion in their
eyes. It was therefore indispensable that he should so deport
himself as to lead them to believe that he was favorable to
their interests. Thus he could await a more convenient season,
when the Huguenots might be reduced to the condition which
all subjects ought to occupy, namely, a condition of impotence
to form a distinct body in the state and of entire dependence upon
the will of their sovereign.1 Meanwhile of abuse poured upon
his devoted head, both at Rome and in France, the cardinal
had no lack. His treachery to the church in which he occu
pied the rank of a prince, furnished the subject of a multitude
of pamphlets more or less virulent in character. One of the
most pungent, playing upon the prelate's supposed leniency
toward the Huguenot capital on the shores of the ocean, was
gravely dedicated to him under the designation of " the most
illustrious Cardinal of Richelieu or La Rochelle, sovereign ad
ministrator of the affairs of France." 2
1 "II etoit done necessaire qu'il se conduisit en sorte qu'ils [les Huguenots]
crussent qu'il leur etoit favorable; car, ce faisant, il avoit moyen d'attendre plus
commodement le temps de les reduire aux terms ott tous sujets devoient etre en
un Etat, c'est a dire de ne pouvoir faire aucun corps separe, et dependre des
volontes de leur souverain." Memoires du Cardinal de Richelieu, i. 365, 367.
'Anquez, Un Nouveau Chapitre. App., 371, seq., gives the titles of no less
than seventeen such pamphlets. The libel last referred to appeared in 1625.

272 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Cn. VI

CHAPTER VI
THE THIRD HUGUENOT WAR AND THE FALL OF LA ROCHELLE
The present peace, like more than one of its predecessors,
deserved rather the designation of a truce than of a pacification,
and marked not the conclusion of the storm of war, but a tem
porary lull during its progress. Short and unsatisfactory
though it was, the Huguenots took advantage of it to hold, late
in the year 1626, a national synod — the twenty-fifth of their
religious convocations of a national character — in the
synod of citv of Castres. The eminent Auguste Galland was the
Castres 
Sept.— Nov., royal commissioner in attendance. Two circumstances
1626 in connection with its deliberations deserve especial
notice. The one regarded the nomination of the deputies
general, the other bore upon the negotiations of Rohan during
the late hostilities. So far as concerned the former of these
points, the court, whose hostility to the Protestant political as
semblies was undisguised, resolved to dispense with the neces
sity of convening one of these gatherings, on the plea of the
trouble and expense it would entail, and proposed to confer
upon the synod — a purely religious body — the unsought privi
lege of electing the six candidates from whom the king should
select two to reside near his person, as the official representa
tives of the Reformed churches and the mouthpiece for the ex
pression of their grievances. When the synod objected to
assume this new responsibility, seeing in it a clear blow aimed
at the articles of the Protestant union, and sent to court special
delegates instructed to state their vieAvs on this and other points,
the king not only declined to recede from his determination
but took the novel step of supplying temporarily the place of
Maniald, deputy general of the third estate, who happened to
die about this time, by designating one Hardi to fill the vacancy.
In the end, the synod found it necessary to acquiesce in the

1626 NATIONAL SYNOD OF CASTRES 273
mode of selection, though not in the king's choice, and submitted
a list of six names, out of whom Louis chose the Marquis
of Clermont Galerande and Isaac Bazin, from the
nominates noblesse and tiers etat respectively. By the synod's
of deputy action the Huguenots renounced the most powerful
weapon of defence against oppression which they had
hitherto commanded. No reason could now be successfully
urged with the court to induce it to permit the convocation of a
political assembly, since the function of electing the deputies
general had been entrusted to another body. It Avas, however,
as will be seen in the sequel, the last time that deputies general
nominated in any manner by the Protestants were accepted by
the crown. Upon Bazin's death in 1631, his place was not filled
and the office of deputy of the tiers etat ceased to exist,
although the Protestants ineffectually nominated Marbaud and,
six years later, Galland. On the other hand, when, after a long
tenure of office, the Marquis of Clermont Galerande in 1644,
resigned the duties which he had discharged as deputy from the
noblesse with little profit to his co-religionists and, apparently,
Avith little zeal for their welfare, the croAvn, without consulting
the Protestants, appointed in his place the Marquis of Arzilliers.
The latter was succeeded by Henry, Marquis of Ruvigny, who
held the position from 1653 to 1678. Upon his retirement, his
son Henry, known as the younger Marquis of Ruvigny, and
after his exile created Earl of Galway by William of Orange,
king of England, occupied the same post of sole deputy general
of the Protestants until the formal revocation of the Edict of
Nantes in 1685.1
Another interesting incident concerned the relations which
the Protestant churches had been accused of maintaining Avith
Spain during the late war. The truth seems to be
gotiations that, in his desperate straits, Henry of Rohan opened
negotiations with the most hostile of all the powers on
the European continent to the religion which he professed, and
despatched a secret agent, one Campredon, to the south of the
Pyrenees. The undertaking had little sincerity about it, as
1 See Benoist, Histoire de l'Edit de Nantes, ii., 470, 473; iii. 25, 26, 161 ; iv.,
357. 18

274 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VI
little upon the duke's side as upon the side of the Escorial ;
but was doubtless justified by its author on the ground that
every subterfuge is allowable in war. Had not Henry of Na
varre himself, before his accession to the French throne, pre
tended to enter into negotiations with Philip the Second.1 In
the present instance there was no serious intention either to
draw upon the resources of the Spanish king, whose father and
predecessor Rohan regarded as having been prompted by Satan
in his hostility to the Reformation, or to augment those re
sources by a genuine alliance. All that was to be effected was,
if possible, to frighten the crafty cardinal whose hands were
grasping the power of royalty in France, into a willingness to
make better terms with Louis's Huguenot subjects and with
the inhabitants of La Rochelle in particular. No practical re
sults came of the present negotiations, though some sort of an
understanding was reached ; the substance of which was that
Philip the Fourth would assist Rohan with money, in case he
should Avage war in earnest with the King of France. But it fared
ill Avith Campredon, the messenger of Rohan's envoy. Arrested
upon his return from Spain, he was thrown into prison at Tou
louse. A hurried trial was accorded him by the parliament of
that city. No time was to be lost ; for the edict of pacification
containing a full pardon of all political crimes had been signed
by the king, and, indeed, had already been received by the judges
Masuyer ^or publication. But Masuyer, their first president,
Parnamentf was an inveterate enemy of Protestantism, and his zeal
of Touiouee. shrank from no excess of injustice. He therefore re
tained the king's edict in his own possession, until Campredon
had been beheaded and the simple soldier taken with him had
been sentenced to the galleys. The day following Campredon's
execution, the edict was produced and solemnly entered up'on the
registers of parliament. The hateful story is no invention of
malignant Huguenots, no improbable rumor set on foot by some
ma charac- one °^ ^ne president's many personal enemies, victims
ter- of his insatiable greed. I find it related, with all its
repulsive details, in the history of his own times written by a
fellow judge and president d mortier in the parliament of Tou-
i The Huguenots and Henry of Navarre, i. 235.

1626 NATIONAL SYNOD OF CASTRES 275
louse, to which I have often had occasion to acknowledge my
indebtedness. Gabriel Barthelemy Gramond, if not by any
means a friend of the Protestants, is at least a lover of fair
play, and he concludes his account of the case Avith the re
mark : " Certainly if good faith had been observed, the guilty
man ought to have been exempted from punishment ; but Ma
suyer, who hated the adherents of the Protestant sect in a su
preme degree, had no regard for good faith where their inter
ests were concerned. " 1
There was no doubt that the first president was guilty of
a judicial murder of peculiar atrocity — a fit introduction to that
course of relentless ferocity with which, during the struggle
that was soon to be renewed, he pursued the Protestants of the
south. It is the same historian Gramond, that makes the state
ment that, in the third Huguenot conflict, Masuyer as truly
waged war with the Huguenots of Languedoc by his shrewd
ness and cunning, as did the Prince of Conde by force of arms.
Not less intent upon this public business than he was ardent in
the pursuit of his own private interest, the first president had
his emissaries thoughout the province. In every city held by the
Huguenots he had men in his pay who kept him well advised
of the secret purposes of the enemy, and by means of whom not
a few of the Protestant leaders, while travelling from place to
place in fancied security, were betrayed to their ruin. Such as
f ell into his hands were instantly put to death, and Toulouse well
deserved the designation applied to it by the Protestants, for it
became in very truth " the horrible slaughter-house of the Re
formed." By this severity, adds Gramond, Masuyer earned a
great name for himself at the royal court. He Avould have
been worthy of praise, had he acted with more gentleness.2

'Gramond, Hist. Gallise ab excessu Henrici IV., 645. See, also, Benoist, ii.
466, 467 ; Le Vassor, v. 351 ; Anquez, Un Nouveau Chapitre, 312 ; Haag, La
France Protestante, s. v. Campredon.
2 " Hac Masuyerus severitate magnum sibi promeruit nomen in aula Regia,
dignus laude si mitius ageret." Hist. Gallise ab excessu Henrici IV., 750, 751.
Benoist would not, therefore, seem to have overstated the case when he says
of Masuyer, " Si c'etoit en beaucoup de choses un vray scelerat, au moins en
matiere de Religion il ne se picquit ni de probite ni de pudeur." Hist, de l'Edit
de Nantes, ii. 467.

276 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VI
A provincial synod held, not long after, at Realmont was in
duced by the royal commissioner sent to be present at its ses-
The Protest- S10ns> to take notice of the treaty with Spain, and to
cMmtheir ProPose action against those that had taken part in it.
loyalty. J3ut the national synod of Castres did not suffer the
incident to pass unnoticed, and declared in forcible terms its
sense of the great wrong that had been done to the provincial
synod, forced as the latter was by the royal commissioner, who
was present in person, to take such action. The evident intent
was to convey the impression of an avowal that some of the
ministers Avere guilty of having a secret understanding with the
Spaniards, sworn enemies of France and of the Protestant
churches. The national synod thanked God that the most close
and careful scrutiny of the most fierce and determined of their
foes had not been able to discover the name of a single person
that had taken part in the negotiations with Spain, and had
only rendered it clear that the churches were innocent of the
crime laid to their charge.1
The little follies of courtiers, observes Rohan in his Memoirs,
are frequently the cause of great commotions, and almost all
the disasters that befall kingdoms have their origin
The duke *-^
of Buck- in the private interest of the favorites, who trample
justice under foot, overturn good order, change all
good maxims, and, in short, make a plaything of their masters
and of their states, in order to maintain themselves in power,
or to increase their authority, or to obtain revenge.2 At the
present juncture, the mutual jealousy of Cardinal Richelieu
and the Duke of Buckingham contributed greatly to the renew
al of war, if, indeed, it was not the true cause of the renewal.
The portrait drawn by the prelate of his English rival perhaps
stands single and alone among the pictures which Richelieu is
accustomed to give us of his contemporaries in this respect,
that not a shadow is darker than is warranted by historic
truth. A man of little nobility of descent, Buckingham was
of even less nobility of soul, for he was destitute both of native
virtue and of study, being ill born and worse bred. If his
father and elder brother had been either crazy or half -demented,

Aymon, Tous les Synodes, ii. 336. * Memoires de Rohan, i. 300.

1626 THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM 277
he himself occupied a middle ground between good sense and
folly, so full was he of extravagance, so furious and unbridled
were his passions. His youth, his commanding stature, and
his beauty of countenance conciliated the favor of the king of
England, father of the reigning monarch, and secured him an
influence such as no other subject enjoyed — an influence which
he contrived to retain by falsehood, flattery, and all other un
worthy means. It w^s not strange that the prince who com
mitted the ship of state to such a reckless pilot incurred great
risk of making shipwreck.1
Whether it was because of physical advantages possessed by
Buckingham which the cardinal himself was conscious of lack
ing, or because the English gallant won more favor with the
gentler sex than fell to the share of the ambitious prelate, certain
it would seem to be that personal considerations were even
more potent than reasons of state in arousing the deadly hos
tility of Richelieu against the minister of Charles the First.
When Buckingham induced his king to order him to go a second
time as ambassador to France, it was in reality less with a view
to effect the release of the English vessels of which the Par
liament of Rouen had ordered the seizure, by way of retaliation
for the capture of ships from Normandy, than for the purpose
of gratifying his mad passion for intrigue.2 It was doubtless
with Richelieu's hearty concurrence that Louis the Thirteenth
persistently refused to suffer the duke to come to Paris.3 For
on his previous visit, when he came to negotiate the marriage
treaty in accordance with which Henrietta of France became
the bride of Charles Stuart, the audacious nobleman had not
feared to pay such marked attentions to the queen of Louis the
Thirteenth, that even a court not over fastidious was shocked
and knew not which to be most astonished at — the Enghshman's
temerity or the evident satisfaction with which, from the first,
Anne of Austria received his demonstrations of attachment.
Even those who refused to believe in the queen's actual guilt, by

1 See Memoires de Richelieu, i. 415.
2 See Henri Martin, Histoire de France, xii. 479, and especially the Memoires
du Cardinal de Retz (edition of Michaud and Poujoulat), 303.
3 Memoires de Rohan, i. 301.

278 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VI
no means cleared her of the imputation of a thoughtless disre
gard of all the rules of conventional decorum of conduct.1 On
the other hand it was Buckingham who, upon his return to
England, had instigated his weak-minded master to pursue that
course of petty annoyance toward his young French wife that
culminated in the abrupt dismissal of all the attendants of
either sex whom she had brought with her from across the
Channel. It Avas Buckingham that persuaded him that Madame
de Saint Georges and her companions stood in the way of his
fully gaining Henrietta's confidence, and it Avas to Buckingham
that was given the congenial task of driving them out of London.2
Meanwhile, at the very moment the duke was executing his com
mission, Charles himself entered his wife's chamber and hav
ing bolted the door behind him, brutally informed her of the
orders he had issued.3 The wretched girl was overwhelmed
with sorrow at the prospect of losing every companion that
she loved. She had been but a little over fifteen years of age
when she left her gay home in France ; she was not seventeen
years now.4 She threw herself at her husband's feet and em
braced his knees, begging him, but in vain, to recall his com
mand. Then hearing the wails and laments of her women as
they were leaving her palace to go to Somerset House accord-
1 "Des le premier jour, la liberie entre eux fut aussi grande que s'ils se
fussent connus depuis un long temps . Ce qui augmenta par la conversa
tion et jusqu'a tel point que la bienseance en fut bannie. Certainement dans les
effets tout y etait hounete, mais les apparences n'en valaient rien." Memoires
inedits du comte Leveneur de Tillieres, 61.
2 Charles I. to Buckingham, August 7, 1626:
' ' Stebnie :
I have receaved your letter by Die Greame — This is my answer — I command
you to send all the French away to morrow out of Towne : If you can, by faire
means (but strike not long in disputing), otherways, force them away, dryving
away so manie wild beastes, untill you have shepped them, and so the Devill goe
with them. Lett me heare no answer, but of the performance of my command.
So I rest. Your faithfull, loving frend,
The 7 august 1626. Charles R."
Harleian MSS. 6988, British Museum. Printed in Memoires de TilliSres,
Introd., p. xxxiii.
8 "II le faisait, ajouta-t-il, parce que les Francais places a ses cfites l'empe-
choient de la posseder entierement. " Memoires de Tillieres, 144.
4Henriette Marie of France was born November 25, 1609. She left Paris fol
England, June 11, 1625.

1626 THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM 279
ing to the peremptory order which they had received, the un
happy princess rushed to the windoAv, dashed the glass in pieces
and grasped the bars outside, in the effort to see her friends and
to be seen of them in turn. She was so roughly dragged back
by Charles that her dress was torn and her hands scratched.1
When Madame de Saint Georges and her companions reached
Paris a few days later, almost in a state of destitution, they
carried the tidings that, at their leaving, their late mistress
was virtually a prisoner, and one of their number, who was the
wife of the French ambassador resident, and who had been
compelled to sell her ear-rings to obtain funds for the journey,
declared that no Frenchman might speak to Henrietta on pain
of death, and that this princess was much changed, eating little
and scarcely sleeping at all, so that unless God should help her,
there was reason to fear for her life.2
Greatly irritated at the treatment his sister had received,
Louis the Thirteenth despatched Marshal Bassompierre on a
Baasom- special mission to remonstrate with Charles upon the
SoTtoEot breach of the promises contained in the marriage
iand. treaty, and to insist upon the re-establishment of the
queen's household, ecclesiastics and all.3 He was magnificently

1 1 owe this graphic incident to the very curious Memoires inedits du comte
Leveneur de Tillieres, first published, in 1863, by Professor Celestin Hippeau, of
Caen. Count Tillieres, for many years in the diplomatic service of France in
England, was a brother-in-law of Marshal Bassompierre. He says: " Pour y
parvenir [to speak to her people], elie rompit les vitres. Le roi la suivit pour
l'en empecher ; elie prit des barreaux de f er qui etaient a la fenetre pour s'y ac-
crocher, mais il la retira si rudement qu'il lui dechira sa robe et lui ecorcba les
mains" (pp. 144, 145).
2 Madame de Saint Georges to Count de Tillieres without date. Memoires du
comte Leveneur de Tillieres, pieces justificatives, 249-251. The Countess de
Tillieres to her husband, London, August 9, 1626, ibid., 251-253.
3 According to John Rushworth (Historical Collections, London, 1721, i. 423),
the king of England had sufficient reason for his action. "By the articles of
marriage it was agreed that the Queen should have a certain number of priests
for her household chaplains, together with a bishop, who should exercise all
ecclesiastical jurisdiction in matters of religion. These, with other Romish
priests within this realm, began to practise and teach, that the pope, upon the
marriage treaty, assumed to himself or his delegates the jurisdiction of the
queen's whole family, especially the institution and destitution of the ecclesias-
ticks ; and that the king of England had no power to intermeddle therein, be
cause he was a heretick, the pope threatening to declare those to be apostates

280 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VI
received, but when at length he Avas admitted to a private audi
ence at Hampton Court, Charles spoke with such anger and de
termination, that Bassompierre would have been glad, had he
been permitted, to take leave of the English monarch then and
there.1 Bassompierre's complaints were met by the Privy Council
with a paper in which Charles's action was justified by the alle
gation that the Roman Catholic ecclesiastics of Henrietta's suite
The privy had been guilty of "practices" against the religious
venesCinilbte3-r" peace of England. But, what concerns us more, the
Huguenots Huguenots of France were not forgotten. Among the
counter-charges Avhich the Council were careful to
bring forward was this: "Likewise the Very Christian King
has not seen fit to fulfil the articles agreed upon with the Prot
estants of his realm, and particularly with those of La Rochelle,
to which they consented and Avhich they accepted at the instant
mediation of his majesty, Avho had therein employed them for
the respect and satisfaction of the king [of France], his very
dear brother ; so that his majesty finds himself deeply involved,
not only by reason of the expectation and summons of those
concerned, but also because of the observation and judgment
of the world, to importune his said brother-in-law for the main
tenance of the peace." 2 To which, as in duty bound, Bassom-
its right to pierre replied by recrimination, dwelling particularly
at0ed0bytheai" uPon tne fact that Charles had harbored in his king-
French. <jom Soubise, a declared rebel who brought with him
into an Enghsh port a vessel belonging to Louis taken at Blavet.
Respecting the Huguenots the marshal assumed a lofty and de-
that should seek their establishment from the king." Charles declared to Louis
that some of the queen's attendants had " so much abused his patience and af
fronted his person, that he was resolved no longer to endure it." Madame Saint
Georges was the chief offender.
1 October 15, 1626. " Puis le due me mena dans une galerie oil le Roi m'at-
tendoit, qui me donna une bien longue audience et bien contestee. II se mit
fort en colere,'' etc. Memoires du Marechal de Bassompierre (Ed. Michaud et
Poujoulat), 254. In a letter to Tillieres, from London, October 17, 1626, he
writes : " Le roy m'a parle sy resolument sur le restablissement des Francois
que sy j'eusse eu permission de m'en retourner, j'eusse pris congS de luy en
seste mesme audiance." Memoires de Tillieres, pieces justificatives, 255, 256.
8 Mercure franijois, xiii. 162.

1626 ENGLISH INTERCESSION 281
fiant tone. " For what purpose do you insert among the com
plaints in your paper that we do not carry out the articles
agreed upon with the heretics of France ? Were they born un
der your protection, or did the king my master beg yours to be
the security of his conventions with them, or was he the media
tor of those conventions ? I admit that the ambassadors Hol
land and Carleton busied themselves in procuring for the
Huguenots gentler conditions that those which the king in
tended laying upon them, and that they also persuaded the
Huguenots to accept them. But it will not be found that they
intervened otherwise, or that the king their master or they were
named in the treaty of peace which the king was pleased to
grant to his rebellious subjects. Hence it is quite superfluous
to speak more of the matter at present." And the envoy hinted
that while Louis would deal gently with the Huguenots, if
obedient, he would not fail to chastise them if they resisted
him, without giving an account to any one else, since it was the
business of no one else.1
It is of little consequence to ascertain how far the Enghsh
monarch was entitled to regard himself as the warrantor of the
Richelieu's favorable terms which he had given the Huguenots to
triumph. understand they might safely depend upon. Neither
Charles nor Louis was above board in his dealings. The latter,
or, to speak more accurately, the cardinal who exercised the
royal functions in his name, had contemporaneously concluded
peace with Spain and with the Huguenots, that he might the
better crush the conspiracy into which the ambitious grandees
of the kingdom had entered, through envy at the unprecedented
success of Richelieu's intrigues. Now that this end had been
attained, by bold and skilful measures which I need not here re
hearse, now that Marshal Ornano had been thrown into prison
at the Castle of Yincennes, now that the Count of Chalais had
been executed, now that the king's brother, the contemptible
Gaston of Anjou, had basely betrayed his unfortunate accom
plices and been rewarded for his weakness and perfidy by the
gift of the duchy of Orleans and a great accession of revenue ;
now that even the proud queen Anne of Austria had been com-
1 "Puisque personne ny a que veoir." Mercure francois, xiii. 189.

282 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VI
pelled to submit to harsh words from the king, and an open
reprimand before the royal council, because of her part in the
plot against the cardinal's life, and had been taunted
Tja resolves
to reduce La by her husband with an intention to marry Louis's
brother in the contingency of Louis's death, uoav that,
at least for the time, the cardinal's authority was no longer
questioned, Richelieu could give his undivided attention to the
other object Avhich he had had before him in concluding the
peace — the reduction of La Rochelle. If he had ever given the
Huguenots reason to entertain hope of the removal of the city's
dangerous neighbor Fort Louis, he had not remitted his prepar
ations of ships in Brittany for the more vigorous efforts which
he had in contemplation. If he had seemed to wink at the pre
tensions of the ambassadors of Charles the First that, by the
mutual consent of both parties to the pacification, their master
had become sponsor for the faithful performance of its articles,
he now found it convenient to repudiate with some show of in
dignation any suggestion that they had done more than solicit
the Huguenots, in Charles's own interest and not without re
course to urgent remonstrances and threats, to accept the terms
offered by the king.1 In fact he maintains in his memoirs,
upon whose statements unfortunately too great reliance should
not be placed, that he had told the English ambassadors in pri
vate, and reiterated the warning " a hundred times," that they
must not understand the king to pledge himself to the destruc
tion of the obnoxious fort, either at once or at a later time.
That was a favor that could be obtained by no one save by the
inhabitants of La Rochelle itself, submitting in unreserved
obedience such as that rendered by his majesty's other subjects.
If we might believe him, the Bishop of Mende and the Duke of
Chevreuse went farther and plainly told the envoys that Louis
would not consent to their assuming the attitude of intermediary
agents ; he would, however, welcome any friendly efforts of
Charles to induce his brother-in-law's rebellious subjects to sub-

1 Memoires du Cardinal de Richelieu, i. 361. The prelate congratulates him
self that, " by a conduct full of unwonted industry," the Huguenots were brought
to consent to peace through fear of a peace with Spain, and the Spaniards
through fear of a peace with the Huguenots.

1626 ENGLISH INTERCESSION 283
mit to their lawful monarch, by the menace that otherwise he
would come to Louis's assistance with his entire forces, such ef
forts being of the nature of the kind offices which all sovereigns
can and are bound to render to one another. As often as they
were thus addressed, Richelieu asserts that the ambassadors
would reply that they claimed nothing more.1 " After that," he
remarks with some asperity, " to draw up a declaration of op
posite import admits of no other excuse unless it be that they
exhibit the same extravagance toward God, their pretended re
hgion being founded solely upon an explanation of His words
that contradicts their true meaning ! " 2
On the ether hand, in the declaration of war which Charles
the First was induced by his favorite to make, he asserted that
Charles de- " ^e na<^ by n*s mediation prevailed for a peace he
ctares war. tween the French king and his subjects, and engaged
his word that the Protestants should observe the articles of the
agreement. Nevertheless, the king of France, contrary to the
said articles, had blocked their towns, garrisons and forts, and
had committed many spoils upon them, when they had done
nothing in violation of the edict of peace." To the mention of
Louis's sins against the Huguenots, Charles added the state
ment of grievances of his own, in particular the seizure in
fuU peace of one hundred and twenty English ships with their
merchandise and artillery. For these reasons he intended to
send a powerful army and navy to require satisfaction.3
Despite these protestations, it was no secret that the danger of
La Rochelle, the entreaties of Soubise, and a sense of the mis
fortunes with which the southern Huguenots were threatened,
had less to do with the hostile undertaking than the wounded
¦Cardinal Richelieu's statements, it must be noticed, agree entirely with the
statements in an answer, article by article, made in 1627, to the Duke of Bucking
ham's manifesto, and published in the Mercure francois of that year, xiii. 809-835.
See the passage on page 825 : " Expressement et par le conseil pris et arreste
par le Roy, le Due de Chevreuse et l'Evesque de Mande furent chargez de dire
ausdits Comte de Holland et Carleton, que s'ils pretendoient se mesler de la paix
comme entremetteurs, que le Roy ne la donneroit pas."
2 "Leur pretendue religion n'etant fondee qu'en l'explication de ses paroles a,
contre-sens de ce qu'elles signifient." Memoires du Cardinal de Richelieu, i.
485. 3 Rushworth, Historical Collections, i. 425.

284 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VI
vanity of the Duke of Buckingham and that nobleman's ambi
tion to exhibit himself in the eyes of the French court, and
Buckingham especially in those of Anne of Austria, in the new and
reuefo? La6 impressive aspect of a chivalric and puissant mihtary
Eocheiie. leader. It was indeed a notable armament which he
caused to be prepared, and at the head of which he set sail for
the relief of La Rochelle, wearing the fresh honors of his ap
pointment as admiral of the British fleet and commander in
chief of the land forces. Of a little over one hundred ships
which composed it, eight were royal vessels of nine hundred or
one thousand tons burden. There were seven thousand soldiers
on board, not counting four thousand more brought by the
Dutch ships to " refresh " the others, or three thousand French
men who came to take part in securing the success of their
Huguenot countrymen.1 The fleet was well provided with
food, with ammunition, with everything needful whether for
besieging or for defending forts. Even so, however, by a
strange oversight, the full co-operation of the city for whose re
lief the expedition was fitted out, had not been secured. La
Rochelle stood in doubt whether to accept the proffered help of
the king of England. For although when his forces were at a
distance she had stretched out her arms for succor, no sooner
did those forces draAv nigh than she closed her gates and her
harbor. The Duke of Rohan will have it that the mayor and
his associates in the municipal government had been gained
over by the court, while the people lacked vigor and courage.
But the day was carried by the resolution of Soubise, who, in
company with Buckingham's secretary, Sir William Beecher,
d. landing from a ship's boat on the beach hard bv the
Sir William . <J . ,„ „. J
Beecher at city, presented himself at one of the gates, and bv
La Eocheiie. ..... , . ° ' •>
the decision ot his no less resolute mother, the Duch
ess of Rohan, who issued forth, and taking her son by the arm
marched back with him into the city, to the great joy of the
people who accompanied them in crowds to their lodgings.2 It

1 Mercure francois, xiii. 801. The Memoires de Fontenay Mareuil (Petitot,
Collection des Memoires relatifs a, l'Histoire de France), 32, state the number
somewhat differently, at 8,000 foot and 500 or 600 horse.
2 Memoires de Rohan, i. 303.

1626 THIRD HUGUENOT WAR 285
was then no difficult matter to secure for Beecher a hearing in
the town-hall. His speech contained a full exposition of
Charles's disinterested motives at the present juncture. He
declared that that monarch offered his assistance solely to ob
tain the advantages promised to the Protestants of which he
found himself the surety. He concluded with a solemn pro
test that should the city decline his proffer, the Duke of Buck
ingham would hold his master fully exonerated before men and
absolved in conscience from all further obligation.1 It was
scarcely creditable to the city magistrates, as it augured ill for
the future, that in place of the prompt answer which Beecher
requested, these prudent officials fell back upon their duty as
members of a league, and postponed a definite reply until they
should have had an opportunity to consult with the Duke of
Rohan and their other Huguenot allies.2
The first of the long list of blunders which the Duke of
Buckingham was destined to commit with fatal results for the
city which he had come to relieve, was perpetrated during
„ . , Soubise's absence. Instead of instantly rendering
Buckingham . , °
lands on the himself master of the island of Oleron, as had been
agreed upon, the Englishman changed his mind and
decided to land upon the island of Re. The latter was indeed
nearer La Rochelle and more conveniently situated for sub
sequent operations. But while Re was already well garrisoned
by the enemy under Toiras, a skilful commander, Oleron had
been neglected by the king's generals. There was not a work
on the island of Oleron that could have held out for a single
week, the body of French troops occupying it numbered only
twelve hundred men, and the island afforded in abundance the
supplies of which an invading army stood in need. With
Oleron in his possession Buckingham might easily have re
duced the other island by the preponderance of the vessels at
his disposal.3 The error of judgment in the selection of the
place of disembarkation might, however, have been retrieved,
1 "Becker envoys par Buckingham aux Rochelois. Harangue qu'il leur fait
dans la Maison de Ville." Mercure francois, xiii. 803-808. Substance in Me
moires de Rohan, i. 303-305.
2 Memoires de Rohan, ubi supra.
s Ibid., i. 306.

286 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VI
had the duke acted with energy and vigor. For the English
sailors and soldiers made a gallant landing, and showed them
selves decidedly superior in strength to their opponents. Had
they pressed on without an hour's delay, and attacked the fort
behind whose walls the enemy Avas entrenched, they would
have found it destitute of provisions and ill-provided with
defenders. It is not improbable that they might have taken it
at the first assault.
The island of Re is a long and narrow strip of land. It may
measure fifteen miles from the Pointe de Sablanceaux, the eastern
tongue of sand upon which Buckingham effected a landing, to
the extreme Avesterly cape, to which the name of Pointe des
Baleines is given. Its breadth at no place exceeds three
miles. The chief works of fortification had been begun on
the northern side of the island at the village of Saint Martin,
where the construction of the four bastions was tolerably well
advanced, but the curtain that united them had scarcely risen
above the height of two or three yards. If, as the Cardinal of
Richelieu asserts, Toiras committed an unsoldierlike blunder in
not firing the adjacent dwellings, but leaving them for the in
vaders to occupy at their leisure and make use of for their
comfort,1 much more serious was the mistake of the Enghsh
His bad gen- duke in allowing Toiras time to strengthen his walls
eraiship. an(] bring in such stores of food and ammunition as
were within reach. Meanwhile, the news of his favorite's success
in getting a footing upon the island excited great joy in the
breast of king Charles, who wrote assuring Buckingham that
great supplies of men and money would be forwarded to him.
In the letter that carried these promises, the British monarch,
having heard of the serious illness of his brother-in-law, Louis
the Thirteenth, upon the journey from Paris to La Rochelle,

i Memoires du Cardinal de Richelieu, i. 457. It is characteristic of the car
dinal to disparage the valor or the good sense of all who might be credited with
having contributed to the successes which the prelate claimed as his own, or
who, as Toiras did, were so rash as to try to raise a party against him. Gra
mond, however, writing in 1642, can scarcely contain his indignation at the
utterances of a contemporary writer who, in like manner, essays to detract from
Toiras's merits, and who "barks at his heroic valor as a dog at the moon."
Hist. Gallia?, p. 743.

1627 EXPEDITION OF ISLE DE RE 287
betrayed the new hopes which he had conceived. Should
Louis die, Charles bade the Duke of Buckingham not make
the first advances toward a peace. He instructed him, more
over, in case the royal manifesto had not been published of
Duplicity of wnicn a C0Py had been forwarded to his majesty, to
chartes. change religion from the only, to the chief cause of
the Enghsh intervention. He was, however, to insert no other
cause, and to " leave those of the religion [the Protestants] to
think what they will." It might so happen, hinted Charles,
that he would other Avise be forced to contradict himself.1
The occasion for Charles to give the lie to his dishonest pro
testations of unselfish motives did not occur. Louis soon re
covered from his fever, and was able to proceed to the siege of La
Rochelle. And the duration of the joy of the English monarch
and of the hopes which the blow struck at Re kindled in the
minds of the French Protestants 2 was very brief. Giving up,
after scarcely an effort, the purpose of capturing the Fort
Saint Martin by storm, Buckingham resigned himself to the
slower process of a siege. The English vessels were moored so
as to prevent the entrance of any further men or provisions.
The land side was guarded by the duke, but so negligently that
he failed to cut off the supply of water, though this was in
his power. The truth was that in M. de Saint Blancard, a
brave, zealous, and sagacious Huguenot captain, killed in the
sharp engagement at the landing, the invaders had lost the soul
of the enterprise.3 As the Duke of Buckingham had entered
1 Charles I. to the Duke of Buckingham, August 13, 1627. Hardwicke, State
Papers, ii. 13, 14.
2"Le rude commencement de Vile de Re a donne la frayeur a. nos ennemis
jusqu'en ce pays : c'est la plus bello action qui so soitfaite de nos jours
Buckingham a acquis un honneur immortol ! " Letter of the Duke of Rohan,
August 8, 1627, apud Laugel, 215.
3 So say even the inimical Fontenay-Mareuil (Memoires, 37, in Petitot edition),
and Gramond, p. 730 : " Plane constat prima belli hujus momenta fuisse in
Sanblancardi capite." The ungenerous cardinal speaks of him as " homme
dont la mamoire sera a jamais en malediction, qui avoit fait le voyage pour le
due de Rohan en Angleterre." Memoires du Cardinal de Richelieu, i. 456. But
the Duke of Rohan has embalmed his name in history as that of " a young man
whose piety, courage, and understanding vied in emulation as to which of them
should render him most illustrious." M'moires du Due de Rohan, i. 307. Re
specting his part in the brave defence of Mas d'Azil, see supra, page 264.

288 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VI
upon the campaign from an insane desire to distinguish him
self in the eyes of a woman, so he conducted it as if the contest
were a strife of compliment and courtesy. Thus it is stated
that one of the duke's gentlemen having told him that Toiras
had spoken of melons and asked whether there Avere any upon
the island, Buckingham sent him a dozen. Toiras recompensed
the bearer by a gift of twenty gold crowns, and the next day
despatched to the English admiral a present of six bottles of
orange water and a dozen vases of Cyprus powder. The bearer
of these in turn received a reward of twenty " jacobuses."
Never was war waged with so many civilities.1 It had been
better for Buckingham to have waged it with more vigor and
skill. Of skill and vigor, however, there was no lack on the other
side. The story might claim a place here of the bravery and de
votion of the three swimmers Avho took upon them the peril
ous task of passing through the ships of the besiegers and
carrying to the mainland the tidings of the straits in which
Toiras and his band found themselves for lack of food and am
munition. One swimmer was taken by the enemy, a second
was drowned, the third, a stalwart Gascon, was more fortunate,
and, having safely escaped the perils of his long course, car
ried the message to the king.2 About the same time, a storm
having broken up the enclosure which the English had con
structed in front of Saint Martin out of hulks of vessels bound
together by cables and chains and rendered firm by masts and
whatever else came to hand, fifteen pinnaces laden with neces
saries made bold, under cover of night, to attempt a relief of
the starving garrison. Thirteen succeeded, and only two were
driven back. The food and drugs thus brought to men who
had that very day been treating of surrender, gave new hope to
Toiras and caused deep discouragement to the English. The
fort, instead of barely two days' provisions, was now furnished
with a full month's supply. Meanwhile the invaders were dis-
'" Jamais en guerre il ne s'est pratique tant de courtoisie et d'honnestete."
Mercure francois, xiii. 860, 861.
2 Most of the contemporary writers have mentioned Pierre Lolanier's exploit
and paid a tribute to its difficulties ; among others, Bernard. Histoire du Roy
Louis XIII., ii. 17, and Gramond, Hist. Gall, ab excessu Henrici IV., 735.

Ql,FE DE

Pointe des^^^^^1^
Bi'/<M'ne4°Tour des BSlefes
¦\\mi -

To face pays 2SS of vol, J,

ENVIRONS OF LA ROCHELLE AND THE ISLE DE RE

1627 EXPEDITION OF ISLE DE RE 289
heartened. Two thousand five hundred men were on the sick
list, mostly in consequence of imprudence in eating immod
erately of the tempting grapes that grew on the island. The
Duke of Buckingham began to think of returning
the En?ush home from a field where no glory was to be won, and
was only deterred from a prompt retreat by the " ex
treme cries and complaints " of the deputies from La Rochelle
who endeavored to move him to pity for their state, and by the
intercessions of Soubise who accompanied them. The deputies
promised to care for one thousand of the sick at La Rochelle,
and to supply the place of these with as many Huguenot soldiers
from the city and from the island of Re itself.1
On his way from the Pointe de Sablanceaux to Saint Martin
the duke had carelessly neglected to wrest from the enemy's
hands an inferior fort situated on the seashore upon his right,
judging that the capture of the chief stronghold of the island
would infallibly be followed by the surrender of this insignificant
work. Thus the Fort de la Free, which would not have with
stood him a single day, was spared to be strengthened and to
become a thorn in his side. And now, when by the unremitting
exertions of the cardinal a sufficient force of men and of trans
ports had been gotten together, it was at the Fort de la Pree, as
a convenient point, that the French reinforcement was landed.
New supplies of food had also been suffered to reach the be
sieged in the main work of Saint Martin, and, although Buck
ingham received in September a reinforcement of fifteen or six
teen hundred men from England, he returned to his previous
determination of abandoning his enterprise. As a parting proof
of valor, he made an absurd attempt to take the Fort de la Pree
by storm, without having prepared the way by opening a breach
in the walls by means of his artillery.2 Foiled in this attempt,
he withdrew toward the end of the island opposite to that at
which he had disembarked, and crossing a narrow causeway to
1 Sir William Beecher to Lord Conway, St. Martin's, October 3, 1627. Hard-
wicke. State Papers, ii. 48-51. Compare Bernard, ii. 17.
* " Mais de forcer plus de quinze cents hommes par escalade, dans une place
de quatre bastions, bien munie d'artillerie et de tout ce qui lui etoit necessaire ,
c'etoit chercher a rebuter ses soldats, et non a leur acquerir de l'honneur." Me
moires du Due de Rohan, i. 333.
19

290 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VI
the small island known as the Isle de Loix, betook himself with
his disgusted followers to the friendly shelter of the squadron
that lay awaiting his arrival. Harassed on the way by the
enemy, his retreat became in the end almost a disgraceful rout,
being attended with the loss of the lives of seven or eight hun
dred men, or, as others say, of more than two thousand. Lords
Grey and Montjoy, who were among the prisoners taken, were
sent by Louis ostensibly as a present to his sister, the Queen of
England. Four cannon fell into French hands and were trans
ported to the Arsenal at Paris, together with forty-four flags
intended to grace the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Everywhere
there were rejoicings. The Te Deum was sung, and rounds of
artillery were fired. It was poor comfort for the inhabitants of
beleaguered La Rochelle, who had parted with their provisions
to help their English allies, to learn that the Duke of Bucking
ham on setting sail for Great Britain left more than eighty hogs
heads of wheat to fall into the enemy's hands.1 A few weeks
later, Toiras and Marshal Schomberg, who had taken a leading
part in the last engagements, received congratulatory letters on
the occurrence written by Pope Urban the Eighth under the
seal of the Fisherman.2
So far from assisting the Huguenots of La Rochelle, the duke,
who had so loudly boasted that he would deliver them, in real-
BucMng- ity hastened, if he may not be said to have caused
tempt hast- their ruin. For had not his advent precipitated the
o? LaKo-11 investment of their city, it was the belief of many that
cheiie. the Italian occurrences which immediately ensued
might perhaps have deferred the siege indefinitely.3
Meanwhile, it is time that leaving the unfortunate English ex
pedition and the neighborhood of the city which it had so inef-

1 On the expedition to the Isle de Re see the prolix accounts in the Mercure
francois, xiii. 835-894, including a letter from Saint Martin de Re dated Novem
ber 14, 1627, a, few days after the departure of the English ; Bernard, Histoire
du Roy Louis XIII., ii. 12-41 ; Gramond, hist. Gall, ab excessu Henrici IV.,
729-742 ; Memoires de Rohan, i. 307-344 ; Hardwicke, State Papers, the letters
on the " Isle de Rhe Expedition," ii. 23-53; Memoires du Cardinal de Richelieu,
i. 454, etc. ; Memoires de Fontenay-Mareuil, 37-59.
2 See the text of the letters, in French, in Mercure francois, xiv. 210-212.
3 Memoires de Fontenay-Mareuil, 59.

1627 EXPEDITION OF ISLE DE RE 291
fectually sought to succor, we should turn to the illustrious no
bleman whose history is so intimately bound up with the declin-
ing military fortunes of the Huguenots of France.
Rohan's Henry of Rohan, the most chivalrous character of the
"Apology." J .
age, has left us, in an " Apology," a touching account
of the conflict of motives in his breast and of the manly resolution
to which he came. Twice before had he been compelled to take
up arms despite his inclinations and his personal interest, and
in two Avars he had sustained a load almost too great for his
strength. Into the first war he was reluctantly drawn by the
actions of the political assembly of La Rochelle, against the con
vocation of Avhich he had made strenuous opposition, and which
he strove ineffectually to induce to disperse after it came to
gether. The second war Avas undertaken, at the solicitation of
his brother Soubise, in consequence of the unblushing infrac
tions of the peace by an unscrupulous court. The king of
Great Britain himself solicited him to enter upon the third,
sending to the duke one of his gentlemen and protesting that,
should the offers he made be declined, he would hold himself
free in the sight of God and men from the obligations he had
incurred by becoming the surety of the preceding peace. " I
now ask my censors," exclaims the duke, " what I was to do in
these circumstances. If I had refused the offers and if, after
the ruin of La Rochelle, the king of Great Britain had published
to the world that I alone was responsible for his not having
saved it, in what repute should I be held ? Should I not be
regarded with execration by all the adherents of my religion ? "
Into the perils and hardships of this new conflict, Rohan de
clared that he entered with his eyes wide open. " I remembered
the inconstancy of our populations, the unfaithfulness of their
principal men, the partisans whom the king had in all our com
munities, the poverty of the agricultural regions, the niggardli
ness of the towns, and especially the irreligion of all classes."
"All these things," he adds, "might have shaken a firmer reso
lution than mine. Nevertheless, hoping that God, who had
thus far strengthened me, would not forsake me, I shut my
eyes to every other consideration than the good of His church.
I replied to the king of Great Britain that I lauded his piety
and generous determination, and I promised him that, after the

292 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Cu. VI
landing of his army on the Isle de Re should have been effected,
I would take up arms, and not before, inasmuch as this stimu
lus was needed to incite our people." M. de Saint Blancard,
whose untimely death in the engagement at the Pointe de
Sablanceaux has already been mentioned, was the gentleman to
whom Rohan entrusted the responsible duty of going to Eng
land in order to enlighten Charles the First respecting the con
dition of the Huguenots.1
It was no easy burden that Rohan took upon his shoulders.
The king was indefatigable in his efforts to prevent the French
Huguenots, Rohan, La Rochelle, from acting in concert, and to
each his agents made representations calculated to sow dissen
sion and discord. Among the Protestants of the south
land's efforts the royalist faction was strong. Its sentiments were
Huguenot well represented by the chief agent now sent as royal
commissioner to traverse Languedoc, Foix, Lauragais,
Vivarais and the Cevennes and to reassure the population be
longing to the Reformed faith. This agent was no other than
the learned and able Auguste Galland, whom we have lately
seen acting as the royal commissioner in attendance upon the
National Synod of Castres, and who, the very year the synod
was held, published a treatise in the form of a " Discourse to
the King on the birth, ancient state, progress and growth of the
city of La Rochelle ; to show that the said city is naturally sub
ject to the sovereignty of the kingdom, that its proprietorship
and all the rights dependent thereon belong to the kings by law
ful title, and that the prerogatives and privileges accorded to
the inhabitants are gratuitous concessions and benefits." 2 No
one could surpass Galland in extreme reverence for the king
ly office. " Princes," he wrote on another occasion, " have been
established for command, subjects for obedience. I grant to
subjects only tears, prayers, flight, patience ; for rebellion and a

1 Apologie du due de Rohan sur les derniers troubles de la France a cause de
la religion. Printed at the conclusion of the Memoires du Due de Rohan (Ed.
Petitot), i. 444-456.
2 The document was esteemed so valuable to tbe royal cause that the editor of
the Mercure francois inserted it entire in the 13th volume of that collection,
pages i.-clx.

1627 THIRD HUGUENOT WAR 293
recourse to arms are in no Avise permitted to them. All actions
of a subject that are apart from obedience are profane and ap
proach sacrilege." x With so devoted an agent, a man at once
of unblemished character, gentle and conciliatory, and enjoying
deserved reputation for his great acquisitions in the domain of
history and letters, holding, moreover, the enviable rank of a
member of the king's council, it is not surprising that the king
at first found his cause faring well. The utterances of the pub
lic meeting which Galland held at Montauban, and which was
attended by all the principal citizens, left nothing to be desired.
The letters addressed by the consuls of Montauban to the king
and to the consuls of Castres expressed a loyal determination
to take no part in the present uprising. So it was also at Bria
texte. In the general assembly of the citizens of Castres, held
ten days later, after Galland had made a long address exculpat
ing his majesty of all intention to violate his edicts and express
ing his majesty's affection for his Huguenot subjects, he listened
to the very loyal reply of Judge Pierre de Lacger, who declared
that the city disavowed the English arms and those of the Duke
of Rohan and his adherents. In the long list of those who
were present figure the names of Samuel de Bouffard, Sieur de
la Garrigue, of "Noble" Jean de Bouffard, Sieur de Madiane,
and of Mr. Josion, the minister of the gospel who offered
prayer on the occasion. To Castres there came deputies from
Pamiers, from Mazeres, from Saverdun, from Mas d'Azil,
and from Carlat (Carta) — all places in the County of Foix — pro
testing then: allegiance to the king.2 The king's policy was, in
deed, so successful that not only did Castres and Montauban —
those strongholds of Protestantism in the south — themselves
hold aloof from the enterprise of the king of England, but they
actually sent deputies to other Protestant cities and towns to
advise them to adopt a similar course. In this matter they laid

1 These expressions are taken from a paper addressed by him to the king and
now in the National Library of France. I am indebted for the quotation to
Schylbergson, Le Due de Rohan et la Chute du Parti Protestant, 51.
2 See the long contemporary accounts of Galland's reception at Montauban,
October 12th (Mercure francois, xiv. 332-343), at Briatexte (ibid. , xiv. 343-47),
and at Castres, October 22d (ibid., xiv. 360-377).

294 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VI
great stress upon the fact that La Rochelle had been in no
haste to effect a union with the forces of Buckingham.1
Meantime, nothing daunted by the opposition of many and
the lukewarmness of almost all, the Duke of Rohan resolved
Kohan con- *° bring together, upon his own responsibility, an as-
vTnBtaProt" sembly so fairly representative that with its approval,
semtember should he obtain it, he might hope to enlist the great
im- majority of his fellow-believers under the banner of re
sistance to the encroachments of the court upon Huguenot
rights. To summon such a meeting openly would have issued
only in disastrous failure. No city would have dared to be
among the first to defy the king's authority and expose itself to
the king's displeasure. Rohan was determined not to run the
risk of incurring defeat. Making no reference to an assembly of
any kind, he wrote on one and the same day letters of identical
import to twelve of the principal Protestant towns of Lower
Languedoc and of the Cevennes.2 In each letter he asked the
citizens of that town to delegate some of their own number to
meet him at Nismes (September, 1627), that he might be able
to communicate to them matters of importance. All complied
with the request, because all supposed themselves to be the only
persons invited. On the arrival of the deputies, the representa
tives of Uzes alone were found to have been entrusted with in
sufficient powers, and, rather than lose their co-operation or
delay the deliberations, the duke promptly proceeded to Uzes
in company with the whole body of delegates.
Having so skilfully brought the Huguenot representatives
together, Rohan made a signal display of that knowledge of
human nature and of that singular personal magnetism which
constituted him a leader among men. He laid before his hear-
Hiseioquent ers *ne infractions of the two previous edicts of pacifi-
appeaL cation and the dangers menacing not La Rochelle alone
but all Protestant France ; and taking them into his confidence,
frankly told them that he had assembled them as the only
1 Memoires de Rohan, i. 309.
2 The towns were Nismes and Uzes, in Lower Languedoc, and Saint Amboix,
Alais, Anduze, Le Vigan, Saint Hippolyte, Ganges, Saint Jean du Gard, Sumene,
La Salle, and Sauve. See Mercure francois, xiv. 306 ; Memoires de Richelieu,
i. 491.

1627 THIRD HUGUENOT WAR 295
method of securing concerted action. This could not have been
attained by communicating with each town separately, and a
formal invitation to a general assembly in a time of peace would
have been the surest means of preventing any assembly from
convening. The duke's eloquence, his impassioned appeals,
added to the confidence inspired by his tried integrity and
manly and Christian patriotism, easily won the day. Protestant
Lower Languedoc and the Cevennes cast in their lot Avith the
champion who almost single-handed espoused their quarrel. It
The Hugue- was *ne Protestant people that spoke in this action —
es°po^ePhis *ne Frotestant people, a distinct majority, who in the
cause. defection of the noblesse and the higher and richer
class of the population to the royalist views of the Gallands and
Madianes, yet retained the manly independence of their an
cestors and were ready to encounter peril of life and property
rather than make a craven surrender of their religious and munic
ipal rights. It has, indeed, been denied that the Duke of Ro
han in his conflicts with the King of France had the sympathy
of the greater number of his fellow believers, and so able and
impartial a work as " La France Protestante " has not hesitated
to assert that evidently the revolt of Rohan was not approved by
the majority of the Protestants of Upper Languedoc, and that
" the unpopularity of Rohan's enterprise suffices to account for
the easy success of the mission of Galland." l But the rapidity
with which the duke undid the work of the royal commissioner,
not less than the enthusiasm kindled by his mere advent in any
quarter at the head of even a small body of troops, seems con
clusively to prove the contrary. It was the coldness and par
simony of the rich, not the lukewarmness of the Protestant
1 This opinion, originally set forth by the brothers Haag in the first edition of this
monumental work has, strange to say, been retained by the late Henri Bordier in
the new and as yet incomplete second edition, vi. 806. I am glad to see that
Schylbergson, Le Due de Rohan et la Chute du Parti Huguenot, adopts a more
correct view. See page 72, but especially page 32, where the young Finnish
historian justly remarks respecting the notion that the refusal of the cities to
take part in the enterprise of Rohan and Soubise is a proof that they disapproved
it: " Rien n'est plus inexact ; les evenements qui suivirent prouveut assez que
l'attitude des villes au commencement de la guerre fut determinee par 1'innu-
ence d'une minorite royaliste, tandis que la masse de la population n'attendait
qu'une occasion pour prendre part a la lutte pour la religion."

296 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VI
people, that thwarted the plans of the only hero of the seven
teenth century who may with propriety be assigned a place, for
purity of patriotism and for self-abnegation, not inferior to that
occupied by Coligny in the sixteenth.
The Protestant towns, through their deputies, took a decisive
step. They refused to allow the noblemen, who were present
to the number of twenty-eight, to vote upon the matter.1 They
re-elected Rohan the Protestant general. They granted him
extensive powers for the levy of troops and the con-
eiectedgen- duct of the Avar, and requested him to associate with
himself a body of representatives of the Protestants of
France which should subsist in office until the return of peace.
To the old oath of union they appended a recognition of the
new alliance in arms Avith the King of Great Britain.2
About the same time was published to the world the " Decla
ration of the Duke of Rohan, Peer of France, containing the
just reasons and motives that have compelled him to implore
the help of the King of Great Britain and to take up arms for
the defence of the Reformed churches of this kingdom." It is
needless to repeat the contents of an important paper which
was but an epitome of the wrongs dwelt upon at length on pre
ceding pages of this history. Written in that nervous and im
pressive style in which the duke perhaps surpassed every one
of his contemporaries, the document closed with a touching, be
cause most sincere, profession of the author's readiness, if only
the Reformed Church might be re-established in its former
prosperity, himself to go into a voluntary exile, and spend the
remainder of his life as a private individual, renouncing all
worldly honor and advantage, foregoing the rest and prosperity
he had procured for others, and celebrating by continual praise
the grace God had accorded him of seeing His poor people once
more delivered by his instrumentality from suffering and slav
ery.3 1 See Schylbergson, 64.
2 Memoires de Rohan, i. 312 ; Mercure frangois, xiv. 306-309. The text of
the oath, ibid., xiv. 312-316.
3 Declaration de M. le Due de Rohan, etc., Mercure francois, xiv. 224-305.
The twenty-nine articles are here met one by one with an answer from the pen
of a royalist. It may be of interest to read the virulent characterization of the

1627 THIRD HUGUENOT AVAR 297
It was not the first time that a Huguenot had made profession
of a willingness to immolate himself upon the altar of his coun
try and his faith. Louis of Conde made it in 1562,
His profes- " '
sion of will- and m consequence was nearly entrapped by Catharine
immolate de' Medici.1 Rohan himseK had so frequently uttered
the aitar of the same thing in various forms, that there can be
little doubt that voluntary expatriation occupied a
prominent place in his thoughts as no remote or improbable
contingency. Whether the notion Avas a fruit of his reading
of profane or of sacred history, whether the example of a Cur-
tius or the nobler example of the Founder of his religion Avas
before his eyes, or whether indeed he had visions of a possible
redemption of his fellow believers at the price of his own suf
ferings, or merely spoke out of the weariness of one who sees
the futility of a struggle, which in his magnanimity he feels
himself incapable of declining, are questions which it may not
be possible to answer.2 At any rate, impartial history, taking
into account the sacrifices that Rohan unhesitatingly made, in
full view of the probable issue of the war, as well as his patri
otic course at its close, will not refuse to accord him credit for
full persuasion of the rectitude of his course and for entire sin
cerity of purpose.
Not so seems to have thought the royalist who made a scurri
lous reply to the duke's Declaration, and who ventured to sug-
a scurrilous Ses* that *ne Huguenot might go to keep company
retort. jn exile with the Elector Palatine, brother-in-law of
Charles the First, whose failure to maintain his title to the
crown of Bohemia and other misfortunes had scarcely ceased to
resound throughout Christendom. "I believe," says this writer,
" that you could scarcely choose a retreat more worthy of you
than the Hague in Holland, the place of sojourn of the favorites
document by the Cardinal of Richelieu (Memoires, i. 490): " Ce manifeste
etoit tissu d'une continuelle fureur deguisee d'un ingenieux artifice, soutenu
d'une impudence de demon." The prelate knows little of Christian modera
tion. 1 See Jean de Serres, Commentarii de statu religionis et reipublicse, ii. 177
seq. ; Rise of the Huguenots of France, ii. 64.
2 The questions are raised, but not answered, by Laugel, Le Due de Rohan,
217. I have before referred to expressions of a similar nature uttered by Rohan
some six years earlier, supra, page 198.

298 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VI
of fortune ; where, as an exiled duke and peer, you will occupy
a furnished chamber near the person of the King of Bohemia,
in no wise intruded upon by his subjects. You will have a place
at his table where tooth-picks of scented wood are served on sit
ting down, and at whose court you Avill have entire leisure to
blow upon your fingers and play the part of one amazed." ]
The Protestant Cevennes answered Rohan's appeals by con
tributing a force of several thousand men, and stood ready to
The c&- assist the entry into France of an auxiliary force which
vennes. was promised by the Duke of Savoy but never came.
Rohan himself, with a body of four thousand five hundred foot
and two hundred horse, started for the west, prepared to help
the Enghsh and make a diversion in the interest of La Ro
chelle.2 Milhau en Rouergue, Protestant though it was,3 had been
constrained by the party of timid counsels to refuse him admis
sion. The consuls wrote him a letter notifying him of
Milhau. . . ...
the city's intention to abide by the king and not to in
quire further into the designs of the " foreigners." 4 Two noble
men of his own partisans in the place came out to dissuade him
from passing that Avay, urging that, Avhen Castres and Montau
ban should once have espoused his cause, the weaker towns
Avould promptly follow the example. But Rohan knew that the
time had come for decisive action, and as a general saw the
importance of securing the little stronghold on the Tarn.
Announcing his intention, in case it held out, to ravage the sur
rounding territory, he resolutely attacked the bridges and pene
trated into the suburbs, making so formidable a demonstration

i Mercure francois, xiv. 305. "Alacour duquel vous aurez tout loisir de
souffler a, vos doigts et jouer a l'ebahy."
2 Memoires du Due de Rohan, i. 318.
3 For the petition of the consuls and inhabitants of Milhau, addressed to
Charles IX. , in which they declared themselves all to be of the Reformed faith,
and the return showing that, in a visitation of over eight hundred houses made
by a commission appointed for the purpose, in 1563, not a person had been
found who asked for or desired a restoration of the service of the mass, see The
Rise of the Huguenots, ii. 147 ; Bulletin de la Societe de l'Histoire du Protes-
tantisme Francais, ix. 382-392.
4 See their letter, dated October 23, 1627, in the Mercure francois, xiv. 312,
etc.

1627 THIRD HUGUENOT WAR 299
before the eyes of the citizens, that the people, rising to arms
by night, compelled the unwilling consuls to open to him the
gates of the city.1
It was not so when he advanced to Castres, a place of capital
importance, both because of its strength and because, in con-
castres shuts sequence of its situation, it commanded the roads as
its gates. we]j toward Montauban as toward Foix. The hostile
faction held the people in check and shut the gates of Castres in
his face. UnwiUing to risk an attack, and fearful of a similar
reception at the hands of the municipal officers of Montauban,
the duke turned southward and executed a brilliant movement
that soon made him master of the better part of Foix. In lieu
of Castres, the smaller but well fortified town of Revel served as
the base of operations and prevented his communica-
zeres.'and tions from being cut off. The people of Mazeres imi-
welcome tated the example of Milhau, and forced the municipal
officers to admit him, and Saverdun, Pamiers, Mas
d'Azil and Carla, not to speak of smaller places, were brought to
submit within little more than a fortnight.3 They were the
very places whose consuls had been so forward in sending to
Galland, at Castres, letters expressive of their unalterable loy
alty to Louis the Thirteenth.3
The bonfires kindled aU about him in the county of Foix by
the Roman Catholic population were the first tidings that
reached Rohan of Buckingham's defeat on the Isle de Re.
They warned him of the danger of his present position, closely
beset as he was by the Duke of Montmorency, and dictated a
prompt retreat, after provision made for the safety of his recent
captures, toward the Cevennes and Vivarais.4
Meanwhile, on the receipt of Rohan's Declaration, the king,
or the Cardinal of Richelieu, had taken a step that fixed the
_ „ . character of the war against the Huguenots. This
The Pnnce ° . D
of Conde se- was the selection of the Prince of Conde, "the sworn
lectedtocrush the enemy of the Huguenots," as the prelate himself styles
him, to crush the southern revolt. Montmorency, as
governor of Languedoc, might well have claimed the appoint-

1 Memoires de Rohan, i. 318, 319. 2 Ibid. , i. 320-329.
3 See above p. 293. * Memoires de Rohan, i. 337, etc.

300 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VI
ment, but he had signally failed in every previous movement
against Rohan, whether because of bad fortune, or of unskilful
management, or of a covert unwillingness to crush the Huguenot
party which his father had done much to strengthen.1 Conde's
commission gave him the command, as royal lieutenant-general,
in the provinces of Languedoc, Guyenne, Dauphiny, Lyonnais,
Forez, and Beaujolais. He was fortified by a royal declaration
against Rohan and his followers, Avhich ordered the Huguenot
leader's trial for treason by the Parliament of Toulouse, despite
the privilege of his peerage, Avhich he was said to have forfeited.
Conde was provided with an ample army to effect his purposes.
The cardinal had taken the pains to invite him to an interview
at his castle of Richelieu, and had fully explained to him the
king's intention to reduce the Huguenots by Avaging a politic
warfare and avoiding a severity both untimely and needless.
It boded ill for his future course, that, shortly after the confer
ence, " the passion which the prince had against the Huguenots
and his desire to hasten their ruin made him forget his under
standing with the cardinal, and write to Louis that it seemed to
him that the time had arrived for attacking all the Huguenots of
his kingdom at once with the utmost hostility." The king, he
said, should resolve not to lay down his arms until he held in
his possession all their remaining towns, and should turn a deaf
ear to every proposal to treat with their leaders.2 Conde's ardor
was quietly cooled by the reminder that his majesty, having
another great war upon his hands, could not comply with the
prince's suggestions.
The superior force at Conde's disposal effectually disposed of
all opposition. Reaching Lyons a little before the first of De
cember, he made his way to the neighborhood of Nismes before
the end of the month. About this time an incident occurred at
Aubenas, a small fortified city situated upon the river Ardeche,
which was heralded throughout France as a veritable miracle.
In the course of a few days, so it was said, the. entire Hugue-

1 " Ou qu'il avoit dessein d'entretenir le parti huguenot que son p§re y avoit
etabli." Memoires du Cardinal de Richelieu, i. 492.
2 1 have quoted almost the exact expressions of the cardinal. Memoires du
Cardinal de Richelieu, i. 492, 493.

1628 CONVERSION OF AUBENAS 301
not population was converted to Roman Catholicism. The ex
ploit of Marshal Ornano (for it was he whom Conde sent thither
Marshal to rnake sure of the place) is deserving of notice as
"converts " one 0I ^ne nrs^ specimens of a kind of work in which
Aubenas. Foucauld, Marillac, and other famous " converters " of
the age of Louis the Fourteenth distinguished themselves about
a half-century later.
For this reason I shall lay before the reader so far as pos
sible the very account which, at the time, was sown broadcast
throughout France, in the interest of the authors of the enter
prise. The marshal reached Aubenas on the last day of the year,
having come in all haste because he had learned that, a week or
ten days before, the Huguenots had captured Vals, a place only
a league distant from Aubenas, and belonging to his wife. Upon
his arrival, the three municipal officers came to do him honor.
Two were Protestants. He gave them no time to utter any
complimentary speech ; but, stepping forward, took from their
shoulders the scarfs of office they wore, and handed them to
their Roman Catholic colleague. He would accept no honor,
he said, at the hands of rebels. Then summoning the Protes
tant minister and certain chief men of his flock, he set forth the
grounds he had for distrusting their loyalty. Their partisans
in Vals had given them an example in their rebeUion against a
mistress who had always used them well. He announced his
intention of placing the guard of the city in safer hands. It
happened that the marshal's visit exactly coincided with the
time for a new municipal election. He therefore ordered the
convocation of the council upon the morrow, New Year's Day.
At this meeting only Roman Catholic burgesses were permitted
to vote, and these were bidden to elect all three municipal offi
cers from members of the same communion. On account of
their numerical preponderance, the Protestants had heretofore
always held either two or three of the seats in the board. An
order was issued to the Protestants to bring in all the arms in
their possession. Their houses were visited, so as to make
sure that they complied with the direction. The Protestant
minister was dismissed, but the members of his flock were for
bidden to leave Aubenas or to assemble for any purpose, on

302 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VI
pain of imprisonment. Three days passed, and the Roman
Catholic inhabitants came to Ornano with the request that the
expenses of the increased garrison be laid upon " the Hugue
nots." It was so ordered, and Ornano commanded the new
municipal officers to lodge the soldiers in the houses of " the
pretended reformed religionaries."
" It was at this point," artlessly observes the Roman Cathohc
account which I follow, " that they began to know that God was
disclosing to them the path to lead them back to the faith of
their ancestors. For which reason a goodly number of them,
anticipating the execution of this order, hastened at once to the
college of the Jesuits, begging instantly to be admitted to the
Catholic church. Their example being followed by others, and
the matter published throughout the town, there was a great
concourse. Ten or fifteen would come together ; and this con
tinued so long, that six fathers of the company were unceas
ingly busy for the space of a fortnight in instructing and shriv
ing them. Had it not indeed been that they were already as it
were half instructed by the frequent sermons that had for
several years been delivered to them upon the public square,
and by private interviews held with them from time to time, the
Jesuit fathers would have been unable to accomplish their task,
seeing even that one of their number had as much as he could
do to recognize them and take down their names. There has
not been seen until now in any city of France so general and so
sudden a conversion, inasmuch as, in less than three weeks,
there have been received into the faith more than two hundred
and fifty families, without reproach and without dissembling,
so far as one can judge from external signs. This shows that
the almighty hand of God has mercifully wrought therein."
Our informant, evidently one of the Jesuit fathers or some
ecclesiastic in full sympathy with them, having said thus much,
might have been content to leave his narrative to the reader to
believe or not, according to his pleasure. But being appre
hensive that so strange a story may require further corrobora
tion, he fortifies it by assertions scarcely more credible. The
proof that the work was a miracle of divine grace he finds in
the circumstance that, while the greater part of the vicinity
of Aubenas had already turned to the faith, the citizens of

1628 CONVERSION OF AUBENAS 303
Aubenas had only been the more hardened. For many years
the number of converts had been small. They of Aubenas had
earned the reputation of being "the most cross-grained" — les
plus acaridtres — of French Huguenots. All at once the obdu
rate metal melts. The converts themselves regard it as a work
of God. The joy and satisfaction visible on their countenances,
and their cheerful conversation and deportment, testify to the
integrity of their conversion. A still stronger proof is the
frankness with t which they converse with those who act as
mediators to reconcile them with God and to keep them within
the pale of the church, accompanying their communications
with tears and sighs that come from the heart. In short, the
converts partake of the divine mysteries with such devotion
and consolation, as to stop the mouth not only of all calumny,
but also of every suspicion which might arise respecting the
reality of their conversion, as though it may have been occa
sioned by fear of the damage they would have incurred in being
compelled to support troops quartered upon them.
Such is the narrative, from a friendly pen, of one of the first
essays at the Dragonnades in France, an essay so successful
that it was asserted that only two families (and the heads of
these families were absent) remained unconverted. So thorough
was the work of regeneration, that the new converts themselves,
the writer would have us believe, desired to leave no trace of
their former rehgion, and placed their church edifice or temple
at Ornano's disposal. A quieter work of grace could scarcely
be imagined, or a movement farther removed from constraint,
did not the compiler, in his anxiety to laud the skill of the
military commander, betray the fact that Marshal Ornano was
present at all the religious conferences between the Jesuits and
the Protestants, and himself went to visit any of the heretics
who were detained at home by bodily infirmity.1
Upon such shallow impostures is the world fed ! And not
only the ignorant and unthinking multitude, but men otherwise
shrewd and far-seeing, were content to close their eyes to the
palpable absurdity of this and similar fables of sudden and

1 The detailed narrative of the conversion of Aubenas is given in the Mercure
francois, xiv. 410-416.

304 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VI
sincere changes in the religious sentiments of mankind operated
by the mere, and scarcely disguised, exhibition of superior and
irresistible force. I need give no other proof of this amazing
blindness of men who did not desire to see, than the fact that
Cardinal Richelieu, ordinarily no bigot, incorporates in his
memoirs the account of the conversion of the Protestants of
Aubenas which I have reproduced, and virtually adopts it as
his OAvn. Not only does he utter no word of doubt or incredu
lity, but he closes his narrative with a pious reflection upon the
utility and the occasional necessity of human considerations,
insignificant though they may be in comparison with considera
tions based on divine things, to effect the conversion of men.1
No friend of extreme measures, the cardinal had, nevertheless,
as little hesitation in approving the forced conversion of Au
benas, as in justifying the seizure of the little principality of
Orange by Louis the Thirteenth, in plain violation of inter
national law and the obligation of treaties. The pretext was
that the little principality enclosed by the king's territory
served as a rendezvous for rebels against his authority. The
motive was perhaps a desire to retaliate upon the Dutch for
the coldness with which they had responded to his call for help
in reducing the Rochellese. The Bishop of Orange was the
convenient instrument in corrupting the governor, who, for a
pecuniary reward, consented to be converted to the Roman
Cathohc faith, to turn the castle over to the French, and to
acknowledge the authority of Louis in place of that of the
Stadtholder of Holland.2
Obedient to the king's commands the Parliament of Toulouse
had instituted a trial of the Duke of Rohan for treason, and,
having found him guilty, it now condemned him to the ordinary

1 The cardinal prefaces the story with the words : " Je ne puis oublier ici la
bonte de Dieu en la conversion de tout le peuple d' Aubenas." Memoires de
Richelieu, i. 496. I note that so recent a historian as Bazin, in his Histoire de
France sous Louis XIII. (Paris, 1838), ii. 376, tells the story of the conversion
of all the Protestants of Aubenas in the space of less than three weeks, and tells
it without any mark of disbelief. He even quotes Cardinal Richelieu's state
ment that many of the converts fully admitted that for years — six, eight, or ten
years — they had been desirous of becoming Roman Catholics.
2 Memoires de Richelieu, i. 497.

1628 THIRD HUGUENOT WAR 305
penalty for that crime. Not being able, however, to lay hands
upon him, an effigy as closely resembling him as possible was
ThePariia- prepared, and the rabble of Toulouse enjoyed the sat-
ToufoMe isfaction of beholding the comical sight of the puppet
condemns torn asunder, limb from limb, by four horses, and look-
Rohan as a ' . .
traitor. jjjg on while the public hangman cast these lifeless
members into the flames, together with a board upon which the
arms of the duke had been duly painted.1 As the Protestant lead-
His estates ers estates were declared to be forfeited to the crown,
forfeited. the Prince of Conde secured for himself the rich
duchies of Rohan and Pontivy and the principality of Leon, not
to speak of other lands and seigniories.2
Meantime that nobleman, quite obhvious of the instructions
he had received, which were simply to hinder Rohan's progress
until such time as, La Rochelle having been taken, the
andimpor- overthrow of the Huguenots could be easily secured,
was vexing the king and annoying the cardinal by in
cessantly writing to obtain permission to besiege the Huguenot
strongholds and to wage a sanguinary and universal warfare.
Repeated remonstrances on the futility of any captures he might
make fell on deaf ears, and for a while Richelieu, busy with a
more serious undertaking, was fain to let him go on pretty much
as he pleased.3 Consequently while Rohan remained in the east,
Conde, joining forces with Montmorency, directed his course
westward, and, penetrating into the County of Foix, retook and
punished with great cruelty the town of Pamiers. His severity
extended even so far as forbidding that a Protestant should ever

1 Since Perier, an envoy of Rohan to Foix, was put to death on the same occa
sion, Gramond, one of the judges, styles the occurrence " actus una tragicus
etcomicus." Hist. Gall, 751.
2 Louis had indeed granted them to Conde, December 1, 1627, or two months
before the sentence of the Parliament of Toulouse, which was rendered near the
end of January, 1628, and executed February 1. The Parliament of Brittany,
within whose jurisdiction most of the lands were situated, made strenuous op
position to recognizing the gift, and only yielded and verified it, March 12, 1629.
Conde's tenure was brief, since the peace of June, 1629, ordered restitution to
the Duke of Rohan. Due d'Aumale, Hist, des Princes de Conde, iii., pieces
justificatives, 512.
3 Cardinal Richelieu explains the situation very clearly in his Memoires, i.
509. 20

306 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Cn. VI
dwell in the place — a regulation which is said to have continued
in force for more than a century and a half, to the outbreak of
the French Revolution.1 He was not always so successful, nor,
when victorious, did his triumphs always further the cause he es
poused. When, coming down from the Pyrenean slopes, he laid
siege to Realmont and forced it to capitulate, scarcely a pretence
was made of observing the terms. The town Avas given over to
The fate of plunder and to the flames, the wretched inhabitants to
Reaimont. the sword and to every form of outrage. Conde is said
to have striven to restrain his troops, but, if so, his troops, flushed
with victory and throwing off all respect for authority, human or
divine, gave unbridled sway to license and lust.2 The miserable
men and women who escaped were scattered abroad. Some
made their way to Castres, which still held for the king, and,
exhausted and half naked, reached the edge of the moat, whence
they called upon their recreant fellow believers for shelter, for
food, for the treatment of their wounds. So moving a spectacle,
so touching an appeal, could not be disregarded. The people 'of
Castres had not forgotten the tie of a common faith that bound
them to the fugitives. The judicial officers and the consuls
might strenuously decry the proposal to open the gates, but
they dared make no active resistance when a party of Huguenot
gentlemen from neighboring towns made their appearance and

1 The text of the order of banishment of the Protestants from Pamiers, dated
from Toulouse, April 5, 1628, is printed for the first time in the Bulletin de la
societe du Protestantisme francais, xix.(1870) 299, 300. So strictly was the pre
scriptive ordinance observed down to 1789, that a Protestant watchmaker, M.
Herisson, was only tolerated in Pamiers because his weekly absences on the
Lord's Day were construed as constituting a legal residence elsewhere. Note of
M. Cassas, ubi supra.
2 The salaried historiographer Bernard (Histoire du Roy Louis XHI., ii. 131),
recalls that Realmont was the first city of Languedoc infected with Calvin's
heresy, and that for more than seventy-six years it had professed the Protestant
religion, having wholly expelled the mass and all Roman Catholic ceremonies.
He has nothing to say of any cruelty or breach of faith. The parliamentary
judge Gramond (Hist. Gall., 756, 757), more honest and truthful, chronicles the
excesses I refer to, with sorrow and regret. The contrast between the two
writers, both ardent Roman Catholics, strengthens one's suspicion that, despite
the eulogium upon the office of Historiographer of France, placed at the head of
Bernard's work, that office cannot be said to have been instituted in the interest
of truth and impartiality.

1628 DEFENCE OF SAINT AFFRIQUE 307
set their scaling ladders against the wall. Thus a handful of
Protestants, by a bloodless assault, captured the city and ad-
Leads eas- ™itted the refugees. The misfortunes of Realmont
Kntauban became the occasion of Castres's coming over to the
theirPgates Party 0I Rohan and the Protestants in arms against
to Rohan. the king. Montauban speedily followed the example
of Castres.1 Thus much was accomplished by the blundering
policy of Conde. His arms were destined to be covered with
fresh disgrace before the insignificant works of Saint Affrique.
This town, founded upon the reputed burial place of Saint Af-
ricain or Africanus, a bishop of Comminges, who, being expelled
saint m- from his see by the Visigoths in the sixth century, is
SegedbyCon- sa^ *° naTe taken up his abode in the neighboring vil-
de, May, 1628. jage 0| yabres, was not a spot likely to be selected for
the honor of a siege at the hands of the first prince of the blood
and of the old favorite of Henry the Third ; nor, having been
besieged, was it likely to detain them long. It may very well, as
was reported, have owed the solitary event that has illustrated
its otherwise monotonous annals to the jealousy of two prelates,
and to the private resentment of a royal officer. The Bishop of
Rodez, chief city of Rouergue, viewed with displeasure a Hu
guenot town the rendezvous of the sectaries of his entire dio
cese ; while to the bishop of the ancient but declining see of
Vabres, it was perpetual annoyance that a distance of scarcely
half a league separated him from a community three quarters of
whose population rejected his spiritual authority. Nor is it im
probable that one Galtier, a judge of Saint Affrique itself, may
have been the most active agent in persuading the Prince of
Conde and the Duke of Epernon, governor of the province, to
turn aside, while upon their march to the relief of the castle of
Meyrueis (at that time hard beset by the Duke of Rohan), that
they might capture the saucy little town of Saint Affrique.
However this may be, late in the month of May the two royalist
leaders, with a united force of about five or six thousand foot
and eight hundred horse, made their approach to Saint Affrique,
which they had been assured would not be enough of a meal for
three regiments, and was too weak to withstand fifteen volleys of
'Gramond, ubi supra ; Memoires de Rohan, i. 355 efcseq,.

308 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VI
cannon.1 Moreover, those within its walls were represented as
cowards, if indeed they were not already gained over to the
king's side.
The assailants little knew the kind of men with whom they
had to deal — either the burgesses, commanded by their pastor
Bastide, or the Huguenot soldiers, led by Charles de Saint-
Esteve, the elder brother of the Baron d'Aubais. Jean Bastide
was an exception to the rule that a converted priest rarely made
a very stanch and trustworthy Protestant minister. Not a
pastor on the rolls of the Reformed Churches of France was
cast in a more heroic mould than the former curate
Bastide of Montgaillard, whom the Protestant provincial sy-
fortifica- nod had installed at Saint Affrique, only three months
before the outbreak of the war. It was a recognition
of this fact that induced La Vacaresse, governor of the town,
to request Bastide "to go a little beyond his more serious oc
cupations and to labor for the preservation of the bodies of his
flock, in like manner as he watched for the salvation of their
souls." La Yacaresse's prayer being reinforced by an express
order from the Duke of Rohan, the Huguenot pastor gave him
self to the work of setting the town in a condition to sustain a
siege, with a skill that Avould have done credit to a professional
engineer. Nor was it an obstacle that, having been foremost in
opposing a resort to arms, he had but recently been convinced
that self-defence Avas now fully justified by the course of events.
With the eye of a practised student of the art of fortification,
Bastide had already devised on paper the Avorks which Saint
Affrique needed for its safety ; now he traced them out upon the
ground. "Necessity, mother of inventions," says the graphic
narrative that may well, I think, have been penned by the warri
or-minister himself, " led Bastide, Avhile holding in one hand the
trowel and building the House of the Lord, to take the sword
in the other for the purpose of preserving the Lord's work." 2
Saint Affrique stands on the northern bank of the little river
1 "On leur assure que St. Affrique n'est pas le dejeuner de trois regimens;
qu'au pis aller elie ne souffrira jamais quinze volees de canon ; que dedans il
n'y avoit que des laches, et qu'on y avoit des intelligences," etc.
2 " La necessity, ni&re des inventions, porta Bastide, pendant que d'une main
il tenoit la truelle, batissant en la maison du Seigneur, de prendre l'epee de

1628 DEFENCE OF SAINT AFFRIQUE 309
Sorgue. A high wall of the old fashion, provided with small
towers and gates at intervals, and surrounded by a ditch, ran
about three sides of the town proper. On the fourth side
flowed the river. The town contained some five hundred
houses. There were beyond the walls three " faubourgs," or
suburbs. Two stood on the same side of the Sorgue ; the third,
lying upon the other bank and connected by a bridge, bore the
name of Tranpon, an abbreviation for Trans pontem. Bastide
had provided the nearer suburbs with walls and outworks, and
had made them reasonably secure. He experienced greater diffi
culty in completing the system of fortifications which he had
planned for the little suburb across the Sorgue, upon which,
as the most vulnerable point, the safety of the whole place
depended. He had, however, wisely begun with the count
er-scarp, consisting of two earthworks joining at an angle
protected by a crescent or half-moon ; and, lest they should be
discouraged, he had carefully concealed from the citizens the
hard task which he had still in reserve for them within these
outer works. The ditch had also been dug in front of the wall,
and, had he been able to carry out his designs, he would have
provided covered ways and other convenient passages at the
places where he foresaw that the attack must surely come.1
Patriotism and religion vied with one another in the names
Avhich Bastide gave to his new works. On the northern side of
the river were the half-moons of the King, of the Queen, and of
Madame de Rohan, the Platform of the Gospel, the Bastions of
Rohan, of Bastide, of La Vacaresse. On the other side of the
Sorgue, the Eagle, the Lion, the Dragon, the Laurel and the
Maiden gave their names to various parts, while upon the whole
l'autre, pour conserver son ouvrage, voyant I'etat auquel les plus pacifiques s'en
alloient etre exposez, ceux-la memement, lesquels, tels que lui, avoient par toys
moyens essay'e d'Sviter la prise des armes dans le Vabrois, et sentant arriver le
terns d'une naturelle et par consequent trop juste deffense II met done en usage
sur le terrain ce qu'autrofois il avoit pratique sur le papier." Relation du
siege de Saint-Affrique, 18, 19.
1 " Mais les traverses necessaires et rues couvertes ont §te encore a faire, par le
caprice de quelques habitans, qui ont eu le repentir pour salaire de n'avoir cru
Bastide, qui leur marquoit jusques A un pouae de terre les endroils par lesquels iis
seroient et assiegez et battus." Relation, page 19. This is another of the little
touches which, if I am not mistaken, reveal the authorship of the document.

310 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VI
suburb the council of Avar and of the city saw fit to confer the
designation of Ville Louis, in token of loyalty to the monarch
against whom they were contending. Finding time in the
midst of warlike preparations for the cultivation of the muses,
and playing upon the tradition that one of the northern suburbs
of Saint Affrique had been the Leucopolis ( Ville blanche) of the
ancients, Bastide composed and placed upon the portal of the
new walls the lines Leucopolis, rigido vastante hax culmina Marte,
Auspiciis, Lodoice, tuis haac moenia ponit.
It is characteristic of the age and of the Huguenots, that, in
chronicling this choice of name for their fresh fortifications, the
loyal narrator pauses to observe : " This was for the purpose
of showing to our adversaries that, in the midst of our most
poignant sufferings, Ave kiss the hand that smites us, and pray
without ceasing for him who in his royal dignity bears pre-emi
nently above all the rest of the kings of the earth the lively
image of God." x
Such was the little town that had prepared to withstand
Conde and Epernon, its citizens divided into seven companies
of fifty men each, Avith a sufficient number over and above for
the most urgent needs. The governor, La Vacaresse, com
manded the first company. Pastor Bastide commanded the
second.2 The Duke of Rohan sent what troops he could to
their relief. There were in all some thirteen hundred fighting
men in the place.3 Their spirit was all that could be desired.
More than once in the preliminary skirmishes did a
fence of the few Huguenots succeed in retarding or frustrating tho
movements of the enemy. But the courage of the
defenders shone resplendent on Thursday, the fifth of June.
On that day, the artillery of the Prince of Conde, posted on a
commanding eminence — the besieged surnamed it Fort False
hood — having made a breach in the Bastion of the Dragon, a
general assault was ordered as well upon this work as upon
the " Fort of Truth," and " the Bastion of the Gospel." The

¦Relation, page 20. 2 Ibid., 21, etc.
3 Memoires du Due de Rohan, i. 368.

1628 DEFENCE OF SAINT AFFRIQUE 311
assailants were confident, apparently not without good reason.
They boasted that they would sup that night in Ville Louis.
In their assurance of victory, they had given out in camp that
no one should spare the life of a single Huguenot, on pain of
the gallows. The women Avere to be abandoned to the brutal
soldiery. Nothing that had life was to escape, even to the
domestic animals; this in revenge, because a cat had been
derisively held up to the view of the royalists on the point of
a pike.1 And indeed the attack was only less bravely made
than repulsed. It was afterwards commonly observed that in
intrepidity and obstinacy neither the assailants nor the assailed
had ever been surpassed.2 More than once the shout arose
from Conde's soldiers that they were Avithin the enemy's Avorks,
but a renewed and more determined effort of the besieged drove
them into the ditch. Three times Avas the desperate struggle
made, three times did the brave burgesses of Saint Affrique
and their equally brave helpers from elseAvhere render futile the
undertaking. Those whose hves had by anticipation been
declared forfeited beyond possibility of ransom, showed little
pity. The offer of a thousand pistoles, the cry " Ten thousand
crowns if you will spare me," or, " Save me, a captain," Avere not
listened to by men who remembered that the suppliants were
the persons who had sworn their destruction, and that, but a
day before, when they overheard the Huguenot soldiers invok
ing the name of God in the trenches, the royalists had boast
fully cried out : " Your Lord is not able to save you from our
hands ! " 3 The women, who on previous days had. not labored

1 Memoires du Due de Rohan, i. 35. " Le bandoul est fait dans le camp, qu'a
peine de la corde personne ne parle de sauver la vie, ni a, ami ni a parent qui
soit dedans. Les filles, par une chastete romaine, sont donnees a la discretion
de la brutalite du soldat. Tout y doit passer, oui, jusques aux chats ; puisque
le premier jour de la batterie les assiegez leur en avoient presente un sur la
pointe d'une pique."
2 The Duke of Epernon was credited with the remark that although he had
lived about eighty [more accurately seventy-four] years in the world, yet he had
never seen an assault either more furiously made or more vigorously repelled.
Ibid., 43.
3 " Qui blasphemant, le jour auparavant, dans la tranchee, lorsque nous in-
voquions le nom de Dieu aux breches, crioient que notre Eternel n'etoit pas
capable de nous garantir de leurs mains." Ibid., 40.

312 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch.VI
less heartily than the men in carrying stones or mortar, or
hurdles, to fill the ditch or strengthen the ramparts, now fought
for their rehgion, and for their honor, with a resolution that
shamed even some of their companions of the stronger sex.
The names of three young girls, daughters of respectable bur
gesses, have come down to us as worthy of special admiration
— all described as "untiring in labor and amazons in the
combat ; " Avhile of a fourth, a woman of the lower class, it is
told, that a cannon-ball having struck a soldier at her side and
driven a piece of bone from his splintered leg into her shoulder,
she begged the captain who chanced to be near by to draw it.
This done, she continued to fight, though covered with blood,
with her wound undressed, until she had twice smitten down
with her own hands one of the enemies in the breach.1
At length the Prince of Conde retired in disgust from before
the little town which had defied his arms. He had lost four
hundred of his best men, including forty officers, in
Retreat of
the Prince of killed, besides three hundred in wounded. Of the
Huguenots there were said to be only twenty-eight
killed and sixty wounded.2 It was a bitter disappointment for

1 Memoires du Due de Rohan, i. 40, 41.
2 The figures are those of the Relation, p. 40, and of the Memoires du Due de
Rohan, i. 368. They agree, so far as the royalist loss is concerned, with those
given by Gramond (Hist. Gall, ab excessu Henrici IV., 760). Again this his
torian of Louis XIII.'s reign shows his superiority to the paid historiographer
Bernard (ii. 133), who in this case is more than usually unfaithful to historic
truth. Not only does he greatly exaggerate the Protestant loss (making it to be
of more than 200 killed and 200 wounded), and reduce the loss of the royalists
to about one-tenth of what it actually was (40-50 killed in place of 400) ; but he
carefully suppresses every indication that the siege ended in disaster. I have
based my account of this interesting event mainly upon a contemporary manu
script published for the first time at Montpellier in 1874, by Professor A.
Germain, dean of the Faculte des Lettres of that city, with an instructive in
troduction, and with notes. It is entitled " Relation du siege de Saint-Affrique
fait en 1628 par le Prince de Conde et le Due d' Epernon." The MS., formerly
belonging to the Marquis d'Aubais, is at present in the library of the city of
Nismes. The triumphal tone of this enthusiastic and admirable narrative, al
most an epic in itself, sufficiently proves that it is a contemporary production,
written, in fact, prior to the fall of La Rochelle and the peace of 1629. The
author is unknown. It has been conjectured that he may have been M. de
Saint Esteve, who as we have seen commanded during the siege. I regard it as
more probable, as I have said, that it was the Huguenot pastor, Jean Bastide, a

1628 THIRD HUGUENOT WAR 313
the first prince of the blood with a well appointed army to fail
miserably before little Saint Affrique almost at the very mo
ment that the Duke of Rohan with inferior forces was captur
ing Meyrueis, a place of much greater strength, as Cardinal
Richelieu asserts, than any of the places that Conde had taken.1
On the other hand, the Huguenots, and none more than the
minister Bastide, covered themselves with renown. It may,
indeed, be esteemed an additional tribute to the glory of the
pastor, otherwise unknown to history, that the memory of his
achievements at Saint Affrique so rankled in the
demands the ignoble soul of Louis the Thirteenth, that at the next
the heroic national synod of the Reformed Churches, held in
Charenton in 1631, his royal commissioner, Auguste
Galland, was instructed to demand Bastide's removal from his
church at Saint Affrique "for having tried to disturb the public
peace and tranquillity." The synod was too feeble to refuse
compliance with the king's request, but learning that Bastide
was at that time a prisoner, it petitioned his majesty for his
release, and at the same time gave the intrepid pastor leave to
apply to any church in another province than Languedoc that
might need his sendees, or in which he might desire to live.2
Of such sieges, so wasteful, so unprofitable for the great ends
of the war, even when carried to a successful issue, the court
had had quite enough. Conde now received peremptory com
mands to forego all enterprises of the kind, and devote himself
hero in action, who may well have written heroically. I am glad to see that Pro
fessor Schylbergson comes to the same conclusion (Le Due de Rohan, p. 79).
See also the Memoires de Rohan, i. 366-368 ; Gramond, 759-760 ; Bernard, ii.
133, etc.
1 It turned out, the prelate states, as he had expected, " car deux mois ne se
passerent pas, qu'apres avoir ete contraint de lever le siege de Saint Affrique
qu'il avoit entrepris avec trop de chaleur, son armee ne f at absolument dissipee,
que le due de Rohan n'eut pris Merve [Meyrueis], place beaucoup meilleure que
toutes celles qu'il avoit prises," etc. Memoires du Cardinal de Richelieu, i. 509.
2 Acts of the Nat. Synod of Charenton, ch. iv., art. 6, and ch. xxiii., art. 10.
Aymon, Tous les Synodes, ii. 459, 506. Jean Bastide was not therefore deposed
from the ministry, as a reader of Professor Germain's note (Relation, p. 18), and
of Haag, La France Protestante, i. 953, might perhaps be led to suppose ; and the
synod is clear of the grievous error of having dishonored a man who deserved
well of his church, and who will be held in high esteem by posterity so long
as courage, sagacity, and self-devotion are prized.

314 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VI
to the necessary work of ravaging the country about the three
great centres of the Huguenot revolt.1 " I beg you to re
member," Cardinal Richelieu urgently, ii somewhat facetiously,
wrote to the prince, " that it is time to prepare to lay waste
the neighborhood of Nismes, Castres, and Montauban ; for on
this hang all the law and the prophets." 2 The three royalist
generals divided the Avork between them, Epernon devoting
himself to Montauban, Montmorency to Nismes and Uzes, and
Conde to Castres. The first two had little heart for their com
mission and executed it negligently, Conde performed his part
with delight, although his forces suffered much from disease,
and he was himself sorely perplexed, what Avith the sorties of
the Huguenots from Castres, the descent of their allies from
the mountains, and the mysterious appearances and disappear
ances of his enemy Henry of Rohan. For if that leader Avas
not reallv ubiquitous, he shoAved a rare faculty for
Alertness of
theHugue- making himself seen and felt when least expected.
At one moment he issued from Milhau and by a
bold stroke recovered several of the towns that he had lost.
The prince would thereupon advance hastily to meet him, sum
moning Montmorency to join his forces, and hoping to come up
Avith the adventurous duke at Milhau. He reached that city
only to find that Rohan had secretly drawn off into the
mountains, whence he presently emerged as a conqueror in the
plains of Lower Languedoc.3
Nowhere, in fact, did the Duke of Rohan exhibit more clearly
his surpassing military genius than in the dexterous use which
The cevennes ne mSL&6 OI *ne Cevennes Mountains as the base of all
DaM°ot oper- n^s operations and as a convenient retreat. Between
ations. the pressure brought upon Conde by Cardinal Riche
lieu to resort to more drastic measures, and the facility with
Avhich Rohan could always escape the hazard of an engagement
with an enemy superior in numbers, the poor prince was almost
distracted. "Those Avho tell you that Ave must not besiege
places but go straight toward Monsieur de Rohan," he wrote on
1 Due d'Aumale, Histoire des Princes de Conde, iii. 209, 210.
2 " Car de la, dependent la loi et les prophetes. " Richelieu to Conde, June 0,
1628, apud Laugel, Le Due de Rohan, 235.
3 Due d'Aumale, Les Princes de Conde, ubi supra.

1628 THIRD HUGUENOT WAR 315
one occasion, " do not understand the country or the impractica
bility of the plan; for the path from which he never strays
leads him from Nismes to Uzes, from Uzes to Alais, and thence
through the Cevennes to Milhau. If he shows his face at one
end and we approach, he retreats into his den, where he can in
no wise be attacked without great forces at command ; because
the mountains are inconvenient of access, because our cannon
can only with difficulty be brought up, because the supply of
food is scanty, because the passes are advantageous to him, be
cause the whole region is favorable to him, and because his in
fantry is strong while our cavalry is of no use.1 Consequently,
unless I push forward, day by day, taking one place after an
other, unless I busy myself incessantly with sieges, either in
Foix, or in Languedoc in the direction of Castres, or in Rou-
ergue as far as Cornus and Lunas, or unless I attack Privas in
Vivarais, the king's army in Languedoc will do nothing but con
sume the people's substance, will make no progress, and will
never assail or harm the Duke of Rohan."
So far, then, from sieges being unnecessary, Conde insisted
that warfare by siege was, in fact, the only thing that was prac
ticable. But in order to stifle the rebellion in Languedoc
completely, a supreme effort must be made. The Cevennes
must be entered, on opposite sides and at the same moment, by
two armies of ten thousand men each, well furnished with
artillery and supplied with abundant provision of food and
money. By means of the two armies the Cevennes might easily
be conquered in a month. This being accomplished, everything
would be accomplished; for the strongholds in the lower
country would make little or no resistance. If the king was not
yet prepared for such radical measures, there was nothing left
but to persist in the slow but sure process of successive sieges.2
1 "Car la gallerie de laquelle il ne s'ecarte jamais est de Nismes a Uses, d'Uses
a Alles, §, Milhau par les Sevenes. Si monstre son nes §, un des bouts et qu'on
l'aproche, il rentre dans la taniere, ou sans de grandes forces, ou pour estre les
montagnes incommodes, le canon difficile a mener, les vivres rares, les passages
avantageux, tous le pays a luy, son infanterie forte, notre cavallerie inutille, il
ne penlt nullement estre attacqu6. "
2 See the long and instructive letter of Conde to Richelieu, undated but be
longing to the year 1628, which the Duke of Aumale has printed among the

316 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VI
It is of interest to note here that Cardinal Richelieu has left
on record in his Memoirs an estimate of the importance of the
Cevennes Mountains to the Protestant party little, if at all, in
ferior to the estimate formed by Conde. In view of the part
which the mountaineers of this region were destined to play
about three-quarters of a century later, in the Camisard war,
the prelate's respect for the " courageous and experienced war
riors '' whom it produced and his admiration of the convenient
access it afforded to Upper Languedoc, Guyenne, and Foix de
serve our attention. " This has always been the course of the
armies of the Huguenot party since it has existed in
cientimpor- France. D'Acier folloAved this path when bringing
great reinforcements to the army which subsequently
fought the battle of Moncontour. By the same passage the
Admiral [Marshal] of Chatillon led his force to deliver Mont
pellier from the arms of the last Constable of Montmorency
who was besieging it. The region abounds in towns, not great
so far as the number of their inhabitants is concerned, but for
midable for their fortifications, each being regarded strong
enough to detain a royal army." 1
The truth was that Rohan had much greater reason to be
proud of his achievements than either of his principal op
ponents. Condi's dissatisfaction was threatening to become
conde's die- chronic and to comprehend all, both friends and ene-
satisfaction. mies, with whom he came into contact. The court
could not, or would not, furnish him the twenty thousand men
whom he deemed indispensable. As the first prince of the
blood, he was jealous beyond measure of the deference he be
lieved to be due to him, and he wrote an angry letter to the
Duke of Montmorency, freely accusing him of a want of respect,
because he had interfered in behalf of some rebels of Langue
doc and had actually forbidden upon pain of death the execu
tion of one of the prince's ordinances directed against them.2
As for the public in general, he was specially indignant that

pieces justificatives of the third volume of his Histoire des Princes de Conde
(Paris, 1886), pp. 515-520.
1 Memoires du Cardinal de Richelieu, ii. 17.
3 Conde to Montmorency, Carcassonne, October 7, 1628, Ibid., iii. 521.

1628 THIRD HUGUENOT WAR 317
having, as he asserted, been successful everywhere else, men
misrepresented the attack upon Saint Affrique, which, he ad
mitted, had not proved successful, as though it had been the
loss of a battle.1 How the report rankled in his breast appears
from the prince's futile attempt to show that the diminution of
his troops after the repulse in front of Saint Affrique — the regi
ment of Normandy, he admitted, had dwindled from six hun
dred men to only three or four hundred men — was due not to
the effective warfare of the enemy, but to lack of pay, to insuf
ficient or unsuitable food, to distaste for sieges, to the call of
harvest time. He was willing to pledge his life for it that there
were not over ninety-eight men wounded in the entire army,
while the number of dead was very insignificant.2
Meantime, while Conde fumed and uttered incessant com
plaints against the very associates for whom at the beginning
of the campaign he had professed the highest consideration,3
Henry of Rohan pursued his plans quietly and effectively. It
was perhaps his misfortune, not his fault, that there
prisais— was an abundance of bloodv reprisals in this miser-
Gall argues
and AWr- able war. Thus when he captured the little fortified
town of Aimargues, not far from Nismes, Montmorency
with a superior force made himself master of Gallargues in the
same neighborhood. A goodly number of Huguenots fell into
the Roman Catholic general's hands, together with the latter
place, and he bethought him of a shrewd device for taking two
castles by one success. The articles of capitulation promised
the prisoners of war taken at Gallargues their lives and their
effects, upon the condition that within ten days they should re
store Aimargues and its fortifications intact to the hands of the
Duke of Montmorency. The demand was as contrary to the
1 "Encores qu'il me fasche un peu qu'aprSs avoir reussy partout, pour une
attacque faicte a Sainte Affrique qui n'a pas este heureuse, on en aye parle
comme si j'avois perdu une bataille."
2 Conde to Richelieu, ubi supra, iii. 519, 520.
""Lui reduit 3, ce point qu'au lieu que, quand il alia en Languedoc, mes
sieurs de Montmorency et d'Epemon etoientceux dont il faisoit plus d'etat en
France, l'un comme ayant l'honneur d'etre son beau frere, et l'autre pour
l'estime particuliere qu'il en faisoit, ce fnrent ceux dont il se plaignoit davan-
tage, et avec qui il lui fut impossible de compatir." Memoires du Cardinal de
Richelieu, i. 509.

318 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VI
usages of war as it would have been to attempt to prevent an
enemy from firing into the ranks of an advancing army by
placing his women and children as a screen in front of them.
So judged Rohan and the Protestant deputies of Languedoc and
the Cevennes, whom he consulted upon the matter. At the
same time that he signified to Montmorency the readiness of
his fellow Protestants to exert themselves to the utmost to ef
fect by ransom or exchange, in short by any means but the un
heard-of method proposed by their enemies, the deliverance of
the unfortunate captives, he also plainly informed him that,
should any evil come to the latter, he would be compelled to
retaliate. He was as good as his Avord. The prisoners of
Gallargues having been transported to Montpellier within
Conde's jurisdiction, the prince had sixty of them hung, and
sent the rest to the galleys.1 Rohan replied by hanging an
correspond- equal number of the Roman Catholics who had fallen
condfand ^° n^s nan(ls a^ the taking of the castle of Monts,
Rohan. near Alais. A virulent correspondence ensued. Conde
taunted Rohan with being the author of the death of the prison
ers of Gallargues, to whose life he had preferred the continued
possession of Aimargues ; and he laid to the duke's charge
three notable crimes — that he had brought the foreigner into
the kingdom, that by his OAvn authority he had created officers
of justice, and that he had coined money without the royal
sanction. He bade him beware of the exemplary punishment
which would certainly overtake him sooner or later. " You spit
against heaven," said he. Rohan, on the other hand, declared
that if the English had come to the help of the Huguenots, they
came as warrantors of the peace, admitted as such by the king's
consent. If the Protestants had coined money, it was with
the king's arms and just as had been done during preAdous civil
wars. As for the prince's threat of future reprisals upon the
peaceable Huguenots living under safeguard of the public faith
in the midst of the Roman Catholics, he warned him that it
would be an admirable example to teach them what trust they

1 See the Memoires de Rohan, i. 381 seq., and the correspondence in Laugel,
Henry de Rohan, 237 seq., and in Due d'Aumale, Hist, des Princes de Conde,
iii. 521 seq.

1627 SIEGE OF LA ROCHELLE 319
ought to repose in their enemies, and a full justification of the
course taken by the Protestants. " It only remains for me," he
wrote in conclusion, " to pray that God may not treat you ac
cording to your deeds, but may bring you back to the true re
hgion, and give you grace to persevere therein unto the end ;
that following the example of your father and grandfather, you
may become the Defender of our churches." x
But it is time that, leaving Henry of Rohan in the midst of
his brave, if hopeless, contest in southern France, we should
siege of La *urn to *ne her°ic struggle of the city of La Rochelle.
Rocheiie. This reached its termination about the point to Avhich
we are noAv come, after a siege that had lasted between fourteen
and fifteen months.
When, in the middle of August, 1627, the army of the king
formally began the investment of the Huguenot capital of the
west, its actions left no room for doubt that the cardinal Avas in
earnest in his determination once for all to put an end to the
political power of the Huguenots. Indeed, the persistent re
fusal of the king to fulfil his engagements to raze the neighboring
Fort Louis gave to the citizens and to their friends abroad all the
warning needed. Yet the student of history who remembers that
the resources of a great and flourishing kingdom were at the dis
posal of the monarch and his trusted adviser, would at first be
inclined to entertain surprise rather at the protracted duration of
the siege than at its inevitable issue. According to the admis
sion of Cardinal Richelieu himself, several serious mistakes
were committed by the royalists that greatly retarded their suc
cess. Thev neglected to cut off the water-supply of
Mistakes of ./ o x x j
the be- La Rochelle. They failed to destroy the Avheat, the
vegetables, and other natural productions which greAV
upon the counterscarp, and which confessedly supplied the
city with provisions for two months' time. They were lax in
not beginning at an earlier date to punish fugitives from the
famishing town and to drive them back inexorably within its
walls. They erred especially in not attacking La Rochelle at

'The letters of Conde and Rohan, dated respectively on the 4th and 6th of
November, 1628, are given in full by Petitot in his edition of the Memoires de
Rohan, i. 383-385.

320 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VI
a time when by a vigorous assault they might have taken it
with comparative ease, and shortened the siege by five or six
months.1 Despite these and other possible blunders, the operations
to which Cardinal Richelieu, exchanging the spiritual functions
of the priest for the life of a general, applied himself with unre
mitting assiduity, will ever remain a monument of his skill and
tenacity of purpose. I shall not imitate Bassompierre, and
give a story, day by day, of the progress of minor events that
Avould be as devoid of interest as burdensome to the ordinary
reader. A few general statements will suffice for my purpose,
both in regard to the situation of the city and the means by
Avhich it was taken.
_ La Rochelle stands at the head of a bay or exterior harbor
which may measure a mile and a half or tAvo miles in depth,
La Rochelle fr°m the farthest side of the city's water-front to the
and its ports. p0int de Coureilles, and which maintains a nearly uni
form breadth of about seven-eighths of a mile. La Rochelle
itself grew up on the sides of a small inner port, extending two
hundred and fifty paces into the land, and thus assumed some
what the shape of a horseshoe. The sheet of water held in the
city's embrace was not so small, we are assured, but that it was
capable of holding at one time more than two hundred vessels
of three hundred tons each ; but a modern ocean steamship of
respectable size, could it have gained admission, would almost
have reached from the entrance to the opposite land, and could
not have turned upon its own central point. The fortifications,
recently greatly strengthened by the Huguenot burghers, not
only comprised a wall on the land side, provided with nine or
ten formidable bastions, with half moons, Avith moat and coun-
The fortifi- terscarp — in short, with every appliance known to the
cations. most approved art of the times — but included a line of
Avail upon the water's edge broken only by the narrow entrance
of the inner port. This entrance was commanded by tAvo towers
— the Tour de Saint Nicolas, on the right, and the Tour de la
Chaine, on the left. Between the two, even in time of peace, a
massive iron chain was by night suspended at the water's level,
1 Memoires du Cardinal de Richelieu, i. 553.

1627 SIEGE OF LA ROCHELLE 321
and so carefully was the narroAv passage watched that the man
to whom its guard was entrusted was permitted to collect a toll
from every vessel that put to sea.1 It is not an exaggerated
statement of President Gramond, that La Rochelle, at the time
of the siege, was the first of European fortified towns.2 There
was perhaps none that exhibited in every detail of its municipal
administration a greater amount of care, bred of well-grounded
fear of possible plots against its peace.3
The results of recent attempts to take towns much weaker
than La Rochelle by assault had been so uniformly disastrous,
works of that a resort to that more prompt, but more perilous,
the royalists, method was out of the question. Larger forces and
far more effective artillery than those at the command of Louis
might have failed to make an impression upon such redoubtable
works. In order to reduce the city by famine it was necessary,
in the first place, to cut off supplies by land. This was done by
throwing up a wall of circumvallation, with suitable forts at
more or less regular intervals, constructed at a respectful dis
tance from the Huguenot bastions, and reaching from just be
low the famous Fort Louis quite around the city to the forts of
Coureilles and Orleans on the opposite side of the bay. It was
even more indispensable to close the communication of the city
with the sea, that no succor, whether of men or of provisions,
might come from the English or other allies of the Rochellese.
The first efforts in this direction were not promising. Pompee
Targon'e Targon, an engineer of Italian extraction, more fertile
cnam. jn invention than successful in practice, had acquired
some reputation at the siege of Ostend, a quarter of a century
earlier. But his plan to shut in La Rochelle by means of a
chain with floating castles, pontoons, and rotating battery,

1 Jodocus Sincerus is careful to inform us that sailors returning with a suc
cessful catch of fish were expected to give him a part of their fish ; for which
purpose a basket was lowered by a rope from the tower. Itinerarium Gallise,
117. * "Haec Rnpella Europaearum princeps arcium (quo tempore obsessa) hodie
pagus est." Hist. Gall., 767. Both Bernard (i. 176, etc.) and Sincerus (ubi
supra) made personal visits to La Rochelle. and both have testified to the cour
tesy with which the mayor took pains to show them all the wonderful works.
3 Bernard, i. 178.
21

322 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VI
though excellent upon paper, did not stand the test when carried
into effect. The first storm snapped the chain asunder and
wrecked the entire structure.1 It was evident that something
more stable must be substituted. A massive dike was ac
cordingly begun, at a distance of a full mile from the nearest
bastion of La Rochelle, and therefore quite beyond the range of
the enemy's fire. The work had advanced but little when a
considerable portion was overthrown by the waves of the sea.
The great Cardinal Richelieu was not discouraged. The disaster
dike. was ascribed to the fact that the sides had been built
perpendicular ; when the work was resumed they were con
structed so that the force of the storms might expend itself
upon the sloping faces of the dike. Thus, while the top had
but four yards of level space in breadth, the foundations reached
far out into the water on either side. Great masses of stone,
laboriously brought to the spot, formed the body of the work,
and were kept in position by piles driven into the bottom;
while farther out, where the depth of the water precluded the
continuation of the wall in this shape, nearly threescore vessels,
firmly bound to each other by iron bands and filled with
masonry well cemented together, were sunk to the bottom and
became the firm foundation which was subsequently covered
by an immense quantity of stones until this part of the work,
hke the parts nearer to either shore, was reared to a height be
yond the reach of the waves at their highest. In order to afford
a passage for the water to run in and out, the dike was not
continuous, but its two arms, projecting from the opposite sides
of the bay, overlapped, leaving a circuitous entrance some thirty
yards in breadth. This was rendered impracticable, even for
such vessels as might have ventured to thread so exposed a
pathway, by spurs of the principal dike, by piles firmly driven,
and united by chains, and by a cordon of sunken ships.2
1 Bernard, ii. 50.
2 See the full description of the dike given by Cardinal Richelieu in his
Memoires, i. 550, 551, and the briefer account by Arcere, Histoire de La Ro
chelle, ii. 268, 269. The excellent plan illustrative of the siege given by this
author is of great assistance to a clear understanding, and has furnished me the
measurements given in the text. Mr. Smedley (History of the Reformed Re
ligion in France, iii. 189) reproduces this plan on a smaller scale, but, through
a blunder of the engraver, reversed.

1627 SIEGE OF LA ROCHELLE 323
Such was the structure, in its ultimate shape, and as modified
under the lessons of partial disaster, which has added to the
fame of the cardinal who, if not the author of every
spinoia's one of its features, made it his own both by the zeal
visit. . . . . .
with which he projected its erection and by the untir
ing application with which he personally superintended its ex
ecution. We may well believe that the Marquis of Spinola,
hero of the capture of Ostend, Avho examined the dike when in
process of construction, did not hesitate to praise the project,
and still more the courage of the undertaking. So ambitious a
military structure had scarcely been seen in modern times. If
the astute marquis had thought so before, he was now fully con
firmed in his opinion that it was highly undesirable, indeed that
it was a violation of the first principles of good policy that Spain
should help the King of France to reduce his Huguenot sub
jects.1 The Spanish ministers Avere evidently of the same mind.
Although, in accordance with the terms of a late treaty, the King
insincerity °^ Spain had sent a fleet to French waters professedly
wwchrecaiis *° a^ nis brother the King of France, their corn-
its fleet. mander had secret instructions to give Louis no sub
stantial assistance. Sorry enough was Don Frederic to be near
La Rochelle Avhen the news reached him that a succor of four
teen English vessels was preparing to come under escort of eight
ships of war. None the less was he compelled to go to Louis
and ask permission, which could scarcely be refused, to carry back
the newly arrived troops to Spain. " It was a great disgrace,"
bitterly remarked the cardinal, " that could have been borne
by no other nation than Spain, a country which can boast of its
impudence, as the wicked emperor Caligula used to boast of his."3
1 " Quando fu in Corte Cattolica, e che proponevansi affari et imprese, sempre
riveniva al suo divisamento, e ricordo di soccorersi La Roccella peccando la
Spagna contra i primi principii della politica in cooperare alia sua caduta ; da
quel momento la potenza Reale della Francia trasalita al punto suo verticale,
onde ben presto pote calpestare gli Ugonotti, ridurre tutti gli Ordini del Regno
ad una cieca ubbidienza, e stipare le sue forze a battere ed in abbattere le fiori-
tissime all' hora della Casa d' Austria." Vittorio Siri, Memorie Ricondite, vi.
359. Others have remarked before me, that, although Siri was a paid histori
ographer of France, he was sometimes more frank than other salaried writers of
his class ; probably because he wrote in a foreign tongue.
2 Memoires du Cardinal de Richelieu, i. 511.

324 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VI
Both sides, indeed, were destined to carry their contest on to
the bitter end without effective help from abroad. Denmark
The Danish sent two ambassadors to remonstrate against the fatuity
embassy. 0f continuing a war with England that could turn only
to the advantage of Spain, and to plead in behalf of La Rochelle.
Marie de' Medici at first positively refused them an audience un
less they should promise to make no mention of the latter topic,
on the ground that Louis would hear of no peace with La Ro
chelle save by its surrender. And when the envoys insisted
that they could fulfil their commission only by saying all that
they had been instructed to say, the queen, or the attendant
ministers, at the audience to which the Danes were reluctantly
admitted, made a reply to the second part of their speech as un
gracious as the response to the former part had been kind and
conciliatory. The intercession was fruitless. :
The help which Buckingham had promised, and for which the
friends and agents of the Huguenots had not ceased to pray,
proved worse than vain. Yet if England turned out to be a
broken reed for the Huguenots to lean upon, this was no fault
of the people. True, the disgraceful mismanagement of the ex
pedition to the Isle de Re was disheartening, and the royal
favorite was so unpopular that the Commons were not disposed
to vote supplies for any new fleet that might be sent out under
his command. And the favorite himself, though he spent a part
of his private fortune in preparations, was so nettled by the dis
trust which the Rochellese had shown, that he insisted at one
time that hostages of the sons of the best families of the city
should be sent to England, and that the English soldiers and
sailors should be allowed, if need be, to enter its walls — demands
which the jealous burghers would in no wise listen to, and from
which he had to recede.2 Yet on the twenty-eighth of January,
1628, new articles were agreed upon between Charles and the
Rochellese, and one of these articles permitted a general collec
tion to be made in their favor throughout his dominions.3 On
1 Vittorio Siri, Memorie Ricondite, vi. 359.
aLaugel, Le Due de Rohan, 244.
3 Text in Mercure francois, xiv. part 2, pp. 1 and seq. The collection thus
authorized must not be confounded with either of those collections for which
briefs were issued dated January 1st, and January 29th respectively. Of these

1628 SIEGE OF LA ROCHELLE 325
the eleventh of May, a formidable English fleet, under com
mand of the Earl of Denbigh, made its tardy appearance before
AnewEng- -^a Rochelle. I need not mention the number of
d«theetEari vessels of war, great and small, of fire ships, and of
of Denbigh, transports laden with provisions, of which it was com
posed. Neither ships nor provisions did La Rochelle any good.
It was too late, or the Enghsh leader was too inefficient. Car
dinal Richelieu's mole was Avell advanced toward completion and
it was, or was thought to be, impossible to force a way for the
ships through the narrow and well protected entrance. A soli
tary boat of no great size succeeded in entering by stealth, and
gave the inhabitants a taste of the plenty Avhich they might have
enjoyed had the fleet come earlier or been more resolute. There
was a short interchange of shot between the English vessels and
those of Louis ; then the former returned home scarcely a week
after their arrival. The second English expedition had done
nothing but tantalize and disappoint the Rochellese ; whose
hearts sank as they saw its sails vanish in the offing ; but, at
least, it had not, like the first expedition, consumed their pro
visions and aggravated the hardships and difficulties of their
situation.1 Cardinal Richelieu would have us believe that the inhabi
tants of La Rochelle were so discouraged by this occurrence
that they would at once have capitulated, had it not
the Duchess been for the machinations of a seditious preacher, Sal-
bert, or Salvert, by name, and especially of the Duchess
of Rohan, whose hopes for her sons lay in inducing the city to
hold out.2 The prelate scarcely exaggerates the activity of the
noble woman whose devotion to the cause espoused by her
family led her to endure with exemplary patience and a truly
virile determination the horrors of the protracted siege, and thus
to make of herself and her daughter a target for the petty mean
ness of Louis the Thirteenth and the malignity of his unforgiv-
two, the first was for the benefit of French Protestants who had come from the
Isle de Re, and the second was in aid of " the poor exiled Palatinate ministers."
G. H. Overend, Strangers in Dover, in Proceedings of the Huguenot Society of
London, iii. (1890) 144.
1 Memoires du Cardinal de Richelieu, i. 537, 538.
2 Ibid., i. 538.

326 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VI
ing adviser. But the same malignity has induced Richelieu to
pass over without a reference the noble conduct of the man who
may be regarded as the true hero of the siege — Jean
mayor of La' Guiton, who, in the midst of the conflict, on Sunday,
the thirteenth of April, 1628, after the second sermon
of the day, was chosen mayor of La Rochelle by the decisive
vote of seventy-five out of the eighty-tAvo echevins and peers
who took part in the election.1
This intrepid man Avas a fair type of that honorable and sub
stantial class of merchants and burgesses that constituted the
strength and the pride of La Rochelle. Various members of
his family had held high position in the municipal government.
His grandfather, Jacques Guiton, Avas elected to the mayoralty
in 1575, apparently as the reAvard of his self-devotion in the
famous siege of 1573, immediately after the massacre of Saint
Bartholomew's Day. It is significant of his social standing
that, nine years later, he was chosen to act as sponsor, on the
part of the Protestant city, at the baptism of that Benjamin de
Soubise destined to be so closely connected with La Rochelle's
fortunes. His two sons, Jacques and Jehan, the latter the
father of the hero of the siege of 1628, Avere raised to the high
est municipal office in 1586 and 1587, in the troublous times of
the League. The family had thus in successive generations
enjoyed the high consideration to which it was entitled by the
executive ability of its members. The stanch Protestantism
of the Guitons was well attested in the past. In the next gen
eration a daughter of Jean Guiton was married to Jacob
Duquesne, brother of Abraham Duquesne, the great Protestant
admiral of Louis the Fourteenth.
After an active mercantile career, during which he either
sailed or despatched vessels in which he had an interest to the
banks of Newfoundland and wherever in the Avest a profitable
field for commerce opened to French mariners, Jean Guiton
turned his attention to public concerns. First an echevin, or
alderman, he was selected at the beginning of the troubles of

i Jean Guiton, dernier maire de l'ancienne commune de La Rochelle, 1628.
Par P. S. Callot, ancien maire de La Rochelle (La Rochelle, 1872), p. 33, from
the .minutesuof .the municipality for 1627-1628.

1628 SIEGE OF LA ROCHELLE 327
1621, with one other, to gather ships to defend La Rochelle,
and on the fifth of September in that year was appointed ad
miral of a fleet of some sixteen vessels that carried the blue and
white flag of the city. As admiral he distinguished himself
above many bred to the profession. The Duke of Guise, whose
superior forces he met and withstood with signal courage, sub
sequently extolled his intrepidity. When, after the return of
peace, Guiton was commissioned to wait upon Guise and offer
him, as the king's representative, the ensign under which he had
fought and which he had rendered glorious, the admiring duke,
placing his hand upon it, replied : " I receive it, but I return it
to you ; I did not gain it in combat." " You are brave men,"
he exclaimed to the Rochellese admiral's captains, " to have
fought so valiantly. That is what I did not expect. I thought
that, at the sight of so powerful an army, you would certainly
retire without fighting." "My lord," replied Guiton, " God has
hitherto conferred this grace upon me, that I have never turned
my back in battle, and I would sooner have lost my life in the
flames than fled." On the other hand, the city of La Rochelle
did the successful admiral no ordinary honors. The mayor, fol
lowed by the echevins and peers, came to greet him upon his
landing, and conducted him in state to his home. In token of
gratitude for his faithful services, they begged him to accept as
a gift "the great vessel named Le Melhuacq, of three hundred
and fifty tuns burden," with all its guns and munitions of war.
It was the ship he had lately commanded.1 The part played by
Guiton, when again chosen admiral of the Rochellese fleet dur
ing the second Huguenot war, has already been referred to.2
There was a story current that Guiton after his election to
the mayoralty made some objections to accepting the post in
the dangerous and well-nigh desperate situation of La Rochelle,
and that when his resistance was overborne by the urgency of

1 Jean Guiton, 4-30. M. Callot has thoroughly investigated and elucidated the
career of a man of whom La Rochelle is justly proud, but of whose life, outside
of his military exploits, little or nothing was known by the majority of readers,
or indeed writers, of history. I am indebted to his account, which is based
upon municipal records and other manuscript sources, for almost all the state
ments which I have made.
2 Supra, chapter v. , page 263.

328 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VI
his associates in the government of the city, he drew his dagger
from the sheath and exclaimed : " Well, I shall be mayor, since
you will have it so, but on this condition : that I shall be per
mitted to drive this weapon into the heart of the first man who
speaks of surrender, and that I be treated in the same fashion
should I propose it." Thereupon he laid the dagger upon the
board before him, to be used as occasion might require.1 It
may be that the story is insufficiently attested to merit our un
qualified acceptance, and that the antique table still shoAvn in
the town hall of La Rochelle with a deep groove, said to be cut
by Guiton's dagger, does not deserve the interest in which it is
held.2 Yet the incident is in strict conformity with the resolute
character which Guiton at once developed.
And, indeed, resolution was the quality most needed in the
defender of La Rochelle. For the situation of that city was
growing desperate. Cardinal Richelieu had not
Richelieu's ° ° r .
tenacity of swerved from his purpose to make thorough work
purDose. j. j. o
with the siege of the recalcitrant place. Others
might grow weary ; he never tired. Louis the Thirteenth him
self, early in the year, waxed so impatient of his enforced stay
on the seaboard, far from his gay capital, that he announced
his desire to retire for a while to Paris ; and Richelieu in
curred the king's displeasure, and may have been in some
danger of losing his favor, by trying to dissuade him by argu
ments drawn from the impolicy of abandoning at this stage so
important a siege. But the cardinal discovered his blunder in
time. Thereupon he recommended that his majesty should
carry out his purpose to return to the capital, magnanimously
offering, though an ecclesiastic, to remain and, so far as might
be, repair the damage that might be entailed by the king's ab
sence from the scene of Avar. It was much hke giving one's
sovereign a furlough, but Louis, having obtained what he
wanted, was indisposed to quarrel with the man to whom he
was indebted for it. He was, in fact, so much delighted to be
1 See, among other writers, Le Vassor, Histoire de Louis XIII., v (liv 25)
690. 2 M. Callot believes in the authenticity of the table, but is incredulous respect
ing the cut in the white marble top, since made, as he supposes, "by clumsy or
ignorant hands." Jean Guiton, p. 38, note.

1628 SIEGE OF LA ROCHELLE 329
permitted to escape, that he shed tears of joy when parting
from the prelate who had accompanied him a few miles on his
way. What was more, he took this opportunity to create
Richelieu his lieutenant-general in the army before La Rochelle,
granting him absolute authority over cavalry, infantry, and
artillery, over domestic and foreign troops alike, with full
power to prosecute the siege, to conclude peace Avith the in
habitants of the rebellious town, and to enter it — -in short, en
joining on all men to obey Richelieu as implicitly as they would
obey the king himself.1 This was in February, and Louis was
permitted to absent himself until April, when he came back
to the camp only to express his complete satisfaction with what
Richelieu had done and was doing — at the progress of the
dike, and at the good discipline of the contented and well-fed
troops. Guiton had a harder task before him, and in the perform
ance of it he too never flinched. Charles the First had nourished
„ . a the Rochellese with vain hopes. His assurances were
Continued x
TciiaTesi stron§ enough, had they been followed by any effects.
" Gentlemen," he wrote from Westminster, " do not
be disheartened, even if my fleet be returned. Hold fast until
the last day, for I am resolved that my entire fleet shall be de
stroyed rather than that you be not succored. To this end I
have countermanded it, and I have sent vessels to make it
change the plan it adopted to return. I send you promptly a
number of vessels to reinforce it. With God's help, the suc
cess will be happy for your deliverance." Eight days later the
king who called himself " Your good friend," wrote again. " I
have been sorry to learn that my fleet Avas on the point of com
ing back without having accomplished my commands, Avhich
were to bring provisions in to you at whatever cost it might be.
I have now given it a fresh order to return to your roadstead
and not to stir thence until it shall have introduced proArisions
or until I have strengthened it. To this end I shall have
labors instituted with all diligence. Be assured that I shall
never abandon you, and that I shall use all the forces of my

1 Memoires du Cardinal de Richelieu, i. 514. The commission dated Febru
ary 4, 1628, six days before the king's departure. See Bazin, ii. 390, 391.

330 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VI
kingdom for your deliverance, until God has done me the grace
to give you an assured peace." 1
Three months after these letters were written, the royal
favorite, the Duke of Buckingham, Avas murdered by one Fel-
ton. One month later, a third and last fleet of the English
The third king appeared in the neighborhood of La Rochelle.
Enghsh fleet. Quiton had not for a moment intermitted his appeals
to the Rochellese commissioners in England begging them
with increasing earnestness to secure the fulfilment of Charles's
promises, and the commissioners had not failed to discharge
their trust. Meantime, the commissioners themsehres wrote
home and urged their toAvnsmen to stand fast. That is a touch
ing letter to which the signatures of Jacques David and of the
intrepid Huguenot pastor Vincent are affixed, written from
London, on the fourteenth of July. These were men full of
compassion for the city Avhich contained all that were dearest
to them in the world, yet men full also of unselfish devotion
to a cause dearer to them than life itself. "In God's name,
gentlemen," they wrote, " continue the miracles of your con
stancy. We know that your necessities cannot but be frightful,
and as we picture to ourselves our children who, with yours,
are crying from hunger, we eat not a morsel that is not wet
with tears. But were you to be compelled to cut off all food
both from our ten children (yet God knows how dear to us they
are) and from all those that are incapable of taking their part
in the common defence, make a virtue of the most extreme
necessity, while waiting that God crown it with His deliver
ance. We write you this with our eyes all bathed in tears." 2
On the other hand, Guiton kept the commissioners advised
of every point of which advantage might be taken. He in
formed them that the dike Avas weakest in the centre, where
there were only floating boats and a few machines ; that the
king had but thirteen large vessels, the rest were small and
badly equipped ; that fire-ships were good for attack, ships in
1 Text of the letters of Charles I., of May 19 and 27 O. S., in tbe pieces justi-
ficatives of Callot, 114, 115. I translate from the French original.
2 This letter was published in the Archives historiques de la Saintonge et de
1'Aunis, 1888, and is reprinted in Sehickler, Eglises du refuge en Angleterre, ii.
11, 12.

1628 FALL OF LA ROCHELLE 331
the form of mines still better ; that men armed with axes were
needed ; that the enemy had but six hundred sailors in all ;
that, after God, all depended upon what the help from England
could effect. In a brief note written on Saint Bartholomew's
day, the fifty-sixth anniversary of the Parisian massacre, he re
minded them that the Rochellese had been expecting the prom
ised aid for full three months, and that they could not con
ceive what disaster detained it at a time when the soldiers and
the citizens of La Rochelle alike were worn out and were dying
of hunger. " Nevertheless, we shall hold out to the very last
day. But, in God's name, do not delay, we are perishing." 2
Now at length, as I have said, the third fleet had arrived,
consisting of more than one hundred vessels, under command of
the Earl of Lindsey. But it soon appeared that he came only
to add another chapter to the story of the incompetence of
British noblemen who undertook the relief of La Rochelle and
succeeded only in affixing disgrace to the arms of their coun
try and themselves incurring dishonor by their pusillanimity.
Three times did the relieving fleet make a pretence of coming
to blows with the inferior force of the enemy in position at the
mouth of the bay leading up to La Rochelle. Three times did
the Enghsh confine themselves to making impotent attempts to
blow up the ships of their antagonists by means of tin cases
filled with explosive material which did no execution, or to set
the ships in flames by means of fire-ships that drifted about
and were easily secured by the enemy, or to cripple them by a
distant, and therefore quite fruitless cannonade which inflicted
no substantial injury. After a few days, the fleet which, in the
words of the Roman Catholic historian of La Rochelle, seemed
to have come less to combat than to offer vain spectacles of
combats,2 gave over even this poor exhibition, and left the
famishing town to its fate. Meanwhile, up to the last moment,
Guiton did not relax his appeals to the Rochellese commission
ers on board of Lord Lindsey's fleet to induce him to make an

'Letters of Guiton to David, Vincent, Bragneau, De Hinse, and Gobert, "in
England," dated August 20 and 24, 1628. Text in Callot, pieces justificatives,
116, 117.
* ArcSre, Histoire de la Ville de La Rochelle, ii. 310.

332 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VI
attack, which he regarded as far from hopeless, upon the middle
of the dike. " Hasten," he said, " in God's name, and do not
leave the few inhabitants that Ave have remaining to perish al
most in your sight. The richest persons among us have no
bread left. Act without delay, or we shall perish." J
Guiton did not exaggerate the deplorable condition of La
Rochelle. Gaunt Famine had not laid her hand with more re-
Famme of lentless hold upon the throat of Sancerre a half cen-
La Rocheiie. tury before, than she now laid it upon the throat of
the miserable inhabitants of La Rochelle. The same old story
of suffering was repeated, perhaps aggravated. Of the sum of
physical distress no price current, such as that which the jubil
ant besiegers despatched to Marie de' Medici, in order to show
her that the end was slowly but surely approaching, can convey
an adequate conception. Yet even bare figures become elo
quent, as they reveal the fact that the barest trifle of food,
which could stay for a moment the gnawing of hunger, com
manded a sum of money which the wages of a laboring man for
a day could not secure. The wealthy found that, for the first
time, all the money in their possession would scarcely buy for
them a satisfactory meal. Two cabbage-leaves or one onion
were valued at ten sols, a beet at eight sols, while an egg was
rated at eight livres. Meats the most disgusting were quoted
at extravagant prices. A pound of horseflesh was eagerly
bought for six livres, a pound of dog meat for twenty sols. Even
at these ruinous rates the supply fell short of the demand.2 At
last men had recourse to anything, however repulsive in char
acter, that promised to defer the fatal moment of complete star
vation. For days before the surrender of the city, the greater
part of its population was driven to subsist upon scraps of
leather, boiled in vinegar and water, until they reached a con
sistency that would permit them to be eaten. Again were there
cases reported of women driven by desperation to feed upon the
flesh of their own children, and it became necessary to set a
watch over the very cemeteries, lest men should undertake to

1 Guiton to the commissioners, La Rochelle, October 10, 1628, apud Callot,
ubi supra, pieces justificatives, 118.
2 "Relation du siege dernier de la Rochelle sous le trSs Chrestien et invincible
Roy Louys XIII. a, present heureusement regnant" (Paris, 1630), 245-247.

1628 FALL OF LA ROCHELLE 333
rob them of the corpses of the dead to obtain the means of sub
sistence for the living. Men, women, and children pined away
and died. The bodies lay unburied in the shops, in the houses,
in the streets. The survivors were too few, and themselves too
much reduced in strength, to provide a grave for the remains of
their nearest friends and kinsmen.1 Some said that eight or ten
thousand persons, others said fifteen thousand, perished of
hunger.2 Death stared the suiwivors in the face.
The extreme point of human endurance was reached. De
serted by the ally who had been so prodigal of assurances of
La Eocheiie nelp> even the stout-hearted mayor saw that he must
capitulates, yield. On Monday, the twenty-fourth of October,
1628, the Rochellese deputies appeared before Cardinal Riche
lieu and begged him to intercede for them with the king. This
the prelate promised to do, but informed them that his majesty
had gone off for eight days ; upon Louis's return he would speak
to him of the matter. " How, my Lord, eight days ! " the en
voys exclaimed. " There is not enough food in La Rochelle to
live upon for three days." A messenger was despatched, and
Louis was brought back to the camp.3
It was not difficult to fix the articles of the capitulation. La
RocheUe was at Richelieu's mercy, but it was not Richelieu's
policy to drive the Huguenots throughout the kingdom to
despair. It was enough that he had triumphed completely over
the defiant Huguenot stronghold, and could dictate terms to the
vanquished. Having secured their submission, he was quite
willing to grant them their hves.
The tAvelve Huguenot deputies who came on the twenty-ninth
of October, to make the formal surrender, were treated with a
mixture of courtesy and disdain. Too much enfeebled by their
long abstinence to walk from the gate to the royal quarters,
Marshal Bassompierre furnished them, at their request, with
horses, and even talked to them, by the way, " with unparalleled
gentleness."4 But he also compelled the burghers to dismount
at the distance of a hundred paces from the king, and led them
1 Memoires de Fontenay Mareuil, 119, 120.
3 Ibid., ubi supra ; Relation du siege, 245.
3 Memoires du Marechal de Bassompierre, 289.
4 "Douceur nompareille." Mercure francois, xiv. 694.

334 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VI
before his majesty, with troopers preceding them and troopers
following them, much as a provost marshal might bring in a
pack of prisoners whom he had been sent to apprehend. At
the sight of Louis the Thirteenth the deputies knelt down, and
from his knees, one of their number, De la Goutte, a peer of
the proud city, pronounced in the name of his associates a very
humble plea for forgiveness, full of assurances of obedience and
loyalty. Thereupon the king accorded them his grace, though
it must be confessed, in no very gracious manner. "I pray
God," he replied, " that it may be from the heart that you bear
me honor, and that it be not the need to which you are reduced
that compels you to utter these words. I know well
Louis xru. that you have always been malicious and full of craft,
gnenot dep- and that you have done everything you could to shake
off the yoke of my obedience. I pardon your rebel
lions. If you prove good and faithful servants, I shall be a
good prince to you. If your actions are conformable to the
protestations you make, I shall fulfil all I have promised you." J
Thus fell La Rochelle. The gates were opened and the
royal troops were admitted. They took possession of the for
tifications that had so long held them in check, and of the
famished city. It was a city of the dead. They could find
but sixty-four French soldiers and ninety-six Englishmen alive.
La Rochelle was full of corpses, lying uncared for in the
rooms, the courts, the streets — wherever they had happened to
die — yet so attenuated by want that the shrivelled remains had
given rise to no general pestilence. On All Saints' Day Riche
lieu celebrated mass in the church of Saint Margaret ; and
that very afternoon Louis made his triumphal entry on horse
back and in full armor. The miserable inhabitants looked on
Avith conflicting emotions, glad once more to taste of plenty,
but sick at heart that they had lived only to witness the ruin
of their cherished institutions, and the forfeiture of privileges
which La Rochelle had for centuries enjoyed. From the full
grace which Louis the Thirteenth was pleased to dispense as

1 See the harangue of the deputies and the king's reply in Mercure francois,
xiv. 695, 696 ; Relation du siege dernier de la Rochelle, 241, 243 ; and mjmoires
de Fontenay Mareuil, 116.

1628 FALL OF LA ROCHELLE 335
of his royal bounty, the chief exceptions were made in the
case of the patriotic mayor, and of the mother and sister of the
great Huguenot leader. So narrow-minded a prince as the
present monarch of France could scarcely have sum-
the city and moned up sufficient magnanimity to appreciate signal
' virtue in determined opponents, even had he pos
sessed generous advisers. When Marshal Schomberg reached
La Rochelle, at the head of the first detachment of troops, he
was met at the gates by Jean Guiton, whom he permitted to
make a brief address ; but, at its conclusion, the latter was in
formed that he had ceased to be mayor, and must give up the
keys of La Rochelle. At the monarch's stately entry, two
days later, the man, whose only fault was that he had defended
La Rochelle too well, was informed that the king positively re
fused to lay eyes on him.1 In accordance with Richelieu's
suggestion, Jean Guiton was commanded to leave for a time a
city where, it was said, he had displayed his inhumanity by
suffering the citizens rather to starve than to have recourse to
the king's mercy ; and the brave dowager of Rohan, with her
equally brave daughter, was sent off to be kept in confinement
at Niort, as unworthy of the king's sight, "because she had
been the torch that had consumed the people of La Rochelle." 3
The duchess had not been mentioned by name, and had been
supposed to be comprehended in the capitulation ; but the in
terpretation of the terms of surrender lies with the victorious
party.3 " It was an unexampled exhibition of harshness," observes the
duchess's indignant son, " that a person of her rank, at the
age of seventy years, issuing from a siege in which she and
her daughter had lived three whole months upon horse-flesh
and four or five ounces of bread a day, should be detained
captives without the exercise of their religion, and so narrowly
1 "Le Maire ne s'y trouva point, parce que le Roy ne le voulut voir." Mer
cure francois, xiv. 710. See also p. 703.
4 Memoires du Cardinal de Richelieu, i. 553. "Leur Maire qui les avoit si
long temps fait subsister en leur rebellion, et quelques-uns des plus seditieux
f urent cominandez de sortir, et changer d'air pour quelque temps. Bernard,
Histoi^du Roy Louis XIII., ii. 117.
'Memoires du Due de Rohan, i. 395.

336 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VI
that they had but a single servant to Avait upon them." But
Catharine of Parthenay, Avho never forgot that in her veins ran
the blood of that brave Huguenot, Jean de Soubise, was made
of too stern stuff to yield to misfortune. From her place of
confinement she wrote to her son Avarning him to place no con
fidence in any letters which force might compel her to write,
and begging him that no consideration for her wretched plight
should induce him to relax his activity, to the detriment of the
Huguenot interests, no matter what sufferings her enemies
might inflict. Her noble resolution, which was in keeping
with a life of rare virtue and piety, forms a fitting sequel to
the story of the siege of a city, which, in the words of the
great Huguenot captain, having undergone a pitiless famine,
in the end acquired, by its constancy, a longer life in the
memory of ages yet to come than the prosperous places of the
day.1 By the king's formal Declaration, La Rochelle lost all its
rights, franchises, and privileges. Of its municipal officers, the
consuls alone were retained ; the offices of mayor, echevins, and
peers, and even the corporation of the city itself, were abolished.
Full pardon for political offences was indeed granted, and it
was promised that Protestant worship should be permitted on a
site hereafter to be designated ; but the large and commodious
edifice which the Huguenots had erected upon the castle square,
and which was known as the Grand Temple, was taken from
them and reserved for use as a cathedral church, when the pope
should have acceded to Louis's request and either transferred
to La Rochelle some bishop of the neighborhood, or erected the
city into a new see. The bell that had served to summon the
burghers to their municipal assemblies was to be melted. A
monumental cross was to be erected upon the castle square to
commemorate the fall of La Rochelle, and yearly processions on
the first day of November were to perpetuate the fame of it.
The fortifications were to be so completely levelled with the
ground that the plough would pass as easily over the spot they
had once occupied as through tilled land. Those Avails alone
were excepted that faced the sea, between the towers of Saint
¦  m — , 
1 Memoires de Due de Rohan, i. 396.

1628 FALL OF LA ROCHELLE 337
Nicolas and La Lanterne, together with these two towers them
selves and the " Tour de la Chaine." In fact the king in ad
vance pronounced guilty of treason not only any person that
should venture to disobey his command, but any person that
might dare to importune him to obtain anything that was con
trary to it.1 Only such Protestants as had resided at La Ro
chelle before the English landing were permitted to dwell
there.2 It is almost needless to say that Louis despatched messengers
to carry the tidings of his victory to all the friendly princes of
Europe. His extraordinary courier to the pope was
Reception of r tt • i i ¦
the news of particularly unfortunate. Having passed on his wav
the fall of La fl , „ J . , . . ., ° f_ , J
Rocheiie through the plague-stricken city of Lyons, he was re
morselessly detained, upon reaching the duchy of
Savoy, until the full term of the quarantine should be com
pleted. The reader accustomed in our times to see in the daily
journal the news of the events taking place in the most distant
quarters of our globe within a few hours of their occurrence,
will be amused to discover that about three weeks elapsed from
so important an affair as the fall of La Rochelle, before Urban
the Eighth heard of it. Even then the story came in so unof
ficial a manner that the enemies of France affected to throAv
doubt upon its truth, and the pontiff was compelled to wait
some days more before publicly testifying the gladness he felt.
But if the rejoicing was postponed, it was none the less demon
strative when the time came for its manifestation. Urban's
congratulatory brief was as ardent as could be desired, and dealt
out praise to the king of France with as free a hand as it dealt
out condemnation to the vanquished heretics and rebels.3 Not
1 "Declarons criminels de lcze majeste tous ceux qui attenteront quelque
chose au prejudice du present Article, ou qui oserontnous presser et importuner
pour obtenir quelque chose au contraire du contenu en icelny. " A similar
threat was pronounced against any that should solicit the restoration of the
mayor, etc.
* "Declaration du Roy, contenant l'ordre et police que sa Majeste veut estre
establie en sa ville de la Rochelle. Donne a la Rochelle au mois de Novembre
Van de grace 1628." In Mercure francois, xiv. 720-736.
3 The brief may be read both in the original Latin and in a French transla
tion in the Mercure frangois, xiv. 749-753, and in the contemporary Histoire
des deux derniers sieges de la Rochelle (Paris, 1630), 255-259.
22

338 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VI
content with words, however, the pope instituted, or encouraged,
spectacles and demonstrations appealing to the senses of the
populace. Peals of artillery resounded from the castle of San
Angelo. The brilliancy of the illumination of the palace of the
French ambassador was rivalled only by the splendor with
which the facade of the church of San Luigi de' Francesi shone
forth. The former was all ablaze, shining " like another firma
ment," and, while trumpets blared and drums beat, two foun
tains ran with wine for all comers. The church, with its six
hundred lights and its representations of fiery ships and a be
sieged fortress, on the exterior, was scarcely less brilliant with
in. Urban himself honored the French sanctuary with his pres
ence, walking on foot all the way from San Agostino, a distance
of some two hundred paces, to join in the Te Deum and the
Exaudiat, and to repeat four prayers with his own voice. Nay,
in the excess of his joy, the pontiff went so far as to publish a
decree granting a plenary indulgence to all worshippers who,
within tAvo days, should visit the churches of San Agostino and
San Luigi — a liberal offer of spiritual benefits even for a city so
richly endowed as Rome with opportunities for the faithful.1
It was not strange that the pontiff should exhibit great satis
faction at the fall of La Rochelle, since the catastrophe signified
to him chiefly a fresh mishap that had befallen the cause of
heresy. More remarkable was the joy which the Emperor of
Germany thought fit to feign, although he could not but knoAv
that the union of all the forces of France in the hands of Louis
and his astute minister, which must now come shortly, augured
no good for the interests of the House of Hapsburg. He gratified
the French messenger, as the bearer of glad tidings, by creating
him a count of the Holy Roman Empire. On the other hand,
the Spanish court was less jubilant and less hypocritical.3
The fall of La Rochelle sealed the fate of the Huguenots as a
political and military power in France. The part which they
had been compelled, contrary to their will, to assume sixty-six
years before, after the massacre of Vassy (1562), they were now

1 Mercure francois, xiv. 105-107 ; Histoire des deux derniers sieges de la Ro
chelle, 251-254 ; Memoires de Fontenay Mareuil, 123.
2 Memoires de Fontenay Mareuil, 124.

1628 FALL OF LA ROCHELLE 339
compelled to renounce. Henceforth not armed resistance to in
justice and oppression, but patient endurance in the hope that
the king might be brought to a better mind characterized their
attitude to the crown. It was not that out of the population of
a single city of thirty thousand inhabitants more than one-half
had fallen a prey to famine, disease, and the sword. But
with the loss of a stronghold Avhich had been regarded as well-
nigh impregnable, ah hope of ultimate success had also been lost.
With diminished resources, abandoned by the greater part of
the higher nobility — the apostasy of La Tremouille within a few
months had made a profound and painful impression 1 — weak
ened by the persuasion, eAren among Protestants, that it is the
duty of subjects to yield unconditional obedience to " the
poAvers that be," it was a foregone conclusion that the Hugue
nots must everywhere succumb to Louis's arms and Richelieu's
policy. Yet, for eight months more, the Duke of Rohan held out in
southern France, and carried on a brave but futile struggle. He
had not lost all hope of help from England, the piety
tinuesthe and sympathy of whose people he did not question,
however his past experience might lead him to put lit
tle reliance upon the promises of its king. His appeals to Charles
the First continued to be urgent and touching, as he reminded
that monarch not only that as Defender of the Faith which the
Huguenots professed, he could not in honor permit them to be
unjustly oppressed, but also that it was his promises, his sacred
word freely given to employ all his power to guarantee them from
ruin that had incited them to resistance and had been, next to
God's help, the only foundation of their hope.2 The Protestant
Assembly of Nismes joined its solicitations to the duke's, in a
letter scarcely less pressing and pathetic in its exposition of

1 See the letter of the Duchess of Bouillon to the Duchess of La Tremouille,
Sedan, August 12, 1628. Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du Prot. fr., xxiii. 411
et seq.
'Henry of Rohan to Charles I., March 12, 1629, printed in the Mercure fran
cois, xv. 285-88, and in Le Vassor, Histoire du Regne de Louis XIII., vi. 61-63.
See, also, his letter written a month later (April 13, 1629), in the pieces justifica-
tives of Schylbergson, Le Due de Rohan et la Chute du Parti Protestant*
113-115.

340 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VI
the straits to which the Huguenots of Languedoc were reduced
by the malice and inhumanity of their enemies.1
The lack of money, which Charles could not or would not
supply, but without which the war could not be carried on, in
duced Henry of Rohan to turn again to Spain. This
eludes a time, indeed, the negotiations proceeded so far that a
treaty with formal compact was concluded at Madrid, on the third
of May, 1629. It was signed by Don Juan de Billela,
on the part of Philip the Fourth, and Clausel, in the name of the
Duke of Rohan. The latter had originally offered, in return for
an annual subsidy of six hundred thousand ducats from Spain,
to set on foot and maintain an army of twelve thousand foot and
twelve hundred horse, wherewith to make a diversion in favor
of Philip, in Upper or Lower Languedoc, or in Dauphiny, as his
Catholic Majesty might please. Philip, however, cut down his
promised allowance to one-half the sum asked for, and stipulated
for only one-half the number of troops. It was a shameful and
unnatural agreement by which a Huguenot, at the head of Hu
guenots battling for the maintenance of the rights of religious
profession and worship, entered into an alliance with the secular
power most inimical to their faith, and pledged himself to renew
Avar against his lawful prince so often as he might be summoned
to do so by the Catholic King 2 — nay, even hinted at the possi
bility that Rohan and his party might make themselves so
strong as to erect a state of their own, in which case it was stip
ulated that liberty of conscience and of worship should be
conceded to the adherents of the Roman Catholic religion." 3

1 " From the Assembly of Nismes to His Majesty" (March 12, 1629), MS. in
the Public Record Office, printed in Schylbergson , pieces just., 115-119.
2 " Et eas advenant que ledit sieur de Rohan vint a traicter de paix, du sceu
et consentement de sa Majeste Catholique, il sera oblige de la rompre quand il
plaira a sadite Majeste, et de conserver la guerre, moyennant les mesmes faveurs
et aydes . . tant qu'il plaira a sa Majeste Catholique."
3 " En eas advenant que ledit sieur de Rohan et ceux de son party se puissent
rendre si forts, qu'ils se puissent cantonner et faire un Estat a, part : audit eas iis
promettent pareillement la liberte de conscience et le libre exercice de la Re
ligion aux Catholiques," etc. Gramond (Hist. Gall., 793) gives a summary, the
Mercure francois (xv. 463-465) the full text of Clausel's offers in thirteen arti
cles, and of the acceptance of these offers, as modified by the Spanish king
Philip attempts to justify his act by referring to the wrongs done to him by the

1629 ROHAN'S TREATY WITH SPAIN 341
The most ardent admirer of the chivalric duke would find
himself unable to defend Rohan's course, and must, with one of
the ablest and most candid historical students of recent times,
content himself with ascribing it to some unaccountable infatua
tion of a man of a noble but chimerical character, who, in his
devotion to the fancied interests of his party and his church,
occasionally forgot the claims of his native land.1 But Rohan
must not bear the entire blame ; if, as he tells us, the Huguenot
pohtical assembly of Nismes expressly begged him to write to
Clausel informing him of the existing need of money and bidding
him to notify the Spaniards that, unless it were promptly re
ceived, the conclusion of peace could not be deferred.2
Cardinal Richelieu suffered his king but little time to rest
at his capital and to enjoy those pleasures for which he had
more than once pined during the protracted siege of La Ro
chelle. Barely had Louis been two months in Paris, before he
again started in the dead of winter for the southeast. In
February he reached Grenoble. Within a few weeks more he
had crossed the Alps, had taken the fortified town of Susa,
had raised the siege of Casale, and had forced the Duke of
Savoy to make peace. This was on the nineteenth of April.
Less than a week later (on the twenty-fourth), peace was con
cluded between England and France. Unmindful of his re
iterated promises to the Huguenots, and careless of every appeal
whether to his justice or to his compassion, Charles the First
dishonorably ended a war during whose continuance he had
won httle glory, and had involved his allies in disaster.3
The cardinal's plans had long been laid. Bringing forward

Kings of France and the help they rendered his revolted vassals of Holland, and
by stating that he had duly consulted his "Conseil de conscience, compose de
gens de grande integrite." See also Memoires du Cardinal de Richelieu, ii.
18-22. 1 "Etrange et coupable aveuglement que Rohan devait payer bien cher. . .
Esprit distingue et noble caractere, souvent chimerique dans ses vues et ses es-
perances, et si fort absorbe par I'interet de son parti et de son Eglise, qu'il eut
parfois le malheur d'oublier celui de son pays." Guizot, Histoire de France, iv.
114, 117.
2 Memoires du Due de Rohan, i. 410.
3 Laugel, Le Due de Rohan, 260. See the duke's own account in his Me
moires, i. 410, and in his Apologie sur les derniers troubles, ib., i. 452.

342 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VI
Louis and the troops that had served under him on the Italian
frontier, he approached the Cevennes, Rohan's very head
quarters, with an army of some fifty thousand men. At the
terror of the advent of so overwhelming a force the stoutest
hearts quailed. That terror was augmented by the studied
severity of the treatment of captured toAvns. The king was
more bloodthirsty than he had ever been before. The capture
of the considerable town of Privas, in Vivarais, now the capital
of the Department of the Ardeche, will long be remembered
Pali of Pn- ^or *ue savage cruelty which it witnessed, and for the
™s- complacency with which a king of France looked
upon the butchery of his own subjects. The bravest part of
the garrison, fearing itself too weak to defend the place, with
drew into the fort of Mont Toulon, overlooking the town.
Finding themselves even here forced to capitulate, the Hu
guenots surrendered only to become the victims of a massacre.
For this the explosion of some barrels of gunpowder at the
moment of the entrance of the royalists furnished a convenient
excuse. The explosion may have been accidental. The Prot
estants believed it to have been purposely caused by the as
sailants. The Roman Catholics charged it upon the late
defenders of the place. By way of revenge, they put to the
sword every man or woman that they met, and burned every
house. The few human beings that escaped instant death be
came the prey of the gibbet, or were sent to the galleys. Nor
was this all. A few days after, Louis issued an edict against
the wretched town, confiscating all the property of the late
inhabitants of Privas, ordering the demolition of its fortifica
tions, and forbidding that any one should henceforth dwell on
its site without the king's express permission issued under the
great seal of state.1
1 The king's sanguinary intentions respecting Privas are betrayed by a letter
which he wrote to his mother, May 28, 1629, wherein, referring to the besieged
who had taken refuge in the citadel, he says : " They are the best men that M.
de Rohan has, and, in hanging them all, as TsJiall do, and Saint Andre the first,
I shall cut off M. de Rohan's right arm." MS. Paris Nat. Lib., apud Henri
Martin, Histoire de France, ii. 587. The contemporary account in the Mercure
franyois, xv. 464-472, shows upon its face that the story of a Huguenot plot to
blow up the king's soldiers is a subsequent fabrication. Louis's edict may be
read, ibid., xv. 483-86. It is dated June, 1629.

1629 PEACE OF ALAIS 343
It was high time to abandon a fruitless contest against such
overwhelming odds.
Peace was concluded at Alais, on the twenty-seventh of June;
and promulgated in a fresh edict of pacification (declared, hke its
numerous predecessors, to be "perpetual and irrev-
Aiais, June ocable " ) at Nismes, in July, 1629. In most respects
27 1629 the present law was unlike the edicts issued at the
conclusion of other wars. It affected to contain, not conces
sions wrung from the unwilling hands of the monarch, but a
gracious pardon granted of the monarch's simple good pleasure
to rebelhous subjects. The jubilant preamble related the
triumph of the king's arms over La Rochelle and Privas, and
the voluntary subjection of Vivarais. It ascribed the conde
scension of his majesty to the fact that the city of Alais had
fallen at his feet and sued for forgiveness ; while, as he was
about to carry his victorious arms farther, the Duke of Rohan
and other gentlemen, together with a host of cities of Lan
guedoc and elsewhere, had sent their deputies to testify their
contrition for the past and their good intentions for the fu
ture. In the articles themselves a similar exuberance of self-
gratulation betrayed itself. While Rohan and Soubise, together
with their adherents, received full absolution of all their mis
deeds, good care was taken to recapitulate those misdeeds —
a formidable list — one by one, with tiresome and, as it would
seem, needless prolixity. This, however, was of little moment,
in view of the fact that, notwithstanding their losses and re
verses, the Huguenots were insured all that was most essential
to their religious freedom and their physical and intellectual
welfare. If Louis gave expression to a pious desire that his
subjects of the " Pretended Reformed Religion" should return
to the church in which he declared that the kings his prede
cessors had lived for more than eleven hundred years " with
out any interruption or change," this did not prevent him from
promising them the full enjoyment of the advantages secured
to them by the Edict of Nantes and the legislation therewith
connected. They might rebuild their houses. They recovered
their property of every kind. All gifts and confiscations were
repealed. They might dwell undisturbed in any part of the
realm, with the exception of the two islands of Re and Oleron,

344 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VI
and the two guilty cities of La Rochelle and Privas. Their
places of worship and of burial were restored to them. The
churches that had been destroyed might be rebuilt. The old
order of municipal elections was recognized. Judges whose
courts had been transferred elsewhere during the troubles, in
cluding those of the Chamber of the Edict at Castres, were
bidden to return to their original seats. But the fortifications
of the cities which the Huguenots had held were, within a term
of three months, to be completely destroyed, with the exception
of a mere circuit of wall, and hostages were to be taken and
held until the work of demolition should be completed.1 The
terms were more favorable than might have been expected.
Almost all the Protestant towns promptly accepted the peace.
Uzes and Nismes were dilatory, but yielded as soon as they
saw the king advancing toward them. Cardinal Richelieu, quite
willing to release Louis from his enforced absence from the
capital, begged him to make an entrance into Nismes and Uzes
before leaving Languedoc. " It is certain," he said, " that
when men see that his majesty has entered these cities (which
are the principal cities of the region), with his troops, and has
made no changes to the detriment of the inhabitants, all the
others will be relieved of the fear Avhich they entertain of being
treated as was Montpellier, which received a large garrison and
subsequently a fortress, although the ministers of his majesty
had given their word not to introduce any there." 2 The frank
admission of the cardinal is a conclusive proof that the asser
tions of the Huguenots respecting one of the causes that led to
the second war were fully warranted by the facts, despite the
persistent denials of their opponents.
Montauban was the last city to yield,3 nor did she accept the

1 The text of the Articles agreed upon at Alais and signed by Louis XIII.,
June 27, 1629, is given in full by Bernard, ii. 172-175 ; the text of the Edict
of Nismes, July 1629, is in the Mercure franijois, xv. 505-521, and among the
pieces justificatives appended to Benoist, ii. 92-98. There are summaries in the
Memoires de Rohan, i. 441, 442; in Gramond, 797, etc.
2 Toutes les autres seroient delivrees de la crainte qu'elles avoient d'etre trai-
tees comme fut Montpellier, quoique les ministres de Sa Majeste eussent donne
parole de n'y en mettre point." Memoires du Cardinal de Richelieu, ii. 25.
a A contemporary royalist account draws an unfavorable picture of the town :
"Montauban, ville des plus acariastres et malignes qui aye jamais este', apres la

1629 PEACE OF ALAIS 345
proffered terms of peace until M. de la Grange, a deputy from
Nismes, had come in the name of a sister city, and, in a forcible
speech, had set forth the good treatment which that city had
received.1 Nor had Montauban any reason to regret the confi
dence she reposed in the Avord of the present prime minister of
France. Cardinal Richeheu himself visited the place, Louis
Richelieu at having returned to Paris, and treated the Protestants
Montauban. ^th kindness as signal as was the welcome he re
ceived at their hands. Scarcely had the prelate returned
from hearing the Te Deum sung in a church of the city, when
he was visited at his quarters by the ministers of Montauban.
They came in a body, and pastor L'Huillier, speaking in their
behalf, declared to Cardinal Richelieu that he alone had pos
sessed the power to deliver the Huguenots. " For," said
L'Huillier, " the greatest of our misfortunes, which was Distrust,
could be healed only by its opposite, namely, Confidence ; and
that clean reputation of incorruptible good faith Avhich your
highness has always professed,2 has in a moment achieved what
armies might have accomplished in a long space of time, but
with much bloodshed and many disasters." "Gentlemen,"
replied Richelieu, "it is not customary in France, anywhere, or
in any circumstances, to receive Protestant ministers as an
ecclesiastical body ; but I receive you as men that profess
letters, and as such you will always be very welcome to me. It
will be a pleasure to me to show you that your position will
never prevent me from rendering you all manner of good offices ;
for I shall make no discrimination between the king's subjects
save as to their loyalty. This loyalty being henceforth common
to the adherents of both religions, I shall help both equally and
with the same affection." 3
Rochelle, laquelle enflee d'orgueil de ses prosperitez passers, ne pouvoit ouyr le
Traicte de paix, ny s'asseurer que tant de rebellions et cruautez par eux com-
mises ne leur fussent une fois imputees pour en faire un chastiment severe."
Mercure francois, xv. 537.
1 See his address as reported in the Mercure francois, xv. 545, etc.
2 " Cette nette reputation de foy incorruptible, dont vostre grandeur a tous-
jours fait profession."
3 " Laquelle se trouvant doresnavant commune aux uns et aux autres, il les
assisteroit tous egalement et d'une mesme affection.'' Mercure frangois, xv.
561-563.

346 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VI
The tribute Avhich the Protestant pastor of Montauban paid
to the character of Richelieu as a trustAvorthy man, was well
Richelieu's deserved. Zorzo Zorzi, the Venetian ambassador,
good faith. wn0) this very year, retired from his post at the
French court, wrote in his report to the doge and senate : " In
the midst of the corrupt passions and the disgraceful faults of
the ministers, the cardinal alone displays a lively and most
severe zeal for the pubhc welfare, accompanied by a constant
integrity of purpose. The gold of his most pure faith receives
only a French stamp." r
With the end of the third Huguenot war, the stately form of
Rohan, the great and incorruptible Protestant hero, passes out
of our history. Few notable characters have ever been destined
to be more misunderstood and misrepresented. As generous as
Admiral Coligny, whom he probably excelled in military genius,
he was born in an age of inferior devotion and less ardent en
thusiasm, an age in Avhich the ideas of the royal prerogative had
reached an exaggeration unknown in the preceding century.
Receiving a divided support from his fellow believers, it is
rather strange that he was able to maintain himself so long,
than that he was finally compelled to succumb to the inevitable
course of events. His subsequent services in behalf of French
interests abroad I may not stop here to narrate. With rare dis
interestedness he had made no attempt, such as the leaders in
previous struggles with the crown made, to secure for himself,
if not a reward for his submission, at least a compensation for
his losses. The voluntary grant of one hundred thousand
crowns, which the monarch promised him at the conclusion of
the general peace, was a poor compensation for his labors and
toils. More than four-fifths of this sum went to pay the troops
he had raised or to reimburse his faithful followers. The paltry
remainder Avas a trifle compared with the sum needed to repair
the ravages of war upon his wide estates.2

1 "L'oro della sua purissima fede non riceve che marca franceze." Relation
of Z. Zorzi, in Ranke, Franzosische Geschichte, v. 287.
2 Apologie du Due de Rohan sur les derniers troubles de la France a cause de
la religion. Memoires, i. 455.

BOOK SECOND

QUIET UNDER THE EDICT OF NANTES (1629-1659)

BOOK SECOND

QUIET UNDEK THE EDICT OF NANTES (1629-1659)

CHAPTER VII
THE HUGUENOTS UNDER RICHELIEU
The peace concluded with the Duke of Rohan and the
Huguenots permitted the Cardinal of Richelieu to give his
undivided attention to the broader schemes which had long
been paramount in his mind. The remainder of his master's
reign was devoted to the execution of the prelate's cherished
plans for the abasement of the House of Hapsburg. With the
history of these events our narrative does not immediately con
cern itself. Yet it is not unimportant to notice that the alliance
effected Avith Gustavus Adolphus, the heroic king of Sweden,
and the close relations into which France was drawn Avith the
Protestant states of the German Empire, contributed not a little
to the comfort and to the comparative freedom from molesta
tion which the adherents of the Reformed Church of France
enjoyed during the period which we have now reached. For
the last fourteen years of Louis the Thirteenth and the first
seventeen years of his son and successor may with propriety be
regarded as the season of the greatest material prosperity of the
Huguenots. These were the times in which, finding themselves
deprived of all political and military consideration, they gave

350 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VII
themselves as never before to the pursuits of trade and manu
factures. Their hopes of power had gone down in the fall of
La Rochelle and the definite failure of Henry of Ro-
materiai han to rally to his support such forces as had gath
ered around Admiral Coligny, and, at a later time,
around Henry of Navarre; but commerce, finance, and the
learned professions still lay open before them and invited their
exertions. Another such intelligent and well educated class of
men as the Huguenots was not to be found in France. Moral
and religious worth such as theirs could not remain unnoticed
or be without its effect upon the community and the nation.
The energy and enthusiasm that had so long rendered the
French Protestants, although constituting only a small fraction of
the entire population of the country, a significant factor in the
determination of its destiny, when directed into the new chan
nels opened for them, could not fail, under favorable circum
stances, to bring the Huguenots into social prominence and into
the possession of wealth and influence. It was not many years
before they became more prominent in almost all industrial
enterprises, as they were already better educated, more refined,
and more highly cultured than the great number of their Roman
Catholic fellow-citizens. But of this I shall have occasion to
speak again.
Meanwhile, the government, or at least the ecclesiastical
prince in whose hands the real powers of government rested,
seemed not indisposed to deal fairly by the Huguenots, now
that their pohtical power was broken. Cardinal Richelieu was
honest when he declared to the Protestant ministers of Montau-
cardmai ban that it was his purpose henceforth never to dis-
daim"™ criminate between Frenchmen save in the matter of
theVprotes-d loyalty-1 The boast of impartiality may possibly
tants fairly. nee(j some qualification, but it is substantially well
grounded. Certainly Richelieu, priest though he was, could
more safely be trusted to do the Huguenots justice than the
Prince of Conde, the son of a brave Huguenot father, and a lay
man. For Richelieu was resolved to give them no plausible

1 See supra, page 345, and the address as recorded in Mercure francois, xv 562,
563.

1629 THE HUGUENOTS UNDER RICHELIEU 351
grounds for a new revolt, and he was equally resolved that no
one else should give them any. To Count de Sault, who was
instructed to attend to the execution of the edicts of pacifica
tion in the province of Dauphiny, he wrote very plainly : "I
His letters to am °^ ^ne 0Pmi°n that, as we must not stretch in
count sauit, fay0r 0f the Protestants whatever may be contained in
the edicts, so also we ought not to detract from the gracious
concessions that are made to them. Especially at the present
time, when, thanks to God, peace is so well established through
out the realm, too much care cannot be taken to prevent all
these causes of popular discontent. I assure you that the king's
veritable intention is to enable all his subjects to live peace
ably under the maintenance of his edicts, and that those who are
in authority in the provinces will render him service by con
forming thereto." 1 The lines which Richelieu penned to Le
Masuyer, first president of the Parliament of Tou-
dent Le louse, were even more remarkable, in view of the fact
that this magistrate had, as we have seen, distin
guished himself for the ferocity of his pursuit of the unfor
tunate Protestants of Languedoc. In the letter in which he
acquainted the president with the terms of the peace just ac
corded, the cardinal wrote : " What we now have to do is to gain
the hearts of these misguided people by good treatment, pro
vided that they faithfully observe the peace. I beg that you
see to this, and that you prevent them from receiving undue
vexations in the obedience which they render. You can do
more in this matter than any one else. I am sure that you
will lend all the help that you can." 2
It must be confessed that Richelieu treated the matter of the
relations of the Protestants to the state with a degree of com
mon sense unusual in prelates of that time. Flushed with
1 Cardinal Richelieu to the Count of Sault, apud Guizot, Histoire de France,
iv. 118. — I have been unsuccessful in my search for this letter in the voluminous
correspondence of Cardinal Richelieu published by order of the French Govern
ment. 5 "II est maintenant question de gaigner le coeur de ces esprits devoyez par
bons traittemens. . . Vous y pouvez plus que personne ; je m'asseure que
vous y contribuerez ce que vous pourrez." Cardinal Richelieu to Le Masuyer,
July 1, 1629. Lettres, instructions diplomatiques et papiers d'etat du Cardinal
de Richelieu, recueillis et publies par M. Avenel, iii. 364, 365.

352 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VII
success, he had, it is true, determined, two months after the fall
of La Rochelle, to abolish the entire judicial system established
or confirmed by the Edict of Nantes in the interest of
tams the the Protestants. Accordingly, an article of the law
of the of January, 1629, ordered that the chambers of the
"chambres edict and the chambres mi-parties should be merged in
11 " ' the parliaments to which they were attached. The
Parliament of Toulouse, fanatical as ever, desired nothing
better than to be well rid of the hated " chamber of the Edict
of Languedoc," properly belonging to Castres, but for the past
six years sitting at Beziers. It promptly undertook to execute
the royal ordinance, by commanding the judges of Beziers to
come and take their seats at Toulouse. Before the term fixed
for the execution of the plan had expired, however, Cardinal
Richelieu reviewed his hasty action and resolved to spare the
feelings of the Protestants Avhose attachment to their courts, as
to one of the chief safeguards of their liberties, was Avell
known. The execution of the order was formally deferred (by
letters patent of the tenth of April), and the treaty of peace,
three months later, secured for the Protestants the retention of
their highly prized tribunal.1
Yet the government did not, under Richelieu, abate its de
termination to exercise a strict supervision over the national
synods, the only representative bodies which the Huguenots of
the entire realm were permitted to have. The presence of a
royal commissioner at all the sessions had come to be regarded
as an indispensable condition to the validity of the proceed
ings — a continual reminder of the jealousy of the government,
and a/ continual menace to the independence of the delibera-
Twenty. tions. One of the national synods, reckoned as the
tiJnainsyn- twenty-sixth in the annals of the Reformed Churches,
"L, septem- met in the month of September, 1631, just outside of
ber, 1631. ^he cap^al, at Charenton. It was characteristic of the
truly catholic spirit that inspired it in its attitude to the
Lutheran churches of Germany, that this body, strong in its

1 Cambon de Lavalette, La Chambre de l'Edit de Languedoc, 95, 96. See the
21st article of the Edict of Nismes, July, 1629, in Benoist, Histoire de l'Edit
de Nantes, ii. (pieces justificatives) 98.

1631 THE HUGUENOTS UNDER RICHELIEU 353
attachment to the Calvinist system of doctrine, emphasized the
substantial agreement of Lutherans and Calvinists on all the
fundamental points of religion, and proclaimed its confidence in
a sister communion in whose worship it saw neither superstition
nor idolatry. Far from requiring any repudiation of Lutheran
tenets, it freely admitted Lutherans to the Lord's Supper and
permitted Lutherans to assume the duties of sponsors at the
baptism of the children of Calvinists, exacting no promise but
of faithful instruction in the articles of the common faith.1
The equity professed by Richelieu in his dealings with the
Huguenots did not prevent him from treating this synod as
cavalierly as it had been the custom to treat Protestant repre
sentative bodies, both political and ecclesiastical, from the time
of the assembly of Saumur. On one point, in fact, Richelieu
went beyond any of his predecessors. The time having arrived
for a choice of deputies to represent Protestant interests at court,
not only did the king virtually dictate to the members of the
synod the person whom they might nominate, but, when they
had made their nomination, and the king had expressed,
through his commissioner, his satisfaction with their action, he
reserved the confirmation, as he did also the answer to their
budget of complaints and requests, until after the synod should
have adjourned.2 On such points, as Richelieu himself informed
the envoys of the synod, " his majesty was resolved to deal
with his subjects in a manner corresponding to his sovereign
dignity, and the sacred authority of his royal word, and would
grant them a favorable reply after the meeting had broken up,
and not before." 3 Unfortunately the experience of past years
had not been calculated to inspire the Huguenots with much
confidence in the authority, sacred or otherwise, of that royal
word. I have spoken of grievances. Of such there was a long list,
which happily we need not here examine in exhaustive detail.
1 Aymon, Tous les Synodes, ii. 500, 501.
2 This was the more remarkable because the deputy of the Tiers Eiat was
the eldest son of the royal commissioner, Augnste Galland, who might well be
expected to follow in the footsteps of his father and to carry loyalty to the very
verge of craven submission. See Aymon, ii. 468-470. Benoist, ii. 523, 524.
3 Aymon, ii. 466.
23

354 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VII
There were many places where the Protestants were entitled,
under the edicts, to hold worship, but from which they were in
Huguenot point of fact excluded. Amyrault and Yillars, whom
grievances, fl^ synod sent to court, alleged the loss of twenty-
four towns or villages in Saintonge, of nineteen in the Ce
vennes, of twenty in Languedoc, and of twenty-nine in Yivarais,
all in the regions in Avhich the recent war had raged.1 Trouble
arose respecting the annexes. A persistent attempt was made
to prevent Protestant ministers from discharging their
pastoral functions in more than a single place. The
royal council forbade them to preach elsewhere than in the
town or village where they resided. The effect of this prohibi
tion was to deprive of all religious privileges every community
of Protestants too weak or too poor to support a pastor devot
ing his whole time to their edification. The grievance was one
that disturbed the peace of the Huguenots for many years.
At one time a more kindly view was taken of their rights. An
unusually equitable order of the royal council (of the twenty-
sixth of September, 1633), based upon the report of commis
sioners sent to Dauphiny, permitted Protestant pastors to
preach in several places, each of which enjoyed the right of
public worship. But the lapse of a few months brought, on the
second of December, 1634, a decision of an opposite tenor from
the same body.2
The root of the trouble, the fruitful source of the oppression
which we shall find more and more burdensome as the century
advanced, lay in the disposition of the royal government and of
the judiciary alike to regard the Huguenots with ill-concealed
dishke. The Reformation was, in the eyes of those who made
or executed the laws, the cause of the division introduced into a
country previously holding but one faith, and, however discord
ant in other respects, harmonious in the point of religious be
lief. The history of the Protestants in France was a history of
contentions. No matter whether these contentions were directly
caused by them, or arose in the attempt to crush them, their
presence was an evil, a misfortune, it might even be said, a
1 Aymon, ii. 461; Mercure francois, xvii. 725.
2 Benoist, ii. 507, 508, 533, 549.

1634 THE HUGUENOTS UNDER RICHELIEU 355
menace to the national peace. France would be better off with
out them. While they were doubtless entitled to certain privi
leges, expressly secured by royal edicts, good care must be taken
not to concede to them a particle more than was strictly theirs.
The rules of interpretation must be abridged, not stretched to
cover their case. In so excellent a cause as the prevention of
the groAvth of a rehgion condemned by the pope and repulsive
to the majority of the subjects of a prince who had the best
claim to the title of " Very Christian," a httle quibbling was not
inexcusable. In ordinary cases, it was true, a new law, when
its provisions were at variance with preceding legislation, was
understood as modifying or superseding what went before.
„. . Now the dangerous practice became rife of deriving
Mischievous . • p i
interpreta- interpretations ot the tolerant edict of Henry the
Edict of Fourth from the proscriptive laws of Charles the Ninth
Nantes. or Henry the Third. In other words, ordinances that
had been purposely repealed became the commentaries on the
ordinances enacted in their place. By an anachronism, as
singular as it was iniquitous, the "Edict of January" (1562),
which by its tenth article forbade Protestant ministers from
"going from place to place, and from village to village, to preach
there by force, against the will and consent of the lords, curates,
vicars, and wardens of the parishes," was construed to prevent a
pastor from going peaceably from the place of his residence
to preach in another place, although there was not a syllable in
the Edict of Nantes, published thirty-six years later than the
"Edict of January," which made the act reprehensible."1
It cannot be truthfully denied that the adherents of the
dominant church in France had been trained to discriminate
An against the Huguenots. The most equitable of judges
sumptiouB could not bring himself to view the distinction of re-
oflaw °
against the ligion as a matter of which he must not take cogni-
Huguenots. ° .
zance. He did not indeed deny the Huguenot a share
in the common heritage of man, nor uphold the doctrine that
1 Benoist's "edit de 1561 " (ii. 540) is, of course, the famous edict of January
17, 1562, New Style. It will be remembered that the year 1561, Old Style, did
not end until Easter, which fell on tbe 29th of March, 1562, according to our
mode of computing. See the 10th art. of the Edict of January, in Benoist, i
pieces just., 4 ; and Memoires de Conde, iii. 13.

356 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Cu. VII
the Huguenot had no rights which the Roman Catholic was
bound to respect. But he adopted and put into practice, with
greater uniformity and with increasing rigor of apphcation
from this time forward, a theory scarcely less repugnant to the
innate sense of justice — the theory that aU the presumptions of
law must be regarded as lying against the dissenter from the
faith of the majority of Frenchmen.
Let it not be imagined that this remark is a generalization
made from uncertain or delusive particular facts. We are so
fortunate as to possess in its support the distinct authority of a
prominent jurist, a member of a family distinguished through
several generations for legal acumen. The point is so impor
tant that I shall speak in some detail of the circumstances in
which the opinion of Omer Talon AAras enunciated.
In the year 1634 there were held at Poitiers the assizes of a
"Grands tribunal knoAvn as " La Cour des Grands Jours" a com-
PoiUeri!" mission whose members Avere drawn from the judges
1634' of several parliaments of France, and which was in
vested with extensive powers for the redress of abuses. Before
this court was brought a suit for the demolition of the Hugue
not church in the town of Saint Maixent. The plaintiff, Mes-
sire Bertrand Deschaux, Archbishop of Tours, commendatory
abbot of the royal abbey of Saint Maixent, presented himself
at the bar in company with the prior and monks of that institu
tion, and attended by an advocate and an attorney. He wore
the full vestments in which he would have officiated in his
cathedral. The defendant was Maitre Samuel Le Blanc, pas
tor of the Protestant church, designated by the records merely
as a " minister of the pretended Reformed Rehgion," who came
with his elder Raphael Dieumegard. Both were apparently
dressed in the simple costume of laymen of the period. There
was no question that the "temple," or Protestant church, of
Saint Maixent had stood fully thirty-five years, and had been
used for the worship of Almighty God, according to the rites of
the Reformed Religion ever since the Huguenots were compelled
by the Edict of Nantes to restore to the Roman Catholics the
ecclesiastical edifices formerly belonging to the state church.
So long a period of undisturbed occupation might have been
supposed to give a title that could not be contested. This con-

1634 THE HUGUENOTS UNDER RICHELIEU 357
elusion, however, the advocate of the plaintiff denied, for he
averred that against the rights and franchises of the Church
there can never be any prescription.1 Again, the counsel of the
Protestants showed that the Edict of Nantes permitted his co
religionists to hold worship in every town or village where they
had held it in 1596 and 1597. He maintained that this per
mission must, in the very nature of the case, involve "the
things necessary to attain thereunto," or places for worship.
Besides this, he proved that the Huguenots had had free and
pubhc worship at Saint Maixent so far back as in 1569 and in
1579 ; and, moreover, that the edicts of the present monarch in
1622 and 1629 ordained the re-erection and restoration of all
Protestant churches, " without discrimination of the spots and
omerTai- places where they were built." But Omer Talon,
pretation'of speaking for the king's attorney-general, repudiated
S'pa'cm-8 the Protestant claims. "The edicts of pacification
cation. were made," he said, "for the purpose of maintaining
the king's subjects in a good understanding, of allowing liberty
of conscience, of preventing the Inquisition in the realm, and
of suffering, by way of toleration and dissimulation, what one
could wish were not there.2 The king's intention was to pro
vide for the personal safety of those who profess the Protestant
rehgion, and for the exercise of their rehgion ; but not to give
it authorization in France, nor to place it side by side with, nor
to confer upon it the same advantages as upon the Catholic re
ligion. For this reason, the terms of the edicts ought to be in
terpreted literally ; they should not suffer extension. It Avould
They must n0^ be just that a religion that exists in this kingdom
SomiV" as- merely by tolerance, and by the kindness of the king,
piamed. should be reckoned among those favorable matters for
which the terms of laws and ordinances are wont to be gra
ciously interpreted and extended." s And, as the interpretation

1 " Parce que l'on ne prescrit jamais contre les droicts et la franchise de
I'Eglise." 2 "Et souffrir par tolerance et dissimulation ce que l'on desireroit qui ne fust
pas." 3 " Pour cela les termes des Edicts doivent estre. interpretez a la lettre ; iis ne-
doivent point souffrir d'extension : et ne seroit juste qu'une Religion qui ne
subsiste dans ce Royaume que par la tolerance et par la bonte du Roy, peust

358 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VII
of one set of prescriptions was rigid, so that of another set was
elastic. The restoration and rebuilding of Protestant churches,
according to the edicts of 1622 and 1629, if they were soundly
interpreted, must be held to apply to such churches only as
rightfully belonged to the Protestants and as they could law
fully hold.
So urged Omer Talon, soon himself to become the highest
law officer of the crown, and so thought the Cour des Grands
Joins. Accordingly it ordered the destruction of the Protes
tant church of Maixent within the term of one week, forbidding,
meanwhile, that any meetings be held within its walls, upon any
pretext whatsoever.1
Omer Talon was not a cruel or unfeeling man. We are told
that he was the very oracle of the bar, respected even by his
enemies. It has been said of his memoirs which have come
down to us, that they everywhere reveal the great magistrate,
the enlightened jurist, the good citizen, and that their eloquent
Avords are manly and full of warmth, wisdom, and dignity.2
Nor were the members of the Cour des Grands Jours by any
means the most unfair judges that ever sat upon the bench in
France. Yet a more iniquitous maxim than that propounded
by Talon and adopted by these judges, could not have been de
vised. Incorporated into the principles of French jurispru
dence, the unfortunate declaration of Omer Talon converted the
very citadel of defence of the innocent into a stronghold of in
justice and oppression. So unfair did the practical application
of the laws become in consequence, for the next hundred years
and more, as to surpass even the atrocity of the laws them
selves. A signal illustration was afforded of the adage that a
severe construction of the law may result in the most flagrant
invasion of personal rights — summum jus, summa injuria. It
was not to be long before the royal judges of France, from im
partial arbiters, would become masters of the petty art of spe-
estre contee entre les choses favorables pour lesquelles les termes des Loix et
Ordonnances ont accoustume d'estre gracieusement expliquees et estendues."
1 Benoist has referred to these judicial proceedings (Histoire de 1'F.dit de
Nantes, ii. 543, etc), but the text of the official documents, of which I have made
use, is interesting and important. See Mercure Frangois, xx. 836-848.
2 Abbe Sabatier, apud Feller, Biographie Universelle, ii. 259.

1631 THE HUGUENOTS UNDER RICHELIEU 359
cial pleading, dealers in quibbles and low chicanery, whose mis
applied ingenuity was all directed, not to the discovery of the
true intent of the laws in force regarding matters of religion,
much less to a conscientious fulfilment of their provisions ; but,
rather, to the study of such methods of interpretation as might
contribute to the discomfiture of the Protestants in the unequal
struggle into which they were forced.
Yet for the present the Huguenots were occasionally treated
with courtesy by the government. At least, of civil words and
of promises of protection there was no lack. Thus, when the
consistory of the Reformed church of Metz, with their pastor,
Paul Ferry, presented themselves before Louis the Thirteenth
and his minister, on the occasion of a royal visit, they had rea
son to be satisfied with the assurances given them in answer to
their own professions of loyalty. The king, it is true, was as
sententious as usual. " I thank you," he said. " Continue to
serve me well. I assure you that I shall maintain you." But
Richelieu, whose countenance seemed to confirm the truth of
his words, spoke in the most kindly manner, as he
receives the expressed his gratification at seeing and hearing the
at Metz with Protestants and the obligation their words had con
ferred upon him. " My affection for you," he said, " is
not small, for it leads me to desire that God may enlighten your
minds, and touch your hearts, and to secure you all the temporal
benefits I may be able. If I find opportunities with the king to
serve you, I shall very cheerfully take advantage of them, that
I may show you by deeds the truth of the words I speak. Make
trial of this." 1
Nor were pohtical favors altogether denied to the Huguenot
nobles, although greater favors evidently awaited any Huguenot
noble that would consent to abjure his faith. In Sep-
a marshai e tember, 1634, the aged Duke of Sully received tardy
recognition of his services to Henry the Fourth, and
was made a marshal of France.2

1 December 23 and 24, 1631. See the addresses and replies, as written down
by Paul Ferry himself, in Bulletin de la Societe de i'histoire du Protestantisme
franeais, xi. 31-35.
» Benoist, ii. 536.

360 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VII
Yet his advisers, lay or clerical, never allowed the king to for
get what they were pleased to call the former rebellion of the
Huguenots. In 1638 they induced Louis the Thir-
piaces " teenth to issue a solemn Declaration by which his
under the majesty placed the kingdom under the special protec-
the virgin tion of the Virgin Mary. This extraordinary document
recited among the signal blessings which Almighty
God had conferred upon him, the overthrow of the Protestants.
" The rebellion of heresy having formed a party in the state that
had no other aim than to share our authority, He made use of us
to humble its pride, and permitted us to rear again His holy al
tars in all the places where the violence of the unjust party had
destroyed them." x
Their clerical enemies were not disposed to leave the Hugue
nots undisturbed in the enjoyment of the comparative quiet of
their condition, and interested themselves in the internal con
cerns of the Protestant churches Avith an officious zeal. As of
ten as the assemblies of the clergy of France were held, so often
the supposed misdeeds of the churches and consistories Avere
held up to reprobation. In the assembly of 1636, the Bishop of
Orleans, besides other odious accusations, charged the
sincationof Protestants Avith having purposely altered the last
the Psalms. verse of one of the psalms sung in their serAices — it
was the twentieth — transforming a loyal supplication to heaven
in behalf of the king, into a prayer that God would be pleased
to turn the king's heart and make it favorable to the suppliants.
One might reasonably have asked the prelate, Avhat concern it
was of the Roman Catholic clergy, even were the allegation sub
stantiated, that the Huguenots had made the change, during the
course of the persecutions to which they were subjected under
so many kings of France? Why should the ecclesiastics of
another faith complain, if, looking to heaven for relief from in
tolerable oppression, the Protestants did indeed prefer a petition
1 Declaration par laquelle le roi place le royaume sous la protection speciale de
la vierge Marie. Saint Germain en Laye, le 10 Fevrier, 1638. Mercure fran
cois, xxii. 284. Isambert, Recueil des anciennes lois francaises, xvi. 483, etc.
Almost the same expressions occur in Louis XIII.'s edict of April, 1643, appoint
ing a regency in the case of his death a document which may be regarded as
his last will and testament. Isambert, xvi. 550.

1636 THE HUGUENOTS UNDER RICHELIEU 361
for deliverance from the effect of royal enmity to a petition for
the longevity of their oppressor ? 1
The truth is that the bishop was not less anxious thus to
prove the disloyalty of the Huguenots, than to persuade the
monarch that the religion of the Huguenots of the day
nots accused Avas quite another religion from that which was toler-
aitered their ated by the edicts of 1562 and of 1598, and conse
quently that it was entitled to none of the privileges
which it now enjoyed. His reasoning on this point is ingeni
ous and amusing : The divisions between the Lutheran and
Reformed churches, said he, are notorious, especially in the
matter of the presence of Christ's body in the eucharist ; for
everybody knows Avhat thunderbolts were hurled to and fro,
Avhat blood was shed, to give weight to their opposite views.
Yet the French ministers, by the express act of the recent Syn
od of Charenton (1631) have publicly received the Lutherans
to a participation in the Lord's Supper. Is this not the intro
duction of a new religion, of Lutheranism, into France ? Again,
one of their most distinguished writers, Daille, in his " Apology
for the Reformed Churches," finds fault Avith them for condemn
ing the Greeks Avith too much severity because the latter reject
the doctrine of the Procession of the Holy Ghost from both the
Father and the Son ; while, in another of his works, the same
¦See Recueil des Actes, Titres, etc., ubi infra; Benoist, ii. 553, etc. See O.
Douen, Clement Marot et le Psautier Huguenot (Paris, 1878), i. 597-599. The
lines as originally written by Beza (not Marot) read :
' ' Seigneur, plaise-toy de def endre
Et maintenir le Roy ;
Veuilles noz requestes entendre
Quand nous crions a toy."
They were changed to read as follows :
" Seigneur, plaise-toy nous def endre,
Et faire que le Roy
Puisse nos requestes entendre,
Encontre tout effroy."
I quote from the copy of the Huguenot psalter in my possession, printed in
Geneva in 1638, two years after the delivery of the harangue of the Bishop of
Orleans. — M. Douen traces the change back to 1562, and believes that Theodore
Beza himself made it after the bloody executions of Huguenots by Francis II.,
consequent upon the Conspiracy of Amboise.

362 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. Vn
theologian opens so wide the door of Christian charity as to ad
mit all the forms of heresy, eight only excepted. — In other
words, the tendency toward broader and more fraternal relations
between the different branches of the churches of the Reforma
tion proved that the religion of Huguenots of the seventeenth
century Avas quite a different thing from the religion of their an
cestors in the sixteenth ; and the prelate, instead of rejoicing in
the change, saAv in it only a reason for the withdrawal of royal
toleration.1 The thought expressed by the Bishop of Orleans, at the
opening of the assembly of the clergy, was repeated by his col
league, the Bishop of Saint Flour, in his harangue to the king at
its close. " It is no longer a pure heresy," he exclaimed, when
speaking of the neAv religion Avhich was disseminated through
out France. " It is a mixture of poisons. From heresy they
degenerate into atheism. They confound the sects of Calvin
and Luther. They mix these two venomous concoctions 2 Avith
those of several other heresiarchs, and instead of fearing the
edicts which forbid them from making any innovations, their
writings give to the world impieties that would horrify the most
irreligious." 3
The most astounding demand, however, was made by the pre
late whom I first mentioned, to the effect that the government
should undertake to expunge from the liturgy of the
that the Hu- Huguenots every expression that might be construed
urgyheex- as offensive to a Roman Catholic ear, and that any
such expression uttered by a Huguenot pastor should
be severely punished. " Can your Majesty believe it," he said,
" that there are to be found in your kingdom ministers so bold
as to style the Church whose eldest son you are ' the infamous
Whore and the idolatrous Babylon,' the host, ' a god of paste,'

'Remonstrance of the Clergy to Louis XIII., Paris, February 17, 1636, by
Nicolas de Netz, Bishop of Orleans. Recueil des Actes, Titres, et Memoires du
Clerge de France (Paris, 1673), v. 313-315.
2 "Ces deux venins."
s " Leurs livres et leurs escrits publient des impietez qui feroient horreur aux
plus libertins." Remonstrance made to the king in the name of the clergy by
Charles de Noailles, Bishop of Saint Flour, at Chantilly, April 20, 1636, ibid ,
v. 324.

1636 THE HUGUENOTS UNDER RICHELIEU 363
' an abomination,' ' a wafer over which the priest mumbles four
or five words,' as says that impious blasphemer Drelincourt,
' and would have us believe that he has made a god of it,' the
mass, 'mummery,' the worship of the Virgin and the Saints,
' idolatry,' the pope, ' Antichrist ' — ministers so bold as to ex
press doubts whether the Holy Father is the successor of Simon
Peter and not, rather, of Simon Magus ? " After which, the
Bishop of Orleans prays that the Bibles and prayer-books of the
Huguenots be taken in hand, and the obnoxious passages be
erased, the prayer for the king restored in the twentieth psalm,
and the " infamous " pages in Daille's works (wherein he had
expressed charitable views respecting the Greek church and
sundry heretics) be burned by the public hangman, while their
author should be severely punished as a " heresiarch." x It was
truly a curious spectacle to behold a Roman Cathohc bishop, at
the head of other bishops of the Roman Cathohc church, insist
ing before the king of France that the Protestant church should
be conservative, not progressive ; as though they would force it
to earn the right to adopt for its own the boast of unchange-
ableness, and the motto "Semper eadem."
Nor must it be supposed that the denunciation of the Hugue
nots fell upon dull ears. Flattery disposes kings to listen with
The Bishop iavor; an(l tbe Bishop of Saint Flour took good care to
piournon the exalt the power and authority of Louis to the skies,
royai power. an(j ^0 congratulate him upon their boundless extent.
" Who indeed," he exclaimed, apostrophizing the monarch, " who
indeed is it that has ground to powder that rock which is re
sponsible for almost all the commotion of this realm? Who
has overturned that foundation of a religion opposed to the
religion founded by our Lord upon the Rock ? Who has de
stroyed the centre of all the disturbances contrary to the stabil
ity of so puissant a kingdom ? Is it not your majesty, Sire ?
And if you have been able to remove this barrier that abridged
the power of kings, may we not hope that you will enlarge the
kingdom which you have liberated, and give new frontiers to a

1 Remonstrance of the Bishop of Orleans, ibid., v. 317, 318. Thus, it is sug
gested, would that monster of heresy, that indifference respecting religion, be
gotten by Minister Daille, be stifled at its birth.

364 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VII
state which, in the reign of former kings, had limits, and within
those limits guilty lurking-places of rebellion."1
It might not be impertinent here to inquire, or conjecture, how
great was the loss to the cause of liberty which France sustained
in the overthrow of the Huguenots as a political party and in
the consequent cessation of their active resistance to the tyranny
of the crown.
If impotent to oppose by force of arms, the French Protes
tants continued to make as determined a stand as their circum
stances would permit, against the combined injustice of the
clergy and of the king acting under its inspiration. Of resist
ance there was great need. The royal commissioner at the
twenty-seventh National Synod, held at Alencon, in
the royai the months of May and June, 1637, brought instruc-
er at the na- tions of the most offensive character, breathing a spirit
of Aiencon, of suspicion of which it was not difficult to detect the
source. Whatever the bishops of the established
church had uttered by way of complaint, here found expres
sion in the form of prohibitions emanating from the govern
ment. The Huguenots must have no intercourse with foreign
countries, however friendly to the French crown, even respect
ing purely ecclesiastical matters, nor indeed the Huguenots of
one province with the Huguenots of another province. Their
ministers must inculcate such perfect obedience as never to4m-
pute to the king any other intention than to maintain religious
liberty, even should he order anything that seemed to be an in
fringement of it. Such words and expressions as " the scourge
of God," "martyrdom," "persecution," and the hke, were ruled
out of place. So also was it of " antichrist," and those other
terms respecting which the clergy had complained. The in
structions went to the length of interfering with the doctrine
and practice of the Protestants respecting Baptism, and bade
the national synod undo the work of a provincial synod of
Nismes which had invalidated the rite when administered by
laymen. The commissioner, or the ecclesiastic who spoke by
his mouth, undertook to inform the Protestant synod of the
nature of the sacrament Avhich, quoth he, works ex opere operato,
1 Remonstrance of the Bishop of Saint Flour, ibid., v. 323, 324.

1637 THE HUGUENOTS UNDER RICHELIEU 365
and which even when administered by a layman cannot be im
pugned without impugning the authority of the Roman Cath
olic Church which approves such a baptism.1
To all which the Huguenot moderator, the Norman pastor
Benjamin Basnage, replied with firmness and with a certain
Firm reply manly independence. There was, indeed, in his answer
erato, Bas- no lack 0I tna* humility which it was the fashion of all
nage- to profess in approaching the throne; but far from
seeing in the speech the signs of timidity, which the learned
Benoist seems to have discovered,2 1 can find only marks of a
true courage that will make no unworthy concessions even to
menace and overwhelming preponderance of power.3 If, speak
ing for the whole body, he declared that the pastors of the
churches should be urged more than eArer to observe the pre
scriptions of their own canons that forbade them from employ
ing, in the expression of their own belief and hope, words
calculated to shock the feelings of men of another creed, he also
took occasion to beg his majesty to require a hke practice on
the part of the ecclesiastics of the Roman Catholic Church, who
in their sermons, indulged so freely in abuse of the Protestants.
On not a single essential point did Basnage flinch. His re
joinder was calm and conciliatory, and he displayed even more
resolution than tact. The historian of the Edict of Nantes,
usually so accurate in his statements, has strangely mistaken
the character of the moderator's words when he represents the
synod, speaking through him, as replying as one replies when
one trembles. He more nearly hits the mark when he observes
of the synod's long list of infractions of the Edict of Nantes
and of other acts of injustice, that it was handed in, not so much
with any hope of obtaining redress, as in order not to forfeit the
right to complain in future.4 It cannot be said that the spirit
of the Huguenots was broken as yet by the disastrous issue of
the wars waged in defence of their civil and religious rights ;
1 Aymon, Tous les Synodes, ii. 534-39 ; Benoist, ii. 569-71.
2 " Le Synode repondit au discours du Commissaire, comme on repond quand
on tremble.'' Hist, de l'fidit de Nantes, ii. 572.
3Haag (La France Protestante, new ed., i. 924), very properly repudiates
Benoist's view.
•Benoist, ii. 574.

366 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VII
but, while unprepared to surrender those rights, they looked for
future acknowledgment of their just claims on the part of the
king in a better mind. Patience, obedience, forbearance seemed,
consequently, to be the qualities chiefly called for in his
majesty's Protestant subjects at the present moment. Thus it
was that, when Louis the Thirteenth, instead of choosing two
deputies-general at the nomination of the synod, ignored the
tiers etat altogether, and prolonged the term of the Marquis of
Clermont as a representative of the nobility, the synod resigned
itself to the king's will without a protest.1
It may here be noticed that if the synod of Alencon was firm
in its attitude toward the crown, it was also faithful in its efforts
to promote the internal peace of the churches. This was seen
in its disposal of what was known as " the great affair
The great
affair of of Messrs. Amyraut and Testard." The former, a
and Test- professor of Saumur, had written a treatise upon the
doctrine of Predestination, but his well-meant attempt
to remove difficulties had merely succeeded in raising the most
considerable storm of theological discussion which the French
Protestant Church had ever known. Happily, the long and
patient examination at Alencon brought about, if not a perfect
calm, at least a temporary lull. Amyraut's explanation of his
use of the term of "universal" or "conditional predestination,"
as an accommodation to the mode of speech of the adversary,
and his declaration that Jesus Christ died sufficiently for all
men, but efficaciously for the elect alone, were accepted by the
synod as satisfactory. But the assembled divines, while they
dismissed Amyraut and his friend in a very honorable fashion,
adopted the advice of the pastors and professors of Geneva, and
enjoined upon them, upon pain of deposition, to abstain in
future from the discussion of what they regarded as a dan
gerous and unprofitable theme, a conclusion which was con
firmed, eight years later, in the National Synod of Charenton
(1645).2 'Benoist, ii. 577-78.
2 See Aymon. ii. 571-76 ; Benoist, ii. 578 ; A. Vinet, Histoire de la Predica
tion parmi les Reformes de France au dix-septieme siecle, 218-21 ; and, espe
cially, the detailed account, for the first time printed from a contemporary
manuscript, entitled "Journal de ce qui se passa dans la ville d' Alencon lors de

163S THE HUGUENOTS UNDER RICHELIEU 367
The year that witnessed the solemn dedication of the king
dom of France to the Virgin Mary, to which reference has
Birth of already been made (1638), beheld also the birth of a
ieptenS" son t° Louis the Thirteenth and his wife, Anne of
5, 1638. Austria, on the fifth of September, after a childless
union of nearly twenty-three years. The infant Avas the future
Louis the Fourteenth, during whose long reign of nearly three-
quarters of a century, the Huguenots were destined to suffer
more disasters than during all the previous years of their
checkered existence. For the present their condition was little
affected either by the events, whether favorable or adverse to
France, of the Thirty Years' War, which occupied the remainder
of the reign of Louis the Thirteenth and the first five years of
the reign of his son, or by the successful contest of Cardinal
Richelieu against other jealous aspirants to the control of the
government of the weak monarch, against Anne of Austria her
self, the Count of Soissons, Cinq-Mars and his despicable ally,
the king's younger brother, Gaston, Duke of Orleans. Important
as these events are in the general history of France, neither
they nor the unfortunate fate of De Thou, son of the great his
torian, concern us here. So far as they had any bearing upon
the fortunes of the Huguenots, they may be regarded as use
fully diverting the attention of the government from a religious
body which fared best when most removed from notice at the
hands of an unfriendly court. It was, probably, otherwise Avith
the quarrel between the pontifical government and the French
cardinal, who, although himseK a member of the " sacred col
lege " and a " prince of the church," Avas ambitious to bring
Rome itself under his comprehensive sway. The Huguenots
rarely, if ever, profited by the disputes of the French crown
Eicheiieu with the Holy See. When Richelieu assumed so dis-
p?oPohsed tract aiL attitude of hostility to Pope Urban the Eighth,
ate^oi?TCh~ that there was serious thought, or, at least, very loud
France. fafe 0£ ^e institution of a French patriarchate and
of a complete sundering of the ties of religious subjection
to the Roman pontiff, it was esteemed politic to prove to the
I'afEaire de MM. Testard et Amyraut," in Bulletin de la Societe de i'histoire
du Protestantisme franqais, xiii. 39-63.

368 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. Vn
world that his eminence had no kindly inclination toward the
adherents of the Reformed faith. I shall spare the reader,
however, the details of the acts of injustice Avhich, if he desires
to see them, he will find on the pages of the faithful and labo-
Mnor vex- rious Benoist. If the villagers of a small place in the
ations. neighborhood of Paris were forbidden to meet to sing
psalms or to bury their dead from their sight except at certain
fixed hours ; if the Huguenots of Dauphiny were unjustly
ordered by the Parliament of Grenoble to drape their houses
on Corpus Christi day ; if the University of Poitiers discrim
inated against Protestant students — in short, if here and there
the members of the Reformed churches were the victims of
palpable injustice, whether at the hands of judges or at the
hands of royal officers, these vexations were, as compared with
the trials awaiting them in the next reign, almost unworthy of
notice, since they did not seriously interfere with the general
state of peace and prosperity of the industrious and God-fearing
men and women professing the Calvinistic faith.
Thus did matters stand when, on the fourth of December,
1642, Cardinal Richelieu died. He was followed to
dinai Eich- the grave less than six months later, on the fourteenth
and of Louis of May, 1643, by Louis the Thirteenth. Louis had
reigned over France for exactly thirty years to a day.
I have spoken of the last years of the reign of Louis
the Thirteenth and the first years of that of his successor — in
other Avords, the period of about thirty years beginning with
the Edict of Grace, in 1629, and ending with the
days of adjournment of the last National Synod which the
estantism, French Reformed churches were permitted by the
government to hold, in January, 1660 — as constituting
the halcyon days of Huguenot history. It may not, there
fore, be out of place to pause at the point which we have now
reached, and gain a few general notions regarding the state of
the Huguenots and their churches before they entered upon the
disastrous times of systematic oppression culminating in an
attempt to terminate at one blow their civil existence in the
realm. I have in a previous work alluded to the difficulties attending
an inquiry into the question respecting the absolute number of

1629-1660 THE HUGUENOTS UNDER RICHELIEU 369
Huguenots in France and the fraction which they consequently
formed of the entire population. Cardinal Bentivoglio, a
HuoTienot PaPal nuncio at the court of Louis the Thirteenth,
population. wn0 gave special study to the condition and pros
pects of the " Calvinists," is not far astray when he reckons
their churches at about seven hundred.1 There were in reality
somewhat more. The reports made to the national synods
show that in 1598 the Protestants had seven hundred and sixty-
three churches ; in 1601, seven hundred and fifty-
and minis- three ; in 1607, seven hundred and fifty-eight ; and
in 1637, OAving to the fact that the forty-seven churches
of the principality of Beam were included, eight hundred and
seven.2 At the very close of the period now under considera
tion, a careful list that was drawn up, apparently, for the last
national synod, showed six hundred and thirty-one principal,
and two hundred and thirty-one secondary places of worship
(annexes), or eight hundred and sixty-two places in all.3 The
cardinal is less accurate when, judging from some of the larger
churches, such as Charenton, which had several pastors, he
supposes that, upon the average, there might be two ministers
for every church. In reality, the number of ministers was
slightly inferior to the number of the churches. But Bentivoglio
is, as I have shown in a previous chapter,4 in accord with the re
sults obtained from other sources in his estimate of the Hugue
not population. France in the early part of the seventeenth

1 Breve relatione degli Ugonotti di Francia, inviata a Rome dal Cardinal
Bentivoglio in tempo della sua Nuntiatura appresso il Re Christianissimo Luigi
XIII. all' Illustrissimo Signor Cardinal Borghese, Nipote della Santita, di Nostro
Signore Papa Paolo Quinto, sotto li vii. di Novembre 1619. In Relationi del
Cardinale Bentivoglio (Venice, 1636), 198.
'See The Huguenots and Henry of Navarre, ii. 445.
3 "Rosle des Eglises Reformees de France, avec les noms des pasteurs exer-
Cant le saint ministere en la presente annee 1660," printed in the Bulletin de la
Societe de I'histoire du Prot. franc;., xv. 511-526, 577-582, from MS. in the
Court Collection of the Public Library of Geneva. The National Synod sat
from November 10, 1659, to January 10, 1660. The names of the pastors, 712
in number, are given in this very valuable document. In some cases also a
later hand has given the number of communicants. Calais and Saint-Quentin,
for example, are credited with three thousand each.
4 See Chapter I. supra, p. 5.
24

370 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Cn. VII
century had fifteen million souls. Of these a million, or a little
over, were Huguenots. They were the only Protestants toler
ated in the kingdom, of whose population they constituted some
what over one-fifteenth, never more than one-tenth part.1 The
fact is that the statistics of Protestantism in France have always
been exaggerated. Before the Revocation, the Huguenots were
popularly reckoned at two or even three millions. In 1680, even
an official document set doAvn the Huguenots old enough. to par
take of the Holy Communion at one milhon seven hundred
thousand souls, and supposed their total strength to be fully
two millions out of the eighteen millions that France contained
at that date. If this could be relied upon, the Huguenots
would have numbered fully one-ninth part of the entire popula
tion of France.2 Even in our own days the number of Protes
tants has been commonly represented as a million and a half,
though the government census fails to show that the adherents
of the Reformed church reach six hundred thousand souls.
In the membership of the Huguenot churches all ranks of
society were represented. Persecution, however, had sifted out
many of those who, in the initial stages of the history of the
Reformation, attached themselves to it from interested motives
— both the ambitious nobles who sought support in political
contentions, and that restless and unruly class whom contem
poraries styled " atheists and Epicureans," leaders in insubordi
nation and iconoclastic exploits.3 Yet if the lower populace
was not now strongly Protestant, the Protestant nobles and

1 Bentivoglio and The Huguenots and Henry of Navarre, ubi supra.
3 Letter of N. de la Mare, August 6, 1680, published from the MS. in the
National Library, with comments, in the Bulletin de la Societe de I'histoire du
Prot. franf, xxxvii. (1888), 28-31. M. de la Mare, who was first a " pro-
cureur," afterward a commissioner in the Chatelet of Paris, and finally intend
ant of the house of the Count of Vermandois, obtained his information from the
"procureur general," or attorney-general, to whom he had in conversation
spoken of the large number of Protestants on the Isle du Palais. " Mais j'ay
este beaucoup plus estonne," he writes, " quand il [le procureur general] a eu
la bonte de me dire que l'annee derniere, il s'est faict un denombrement dans le
Roiaume, de tous ceux de cette religion en aage de participer a la Ceine, qui
c'est trouve monter a dix sept cens mil."
1 Guillaume et Jean Daval, Histoire de la Reformation a Dieppe, i. 22 (under
date of 1561).

1629-1660 PROSPERITY OF THE CHURCHES 371
gentry were still considerable in numbers and in influence.
Many a church Avas composed almost exclusively of the best
families of the region. In some places eighty or one
'Vhenoblesse hundred families of the gentry attended the Aveekly
services for worship, coming from far and near, and sixty or
eighty carriages might often be seen draAvn up before the doors
of the spacious " temple." x But in the large towns and cities
the strength of the " pretended Reformed religion " lay in the
The middle great middle classes. Trade, foreign and domestic,
classes. banking, manufactures, came more and more to fall
into the hands of the Huguenots. Excluded, as time passed on,
from hope of preferment in the various departments of the
royal service, they pressed into those callings in which men of
all creeds meet substantially as equals. Later in the century, a
Venetian ambassador, Girolamo Venier, in a report to his gov
ernment, asserted that, at the Revocation of the Edict of
Trade in the Nantes, the Huguenot merchants transacted two-thirds
gu»not°aier-" °^ *ne business of the country. This was, doubtless,
chants. a gr0SS exaggeration even then.2 However this may
be, there were many places where, as at Dieppe, the Roman
Catholic merchants were few in number and of little wealth as
compared with their Protestant townsmen.3
Long before the time of the abrogation of the Edict of
Nantes, the greater material prosperity of the Calvinists had
become matter of common report. I am not able to state pre
cisely when the saying " Rich as a Huguenot " passed into a
' Benoist, ii. 568 (referring to the date of 1637). " A la verite les Reformez
etoient encore considerables par leur nombre. Leur Eglises de la campagne
n'etoient presque composees que de Noblesse. II y en avoit plusieurs ou on
comptoit quatre-vingts ou cent families de Gentilshommes ; et cela faisoit encore
honneur a. leur Religion, qu'on vit souvent soixante ou quatre-vingts carrosses a
la porte du lieu de leurs exercises. "
2 "II non poter sperar essi fortuna alia Corte, o alia guerra,.l'essere dispersi
nelle provincie piu adattate al traffico, faceva che tutti i Protestanti vi contri-
buissero o col lavoro, o colli cambii, o colla navigazione. Si tiene che li due
terzi del negozio fossero nelle loro mani." Relation of Girolamo Venier, July
4, 1689, in the collection of Venetian Relations appended to Ranke, Franzo-
sische Geschichte, v. 317. Venier, no very trustworthy authority, I fear, speaks
of the "continually increasing number of the Protestants."
s ,l Vu le petit nombre et peu de capacite des marchands de la religion Ro-
maine, en comparaison d'eux." Daval, ii. 134 (under date of 1644).

372 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VII
current proverbial expression; but the circumstance to which
it pointed had long been noticeable. It can scarcely be doubted
by the impartial observer that the superiority of the Protes
tants in average morality — their more general avoidance of the
sins of drunkenness, lewdness, and gaming, and the other prev
alent vices of the day — was the chief cause of the difference.
But there was, besides this, an interesting fact, of Avhich the
late Mr. Charles Weiss has taken notice, that bears directly
upon the point.1 I refer to the greater industry of the Hugue
not as affected bv the much longer time he devoted
The Hugue-
not artisan annually to his trade or handicraft. The Roman Cath-
daysinthe olic artisan, although he did not observe the Lord's
year. . .
day as strictly as his fellow-workman of the other
faith, had a far larger number of holidays, saints' days, and other
times at which he Avas prohibited by his church from engaging
in any manual labor. His days of idleness amounted to one
hundred and five, or two days, on the average, in every week,
but scattered at irregular intervals throughout the year. The
Huguenot artisan observed only the weekly day of rest, or
dained by the Almighty, and coming at the regular interval
which experience has taught to be the most conducive to phys
ical invigoration. Consequently the Huguenot had, at the end
of the year, the fruits of three hundred and ten days' toil, as
against the fruits of the Roman Catholic's two hundred and
sixty days. If the tAvo were equally laborious and thrifty, the
Huguenot evidently gained upon his Roman Catholic neighbor
every year at the rate of not much less than twenty per cent.
of the latter's income — a great and cumulative difference,
Avhether the whole was added to capital, or, as was more likely,
a part was used in adding to the comforts and means of intel
lectual improvement enjoyed by the family.
Whether many or few, the Protestants were loyal to the
government of their country beyond all others. When, in 1647,
Loyalty to m time of war, Louis the Fourteenth came to Dieppe,
the crown. ne ]ia(j not ^fa nim a singie protestant of those
accustomed to be of his suite; all were in his armies.2 On
the other hand, the Protestants had apparently lost little or

1 Histoire des Refugies protestants, i. 35. ' Daval, ii. 156.

1639-1660 PROSPERITY OF THE CHURCHES 373
none of their old-time stanchness of principle. Upon this
same visit to the flourishing seaport of Normandy, it was
quietly suggested to the consistory that they should order the
discontinuance of public religious services in the " temple ; "
the more so that by the royal edicts Protestant worship was
forbidden within the distance of three leagues of the place of
the king's sojourn. But the consistory declined either to inter
mit prayers and preaching, or to ask a permission that might be
refused. Did the services at Charenton cease, said they, when
ever the king took it into his head to go to the Bois de Vin-
cennes, or were they suspended at Amiens during the three
months of Louis's recent stay ? :
The poor were well cared for. There were regular gatherings
for their relief at the church doors. Annual collections were
made from house to house. It might be said that scarcely
ever was there a Huguenot will made Avhich did not contain
some gift, great or small, for the benefit of the destitute. In
cases of urgent need, an assessment Avas made and each member
care for the Pa^ n^s share. Then, too, boxes were placed in the
poor. shops to receive the free-will offerings of the charitable.
The consistory made the wants of the impoverished artisan
the object of their special solicitude, purchasing not merely
food and clothing, but even the tools for the pursuit of his
craft, and in time of famine obtained by loan the requisite re
lief funds.2
Even when, in the course of his unrighteous proscription,
the king, shortly before the Revocation, seemed to forbid the
Protestant consistories to raise money either for the sup
port of the ministry or for relief of the poor,3 Huguenot liber
ality could not be balked. At Easter, 1685, the members of
the church of Mer, on the Loire, bringing, as usual, their gifts
when coming to obtain the mereaux, or tokens, necessary for
admission to the Lord's Supper, the elders that dispensed the
tokens felt compelled to decline receiving the money. There-
1 Daval, ii. 158, 159.
2 J. P. Hugues, Histoire de l'Eglise Reformee d'Andnze, 564, 565.
3 See " Arrest du Conseil du 11 Dccembre, 1684, portant defenses a ceux de
la R. P. R. de faire aucunes Impositions sans la permission expresse du Roi,"
in Edicts, Declarations et Arrests, 171.

374 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VII
upon the faithful, unsolicited, placed their gifts in a box hard
by, whence the person whose duty it was subsequently took
out the amount ordinarily appropriated to the poor, and paid
the remainder to the two pastors, whose salaries were thus
met.1 The consistory had a wide jurisdiction and exerted great in
fluence. The members embraced the pastor or pastors, the
elders, whose duties were chiefly spiritual, and the deacons,
The consis- WQO na(^ rather to do Avith the worldly concerns of the
tones. little community, although the functions of the elders
and deacons seemed often in practice to mingle. In a large
church, such as that of Anduze, which had two pastors, there
might be as many as twelve elders and an equal number of
deacons. The choice of elders and deacons was made annually
by the consistory itself, a method of election that tended to give
dignity to the whole body and to render it conservative. The
first articles of discipline adopted by the Reformed churches
of France had given to the consistory a character rather aris
tocratic than strictly democratic, by directing that in places
where church order was not yet fully constituted the elders
and deacons should be elected by the common vote of the
people and their pastor, but that, discipline having been once
instituted, the right to elect should be vested in the "senate"
of the church, that is, in the elders and deacons themselves in
conjunction with the minister. The appointees must, it is true,
before entering upon their offices, be presented to the people
for approval ; but should there be any opposition, the matter
was to be settled by the consistory, or, in the last resort, by
the provincial synod. In no case were either elders or deacons
to hold office permanently.2
In a leading church, such as that of Anduze, the influence of
the consistory made itself felt over a wide district, or even
an entire province. It reconciled differences between other
churches. Sometimes it audited the accounts of provincial

1 P. de Felice, Mer; son figlise Reformee, 152.
a Premier Synode National des Eglises Reformers de France, tenu a Paris le
25 jour du mois de Mai, Tan 1559. Articles 24, 25, 26, 27. In Aymon, Tous
les Synodes, i. 5.

1629-1660 PROSPERITY OF THE CHURCHES 375
synods, and was the depository of their archives. In this case
not less than two deacons must be present when the archives
were opened, and no document could, on any pretext, be re
moved, save by a direct vote of the entire body. If there was
a Protestant college in the place, the consistory had a special
charge of it.1
It watched over every member of the Protestant commu
nity. It enforced the observance of the Lord's Day by constant
exhortation and censure. The shoemaker or tailor
of the Lord's that Avorked at his trade during the holy hours, the
dealer that kept open shop and scandalized his breth
ren, the laborer that received his wages, the farmer who
gathered his fruit, even the person that frequented the public-
house ostensibly to obtain a meal, Avere rebuked for their delin
quencies, and, if they persisted in them, were not easily let off.
The barbers, who were also surgeons, were warned that, though
they might indeed keep their doors open and perform opera
tions, they must in nowise trim a customer's beard. And
Pierre Puech, better known by his surname of Renard, who
confessed that he had gone out one Sunday to a plot of ground
which he owned not far from Anduze, and had sown " a little
beet seed," covering it in with his foot, despite the fact that
when called to account he begged pardon of God and of the
church, was gravely censured and was suspended from the com
munion for a time.2
It is almost needless to say that on other points of morality
and decorum the consistory was equally vigilant. It took cog-
Moraisand nizance OI lewd behavior ot every kind, of dancing,
discipline, masking, and the wearing of sumptuous apparel. Such
unseemly practices as that of men and women sitting side by
side in church, or promenading the streets on Sunday evening
up to ten or eleven o'clock, met Avith appropriate animadversion.3
To the consistory belonged the custody of the church build
ings of the Protestants, commonly called " temples," to distin-
The ¦• tem- guish them from the Roman Catholic places of worship.
pies." These structures usually stood upon ground to which
full title had been acquired in virtue of a general amortizement
1 Hugues, 553, 555. * Ibid. , 556, 557. 3 Ibid., 569-572.

376 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VII
granted by the king in favor of all lands occupied by Reformed
churches upon payment to the holder of the fief of such an in
demnity in a single sum as the royal commissioner should have
fixed upon.1 Where, for some reason or other, the Protestants
would not or could not avail themselves of the general law, and
the consistory consequently did not possess corporate rights,
choice was made of a person — ¦" homme vivant et mourant," in
the terms of feudal jurisprudence — to represent them as holders
of property in mortmain in their relation to the owner of the
fief. In 1658, the church of Mer selected a boy of eleven years
of age for this purpose, Avith the evident hope of deferring as
long as possible the heavy seigniorial payment attending the
transfer to his successor.2
The "temples" were often difficult of access, for their ene
mies, the clergy, had taken good care that the places accorded
to the Huguenots for their service should not only be far from
any Roman Cathohc church, but as distant as possible from the
homes of the worshippers. But, if the inhabitants of Rouen,
for instance, were compelled to cross the Seine and go several
miles in the country to the village of Quevilly, they there found
a large and commodious structure erected by their an-
The "tern- . ,
pie" of Que- cestors immediately after the publication of the Edict
of Nantes. It was no Gothic edifice with long aisles
into which a dim religious light is reluctantly admitted through
windows of stained glass, but one of those compact buildings
which the skilled architects of the Huguenots devised as best
adapted to secure the comfort of the worshippers and to enable
them to take part most fully in the services. A description of
this may therefore serve to convey a general idea of the Hugue
not " temple " of the seventeenth century. It was entirely con
structed of wood, but so firm and substantial that Philippe

1 " Depuis le Roy ayant donne un amortissement general pour toutes les
places ou sont batis les temples de la religion, le dit sieur Bouchard fut con-
damne par les dits sieurs commissaires, a ce deputes, en l'an 1612, et luy fut
paye jusques a 80 liv., encore que la quittance n'en ait peu estre representee,
pour avoir este egaree." Daval, Hist, de la Reformation a Dieppe, ii. 109.
2 Amounting, according to Paul de Felice, to a. sum equivalent in value to
about 2,500 francs of the present currency of France. See his interesting work
entitled Mer : son Eglise Reformee, 64, 65.

1629-1660 PROSPERITY OF THE CHURCHES 377
Legendre, the last pastor that preached within its walls, lov
ingly declared, after it had stood the summers and winters of
eighty-four years, that it bade fair to last as long as the French
monarchy — which meant, we must presume, to the end of time.1
The ground plan was a figure having twelve equal sides. The
structure was nearly one hundred feet in diameter and over
seventy in height. It was well lighted by sixty windows. The
pointed roof rested solely upon the exterior walls, and had no
need of pillars for additional support. It was capped by a
lantern or belfry, and this in turn was surmounted, in token of
loyalty, by a large fleur-de-lis, in place of the traditional cross.
Within there was a double or triple gallery running around the
edifice. Legendre tells ns that it could easily contain seven or
eight thousand worshippers, all of whom could hear the minis
ter however low his voice, if only he spoke distinctly. Another
writer increases its capacity to eleven thousand seven hundred
persons.2 Few Huguenot " temples " were more spacious — for the mem
bership of the church of Rouen was among the largest in
France — but some were built of more substantial materials.
The walls of the "temple" of La Rochelle were of
pie" of La dressed stones. The shape was that of an octagon,
somewhat longer than it was broad, but the roof, a
marvel of architectural skill in the eyes of contemporary trav
ellers, was, hke that of Quevilly, firmly supported, without any
1 Histoire de la persecution faite a l'Eglise de Rouen sur la fin du dernier
siecle (Rotterdam, 1704), p. 2. — This rare and curious book has been reprinted
in fac-simile, together with two views of the elevation and ground plan of the
church, at Rouen in 1874.
2 Ibid., 70, and the accompanying views. See also Farin's description in the
introductory notice by Emile Lesens, p. xviii., and Jean Bianquis, La Revoca
tion de l'Edit de Nantes a Rouen (Rouen, 1885), p. xx. The Protestants of
Rouen worship at present in a fine Gothic edifice built in the sixteenth century,
the church of Saint Eloi, given to them by the government in 1803. It has
beautiful stained glass windows and a grand organ with carved work ascribed to
Coustou. It was here that the French Protestant Historical Society held its
annual sessions in June, 1887. It is an interesting coincidence that the curate of
Saint Eloi was the chief instigator of the legal proceedings that ended in the
demolition of the Huguenot church at Quevilly in 1685. Bulletin de la Societe
de l'hist. dn Prot. franc., xxxvi. (1887), 281, where a view of the facade of the
church is given.

378 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VH
bearing columns.1 It will be remembered that, at the fall of
La Rochelle, this elegant Huguenot church was taken from
its rightful owners and bestowed upon the Roman Catholics of
the place, to become the cathedral of the new episcopal see
which Louis the Thirteenth begged the pope to erect. Such
it remained until consumed, in 1687, by the flames kindled by
the great bonfires that celebrated the restoration of Louis the
Fourteenth's health.2
The expenses attending the maintenance of divine worship,
including the salaries of the pastors, Avere at first met by vol
untary offerings, but when the zeal of the faithful
penses, how cooled, the amount was apportioned according to their
de raye . weai j.^ rri]ie head 0f each family, at Dieppe, for ex
ample, received a statement of his share at the hands of the
consistory when he presented himself, previously to each of the
four great feasts, to obtain the "token " that would admit him
to the communion, and of which I shall presently have occasion
to speak.3 The expenses were not heavy, if we may judge from
the very modest salaries of five or six hundred livres generally
paid to the highly educated ministers — a sum which may pos
sibly represent the value of six times as many francs in our
days, and. will compare favorably with the amount now doled out

1 " Soutenue par deux clefs de bois d'une riche invention et artifice." Mer-
vault declared that the roof, " as well for its size as for its admirable construc
tion, is esteemed by those that behold it to be one of the most beautiful master
pieces that can be seen." Bulletin de la Societe de l'hist. du Prot. frang. , xxxvi.
(1887), 221. Jodocus Sincerus thus describes it in his Itinerarium Gallia? (p.
118), written in 1616 and published in 1627, before the fall of La Rochelle :
" Nunc in area vicina templum noviter excitatum elegans, figura? ovalis. Lig-
neum opus lapideo impositum visu imprimis dignissimum : tignis ita invicem
nexis, ut, etsi nullis in medio sustinentur f ulcris, mutuo se solis muris impos
ita sustentent." A miniature view may be seen upon the map of La Rochelle
in the history of the first siege, published at Maille in 1621. This "grand tem
ple " must be carefully distinguished from the ' ' temple " subsequently erected
in 1630 in the Pr<§ de Maubec, and demolished in 1685, of which my brother has
given four views in his History of the Huguenot Emigration to America, i. 276.
The latter was a much less imposing structure.
2 The populace ascribed tbe conflagration to the malice of a Protestant, vexed
at the sight of a church built by his ancestors serving for the worship of an in
imical faith. See the excellent article in the Bulletin, ubi supra.
3 Daval, ii. 21.

1629-1660 PROSPERITY OF THE CHURCHES 379
by the government of the French republic to the pastors of the
Protestant churches supported by the State.1 The number of
sermons delivered every Sunday varied in different
places, according to the size of the Huguenot com
munity and the number of pastors. In Dieppe there were
customarily four (in 1596), at Anduze, only tAvo.2 The ministers
The Geneva wore m the pulpit the black Geneva gown.3 The cus-
gown. torn has come down to our days. Among the duties
of the pastors the preparation and delivery of sermons naturally
formed, next to their parochial duties, the most engrossing
occupation. In the conduct of the devotional services on the
morning of the Lord's Day, they had the help of the beautiful
Calvin's liturgy prepared by Calvin in the first instance for the
liturgy. French church at Frankfort, and subsequently modi
fied for the use of the church of Geneva. Of this I have else
where given an account at considerable length.4 It was a
liturgy the use of which was not obligatory, and which might
therefore be dispensed Avith for sufficient reasons. Yet it was
so associated with the habits of a full century, that its noble ex
hortation and its confession of sins, hallowed by the use which
confessors for the faith had made of it in the dungeon, and mar
tyrs at the stake, or when suspended over the flames in the
terrible " estrapade," were rarely omitted from the order of wor
ship. Nor had the metrical psalms of Clement Marot
and Theodore de Beze lost their hold upon Huguenot
imagination and Huguenot devotion. They were sung in every
pubhc service. They were printed, generally with the accom
panying music written out at length, in the volume that con
tained the New Testament, as " revieAved and compared with
the Greek text, by the pastors and professors of the Church of
Geneva," and the catechism and confession of faith. There was
scarcely an incident of the life of the individual man, of the fam
ily, or of the community, scarcely an act of civil or religious life
for which this storehouse of the pious thought of remote antiq
uity did not supply appropriate form of expression to men and

1 Paul de Felice, 103.
2 Daval, i. 152 ; J. P. Hugues, 558, 559. 3 Daval, ii. 102.
* Excursus to chapter viii. of Book I., Rise of the Huguenots, i. 341-45.

380 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VII
women who had been familiar with it from earliest infancy. The
constant use of the psalms set the Huguenots apart as a peculiar
people. The devout Roman Catholic had received no similar
training. The Roman Catholic populace had none but songs of
a very different character to offer. Hence it was that Hugue
not psalm-singing annoyed and irritated. Hence the frequent
prohibition of psalm-singing in the streets, in the shop, or even
in the private home, Avhere the words or the familiar tunes might
be heard and " scandalize " the hearer ; especially in the vicin
ity of churches where they might break in upon the monoto
nous chant of the priest. Hence numberless popular conflicts.
For the psalms Avere so ingrained in Huguenot nature, that
they forced themselves upon the lips in season and out of sea
son. It may, however, be doubted whether, at the later date of
which I am writing, the Huguenots had not everywhere become
so fully aware of the dislike in which these sacred poems were
held by their Roman Catholic countrymen, that they would have
refrained from imitating those Norman Calvinists Avho, in 1562,
welcomed a friendly governor of the other faith, sent to them
from Paris, with loud singing of appropriate psalms in lieu of a
salute of fire-arms.1
The services, or more probably, the sermons, were appar
ently timed in some churches by a clock, such as that in the
The services. cnurch OI Dieppe, which ran but once around in an
The clock. nour an(j then struck one — a circumstance that has come
down to us because, in 1645, thieves broke in and carried off
not only this, but the carpets and the copper boxes used in the
collection of alms. These anVl other losses led to the lodging
of the janitor in the building.2 The Holy Scriptures were read
systematically, and often many successive chapters on one Sun
day.3 The liberality of the churches was not confined to their
Generous own bounds, but went forth toward all needy commu-
fOTforeign nities of a like faith throughout the Christian world.
brethren. jn ^e recor(js 0f one or two churches, I find references
to money raised, in 1566, to be sent to the suffering Protes
tants of Avignon ; in 1590, to collections for the city of Geneva,
1 Daval, i. 23. » Ibid., ii. 148.
3 Ibid., i. 122 : " Ce jour 13, on acheva de lire le livre du prophete Osee."

1629-1660 PROSPERITY OF THE CHURCHES 381
reduced to straits by the incursions of the Duke of Savoy (and
this at a time when the contributing church had scarcely been
gathered together after its dispersion) ; in 1606, for the expelled
Scotch pastors ; in the same year and in 1610, for the refugees
from the marquisat of Saluzzo.1
While admission to the pubhc services was free to all, except
in the time of violent persecution or of great civil commotion,2
it Avas otherwise with access to participation in the holy com
munion. The consistory was wont to draw up a fist of the per
sons whom it deemed worthy to commune, and to
reaux," or these, and to these alone, it distributed in advance the
mereaux, or small leaden tokens,3 required of all that
presented themselves on the four great occasions at which the
Lord's Supper was celebrated — Christmas, Easter, Pentecost
or Whit-Sunday, and the first Sunday of September. Such
as were deemed unworthy received a visit from the officer
The "aver- known as the " avertisseur," sent to warn them to ab-
tisseur." gen£ themselves ; and neighboring churches received
notice of the exclusion. With these exceptions all communi
cants were expected to come, and, if they failed to do so, in
quiry was made into the reason.4 Baptism was administered
and marriage solemnized in the church, the latter after
The sacra-
ments and publication of the banns.3 While preaching and prayer
ahvays accompanied the administration of baptism, it
was expressly forbidden to offer prayers at the burial of the
dead, lest superstitious notions of the efficacy of supplications

1 Daval, i. 64, 143, 176 ; P. de Felice, 81.
2 Tokens were required in early times, when, through fear, the faithful met
with secrecy in private houses ; as at Dieppe in 1574. Also, in the uneasiness
consequent upon the victory of Henry IV. , at Arques, in 1590. Daval, i. 42,
120, 145.
3 See The Huguenots and Henry of Navarre, ii. 220. M. Edmond Hugues has
given in the second volume of Les Synodes du Desert, pp. 503-511, «• very
full and valuable account of the "mereaux "of the eighteenth century, to
gether with a plate reproducing, by heliogravure, nearly a score of the most in
teresting specimens that have been preserved. Each church seems to have had
its own design for purposes of identification.
1 J. P. Hugues, ubi supra, 559, 560.
5 At first with only one publication. " On marioit alors (1577) apres une an-
noncefaite." Daval, i. 121.

382 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VII
in their behalf should seem to be countenanced.1 Many days
of fasting were observed on special occasions.2
The Reformed churches were not Avithout their internal dif
ficulties, arising sometimes from doctrinal differences, sometimes
intemaidif- from other causes. Pastor Deschamps had serious
Acuities. trouble with his flock, being convicted of a number
of grave offences against good morals, besides the crime of
" intelligence and familiarity with the Arminians." The synod
of Normandy forbade him the pulpits of all the churches of the
province, but the minister obstinately refused to leave Dieppe,
and succeeded in inducing a considerable party in the church to
support him in setting the synod at defiance. Primerose, pas
tor at Rouen, and Civille Saint Mars, an elder from Bacqueville,
were deputed to announce to the people the synod's decision.
But at the second service which they held, a great tumult
arose ; for the factious minister brought together a great number
of sympathizers, including persons who had been censured for
scandalous behavior or had not contributed their quota to the
church's expenses, AA'ith young men and girls whom it was not the
practice to admit to such meetings, but who strenuously resisted
the attempts of the elders to induce them to leave.3
Occasionally the plagiarism of some minister who ventured
to preach as his own the sermons of Du Moulin or some other
divine was brought to notice, and a consistory would propose
to test the preacher's abilities by directing him to speak from
an assigned text.4 But for the most part it was the irrepres
sible zeal of the Huguenot minister that gave uneasiness to his
brethren and to the church ; as when one hot-headed con
troversialist, disregarding the injunction of the book of dis
cipline to commit no Avork to the press without consulting his
colleagues, brought out a book directed against the Roman
Cathohc chinch, and, imitating a very common practice of the

' " Les ministres ne feront aucunes prieres a l'enterrement des morts, pour
obvier a, toute superstition." Art. 15 of the Third National Synod (Orleans,
1562), Aymon, i. 26.
2 E. g., Daval, i. 121, 122, 153.
3 The recital of the matter takes up many a page of Daval, ii. 51-96, and the
scandal occupied the attention of the province for two or three years.
'Ibid., ii. 24, etc., 64, 68.

1629-1660 PROSPERITY OF THE CHURCHES 383
day, substituted an imaginary for the real place of publication,
the title-page bearing the imprint of Leyden instead of Dieppe}
Yet as a general rule the pastors of the Huguenot churches
of France were quiet and judicious men, characterized rather
by the equipoise of their minds than bv extrava-
The Huffue- ,
not min- gance either of expression or of action. Of their liter
ary and scholastic attainments evidence sufficient is
found in the number and in the quality of their published
works. More than one half of the twenty-four pastors of Rouen
from 1557 to 1685 are known to have written treatises of greater
or less importance.2
I have elsewhere made mention of the academies, or uni
versities, and the colleges, founded by the Huguenots for the
The Prates- purpose, above anything else, of furnishing facilities f or
Sesand *ne education of pious young men for the ministry.3
colleges. The interval between the death of Henry the Fourth
and the Revocation was the period of the greatest prosper
ity of these institutions of learning. It was also the period in
which were developed the striking divergencies that charac
terized them. This was especially true of three or four of the
number. The school of Nismes, otherwise not deserving to
rank among the most important, was notable for its (*
irenic tendencies. Its professors were more inclined
than others to soften the differences of doctrine separating
Protestants and Roman Catholics. From them came naturally
those delusive projects of conciliation and reunion which only
added to the reigning discord, and which were doomed in ad
vance to inevitable failure. It was an almost necessary con
sequence that from this school came more examples of apos
tasy from Protestantism than from any other school. Yet the
names of those who distinguished themselves as teachers,
whether of theology, Hebrew, Greek, jurisprudence, philos
ophy, history, or eloquence, form no obscure list, from Pierre
Viret, the reformer, and the first Jacques Pineton de Chambrun,
in the sixteenth century, to Jeremie Ferrier, Samuel Petit,
'Daval, ii. 178.
2 See the list given by Bianquis, La Revocation de l'Edit de Nantes a Rouen,
p. xviii.
3 The Huguenots and Henry of Navarre, ii. 477.

384 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VII
Benedict Turretin, and Jean Claude, in the seventeenth ; not
to speak of Jean de Serres, the historian, and Claude Baduel,
who relinquished a professorship in the University of Paris to
become the rector of the new college in his native city. Claude
Brousson, lawyer and martyr, and David Martin, the reviser of
the French Bible, were pupils of this school.
The foremost position among the Protestant academies was
undoubtedly held by the school founded through the unremit
ting exertions of Duplessis Mornay, at Saumur. The wide per
sonal acquaintance AA'hich the representative Hugue
not of his age had throughout Europe with the men
most distinguished for learning and intellectual ability, an ac
quaintance maintained and enlarged by means of a correspond
ence, unrivalled in interest, with all parts of the civilized Avorld,
enabled him to attract to the new institution on the banks of the
Loire many of the ablest teachers of the times, not only in
France, but in Scotland and elsewhere. Michel Beraud, Robert
Boyd, John Cameron, Moise Amyraut, Josue de la Place, Claude
Pajon, and others of almost equal merit, illustrate the long cata
logue of the instructors ; while the very mention of the most
famous among the multitude of the alumni would occupy far
more space than could here be accorded to them. In short, no
Protestant academic more speedily attained celebrity, more stead
ily retained its hold upon educated men, or was frequented by
greater numbers of pupils. It was in keeping with the circum
stances of its establishment that the professors of the School of
Saumur early exhibited a disposition to teach a modified Calvin
ism, denounced by many as a serious departure from the theo
logical views propounded by the fathers of the Reformed church,
and that they thus came into collision with their brethren of
other Protestant schools. The discussions were long and acri-
sedan and monious ; f or the professors of Sedan and Montauban
Montauban. became the defenders of orthodoxy and in turn attacked
with boldness and vigor a system which they viewed as differing
little from the belief of Arminius, condemned by the decrees of
the Council of Dort. As over against the eminent men that oc
cupied chairs of instruction at Saumur, Sedan boasted the dis
tinguished names of Pierre du Moulin, of Samuel des Marests,
and of Pierre Jurieu, and Montauban the names of Daniel Cha-

1629-1660 PROSPERITY OF THE CHURCHES 385
mier, Pierre Beraud, and Antoine GarissoUes, while among the
celebrated men who studied at the latter institution, were the
theologian Jacques Abbadie, the great critic and philosopher
Pierre Bayle, Elie Benoist, the historian of the Edict of Nantes,
Rapin Thoyras, the historian of England, the eloquent preachers
Pierre du Bosc and Paul Ferry, and the academician Paul Pelis-
son, destined to an unenviable notoriety as the founder of the
" Caisse des Conversions," which will occupy us later.1

For a very full and thoughtful discussion of the character of French Protes
tant preaching in the times of Louis the Thirteenth and Louis the Fourteenth,
__ . I refer the reader to a work of Professor A. Vinet entitled "Histoire
French Protestant de la predication parmi les Reformes de France au dix-septieme
Fn'thesev'- s^°le " (Paris, 1860). The eight preachers who may be regarded as
enteenth representative are Pierre du Moulin, Michel le Faucheur, Jean Mestre-
zat, Jean Daille, Moise Amyraut, Raymond Gaches, Jean Claude,
and Pierre du Bosc. To these De Superville and Saurin might be added, but
they belong rather to the refugee church in the Netherlands than to their native
land. I have already had something to say of Daille, Amyraut, and Du Moulin.
I shall in the sequel speak of Claude's resplendent abilities both as preacher and
as controversialist. The notable scene when Du Bosc appeared before Louis the
Fourteenth to plead the rights of the oppressed Huguenots will occupy our at
tention in a subsequent chapter. We shall then see the remarkable, but evan
escent, impression which his words made upon the monarch. Despite the re
nown of Claude and Du Bosc, and perhaps not even excepting these eminent men,
Professor Vinet regards the greatest of the Roman Catholic preachers as having
excelled in brilliancy the greatest of the Protestant preachers. The prosperity
of-a country, however, is not gauged by the extraordinary wealth of a few per
sons, nor the intellectual superiority of a period or a set of men by the pre
eminence of a limited number of individuals. Apart from some great names,
French Protestantism could boast of a far larger number of good preachers than
French Roman Catholicism ; and the discourses of the Protestant preachers of
the seventeenth century well deserve careful study. In a purely literary point
of view they were not the equals of their Roman Catholic rivals. They were at
a disadvantage in two respects. There was a " refugee style " even before there
were refugees. Keen critics detect in such pulpit orators, as Du Moulin and Le
Faucheur, who still wrote in France, a certain lack of true French feeling.
' See the admirable book of Daniel Bourchenin, fitude sur les Academies pro-
testantes en France au xvi" et au xvii" siecle (Paris, 1882), and particularly the
exhaustive lists of instructors and eminent pupils, on pages 463-472. Cf. also
Michel Nicholas, Hist, de l'ancienne Academie de Montauban (Montauban, 1885),
and, on the tendencies of the schools, the same writer's article in the Bulletin,
etc., ii. 320 et seq. 25

386 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VII
The church to which they belonged was, as it were, a commonwealth by itself,
with its usages, its traditions, and even its language — " a grave and simple lan
guage such as became a persecuted church." On the other hand, the Protestant
preacher could not avoid controversy even in the pulpit; while the Roman
Catholic preacher was only too happy to put controversy aside and let his
hearers forget even the existence of Protestantism. But if less eloquent and
emotional, the preaching of the Protestants was robust, scriptural, and cogent.
It dealt in exhaustive analysis. The sermon was, for the most part, constructed
with skill, compact and solid. It was intended for an audience that was not
easily satisfied — an audience that might be said to be composed of theologians,
sometimes of prospective martyrs. What strength, as Professor Vinet observes,
must there not have been in the flock to endure such preaching on the part of
the pastor ! But the flock not only endured, it loved the sermons to which it
listened. Those sermons were less conformed to the fashion of the day than
were the contemporary Roman Catholic sermons. But form and fashion are
always temporary and mutable ; and it is, perhaps, for the very reason that the
Protestant sermons were once out of fashion, that they now strike the reader as
more recent, fresher, less antiquated than the Roman Catholic sermons that
were better liked at the time of the delivery.

1643 UNDER CARDINAL MAZARIN 387

CHAPTER VIII.
UNDER CARDINAL MAZARIN— THE LAST NATIONAL SYNOD.
From the hands of a prince of the Roman Catholic Church
the chief direction of the political destiny of France passed al
most immediately into the hands of another member of the
pontifical consistory. Cardinal Giulio Mazarino, or Mazarin,
Avho had entered the council of state at the death of Riche
lieu, became, on the death of Louis the Thirteenth, prime
minister of the realm, through the favor of Anne of Austria.
For that princess, when, by a bold stroke she annulled the testa
mentary dispositions of her husband, and induced the Parlia
ment of Paris to acquiesce in her purposes, took from the board
by whose advice her actions were to haAre been guided, the
Italian churchman who owed his preferment in French politics
to her arch enemy the Cardinal of Richelieu, and invested him
¦with the full powers of government. Born of a noble family of
cardinal *ne southern part of the peninsula, Mazarin early ex-
Mazarin. changed the army for the church, and found in diplo
macy a promising and congenial occupation. He had been a
papal internuncio before he came to France, and after coming
to France, in 1630, and winning the confidence and esteem both
of -Richelieu and of Louis the Thirteenth, he was so fortunate
as to obtain, through Richelieu's powerful advocacy at the court
of Rome, first, the honorable post of legate of Avignon and then
the scarlet robe itself. As ambitious of power as Richelieu had
been, his was a mind less capacious of great designs and less
resolute in the accomplishment of what he purposed. Yet if
his will was less inflexible, he had, on the other hand, the ad
vantage of being less violent, and more conciliatory. Not in
capable of forming bold plans or of executing them with
prompt decision, he wore for a time, at least, an air of greater
consideration for the feelings and the opinions of others. He

388 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VHI
knew also how to bow before the storm, reserving for himself
the right to reclaim later every power of which he had tempora
rily divested himself. If he did not succeed so well as Richelieu
in impressing the world with a sense of his intellectual or moral
force, he surpassed all other prelates in the vast wealth which
he laid up for himself in the course of a few years, and in the
social position Avhich he secured for his relatives. Few eccle
siastics of equal birth have ever enjoyed the honor of having
so exalted a suitor for the hand of a niece as the future Charles
the Second of England, or have committed the blunder of refus
ing so eligible an alliance.
Under Mazarin's rule the Huguenots did not experience any
disastrous change from the administration of Richelieu. So far
as assurances conveyed in royal declarations were concerned,
the new reign opened auspiciously enough. Within less than
two months from the accession of Louis the Fourteenth, there
The Edict of was published in his name a law confirming the toler-
coanfi?mliain an* legislation enacted in favor of the Huguenots.
July 8, ic43. ipne most notable expression in this law was the sen
tence Avherein the young king Avas made to intimate distinctly
that the confirmation was in point of fact a Avork of supereroga
tion, inasmuch as the Edict of Nantes and the laAvs connected
therewith were themselves of permanent authority.1
It could not, however, be forgotten that it was a Spanish
queen and a granddaughter of Philip the Second that was re
gent ; and with Anne of Austria the Huguenots stood no higher
in favor than they had with either Catharine or Marie de'
Medici. Indeed, it is said that when the deputies of
Austria's the clergy came to condole Avith her on the death of
her husband, and to offer their congratulations upon
the new authority into which she had come, Anne distinctly
promised them that she would revoke all the laws that had
been issued in the interest of the Protestants.2 It is not aston-
» "Lesquels Edits bien que perpetuels, nous avons de nouveau, en tant que
besoin est ou seroit, confirmez, et confirmons," etc. Declaration dated Paris,
July 8, 1643. Text in Benoist, Histoire de l'fidit de Nantes, iii. (pieces justifi-
catives) 3, 4.
2 " La Reine promit formellement aux Deputez du Clerge, qui vinrent la com
plementer sur la mort du Roi et sur la Regence, qu'elle revoqueroit les Edits."
Benoist, iii. 7.

1643 UNDER CARDINAL MAZARIN 389
ishing, therefore, that the crown showed itself as arbitrary as
ever in its dealings Avith the Huguenots. When the Marquis of
Clermont, with little consideration for the interests of his con
stituents, placed in the king's hands his resignation of the office
of deputy general of the Reformed Churches which he had held
for some seventeen or eighteen years without procuring any sen
sible advantage to his fellow believers, the court, instead of
waiting for the convocation of the approaching National Synod,
and permitting it to nominate his successor, appointed the Mar-
Thekin ap- 1l"s d'Arzilliers in his place. The synod, Avhen it
points the came together, saw no course open but to consent to
d'Arzimers the selection of a man who proved in the end more
deputy gen- , ., .
protectants useful ^an "ls predecessor, while it petitioned in
vain for a return to the original practice of associating
a representative of the Third Estate with the deputy from the
"noblesse."1 In cases of this sort an arrogant government
rarely recedes. The Protestants were never again permitted to
have a commoner to watch their concerns at Paris, nor did they
ever have a voice in the selection of the nobleman who should
reside near the king. Moreover, the royal commissioner repre-
Nationai senting his majesty at the National Synod of 1644 —
Kenton ^ne ^as^ ^ut 0Iie °^ ^ne national synods which the Hu-
1644-1645. guenots were to be permitted to hold down to our own
days2 — had been carefully instructed in the art of vexatious
meddling, and the address which he delivered at the opening
session revealed unmistakably that the hand of the clergy of
the established church had been concerned in the preparation.
For he complained, among other things, of the injurious refer-
compiaints ences to the doctrines of the Roman Catholic religion
of the royal contained in two of the articles of the Confession of
commissioner. Faith of the Reformed Churches ; as though their in
sertion was a new and audacious act of the Huguenots which
they were ordered at once to recall. Their majesties, forsooth,
the king and his mother, the regent, could not tolerate, in a
formula which the national synods SAvore to observe, expressions
1 Benoist, iii. 25, 26, 33.
2 The twenty-eighth national synod, and the third that sat at Charenton, con
tinued its sessions from December 26, 1644, to January 26, 1645. Its proceed
ings may be read in Aymon, ii. 620-706.

390 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VIII
insulting to their religion and to the church whose head they
styled the Holy Father, an ally of the French croAvn.1
The moderator, Antoine Garissoles, pastor and professor of
theology at Montauban, was no weakling too timid to express
his mind, but a Huguenot of the old heroic type. No
of the mod- sooner had Monsieur de Caumont, royal commissioner
tofnerGaris- and councillor of the king's council and of the parlia
ment of Paris, concluded his offensive harangue, than
Garissoles made, on the spur of the moment, a calm and intrepid
reply. He gave the nobleman no reason whatsoever to expect
that the venerable body over which he had the honor to pre
side would alter the expression of its doctrinal tenets, even
in order to please the queen or the queen's advisers. "We
very humbly beg their majesties to reflect," he said, " that our
Confession of Faith was draAvn up a hundred years ago or
thereabouts, before any edict had been issued in favor of the
adherents of our religion, and that they presented it to King
Francis the Second for the purpose of giving him a reason of
the hope that was in them, and of pointing out to him the
abuses which they firmly believed to exist in the religion of
Rome, and Avhich therefore needed to be reformed. Conse
quently, our French Protestants have never changed, and can
not now change, without incurring the guilt of very gross be
trayal of trust, that form of expression which was inserted from
the very beginning in our Confession of Faith, by which they
have sincerely and truthfully declared their common belief,
which was authorized in 1561 [1562 new style] by the Edict of
January and, later on, by the Edict of Nantes, granted to us
by Henry the Great, and confirmed both by the late king and
by his Majesty now reigning." 2
These were brave Avords. The rest of Garissoles's address
was not inferior to them in tact or in firmness. If he yielded
1 For the full text of Caumont's harangue, see Aymon, Tous les Synodes, ii.
629-634. It is needless to recite the contents of the articles (the 24th and 28th)
of the French Confession of Faith, which may be read in the Recueil des Choses
Memorables faites et passees pour le faict de la Religion et Estat(1565), 51-69,
in the larger Memoires de Conde, i. 411-433, and in the successive editions of
the Huguenot psalter, where it is placed after the liturgy and the catechism.
2 Aymon, Tous les Synodes, ii. 637.

1645 UNDER CARDINAL MAZARIN 391
some matters of trifling importance, it was only to take his
stand with more decision upon points that were all-important,
and to vindicate those rights and franchises expressly guaranteed
by the Edict of Nantes, the loss of which would be the entire
ruin of the Protestant subjects of the crown. He therefore
insisted upon the right of Protestants to express themselves
with clearness and without concealing their sentiments on all
controverted heads of doctrine. He justified their aversion to
the Jesuits by the judicial action set on foot by the University
of Paris, their denunciation of the Council of Trent by the
opposition made to its decrees by the Emperor Charles the Fifth,
from whom Louis the Fourteenth was descended on the mother's
side. He claimed for the French Protestant churches the same
permission to send their students to study theology at Geneva,
in Holland, or in England, which was so freely accorded to
students from Geneva, Holland, and England to attend French
universities, or to French parents to send their sons to Padua
or to the republic of Venice. He was equally outspoken in
claiming for his fellow believers immunity from molestation of
their pubhc worship in places where they were clearly entitled
to hold it. To such words and so spoken the government
could not but give a respectful hearing ; and it may be that the
Huguenots owed it to the tact and unflinching courage of An
toine Garissoles that their rights under the Edict of Nantes
were treated with consideration for some years longer.1
At times, indeed, they were officially addressed from the
throne with a courtesy of which they received scant measure
from other quarters. The very national synod of which I have
been speaking received a very kindly reply from the hand of
Louis the Fourteenth to the congratulatory letter which it had
courteous sent, and this reply was directed : " To our dear and
treatment weli beloved, the Pastors and Elders, deputies of the
crown. Pretended Reformed assembled by our permission in
the national synod of Charenton." 2 It was amusing to see that
the king himself freely addressed them by the very title of

1 This is the opinion of Professor Michel Nicolas, Histoire de l'ancienne Aca-
demie protestante de Montauban et de Puylaurens (Montauban, 1885), 174.
2 Letter of Louis XIV., January 4, 1645, in Aymon, Tous les Synodes, ii. 645.

392 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VIII
pastors which the Huguenot ministers were subsequently for
bidden, upon very heavy penalties, to apply to themselves.1
Such are the occasional inconsistencies into which intolerance
and persecution fall. Meanwhile, it was only some six months
later that, in a writ issued by Argenson, royal intendant at Poi
tiers, forbidding a Scotchman, one Forbes, from teaching the
Latin language at La Rochelle in one of the small schools which
the Protestants were allowed by the Edict of Nantes to hold,
the church officers were sneeringly designated as " so-called
elders" of "the pretended consistory of those of the pretended
Reformed religion " in that place.2
It was no secret whence the prompting to such insults came.
This very year there was another of the quinquennial assem
blies of the clergy of France, at which the Archbishop of Nar
bonne, being called upon to address Anne of Austria
tended re- as regent, indulged in the customary invective against
the Protestants and their "pretended" religion. In
order to find a plausible pretext for urging the denial to the
Protestants of any additional favors, he accused the latter of
having undertaken with arms in their hands, to re-establish
their worship where it has been justly suppressed. Having had
the audacity to advance so false a charge respecting events of a
recent date, it is not strange that the prelate was bold to in-
caiumnies Yent calumnies at Avill touching the misdeeds of the
bishoVo?" Protestants of the time of Henry the Fourth. That
Narbonne great king, forsooth, had been hard pressed by his
Huguenot subjects and forced to grant them privileges con
trary to his inclination. Thereupon, his indignation passing
all bounds, his majesty once exclaimed, at the same time point
ing with his hand to the dauphin, the future Louis the Thir
teenth : " There is he who Avill some day avenge the insults
you offer me and the violence you exercise over my mind. He
will strip you, doubtless with justice, of what you are extort-

1 Benoist, iii. 32.
1 " Soy-disans Anciens, et ayant charge du Consistoire pretendu de ceux de la
Religion pretendue Reformee a. La Rochelle." Ordonnance de M. d' Argenson,
etc., signifiee le 10 juillet 1645. Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du Prot. fr., xli.
(1892) 470.

1646 UNDER CARDINAL MAZARIN 393
ing from me by importunity and what I reluctantly yield to
you."1 We know with certainty that the Edict of Nantes Avas freely
given by Henry the Fourth, from a sense of justice to his former
fellow believers and to those faithful men who had followed him
through a long period of adversity. The incident, hoAvever,
even were it true, could have had no reference to the great char
ter of Huguenot liberties which was signed more than three
years before the birth of Louis the Thirteenth.2
The same effrontery Avas exhibited in the harangue of Jacques
du Perron, Bishop of Angouleme, a few months later, when,
taking occasion to refer to the English Revolution, he
wshop of represented it to be the chief end of the Parliamentary
party, after destroying religion in Great Britain, to cross
the Channel and destroy it in France. In fact, he dreAv a pict
ure very flattering to the prowess of the Huguenots, both past
and prospective. " If, " said he, " the Huguenots, at the begin
ning, with the help of only a few heretical princes of Germany,
soon became sufficiently powerful to set on foot prodigious
armies, give hundreds of battles, win many victories, capture a
great number of the best cities of the realm and occupy whole
provinces, what may they not accomplish, if, beside the heretics
of Germany — now incomparably more puissant — they shall be
assisted by the Puritans of England, Scotland, and Ireland, in
corporated in a republic the most formidable of Christendom."
In his view, the Huguenots had no lack of evil intentions.
" The Huguenots have been much enfeebled, but not wholly ex
terminated. They are as numerous, as full of animosity against
us as ever. They have indeed had their towns and strongholds
taken from them, but not their hatred nor their thirst for re
venge. They await only the opportunity to manifest it ; and
no more favorable opportunity will ever present itself than will
be offered by the establishment of a Puritan republic in Eng-
1 Remonstrance of the Clergy, presented by Claude de Rebe, Archbishop of
Narbonne, attended by the Cardinal of Lyons and Cardinal Mazarin, July 27,
1645. In Recueil des Actes, Titres et Memoires concernant les affaires du
Clerge de France, v. 334 seq.
' It will be remembered that the edict was signed in April, 1598, and that
Louis XIII. was born September 27, 1601.

394 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VIII
land." 1 Then again, he added, shall be seen in France the
spectacle of churches ruined, burial places profaned, bishops
expelled from their dioceses, sacred virgins dishonored, priests
and monks cruelly murdered.2
Du Perron's harangue to the clergy tended to the same end
as the remonstrances in behalf of the clergy handed in to the
young king, some months later, by Gondy, the future Cardinal
of Retz, very humbly begging his majesty " not to suffer the
son of the bondwoman to be heir with the son of the free-
woman." 3
To all the calumnies of Du Perron respecting the rebellious,
treasonable intentions of the Huguenots the peaceable and loyal
conduct of the Protestants during the troublous times
th°eyHugne- of the so-called "Fronde," which began two years
the time of later, gave the lie direct. And it is an interesting cir
cumstance that the Cardinal of Retz, who had in his
"remonstrance " made much of the pretended " sacrilegious en
terprises which the [Huguenot] rebels, disarmed by the victo
rious hand of Louis the Just, nevertheless were every day ex
ecuting with so much audacity against religion," was the very
prelate who, more than any other, may be truthfully called the
instigator of the commotions that convulsed the kingdom dur-
. ing five years of the reign of Louis the Fourteenth.
twice pro- On the other hand, despite the solicitations of the
feases his in- r
tentionsto unruly nobles that took part in the "Fronde," the
execute the ^ ¦*- . . , .
edicts favor- Huguenots continued unshaken in their allegiance,
able to the ° ° '
?649Sto' ^ either remained quiet or assisted the regent and
her minister. Not but that the court had at times
some needless solicitude regarding their possible rising. There
fore it was that first in December, 1649, and again in April,

1 Charles I. was not beheaded until 1649, nearly three years later.
2 Harangue de Messire Jacques du Perron, Eveque d'Angouleme (February 19,
1646) in Recueil des Actes, Titres, etc., v. 347, 348.
3 " Nous avons supplie tres humblement Votre Majeste d'empescher que le fils
de la servante repudiee, dontil est parle dans l'Escriture, ne partage egalement
dans vostre Royaume avec l'Enfant de l'Espouse veritable." Remonstrance du
clerge de France assemble it Paris, faite au Roy Louis XIV. en presence de la
Reyne Regente sa Mere le 30 Jnillet, 1646, par Illustrissime et Reverendissime
Messire Jean Francois Paul de Gondy, Coadjnteur de Paris, depuis Cardinal de
Rais. Recueil des Actes, Titres, etc., v. 370.

1650 UNDER CARDINAL MAZARIN 395
1650, there were published royal declarations in the king's name,
to the effect that Louis the Fourteenth purposed to execute to
the letter every edict favorable to the members of the Reformed
communion, and intended that they should be unmolested in their
persons and their worship.1 It was much the same, a year later
(1651), when they were invited to join in the revolt of the Prince
of Conde, with a fair prospect of making themselves felt and ap
preciated. In the general revolt of the province of Guyenne,
Protestant Montauban was prominent in her fidelity to Louis
the Fourteenth. As, in 1650, she had sent five hundred soldiers,
levied at her own expense, to the siege of Bordeaux, so in 1651
she furnished the Marquis of Saint Luc with twelve hundred to
serve in the reduction of Moissac, and Count Harcourt with five
hundred to help in the rescue of the regiments of Champagne
and Lorraine shut up in Miradoux.2 Montauban thus earned
TheHngne- *Qe eulogy which Count Harcourt pronounced upon
LoSs^toT- tne Protestants when her deputies came to offer new
teringcrown. assurances of readiness to serve his majesty. " The
crown," said he, " was tottering on the king's head, but you have
steadied it."3
Nor did the loyalty of the Huguenots altogether escape the
notice and commendation of Cardinal Mazarin, in whom, even
more than in Richelieu, the ecclesiastic was subordinated to the
statesman. Referring to them on one occasion, he is said to
have exclaimed : " I have no complaint to make of the little
flock ; for if it feeds on bad pasture, at least it does not go
astray." 4 And he replied with the utmost cordiality to the ad-

1 Declarations of December 23, 1649, and April 21, 1650. Text in Benoist, iii.
pieces justificatives, 37, 38.
2 See the petition of tbe Reformed of Montauban (in 1668 or 1669), printed in
the Bulletin de la Societe de l'hist. du Prot. francais, xiii. (1893) 24, 25.
3 " Le Comte d'Harcourt, Prince qui parloit peu sans accompagner ses paroles
de quelque action significative, elant salne par les Deputez de Montauban, qui
lui rei'teroient les assurances de leur fidelite, leur repondit, apres avoir mis son
chapean en etat de tomber s'il ne l'eut soutenu, et le remettant en suite dans une
assiette plus ferme, La Couronne chanceloit sur la Ute diu Roi, mais vous Vavcz
affermie." Benoist, iii. 154.
4 " Mazarin disoit d'eux : ' Je n'ai point a me plaindre du petit troupeau ; s'il
broute demauvaises herbes, du moins il ne s'ecarte point.' " Rulhiere, Eclaircis-
semenshistoriques sur les causes de la Revocation de l'Edit de Nantes (1788), i. 19.

396 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VIII
dress of the last national synod in 1659. " Gentlemen," he said,
"your deputies have handed to me the letter you took the
trouble to write me. I thank you for your civilities,
tributes to and I may tell you that his majesty being fully per-
eir oy y. gua(je(^ ag in(jee(j ne jSj 0f y0ur inviolable fidelity,
and of your zeal for his service, it was needless for you to
make mention of the services I may have rendered you with
his Majesty. I beg you to believe that I entertain a high
esteem for you, as you deserve, being such good servants and
subjects of the king." And the prime minister signed him
self, " Your very affectionate servant, to serve you, Cardinal
Mazaein." 1
Of still greater practical importance was the fact that, appre
ciating the general trustworthiness of the Huguenots, in matters
committed to their care, Cardinal Mazarin did not hesitate to
employ them in the public service. Disregarding the outcry of
the clergy,2 he advanced Bartholomew Hervart to the very re
sponsible post of Controller General of Finances. Hervart was
The Protes- thereby enabled to help his co-religionists. His liber-
con'trou™' auty to tne churches added to their external prosper-
generaiof ^y "Never," observes Benoist, "had the ministers
finances. J i '
received better salaries or been more punctually paid.
Almost all the prominent churches increased the number of
their pastors ; inasmuch as there were f eAV places in which
there were not some families that entered into the administra
tion of the finances and gave of their earnings to the churches
by liberal contributions." The Duke of Sully, too,
Numbers of
Huguenots had once been intrusted with the chief management
pioy of the of the treasury, but, under so lukewarm a Protestant,
his department did not become, as it became under
Hervart, the asylum of the Huguenots who were excluded
from appointment elsewhere. Now they entered into every

1 Mazarin to the National Synod of Loudun. Aymon, ii. 739.
2 See "Opposition faite par les agents generaux du Clerge, le 15 Fevrier 1650
a l'installation an Conseil du sieur Herval en qualite d'Intendant des Finances
pour estre de la Religion Pretendue Reformee," in Recueil des Actes, Titres, etc.,
du Clerg§ de France, vi. 356, 357. The foremost of the reasons alleged is the
queen's own declaration that she would give the Protestants no greater ad
vantages than they had enjoyed in the late monarch's reign.

1652 UNDER CARDINAL MAZARIN 397
department of the treasury and rendered themselves so in
dispensable that even Fouquet and Colbert were compelled to
retain them.1
Louis the Fourteenth himself gave evidence of his satisfaction
with the Protestants in a declaration given out shortly after the
Louis xiv. proclamation of his majority. In 1652, he again rati-
nfSthe11" ne<^ an(^ confirmed the Edict of Nantes and the attend-
Ees£and an* legislation, and he took occasion to express full
Hr"o-uenots confidence in those in whose interests the laws had
1652. been given. " Our subjects aforesaid of the Pretended
Reformed Religion," he said, " have afforded us sure proofs of
their affection and faithfulness, notably under the present cir
cumstances, wherewith we are much pleased." 2
This law was of the greater importance that Louis, in the
abundance of his gratitude for the loyalty of his Huguenot
subjects, not only set the seal of his approval upon the legisla
tion of Henry the Fourth, but expressly declared null and void
whatever might subsequently have been done to derogate from
the rights of the Huguenots under that legislation. The words
employed were clear and distinct, and admitted in all fairness
of but one intrepretation. " It is our pleasure," said the
monarch, " that our said subjects of the Pretended Reformed
Rehgion be maintained and protected, as in fact we do main
tain and protect them, in the full and entire enjoyment of the
Edict of Nantes, and other edicts, declarations, writs, laws,
articles, and patents issued in their favor, and registered in the
parliaments and chambers of the edict, particularly in the free
and pubhc exercise of the said religion, in all places where it
has been granted by them, all letters and writs, as well of our
council as of the sovereign courts and other decisions to the
contrary notwithstanding." He ordered that all persons here
after violating the edicts in question should be punished as dis
turbers of the public peace. There was not a word that hinted
1 Benoist, iii. 139, 140. On Herwart and his descendants see Agnew, Protest
ant Exiles from France, ii. 66, etc.
2 Declaration of May 21, 1652. Text in Benoist, iii., pieces justificatives, 38-.
" Et d'autant que nosdits sujets de la Religion P. R. nous ont donne des
preuves certaines de leur affection et fidelite, notamment dans les occasions pre-
sentes, dont nous demeurons tres satisf aits."

398 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VIII
at any restriction of Huguenot rights under the law of
Nantes ; not a syllable implying that the present members of
the Protestant churches or their ancestors had by any acts of
theirs forfeited a part of their inherited prerogatives. Their
signal services in the present had evidently obliterated from the
memory of the crown any causes of dissatisfaction that might
previously have existed.
The Huguenots were delighted, as well they might be de
lighted, at so official a recognition of their merit. They were
thankful to heaven that now, by a formal decree, the
Their con-
sequent ex- young king had seen fit to put an end to their
anxieties, by repealing the entire series of vexatious
laAvs and interpretations of laws which tended to the gradual,
but not less entire, overthrow of their prized liberties. The
day of better things appeared to have daAvned in France. The
golden age had come. It may be that their joy Avas too exuber
ant. It may be that their exultation Avas imprudent, because it
irritated a dangerous foe. It is not unlikely that they might
have fared better had their trust in the honest intentions of the
crown and in the justice of their OAvn cause been less freely ex
pressed by word and in action.1 But, however this may be, the
Huguenots, through their conduct and their misplaced con
fidence, paid Louis the Fourteenth more respect than did Sou
lier, the Roman Catholic historian of the Edicts of Pacification.
At least they gave him credit for integrity of purpose, while
Soulier tarnishes the king's fair name while apparently imagin
ing that he holds the monarch up to the admiration of the world.
" Inasmuch," he says, " as the prince had issued this Declara
tion only for the purpose of obliging the Calvinists to keep
within the bounds of their duty during the divisions of his
state, the civil wars having been happily brought to an end, he
recalled it in 1656, together with everything that had followed
it."2 The superficial historian seems, indeed, to have based

1 See Benoist, iii. 158 seq.
2 " Mais parce que ce Prince n'avoit donne cette Declaration que pour obliger
les Calvinistes de se contenir dans leur devoir pendant les divisions de son Etat ;
les guerres Civiles ayant este heureusemeiit terminees, il la revoqua en 1656
avec tout ce qui s'en etoit ensuivy." Histoire des Edits de Pacification, et des

1656 UNDER CARDINAL MAZARIN 399
his calumnious statement upon the congratulatory address of
the Archbishop of Bordeaux, of which I shall speak later, who
saw in the kindly law of 1652 only " a prudent device of the
king to check the wayward and factious spirit of the heretics "
— a singularly absurd view, inasmuch as the Huguenots, so far
from needing a curb to keep them from acts of rebellion, had
resisted every solicitation to revolt and were active in the sup
port of the king's cause.1
In point of fact, however, Louis and his ministers do not
seem to have been guilty of the low cunning and duplicity
which are laid to the monarch's charge by his apologists. I
knoAV nothing that proves that he was not moved in the publica
tion of his first decree by some desire to recognize and requite
the good services rendered to him in troublous times by the
Huguenots of his kingdom. But if he attempted to do them
justice by the law of 1652, he was determined to undo that just
act when, four years later, he issued his Declaration of the eigh
teenth of July, 1656, wherein he recalled every gracious conces
sion previously made.2
It is characteristic of the perversity of the French legislation
of the period upon which we are now entering, that the pream-
The Edict ble 0I the law which was to rob the Huguenots of a
"£a^u?g1dar g°0(l measure of their rights, and, in particular, to strip
HemVfv.'s them of the reward of their timely services to the
prudence." cr0wn, should contain the most distinct eulogy of the
statute of Henry the Fourth. " We have always considered the
Edict of Nantes a singular work of the perfect prudence of
Henry the Great, our grandfather." 3 Thus began Louis a paper

moyens que les Pretendus Ref ormez ont employe pour les obtenir. Par le sieur
Soulier, Pretre. Paris, 1682. Pages, 391, 392.
1 The archbishop's remonstrance, delivered May 5, 1657, may be read in
the Recueil des Actes, Titres, etc., du Clerge, v. 431-39. See Benoist's re
marks, iii. 245.
' Declaration du Roy du 18 Juillet 1656, portant qui l'Edit de Nantes et autres
edits, declarations, arrests et reglemens donnez en consequence seront observez
selon leur forme et teneur, etc. Recueil des Actes, Titres, etc., du clerge, vi. 33-
35. Benoist, iii. , doc. 38-40.
3 "Nous avons toujours consider? l'Fidit de Nantes comme un ouvrage singulier
de la prudence parfaite de Henri le Grand notre ayeul."

400 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VIH
in which he next set himself to dashing in pieces the hopes he
had raised in the Protestants by his previous Declaration.
Henry the Fourth had judged that it was not enough
Louis xrv. , , J . . , , . J °. , , ,, , .,
dashes Hu- to have vanquished his enemies, but that it was neces-
lopee by a sary to remove forever the causes of the disasters that
cruefilw, had spread over the realm from the reign of Francis
the First until his own time. While Avaiting until
God should incline men's hearts to forsake the new opinions
that had found admission in France, contrary to the truth of
religion, he deemed it advisable to leave the exercise of the
Protestant rehgion free. He thought that there was reason to
hope that, in a season of profound peace, the care which the
prelates would give to the instruction and conversion of those
that had separated themselves from the church, would produce
more certain and assured results than could be reached by force
of arms, which had until then effected only the ruin of both
Church and State. It had turned out as Henry hoped. Divi
sion between his subjects ceased the moment the edict was pub
lished, and France enjoyed undisturbed quiet so long as God
spared his life. His successor, Louis the Thirteenth, was as
siduous in the maintenance of the edict in its entirety ; nor did
he make any change in it until a portion of his Protestant sub
jects having revolted and been reduced, he deprived them of
some of the favors granted to them by the Edict of Nantes.
Consequently, that edict could not and ought not to be observed
save as conditioned by the laws promulgated for the pacification
of the disturbances created by the Protestants. But various de
cisions having been made by the courts in cases between Roman
Catholics and Protestants, and the latter having conceived the
fear lest in the disorders of the late civil war some change should
be made in the Edict of Nantes, the present monarch had
deemed it fitting to publish his Declaration of May, 1652, for
the maintenance of the adherents of the Pretended Reformed
Religion in all that had been granted to them by that edict.
" Inasmuch," continued the king, " as this has been interpreted
contrary to our intention, and it has been thought that we re
voked everything done since that edict, we have deemed proper
to make known that our Avill was not to grant to our said sub
jects of the Pretended Reformed Religion anything beyond what

1656 UNDER CARDINAL MAZARIN 401
is ordained in the Edict of Nantes, nor to derogate from the en
suing edicts, declarations, writs, and laws."
It would certainly be difficult for an unprejudiced person to
reconcile these words with the exphcit terms of the previous
statute. The second laAV admitted that Louis the Thirteenth
had subtracted from the original edict certain rights, or favors,
as the monarch was pleased to style them, accorded by that
document. The first law purported to " maintain " and " pro
tect " the Huguenots in the enjoyment of the Edict of Nantes
and the laws and letters patent therewith connected issued in
their favor, aU letters and writs to the contrary notwithstanding.
The second law now asserted that the king's intention had never
been to detract from the authority of any of the subsequent
laws, or writs. The contradiction was self-evident, but unfort
unately subjects have no opportunity to reason with an absolute
monarch. If we cannot find the source of the crown's tergiversation in
a premeditated design of treachery, as suggested by Soulier, it
is not impossible to discover the cause elsewhere.
The Declaration of May, 1652, at once created an extraordinary
ferment in the clergy of the dominant church. This ferment
found its fullest expression in the " remonstrance "
of the clergy made to the king by the assembly of 1656, by the mouth
peal of the of Gondrin, Archbishop of Sens and one of the primates
of the kingdom.1 This virulent paper is worthy of
notice in more than one respect. The burden of the prelate's
complaint is the " persecution " which the church is undergoing
0 . * at the hands of the heretics. That church's entire de-
Speech of
MshAr(of struction might be prognosticated did not Truth itself
Sens- assure her a duration so long as the world shall last.
Despite this persecution, the clergy refrains from asking, as it
asked on some previous occasions, the repeal of the Edicts
given to the Protestants, obtained as these edicts had been
through force of necessity.2 No, the clergy petitions only for
' On the conflicting claims of the archbishops of Sens and Lyons to the primacy,
see Rise of the Huguenots, i. 118.
2 " Quoy que ce ne soit pas pour luy demander, comme faisoient autrefois
nos Predecesseurs a vos glorieux Ancestres, la revocation de ces Edits, que les
divisions d'Estat, et les pressantes necessitez du Royaume ont autorisez publique-
26

402 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VHI
the repeal of " that deed of darkness " in which the king and
his mother can certainly have had no hand — the Declaration of
Saint Germain en Laye, of the twenty-first of May, 1652, which
not only restores to the Protestants the unqualified enjoyment
of the Edict of Nantes, but revives every other law favorable to
them, while repealing every patent, every decision of council,
every decree of parliament in the interest of the Roman Catho
lic church. The proof that the Declaration in question broke
down all the barriers erected by Louis the Thirteenth to check
Huguenot aggression, Avas sought in incidents which, had they
been true, were too contemptible to deserve notice. A Reformed
church had been erected at Pamiers in Foix, a second at Privas
in Vivarais, in both of which places Reformed worship had
been proscribed. Although the Huguenots were not allowed
to have preaching services on fiefs dependent upon spiritual
lords, they had instituted it in villages like Merindol and
Manosque, where a bishop or a commander of the Knights of
Malta Avas entitled to feudal homage. The heretics were in
solent enough to lay claim to an old church uoav in Roman
Catholic hands, because, forsooth, some thirty-five years ago it
had served " for the exercise of the profane worship of their
errors " — whatever the archbishop might have meant by the ex
pression. The Huguenots were taking upon them the functions
of a body politic, and their deputy general, from being a private
individual residing at his Majesty's court to look after their in
terests, had become a public personage at whose application
orders were issued even by the royal council. The Huguenots,
in defiance of law, dared to make collections for the distressed
adherents of their religion. La Rochelle alone had raised
twelve thousand livres for the Waldenses of the valleys of Pied
mont ; the churches of all France had raised more than half a
million for the same object. The Huguenots actually dared to
aspire to all sorts of offices — the prelate omitted to say that
the Edict of Nantes expressly made them eligible to all offices
— despite the fact that Louis the Thirteenth recognized the
necessity of humbling that pride which is the real foundation of

ment au grand regret, sans doute, des Roys mesmes, et de tous ceux qui aiment
la Religion et la discipline."

1656 UNDER CARDINAL MAZARIN 403
Heresy. Nor was this all. The Huguenots of Castres had
made unwonted objections to permitting the fronts of their
dwellings to be draped on the festival of Corpus Christi ; and,
worse than all, their brethren of Parthenay had had the ef
frontery to start a funeral procession just at the hour when the
Roman Catholics were carrying the holy sacrament with great
solemnity through the streets, and the Roman Catholics were
compelled to retire mournfully to their homes, " as if they were
returning from the funeral obsequies of a dead man, and not
from the triumph of an immortal God." 1
The sum of the whole matter was that the orator " trembled "
when he considered such perilous novelties as the attempt, for
example, to allow the Protestants again to elect half the consuls
of a municipality which of late had been exclusively Roman
Cathohc. And his appeal to the king found its climax in the
exclamation : " Our rehgion, Sire, whose holy ceremonies these
sectaries have scarcely ever dared to violate publicly, no longer
finds itself in safety within your realm against their insolence
and irreligion." 2
'It is almost cruel to spoil the effect of the archbishop's highly wrought
phrases by interposing the remark that the reader will find by consulting
Bayle's Dictionary (under the word Parthenay) that there was not a word of
truth in the statement he made. Those who had the funeral in charge having
brought the dead from a distance of two leagues and finding the street decked
for the Roman Catholic pomp, did not proceed on their way until they learned
by inquiry of the parish authorities that the procession would not start for half
an hour. They remained in the cemetery until the procession was over and
the hangings were taken down. There were no insults, as there was no encoun
ter at all.
2 " Cette religion, Sire, dont ces sectaires n'avoient encore presque jamais ose
violer en public les saintes ceremonies, ne se trouve plus en seurete dans vostre
royaume, contre leur insolence et leur irreligion." Remonstrance du Clerge de
France, assemble a Paris, faite au Roy Louis XIV. la Reine sa Mere presente,
le 2 Avril 1656, in Recueil des Actes, Titres, etc., du Clerge, v. 409-421. I con
fess that in reading this document, and some others of the kind, it has occurred
to me that Moliere might have taken useful hints from tbe utterances of the
clergy for the composition of his comedy Le Tartufe, which was brought out
eleven years later. The clergy persecuted by the Huguenots have a family re
semblance to the hero of the play, in the best of health, with a ravenous appe
tite and an enormous capacity for drink, repeatedly commiserated by Orgon as
lepauvre homme, so often as he is successively informed that Tartufe's unfortu
nate wife has had a fever that prevented her eating and a raging headache that
could be relieved only by blood-letting.

404 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VIII
The primate's speech was neither the first not the last of its
kind. Bertier, Bishop of Montauban, had made a violent attack
upon the Protestants, two years before (1654), at the
ofthemsh- time of Louis's coronation — an attack which has been
tauban and characterized as the opening of the persecution which
thenceforth continued with little or no intermission
and culminated in the Revocation.1 And when a year later (on
the fifth of May, 1657) the Bishop of Bordeaux addressed a
speech to Louis the Fourteenth, by way of thanksgiving for the
repeal of the obnoxious law, he was scarcely less violent and not
a whit less absurd. For he maintained that the Declaration of
1652 " ruined the greatness of the church and tended to her de
struction," since it allowed the Huguenots, among other things,
to build neAv churches, to obtain consulates and magistracies,
and to found colleges in the towns — all which irregularities
" destroyed the worship of God and dishonored the victories of
the late king, his Majesty's father, of glorious and triumphant
memory."2 It must not be supposed that these and other acts of injustice
to the Huguenots passed without comment or remonstrance on
Eepiyby their part. The speech of the Archbishop of Sens, in
Dreiincourt. particular, occasioned the publication of a treatise set
ting forth the prelate's flagrant inaccuracies of statement and
the gross injustice of his contention. Issued anonymously, it
was known by few to be from the pen of the eminent pastor
Dreiincourt. Though it was convincing in argument, and as
temperate in tone as the prelate's address was reckless and im
moderate, the Huguenot reply met the fate of many another
book whose chief fault was that it was but too true, and was
burned by the public hangman, in pursuance of the sentence of
the lieutenant civil.3
One prescription of the royal declaration of 1656 has been
unnoticed. The king ordered that, with the view of securing a
more exact observance of the Edict of Nantes and the other
laws connected therewith, commissioners should be appointed
1 Benoist, iii, 182 seq.
2 Actes, Titres, etc., du Clerge de France, v. 433.
3 1 know the Huguenot reply only from the analysis of Benoist, iii. 208-212.
It bore the title, "Lettre d'un habitant de Paris a un ami de la campagne."

1656 UNDER CARDINAL MAZARIN 405
and sent throughout all the provinces. To each province two
were to go — a Roman Catholic and a Protestant — and their
commission- decisions were to be executed despite opposition or
pSnt°edetoP" appeal.1 It will be seen in the sequel with what dis-
iuces*orrOT" astrous consequences for Protestantism in France this
execution of apparently innocent arrangement was fraught. Mean-
the edict. time the execution of this portion of the law was de
ferred for about five years, and the injustice of which the Hu
guenots had reason to complain partook less of the character of
persecution than of the nature of annoyances, hardships of one
and another kind, and restrictions placed upon their
to patrons, clearly denned rights, rather offensive than positively
harmful. For example, another royal Declaration sus
pended for the time being the seigniorial rights of Protestant
noblemen. Patronage lay dormant or was transferred to the
bishop, so long as the patron was a Protestant. However in
disputable his title, the Huguenot lord was forbidden to place
upon the exterior or interior walls of the church that band of
mourning, together with his armorial bearings, which, had he
been a Roman Catholic, he would have been alloAved to put
there, in token of honor to a deceased member of his family.2
The royal council went out of its way, three or four weeks later,
to prescribe that Protestant ministers should never presume to
call themselves pastors, nor to speak of the adherents
ministers 'of the national church save as Catholics, nor to call the
themselves principal men of their congregations together for the
purpose of consultation, nor to make collections, nor to
sing psalms at the execution of a criminal, nor to hold services
in any other place than that in which they were entitled to of
ficiate, even in case of a visitation of the plague, nor to have
meetings of colloquies, apparently for the reason that no royal
commissioner could be expected to be present.3
1 See the Declaration of July 18, 1656, ubi supra.
2 Declaration of December 16, 1656. Printed in the collection of piSces justi-
ficatives of Benoist, iii. 41, 42. The " droit de litre," comprehending the " eein-
ture de dueU," or " ceinturefune'bre," was a highly prized privilege of the noble
men that were founders and patrons, or possessed the right of " haute justice."
See the Dictionnaire de l'Academie, s. v.
1 Arret du Conseil d'Etat, sa Majeste y etant, tenu a Paris, I'll, jour de
Janvier 1657. Printed in Benoist, pieces justificatives, iii. 42, 43.

406 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VIII
This legislation had not infrequently a comical side. To be
lieve the preambles of the laws, the slightest irregularity in
which the Protestants might indulge, was certain to be followed
by momentous consequences. The established church Avould
seem to have been in a very precarious situation, in the opinion
of its supporters, and especially in the opinion of the clergy it
self, whose hand Avas, for the most part, visible in every line of
the laws. Thus, according to the action of the royal council to
which I have just referred, such apparently trifling incidents as
that Protestant ministers should assume the designation of
" pastors," or Protestant laymen should claim burial in the ceme
teries where their fathers or grandfathers were buried, were act
ually causing such great disorder and abasement of the church,
" that, unless prompt measures be taken to check them, they
may entail the total ruin of the Roman Catholic and Apostolic
Church." : The force of absurdity could no further go.
In the city of Alais, Avhere the Reformed constituted the great
majority of the population, they were nevertheless, as usual, ex
cluded from the office of first consul. Hence, as the inhabitants
were divided into different grades, the Protestants of the first
grade were shut off from all part in the municipal administra
tion, unless they should be elected, as had come to be the prac
tice, from the second grade to the office of second consul. Their
enemies now succeeded in obtaining from the royal council an
order forbidding this practice for the future. It was forsooth
"an insufferable domination," because it trenched upon the
vested rights of the citizens of the second grade.2
Against the progress of hostile legislation a new deputy gen-
Marquis eral of the Reformed churches had within a few years
Euwgnyap. been called to make opposition. On the death of the
utTgenerar Mar(luis d'Ajzilliers, in 1653, Louis the Fourteenth,
16S3- again without consultation of the Protestants, ap
pointed as successor Henry de Ruvigny, who had done good ser-

1 " Toutes lesquelles choses causent un si grand desordre et abaissement de
l'Eglise, qu'il s'en peut ensuivre la ruine totale de la Religion Catholique, Apos-
tolique et Romaine, s'il n'y est promptement remedie et pourvu." Arret of
January 11, 1657, ubi supra, iii. 43.
5 Arret du Conseil d'Etat, qui ordonne que l'on ne pourra elire pour second

1653 UNDER CARDINAL MAZARIN 407
vice in the royal armies and had attained the honorable rank of
lieutenant general.1 His predecessor had deserved well of the
Huguenots by his earnest and successful efforts in their behalf,
crowned by the favorable declaration of 1652, which he had a
principal share in obtaining from the crown. It has been com
monly asserted that the Marquis of Ruvigny and his son did not
fall behind D'Arzilliers in earnest and efficient advocacy of
Protestant rights, through the long term of two and thirty years,
during which the office remained in the hands, first, of the
father, and, afterward, of the son, ending only at the Revocation,
Avhen the office of Protestant deputy at Paris became super-
fluous. I regret greatly to say that a careful exami-
ter and ser- nation of the course of the elder Ruvignv, as recorded
V1C6S. in his own letters, as well as in the pages of the his
torian of the Edict of Nantes, prudent as the latter deemed it
necessary for him to be, reveals the new deputy in a somewhat
different light. A pliant courtier, with whom private advantage
counted for more than religious convictions, he was able to main
tain himself steadily in the king's good favor by the same means
through which he had ingratiated himself. With the more poli
tic members of his own communion he stood well, and he earned
their loud plaudits ; but the more loyal majority of the Hugue
nots saw through his pretence of zeal and distrusted his motives.
His shameful betrayal of the unfortunate Marcilly, to which I
may have occasion to refer later on, could scarcely fail to open
the eyes of all but those wilfully bhnd.2

Consul de la ville d'Alets que des habitans du second rang. Dated December 7,
1657. Text in Benoist, pieces justificatives, iii. 49.
1 Aymon gives the king's commission, dated August 3, 1653, as well as the ac
tion of the National Synod of Loudun in 1659, approving the conduct of Ruvigny
during the six years that he had already acted, formally electing him and ad
ministering to him the oath of office. Tous les Synodes, ii. 732, 733. Tbe Bui.
letin of the French Protestant Historical Society, x. (1861) 119, publishes the
letter by which Louis IV., announced Ruvigny 's appointment to " Our dear and
well-beloved, the Pastors and Elders of our subjects professing the Pretended
Reformed Religion of our province of Burgundy in the Church of Lyons," etc.
See Benoist, iii. 161, 264, etc., 312.
2 See the important article of C. Pascal in review of the work of A. de Galtier
de Laroque, in Bulletin de la Societ§ de l'hist. du Prot. franc., xiii. (1893) 46,
etc.

408 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VHI
Meanwhile the wisest of counsellors would have been impo
tent to stem the resistless current setting in against the French
Protestants. On the third of September, 1658, the
OMver° great Protector of the English Commonwealth was
taken away by death, and in his tomb were buried all
Cardinal Mazarin's fears of British intervention in behalf of the
objects of the hatred of the French clergy. With Oliver Crom
well was lost, for the time, all the weight of England in the af
fairs of Europe. Tyranny was able once more to breathe freely ;
for never again would the eloquent pen of John Milton be em
ployed in the protector's name to hold up to the execration of
Christendom the atrocities perpetrated upon the defenceless
Waldenses of the valleys of Piedmont. The control of the
foreign policy of England was now to fall into the hands of men
who cared little for the noble sentiments that had inspired the
diplomacy of the Commonwealth.
Meanwhile, the events that occurred at Montauban fore
shadowed with distinctness the violence which the
at Montau- Huguenots might, from this time forward, expect to be
exercised toward them under the forms of law.
That ancient city which so reluctantly accepted the terms of
the so-called Edict of Grace, thirty years before, still remained
the centre of Protestantism in the south. The population was
for the most part of the Reformed faith ; the upper and more
influential class was almost exclusively Protestant. Although
the inhabitants were obliged, in 1632, to consent that one-half
of the consuls and one-half of the general council should be
Roman Catholics, the change did not affect the relative social
distinction of the adherents of the two faiths. The place was
wealthy and prosperous. The loyal conduct of the citizens,
during the period of the Fronde, had induced the government
to wink at, if not positively to authorize, the rebuilding of the
formidable bastions and other fortifications demolished in 1629.
The Academie, or University, as Avell as the College, attracted
studious youth from every part of the French realm and even
from Switzerland, Scotland, and the Low Countries. The fame
of the present professors was scarcely inferior to that of the
great men — Beraud, Chamier, and Cameron — who lectured to
the students of a previous generation. True, the Huguenots

1659 UNDER CARDINAL MAZARIN 409
had been compelled to give up one-half of the building erected
at their own expense, to the Jesuit fathers; but while the
Jesuits found it difficult to muster more than a small company
of scholars, over five hundred young men thronged the part re
tained by the Protestants. It was the joint occupancy of the
college buildings that gave rise on the fifth of July, 1659, to
the trifling incident which well nigh proved the ruin of Protes
tantism in Montauban.
The Jesuit fathers encouraged their pupils annually to take
part in a dramatical performance, and for this purpose a stage
was erected in one of their lecture-rooms. This year it had
been reared in the common courtyard, and, indeed, in such a
position as to close one of the entrances. In consequence, a
quarrel arose between the Roman Catholic and Protestant
students, in the course of which the offending platform Avas
torn down. The Roman Catholic lads, inferior in number, came
off worse in the fray and took refuge in the belfry. The dis
turbance would doubtless soon have spent itself, had not the
besieged party been so ill advised as to ring the tocsin. At
the sound, the consuls of both religions hastened to the spot
for the purpose of restoring order. They would have suc
ceeded, had not the bishop also undertaken to send a body of
determined men, under the conduct of Canon Lebret, who, with
out warrant of law, apprehended and carried off to the castle
one Gellius, a student and a candidate for the Protestant
ministry. It needed no more to inflame the minds of students
jealous of their traditional privileges. They rushed to the
castle and, finding the doors closed, burst them in and rescued
the prisoner.
It is interesting to see how so paltry a quarrel was mag
nified into an affair of transcendent importance. On the very
day of its occurrence Bishop Bertier wrote to Cardinal Mazarin,
complaining and demanding exemplary chastisement of Hugue
not insolence.1 Three days later he despatched another com-

1 Letter signed by Bishop Pierre de Bertier, Canon Lebret, and the Roman
Catholic consuls, July 5, 1659, printed from the Archives of the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs, in the Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du Prot. francais, xiii.
(1893) 11.

410 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VIII
munication exaggerating the offence and calling for a retribu
tion sufficient to make amends, not only for this crime, but for
all the previous seditious movements at Montauban, none of
Avhich, he averred, had ever been punished. Accordingly, he
begged that the college and the academie, the source of all
these evils, be removed to some other place, where, if the stu
dents must serve an apprenticeship in rebellion,1 they might, at
least, be under better restraint than at Montauban. He even
suggested that the fortifications be torn doAvn, and that a citadel
be erected to accommodate a permanent garrison of soldiers,
without which the Roman Catholics must surely leave the city.
They were only waiting, detained by him he said, until Car
dinal Mazarin could be heard from.2
Strange to say, the bishop's demands were carried out to the
very letter. A judicial investigation was made by the Parlia
ment of Toulouse, and that tribunal found no trouble in involv
ing many of the most reputable of the Protestants in a crime
of which they had never dreamt. The king's privy council,
thanks to the active zeal in the affair displayed by the queen
it is robbed mother, ordered the transfer of the Protestant univer-
versftyTnd SUT and college from the important city to whose pros-
coitege, perity they had greatly conduced, to the insignificant
town of Puylaurens, and, contemporaneously, commanded the
bastions of which Montauban was so proud to be levelled to
the ground. Soon after the Jesuits entered into possession of
the entire college.
This was by no means the end. A meeting of the Protestant
citizens was summoned after the customary order by the three
consuls of their faith. It sent a deputation to wait upon the
intendant and request him to defer the execution of the king's
instructions until they might have an opportunity to inform his
majesty more accurately of the true state of affairs. The peti-
1 " Us y font apprentissage de rebellion et desobeissance sous des maitres qui
leur font faire essai sur nous de ce qu'ils leur ont enseigne."
2 "Nous ne saurions plus etre libres que par une citadelle ou une garnison, et
si quelqu'un de ces moyens ne nous aide, il faudra que les catholiques quittent
la ville, il le voulaient tous faire en cette occasion, mais j'en ai suspendu la re
solution jusqnes aux ordres de Votre Eminence." Letter of Bishop Bertier,
July 8, 1659, from the same Archives, in Bulletin, xiii. (1893) 11,12.

1659 UNDER CARDINAL MAZARIN 411
tion Avas both natural and innocent. The college had been
built with Huguenot gold and belonged to the Huguenots. But
no account was taken of this. The meeting was represented as
a revolt, the request as a seditious demand. Not only did Louis
grant no reprieve, but four or five thousand soldiers, horse and
foot, with the Marquis of Saint Luc at their head, were sent to
be quartered on the unfortunate place. The citizens were dis
armed, that they might be the easier prey. So far from finding
the citizens of Montauban guilty of sedition, history can con
demn them only for too supine a submission to their oppressors.
For a true persecution now set in, and lasted, with little inter
mission, for several years. Every Protestant truly or falsely ac
cused of participation in the popular assembly was indicted.
Some were sentenced to death, others to the galleys, others to
banishment from the province. Most of these fortunately made
good their escape, but two were publicly hung. A few houses
were torn down, and upon the sites, pyramids, or pillars of in
famy, were erected. Great numbers of Protestant books AArere
consigned to the flames. The incipient " dragonnade " bore fruit.
Some Huguenots, despairing of other release from the intoler
able burden of supporting in their homes a great number of sol
diers, went to the parish churches and made an insincere pro-
and, later, fession of Roman Catholicism. In the course of two
StantProt years the Protestant consuls were removed from of-
churches. gce an(j ^nej[r places given to Roman Catholics. Two
years more passed, and, on the most absurd and iniquitous of
pretexts, the Reformed church was robbed of the larger and
more commodious of its edifices, the " temple neuf," of which
the Protestants had been in peaceable possession for over a
century.1 Such were the chief events of the four or five years
succeeding the interruption of a play of the pupils of the
' According to Benoist the worst features of the later dragonnades were want
ing in this case ; for the prudent magistrates had, by timely and liberal prom
ises to the officers, secured the enforcement of good discipline among the sol
diers. But when, after several months, some of the less resolute Protestants
consented to go to mass, the troopers quartered upon them were removed and
sent to the houses of their more constant neighbors. Thus a man who had pa
tiently endured the annoyance and expense of three or four unwelcome guests,
began to waver and, possibly, succumbed when the number was increased to
twelve or fifteen.

412 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. Vni
Jesuits_events that served as a fit prelude to the scenes en
acted, a score of years later, at the Revocation. Such was still
the situation of the Huguenots of Montauban in 1668, when
again they petitioned, but in vain, for the recovery of their po
litical rights, for their church, for a quiet life unmolested by
their enemies — with no representation in the municipal govern
ment, although they still numbered more than three-quarters of
the population and still paid yearly six-sevenths of the taxes ;
compelled to worship in a church building that would hold
barely two thousand five hundred worshippers and could not be
enlarged, while there were ten or twelve thousand worshippers
to be accommodated.1 Thus did Louis the Fourteenth avenge
on the children the repulse which Louis the Thirteenth had sus
tained from their fathers at the gates of Montauban.2
I have been obliged to anticipate the course of events. I
now return to 1659. In this year the Reformed Churches of
France were at last permitted to hold their twenty-
mnthmd ninth National Synod, at Loudun, in Poitou. Fifteen
afsynod,on" years had elapsed since the last similar convocation,
and the court, which had found reasons in the political
relations of France for putting the Huguenots off, reluctantly
yielded to their importunities. The government was resolved
that this should be the last gathering of the kind. Accordingly,
the royal commissioner took an early occasion to inform the dele-

1 See the petition of the Reformed of Montauban, without date but belonging
later than December 1, 1668, in the Nat. Library at Paris, and printed iu the
Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du Prot. franc, xiii. (1893) 24-26. I have fol
lowed in this account M. C. Garrisson's excellent article entitled "Les preludes
de la Revocation ii Montauban," ubi supra, xiii. 7-23, and especially Benoist, iii.
345-354, 600-603, here as ever truthful and well informed. See, also, Bour-
cheniu, Les Academies Protestantes, 136, and Nicolas, L'Ancienne Academie
Protestante de Montauban, 46. Even as late as in 1676, when the Roman Catho
lic population had been so much increased, in consequence of the transfer of the
Cour des Aides from Cahors, as to approximate to the Protestant population,
" the greater part of the gentry and of the principal burgesses almost all the mer
chants, and many of the artisans" were of the Reformed church. They held al
most all the lands, and paid nearly nine-tenths of the taxes — 61, 140 livres out of
a total of 69,800. "Advis donnee a S. M. par le sieur Foucault," November 28,
1676. MS. in National Archives, printed in Bulletin de la Societe de l'hist. du
Prot. francais, x. 393.
2 Benoist, iii. 354.

1659 THE LAST NATIONAL SYNOD 413
gates that it was the king's desire that the practice of holding
national assemblies be discontinued, and that the provincial as
semblies be empowered to decide all matters in last resort. The
alleged reason was the expense involved. It was noticeable
that, while his majesty proposed to take away from the Protes
tants themselves the right to meet for general conference upon
their common interests, he distinctly reserved for himself the
right to call them together should the occasion arise. He thus
provided for the emergency, in case he should at any time be
able to secure a majority of delegates favorable to the danger
ous scheme of a reunion of the Roman Catholic and Reformed
churches. The contingency, indeed, never arrived, and the
twenty-ninth national synod proved to be the last of the series
of French national synods that were convened until that which,
under very different auspices, met in Paris, within our own
days and under the modern republic. The provincial synods,
representing the great bulk of the Protestant population, stood
firm and stoutly declined to entertain the insidious proposal
that a false peace should be gained by the complete surrender
of the principles that led the Reformers of the previous century
to abandon the Roman Catholic Church. They Avere not doubt
ful in their utterances.
A synod of Languedoc, meeting at Nismes, in May, 1661,
denounced the project as culpable, and declared that all who
might entertain it would deserve exemplary punishment, in view
of the impossibility of reconciling light with darkness, God
with Belial. The synod of the Cevennes and Gevaudan, held
the next month, at Anduze, was equally outspoken. Both
synods, consequently, incurred the displeasure of the govern
ment, which not only issued orders of council annulling the
proceedings, but took revenge upon the moderators that had
presided at the meetings, by depriving them of their pastoral
charges and commanding them to leave the province of Lan
guedoc Avithin two months. The moderator at Nismes was the
pastor Jean Claude, destined to become the most influential
and celebrated of French Protestant ministers. The council's
order was the occasion of bringing him from Nismes, and from
a position of comparative obscurity, to Paris, where he entered
on a brilliant course, first as a controversialist in answer to

414 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. VIII
the Jansenists, and then as one of the pastors of the great church
at Charenton.1
In the present circumstances there seemed, it is true, little to
be gained for Protestantism by the holding of national synods —
scarcely anything beyond the opportunity to make ineffectual
protests against the successive infringements of the great Edict.
Even those protests must be made with caution. The great
Daille, who presided over the national synod of Loudun, dis
charged his responsible functions with firmness and tact. He
calmly made reply to the royal commissioner's address. That
address was full of the old injunctions to obedience to the
king's authority, full of the old Avarnings to the Protestant min
isters to avoid in their sermons all references to the pope as
Antichrist, to the Roman Catholics as idolaters, all use of such
words as "scourge " and "persecution," in speaking of the treat
ment to which their flocks were subjected, full too of the stale
accusations, suggested to the king by the clergy, of Huguenot
audacity and Huguenot presumption. But not content with
meeting at every point the commissioner's complaints and giv
ing assurance of the disposition of Huguenot pastors to preach
obedience to the powers that be, so long as their commands do
The moder- n°t run counter to the commands of the King of kings,
name?5™- Daille insisted upon the continued grievances of his
protestant fellow-believers, pleaded earnestly for the privilege of
anafprac°n holding every three years the synods whose contem-
tice- plated discontinuance had been announced, for the
permission to send Protestant youths to study abroad in the
great universities, and, in general, for the right of the Protes
tants to employ such language as was necessary for the expres
sion of their religious views. " As to those words Antichrist,
found in our Liturgy," he said, "and idolatry and deceit of
Satan, found in our Confession of Faith, they are the expres
sions that declare the reasons and the foundation of our separa
tion from the Church of Rome, and the doctrine Avhich our
fathers maintained in the most cruel times, and which we are

1 The orders of the royal council (of August 6 and September 30, 1661) are
reprinted by Benoist, iii., pieces justificatives, 84, 85. Compare that author's
remarks, pp. 422-425.

1659 THE LAST NATIONAL SYNOD 415
resolved, following their example, by God's grace, never to
forsake, but to preserve faithfully and inviolably to the last
moment of our lives." 1
Vinet has aptly remarked that Daille's remarkable speech
weU depicts the situation of affairs, a false and violent situation
which in the nature of things could not last. One part of the
nation consigned to perdition the other part, whose religion
was reputed to be the religion of the state. If this fact, he
observes, does not justify the recall of the Edict of Nantes, at
least, it explains it ; and yet twenty-five years more were re
quired for the fall of that edict.2
After a session covering exactly two months, the last national
synod of the Huguenots adjourned on the tenth of January,
1660.3 It left the Marquis of Ruvigny to battle single-handed
in a combat far exceeding in difficulty his expectations and his
powers; for although it did not neglect to nominate for the
office of deputy-general from the Tiers Etat, three persons, and
among them M. des Galesnieres, noted for his rare familiarity
with all the legislation connected with the Edict of Nantes, the
court took no notice of their candidature, and left the office un
filled. The adjournment of the synod of Loudun marks the close of
the period during which the Huguenots of France enjoyed a
good degree of quiet and prosperity in the more or less full
enjoyment of the advantages guaranteed to them by the Edict
of Nantes. A period of a widely different character was now to
ensue.

1 Aymon, Tous les Synodes, ii. 725. The whole of this reply, which was a
long one (pp. 724-731) deserves a careful perusal.
2 Histoire de la Predication parmi les Reformes de France au dix-septieme
siecle, par A. Vinet, 192.
2 Besides the long official account in Aymon, ii. 707-813, we are so fortu
nate as to possess the minutes published for the first time in the Bulletin de la
Societe de I'histoire du Protestantisme francais, viii. (1859) 145-219.

BOOK THIRD

THE EDICT UNDERMINED (1660-1685)

BOOK THIRD

THE EDICT TJNDEKMINED (1660-1685)

CHAPTER IX
GROWING PERSECUTION

On the very day upon which Louis entered upon his four
teenth year and became in the eye of the law a grown man, he
held what was styled a lit de justice, to proclaim his OAvn major
ity. Here, in the presence of the Parliament of Paris, he was
addressed by Omer Talon, the advocate-general, esteemed to be
the chief light of the French bar. The great lawyer took the
opportunity to tell the young prince some sober truths. Many
of his Majesty's predecessors, he informed him, had nothing
royal about them save their birth and the good- will of an obe
dient people. Among all the emperors of Rome, scarcely three or
four can be picked out that have left a savory reputation. This
results from a mistaken notion entertained by the ma-
on the rights jority of sovereigns and of their courtiers, that aU their
undertakings are just, all their caprices lawful, their
very dreams true. Imagining themselves to be gods on the
earth, they regard the people as created for the sake of the
kings, and not the kings for the sake of the people. " Sire," he
continued, " all men are born to have dominion over the earth,
or, at least, to be free. The words lordship and obedience are
barbarous in their origin, and contrary to the principles and es-

420 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IX
sence of our nature. The audacity of the stronger introduced
them. Time and necessity have rendered them legitimate." J
It could not, therefore, be said that Louis the Fourteenth
never heard a candid, almost radical, exposition of the rela
tion of the ruler to his subjects. How slight the im-
LouisXIV. . ,. ... \ , . . °,
and pariia- pression the exposition made upon his mind was seen,
barely six months later (1652), in the reception he
gave to the grave magistrates sent by parliament to bear a re
monstrance against the recall of Cardinal Mazarin to power in
violation of Louis's own promise. On this occasion the boy king
snatched the document from the hands of the judge who was
reading it, and, Avhen the latter tried to explain to him the func
tions of the highest court of judicature in the land, grew red with
anger, and twice exclaimed : " Begone ! gentlemen, begone ! " 2
The personal reign of Louis the Fourteenth cannot be said to
have begun until after the death of Cardinal Mazarin, which
took place on the ninth of March, 1661. Then, for the first time,
the young king, in the twenty-third year of his age, took the
reins of government into his own hands. It is proper that we
should look for a moment at the natural endowments and char
acter of a prince destined to play so important a part in the af
fairs of Christendom, and ascertain, if possible, what were at
this time his disposition and intentions toward his Huguenot
subjects. Of Louis the Fourteenth when a boy of fifteen the Venetian
ambassador Morosini has drawn a flattering portrait. " An
angel for beauty," with a clear white complexion, his
Jrcrsoiifli ftp- . m >
pearanceof eyes gracious, of excellent carriage and great agility,
he bade fair to become with years as tall and well pro
portioned as could be desired.3 The promise of boyhood was
1 " Sire, tous les hommes naissent pour commander sur la terre, ou du moins
pour £tre libres ; ces noms de domination et d'obeissance sont barbares dans leur
origine, et contraires au principe et a 1'essence de notre nature." Address of
Omer Talon to the king, September 7, 1651, in Isambert, Recueil des ancienues
lois francaises, xvii. 59, 60.
2 " Retirez-vous, messieurs, retirez-vous ! " Remonstrances of parliament,
March 23, 1652, in Isambert, xvii. 281 seq.
3 " E per verita un angelo di bellezza, bianco di carnagione, gratioso negli
occhi," etc. Relation of Sier Michael Morosini, 1653, in documents of Ranke,
Franzosische Geschichte, v. 294.

1661 GROWING PERSECUTION 421
not borne out in the sequel, for the king's stature was some
what below the average ; but the constant study which he made
to acquire an air of command invested him with a certain
grandem- of mien. This Avas further heightened by the habit of
Avearing a dress well comporting with the dignified appearance
to which he aspired. He impressed subjects and foreigners
favorably by his courtly manners.
His mental abilities were not extraordinary; indeed, they
were barely respectable. The Duke of Saint Simon states with
intellectual emPnasis that the intellect of Louis was by nature be-
abiiiaes. \ow mediocrity, yet it was an intellect capable of
being formed, polished, and refined. He could borrow from
others without seeming to imitate. And, if Louis was not him
self brilliant, it was his good fortune to hve all his life in a
society of men and women of uncommon brilliancy.1
Upon one point there is substantial agreement on the part of
the greater number of authorities. Louis's early education had
Neglected Deen neglected to a deplorable extent in some direc-
education. tions. Engrossed in the pursuit of selfish interests,
neither Anne of Austria, his mother, nor Cardinal Mazarin, who
governed under her authority, concerned themselves much for
the intellectual discipline of the future king. It is true that the
learned Bayle controverts the statement that Louis was "badly
brought up," and instances in proof of his position the fact that
in youth the king was sparingly supplied with money, that he
was early taken to the provinces and was allowed, when sixteen
years of age, to go to the seat of war in Flanders at the time of
the siege of Arras. He affirms that the prince was well trained
in bodily exercises and in arms, that Villeroy, his governor, was
one of the best wits of the kingdom, that his tutors were good,
and that his preceptor the Bishop of Rodez made it his study
to form his royal pupil on the model of Henry the Fourth.2
However this may be, there can be little or no doubt that the
attention paid to Louis's physical culture Avas altogether dis-
proportioned to the care devoted to the culture of his mind, or

' Memoires du Due de Saint Simon, xxiv. 62, 73.
2 Nouvelles de la Republique des Lettres (GSuvres diverses de Mr. Pierre
Bayle. La Haye, 1737), 12, 13.

422 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IX
that in the latter department he proved an inapt scholar. Of
many branches of polite learning he was throughout life shame
fully ignorant. His knowledge of the history of the nation over
which he ruled was very imperfect. How far this want of
familiarity with so essential a matter was due to the negligence,
and how far to the interested designs of his teachers, is open
to doubt.
There was one lesson which Louis the Fourteenth had
thoroughly learned — the lesson of his own importance. From
the beginning, his consuming ambition was to rule by
his own himself, and as soon as he was emancipated from the
control of the cardinal whose will his mother had im
plicitly followed, he manifested his resolution that no Richelieu
or Mazarin should again grasp an authority royal in all but
name. To the end of his days he deluded himself with the be
lief that he had succeeded in this great purpose of his life.
Affecting superiority to the foibles of other men, he was more
than usually open to the attacks which the shrewd aim at the
Love of adn- wea^ points of kings. Adulation was the very food
lation. upon which he fed. The grossest flattery did not
seem to him excessive, because of the persuasion that he de
served every word of praise lavished upon him. The more ser
vile the abasement of those who approached him, the more ap
propriate did their attitude appear. A courtier in order to earn
his regard must assume at all moments a look of admiration and
dependence, must seem to cringe at his feet, above all, must
aspire to be and to have nothing but through his gracious pleas
ure.1 Statesmen, poets, preachers, all supplied fuel for the
flame of his self-esteem, in unmeasured panegyrics which min
istered to him infinite delight. Destitute of a voice and with
no knowledge of melody, he sang in private the must adulatory
parts of musical productions composed in his praise, and
hummed them in public when the tunes were played.2 It de
lighted him to have statues and triumphal arches erected in his
honor in every part of his dominions, and fawning intendants
1 " La souplesse, la bassesse, l'air admirant, dependant, rampant, plus que
tout l'air de neant sinon par lui, etaient les uniques voies de lui plaire." Saint
Simon, xxiv. 75.
2 Ibid., xxiv. 76.

1661 GROWING PERSECUTION 423
and obsequious municipalities vied with one another in seek
ing permission to rear them. The king, of course, selected
the spots which he graciously allowed to pay him this hom
age.1 As great in small things as he was small in great things, there
was scarcely anything so insignificant that he did not wish or
expect to excel in it. A simple incident shows how well his
courtiers understood this peculiarity of his character. Going
on one occasion to inspect the grand fortifications erected for
him at Luxemburg, the king took it into his head to leap over
one of the parapets, instead of waiting for the stool which some
one had run to get. Louis was in his forty-ninth year, tolerably
corpulent and not over agile ; moreover he had just recovered
from a serious illness. It could scarcely have been a difficult
feat that he performed, but the great lords of his suite expressed
profound astonishment. Nothing would do but that each in
turn should try to do the same thing — and fail ! Not a man
succeeded. The perfect courtier knows quite as well what not
to be able to do, as what not to see.2
It was a part of his assumed elevation above the rest of his
kind, that Louis the Fourteenth affected an equanimity which
no accident of fortune, no dispensation of Divine Prov-
ImD6rtnr~ ¦*¦
bap'.eequan- idence could disturb. The Venetian Foscarini chron
icles with wonder the manifestations of an excessive
self-love that made the French monarch appear hard-hearted.
When the recovery of the Dauphin was despaired of, Louis, to
hide his anxiety respecting an event that might mar all his
plans, gave express orders to have instrumental music performed
that very evening, in one of the saloons of the palace. After the
death of the queen, he paid a brief tribute of tears to her mem
ory, and then composed his countenance to cheerfulness.
Neither at the death of his mistress nor at the deaths of his il
legitimate children and of his ministers could it be perceived
that he ever stepped out of the "magnanimous indifference"
1 " Je ne doute pas que le roy ne choisisse la ville de Pau pour y faire mettre
sa statue." Foucault to Gassion, Poitiers, October 27, 1685. Soulice, L'lntend-
ant Foucault, pieces just., 142.
5 The incident occurred in May, 1687. See the Mercure historique' et politique,
Parma [The Hague], 1687, ii. 832.

424 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IX
which he professed. In prosperity there was the same studied
imperturbability. !
It concerns the subject of this history more nearly to inquire
into the intentions entertained by Louis the Fourteenth, at the
His purpose beginning of his personal rule, respecting the treat-
tblPHu"uf- ment tnat ne should accord the Huguenots of his
note. kingdom. "We possess some information on the point
in the Memoirs purporting to have been dictated by the mon
arch himself, and written by Paul Pelisson, a personage of
whom I shall have something to say farther on. The memoranda
jotted down by Pelisson were confessedly a very rough draft
which the courtier set himself to the task of elaborating with all
the agitation and diffidence which the subject of so great a king
must of necessity feel, or affect.2 Yet apart from some embel
lishment of style, they, doubtless, express the thoughts of Louis
the Fourteenth with virtual accuracy. It was, apparently, about
1666 that the monarch made a trial of committing his recollec
tions to paper ; but the Memoirs, as we have them, date from
1670 or 1671, being prepared for the instruction of the Dauphin,
to whom they are addressed.3 From them it is clear that no
immediate Revocation of the Edict of Nantes was then contem
plated. Louis did not intend to resort to violence ; for violence,
it is expressly stated, had always proved useless. He purposed,
on the contrary, to avoid pressing the Huguenots at all by
means of any new and rigorous procedure, and to observe every
law which they had obtained from his predecessors. But he
was equally determined to confine the execution of these earlier
grants within the narrowest limits permitted by a regard for

1 Relation of Sier Sebastian Foscarini, returned ambassador from France,
March 22, 1684. Sent from Madrid. Ranke, FranzSsische Geschichte, v. (doc
uments) 311.
2 "Mais au fond," says the skilful flatterer in a note to his work, " ce n'est
qu'une ebauche, qu'en achevera quand on aura concu tout-a-f ait l'intention de
sa Majeste, quoiqu'il n'y ait personne sans exception, qui ne doive trembler
quand il ecrit pour elie." Memoires de Louis XIV. (Paris, 1806), i. 145.
3 Ibid., editors' notice, i. 19, 20 ; and Louis's own remark page 37, that it was
now the tenth year that he had been pursuing the course adopted — informing
himself of everything, giving orders, treating directly with foreign ministers,
drawing up some of his despatches, giving to his secretaries the substance of
others, etc.

1661 GROWING PERSECUTION 425
justice and decency.1 Meanwhile, he settled upon the policy,
from which he never subsequently swerved, of granting the Hu
guenots no favors. Thus, rather by kindness than by harshness,
he endeavored to compel them to consider for themselves, from
time to time and without violence, Avhether they had any good
reason for voluntarily depriving themselves of advantages which
they might otherwise enjoy in common with all the rest of the
king's subjects. This, together with a judicious use of rewards
for those that might be more docile than their fellows, with an
attempt to incite the bishops to labor for their instruction, and
with a determination henceforth to fill all high offices at the dis
posal of the crown with men of learning, industry, and piety,
capable of repairing by their exemplary conduct the disastrous
effects of the lives of their predecessors — is the plan which
Louis tells us that he had in mind.2
One that is familiar with the story of persecution which I
am now to narrate, a persecution groAving more and more in
tolerable for the next score of years, may be inclined
ot justice to hold that the event proved the falsity of Louis's
sud decency ' ' statement of his early purpose — so far was he from
observing either "justice" or "decency" in his treatment of
the Huguenots, so violent were the encroachments upon their
guaranteed rights. Such an one I should beg to observe that
the notions of justice and decency conceived by a monarch
that regards his own will as the sole arbiter of the destiny of
his subjects, probably differ materially from the definitions
which the world at large lays down ; and that the possessor
of despotic power has entered upon a course of action more
dangerous to his OAvn integrity than he is apt to understand,
whenever he undertakes to measure the amount of equity to be
meted out to a hateful people with so exact a hand that they
shall not receive a particle more than the amount to which

1 " Je cms, mon fils, que le meilleur moyen pour r§duire peu a peu les hugue
nots de mon royaume etoit, en premier lieu, de ne les point presser du tout, par
aucune rigueur nouvelle contr'eux . . . mais de ne leur rien accorder au-dela,,
et d'en renfermer meme l'execution dans les plus etroites bornes que la justice
et la bienseance le pouvoient permettre." Memoires de Louis XIV. (Paris, 1806),
i. 86, 87.
2 Ibid., i. 87, 88.

426 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IX
they are entitled according to a strict construction of the law.
In point of fact, however, we are not left to conjecture what
was that line of conduct that commended itself as right and
proper to the moral sense of Louis the Fourteenth. The king
himself proceeds to describe it. " To this end," he says, " I
named that very year commissioners for the execution of the
Edict of Nantes. I everywhere put an end to the enterprises
of the adherents of that [Protestant] religion ; as, for instance,
in the Faubourg Saint Germain [at Paris] where I learned that
they were beginning to establish secret meetings and schools
of their sect ; at Jamets, in Lorraine, where, although they had
no right to assemble, they had taken refuge in great numbers
during the disorders of war and were holding their services ;
at La Rochelle, where only the old inhabitants and their
families were permitted to dwell, and yet these had gradually
and insensibly attracted a large number of others, whom I com
pelled to leave." x What all this signified to the unfortunate
Huguenots I must now explain.
I referred on a previous page to the provision of the royal
declaration of 1656 for the appointment of commissioners to
The commis. v^si* every province of the kingdom and rectify any
edict5 sent the abuses that might have arisen in connection with the
out, Wei. Edict of Nantes. I also stated that for about five
years there was no attempt to carry this provision into effect.
A beginning was made in the year 1661.
It was an ancient custom for the sovereign to appoint trusty
servants to investigate upon the ground the fidelity with which
his edicts were executed, and either report the result of their
examination to the minister, or themselves apply the remedy to
existing evils, by virtue of the extensive powers intrusted to them.
The father of Theodore Agrippa d'Aubigne received such a
commission in the sixteenth century, at the close of the first
civil Avar.2 Such commissioners were in particular sent out to
see to the execution of the Edict of Nantes itself, immediately
after its promulgation ; and they performed their responsible
duties, for the most part, with commendable fidelity and satis-

1 Memoires de Louis XIV. (Paris, 1806), ubi supra.
2 See Memoires d' Agrippa d'Aubigne, 474.

1661 GROWING PERSECUTION 427
factory results. One reason of this was that although one of
the two commissioners was in each case a Roman Catholic and
a man of higher rank than his Protestant colleague, he was pur
posely selected, in the reign of Henry the Fourth, from among
those equitable officers whom the Huguenots could count
upon to show them fair play.1 The appointment of commis
sioners, in 1661 and in succeeding years, would not therefore
have occasioned any special alarm, had the law that directed
the choice betrayed less distinctly a spirit of hostility which
the lapse of five years had not softened down, and had not
the real intent of the present nomination been made manifest
by a series of suggestions put forth by the clergy to serve in
the inquest for the discovery of alleged breaches of the royal
edicts. From these suggestions it was clearly no part of the
scheme to seek out any infractions save those of which the Prot
estants might have been guilty. Nothing could at first sight
seem more equitable than the arrangement by which two
persons, representing respectively the Roman Catholic and the
Protestant religions, were sent forth together to visit every part
of the realm. Their powers were ostensibly equal ; their joint
conclusions had the force of law and admitted of no appeal ;
only in case of their disagreement could the matter be brought
before the king's council for final adjudication. In point of
fact and in practice, the measure worked the greatest possible
injustice. The Roman Cathohc commissioner was uniformly an officer of
high standing in the administration, one of those royal Intendants
respecting whose estabhshment and authority I shall presently
speak, a man from his rank and by force of habit accustomed to
command and to make himself obeyed. The Protestant com
missioner had no similar advantage, for he figured by the side
of his colleague much as an inferior sitting by his superior in
the capacity of an assessor or adjunct. In many cases he had
been chosen by his Roman Catholic colleague, and was in a
measure dependent upon his favor. The patent had been issued
to the intendant with a blank to receive the insertion of the
name of such a Protestant as he might see fit to choose. It was
1 Eenoist, i. 298, 340, 360, etc. -

428 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IX
natural for the intendant to select for the purpose some ir
resolute, timid, or lukewarm member of the Reformed church,
a person who, possibly, had a lawsuit pending before
tant commis- some Roman Catholic tribunal, a man, in short, who
gave his fellow-believers every reason to fear. Yet,
despite these adverse circumstances, it is remarkable that by
far the greater number of the Protestant commissioners ac
quitted themselves in a manner that met the reasonable antici
pations of their brethren in the faith. It Avould appear that out
of thirteen whom the industrious and well-informed Benoist
mentions by name, seven proved themselves not only faithful
but really excellent. Of the remainder, three might, indeed, be
reckoned weak and too complaisant. Only three seem to have
betrayed their trust by collusion with the enemies of their re
ligion. In all honesty, moreover, history must record the fact
that some of the intendants, no strangers to the higher instincts
of our nature, made it a point of honor to consult the Reformed
churches of the provinces respecting the person to be named as
the Protestant representative, and that they cheerfully accepted
the Protestant nomination. In the end the Huguenots lost
little by the ruse of those Avho strove to make them instruments
of their own destruction.1 Unfortunately the same end could
be compassed by other means. Where the privilege of Hugue
not worship was in question, the opinions of the two commis
sioners were with strange uniformity arrayed against one an
other, and when the partage, or tie, was brought before the
royal council for final decision, the verdict of the intendant
rarely failed to be endorsed, however unsatisfactory the reasons
which he alleged in support of it.
It is necessary to consider very briefly that important change
which had come over the administration of France by the insti
tution of the Intendants to whom I have just referred ;
mentofin- for Avithout these obsequious servants of the crown,
scattered over the entire surface of the kingdom, and
empowered to execute the royal will, without regard to ancient
custom or local privilege, it would scarcely have been possible
that the persecution of the Huguenots, in the fifteen or twenty
1 Benoist, iii. 414, 415.

1661 GROWING PERSECUTION 429
years immediately preceding the Revocation of the Edict of
Nantes, as well as in the century following that disastrous
event, should have assumed so different an aspect from that
presented by the persecutions of an earlier date.
During the sixteenth century the authority of the king was
represented, outside of the capital, above all by the governors
of the provinces. The more remote the residence of
orsof prov- these officials from the city of Paris, the greater was,
sixteenth for the most part, the power which they grasped and
exercised. A dignity so exalted as that of the governor
of a province was rarely conferred upon any other than a noble
of high family and great influence. The weakness of the last
kings of the Valois race compelled them to seek the support of
the representatives of the great houses, and to acquiesce in the
principle, that the dignities enjoyed by the father were no less
the hereditary right of the son, than the lands and titles which
he held of the crown. Thus a revived feudalism rapidly spread
over France. So strongly did the governors of certain prov
inces intrench themselves in their domains, that only by a di
rect conflict of arms could they have been removed. There
were some cases in which the designation of sovereign seemed
to be all that was wanting to complete their independence.
During the reign of Henry the Third, the Duke of Damville-
Montmorency was often styled, with more truth than usually
accompanies such jests, " the Xing of Languedoc." Gladly as
Henry would have dislodged him, in order to make room for
one of his own favorites, the Valois, after a fruitless attempt,
was fain to desist from the undertaking, and distinctly recog
nize the authority of his insubordinate vassal.1 The governors
of cities and important places imitated this instructive example,
and to a certain extent threw off the yoke of subjection to the
crown. From a state of things which threatened the entire disinte
gration of the kingdom, the strong hand of Cardinal Richelieu
freed France. But it was reserved for Louis the Fourteenth to
carry out the policy of the great prelate to its ultimate conse-
1 In October, 1584. Lestoile, i. 179. So much, observes the chronicler, for
showing one's teeth.

430 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IX
quences. This he did by the annihilation not only of the liberties
of the communes and municipalities, but even of all semblance
of independent authority intermediate between the subject and
a monarch who claimed to dispose absolutely of the lives and
property of the inhabitants of the realm intrusted to him by the
Almighty. In 1662, he took a decided step in this di-
makesap-' rection. "It was in this year," he himself writes, in
tor only the memoirs intended for his son the dauphin, "that
persisting in my purpose to diminish the authority of
the governors of cities and provinces, I resolved henceforth to
confer no vacant governorship for more than three years. I re
served for myself, however, the right to prolong this term by a
new appointment, as often as I might deem it proper." He
informs us that this policy, consistently carried out, had been
followed by two good results : the governors ceased to endear
themselves to those over whom they ruled, and, being entirely
dependent upon the king for a continuance in office, were much
more submissive to his will.1 Nor was this all. Louis the Four
teenth found no difficulty in making the governors understand
that they were to regard their appointments merely in the light
of liberal pensions with which he had seen fit to gratify them,
and that they were expected in their turn to make the court
their usual place of residence, and to regard an order to repair
to their provinces as a positive disgrace and a punishment little
short of a decree of banishment.2
The powers wrested from the hands of the governors, and
much greater powers too, were conferred upon the Intendants.
The practice of occasionally sending judicial officers,
the inten- maitres des requetes, on circuits through the provinces,
was not a new one. It had been resorted to as early
as the reign of Henry the Second, and, more systematically in
the reign of Louis the Thirteenth.3 The outcry against the
¦Memoires historiques et instructions de Louis XIV., in Q3uvres (Paris, 1806),
i. 197, 198.
2 1 have here followed Sismondi, Histoire des Francois, xxix. 509. etc.
3 fidit de creation des intendans. Neufchatel, May, 1635. in Isambert, An-
ciennes lois franchises, xvi. 441-450. According to M. de Saint Aulaire, quoted
by Isambert, this creation, while securing order, celerity, and economy, entailed
the ruin of three thousand treasurers who had bought their offices and counted
upon handing these down to their children.

1661 THE INTENDANTS 431
abuses with which it was said to be attended, led to the aban
donment of the plan in 1648 ; but it was revived five years later,
and the protests of parliaments, as well as the remonstrances of
individual judges, proved futile. Under the title of " Intendants
of Police, Justice, and the Finances," the new-comers usurped,
one after the other, nearly every function belonging, by law and
by immemorial custom, to the various departments of the ad
ministration. They were usually ambitious men, aspiring to
higher positions, who, because they looked for promotion only
from the monarch, had but the single desire to please him.
What to them were the privileges to which the inhabitants of
the provinces appealed as the most precious of inheritances from
the time of their fathers ? Unacquainted Avith the provisions of
the local charters, or, if acquainted with them, not reluctant to
violate them when assured that the breach of law would be con
doned by the king as a mere excess of praiseworthy zeal — -per
suaded in short, that an order could at any moment be obtained
from the privy council, enjoining the courts of justice from at
tempting to mete out deserved punishment — they knew no rule
of conduct but blind obedience to their secret instructions, no
law but the will of their master. No wonder that Louis the
Fourteenth could soon dispense altogether with the meetings of
_ the provincial estates, even when such estates had the
They en- x . '
croachnpon sole right to levy new taxes or to increase old ones.1
the tunc- T^ . -
tions of pro- For, in defiance of all codes, written or unwritten, the
vmcial es- .
tates and intendants proceeded to impose fresh burdens on the
people and to exact mercilessly the moneys called for
by the' ministers at the capital.2 If they did not actually sup
plant the parhaments and the other judicial bodies, the inten-
1 For example, the States of Normandy met only twice during the first twelve
years of this reign, and-finally met not at all. Floquet, Histoire du Parlement
de Normandie, v. 546, etc. This author's remarks upon the new and despotic
institution of the intendants are just and forcible. Ibid., v. 537, etc.
2 Every year, says Piganiol de la Force, the king in his council of finance
makes a statement of the sums which he will have the twenty " generalities " of
his kingdom that are subject to this form of tax, pay for the tattle of the ensuing
year. Every generality is divided into "elections." The intendant visits each
election in his generality, and there, in the presence of all the officers of the
election, etc., apportions the quota of all the parishes. Nouvelle Description de
la France, i. 239, 240.

432 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IX
dants, none the less, encroached seriously upon the jurisdiction
and embarrassed the action of these tribunals. At times, they
called in a judge of the royal presidial court to sit with them ;
at other times they made bold to act without one. In either
case, they made inquest, and tried, and passed sentence in
causes which had heretofore been reserved for the cognizance of
judges learned in the law, jurists by profession, familiar with the
customs of the kingdom, and trained to weigh evidence. The
lack of qualifications of this kind, however, made little differ
ence. The intendant occupied the place he held, not so much
that he might administer justice, as that he might represent the
interests of royalty. This was his leading characteristic ; every
thing else was accessory. " Every generality," says a Descrip
tion of France which dates from about the end of Louis the
Fourteenth's reign, when the realm proper was divided for finan
cial purposes into twenty-five generalities, according to this au
thority — " Every generality has an intendant who is sent thither
to regulate whatever relates to justice, police, and the finances.
Sometimes, even, intendants are sent into districts
ant the where there is no generality, as in Alsace and Franche
ms man. £jQm^ rj^g intendant is properly speaking the king's
man, who is sent to watch over his interests, and to have a care
for those of the people." 1
Is it wonderful that, when the affairs of the Huguenots came
before the intendants for adjudication, the Huguenots found
themselves the victims of signal injustice ? On the contrary, it
would have been a marvel had they been treated equitably.
For there was scarcely the pretence of following the rules of
judicial procedure and judging according to the merits of the
case. The good pleasure of the monarch and the written orders
of his ministers were motives far more influential than all the
dictates of pity for the unfortunate, than all the respect due to
the sanctity of the bench.
Among the first to experience the effects of the new system
of administration were the Huguenots of the bailiwick known as
1 Piganiol de la Force, Nouvelle Description de la France (Amsterdam, 1719),
i. 239. "The intendants," adds the writer, "are almost always taken from the
number of the maitres des requetes, though there are examples of a few that
have not been invested with that dignity."

1661 AFFAIR OF GEX 433
the Pays de Gex. The history of their treatment will serve to
ihustrate the operation of the inquisition into the enforcement
of the Edict of Nantes made by the new commissioners in other
parts of the kingdom.
The district in question, roughly described as five or six
leagues in length and two leagues and a half in breadth,
The "Pays bordered the territory of the city of Geneva on the
de Gex." northwest and, according to the Roman Cathohc theory,
formed a part of the diocese of the titular bishop of that city,
now and long resident at Annecy. Gex had become Protestant
and had been seized by the Canton of Berne in 1536. Twenty-
eight years later the Bernese ceded it to the Duke of Savoy,
who solemnly pledged himself to maintain the inhabitants in
the undisturbed enjoyment of their religious rights, until such
time as a free oecumenical council should determine the form
of rehgion for Christendom. At the capitulation of Gex to
Sancy, acting as lieutenant-general of the armies of Henry the
Third, in 1589, a similar stipulation was made. And when by
the treaty of Lyons, on the twenty-seventh of January, 1601,
the Duke of Savoy formally surrendered his claims upon Gex
and other lands, in exchange for the marquisate of Saluzzo or
Saluces, the rights, privileges, and immunities of the inhabitants
were specially guaranteed by Henry the Fourth. These privi
leges and immunities had been respected ever since.1 The
Pays de Gex, now attached to the province of Burgundy, con
tinued to have a population almost exclusively Protestant.
The Protestants numbered seventeen thousand souls, and they
had twenty -four "temples," or churches. The Roman Catho
lics, on the other hand, could count up only four hundred ad
herents, but they were possessed of not less than twenty-five
parish churches, served by seventeen curates.2 It is easy to
see that the complaint of the clergy was well founded, that these
poor curates were, for the most part, shepherds without a flock.
In some parishes there was but one parishioner, in some the
1 See the summary of the arguments of the Protestants of Gex contained in
the famous order of the royal council of August 23, 1662, ubi infra.
2 Lettre d'un gentilhomme du Ealliage de Gex escritte a un de ses amis. Gex,
February 20, 1662. See also the Order of Intendant Bouchu of November 24,
1661, in Claparede, 106, 107.
28

434 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IX
curate and his household comprised all the worshippers. In
one there were two members, in another there were ten. In no
case did the Roman Catholics compare numerically with the
Protestants, and the language of the priests was less extrava
gant than usual, when they declared that the Protestants out
numbered their folloAvers in the ratio of forty or sixty to one.1
The case of the Roman Catholics in so thoroughly a Protes
tant region might have been deemed hopeless. The clergy, and
especially the bishop of Annecy (Jean d'Aranthon, who had
succeeded Charles Augusts de Sales in 1660) thought other
wise. They dreAv up a memorial and despatched it to Paris to
be laid before the privy council. They begged that the nine
officiating Protestant pastors be forbidden to preach outside
of the villages Avhere they resided. This Avould necessarily cut
off fourteen or fifteen villages from the privilege of worship.2
They particularly requested that Protestant services be inter
dicted in the principal village of Gex, Avhere there was a new
" temple " recently built. The petition was favorably received.
It was to no purpose that delegates hastily sent to the capital
by the churches which were menaced, endeavored to show the
injustice of the proposed action. The royal council promptly
(on the twenty-seventh of June, 1661) instructed the commis
sioners already appointed for Burgundy to do their office in the
Pays de Gex, and meanwhile granted the full demands of the
clergy. The Prince of Conde, as governor of the province, no

1 The "Factum " of the clergy presented to the privy council speaks of " dix-
sept pauvres cures qui sont a, la pluspart des pasteurs sans trouppeau, pour aucun
qu'un seul paroissien, les autres dix, autre deux, ne pouvant resister aux
Religiounaires, qui sont soixante contre un." In ClaparSde, Histoire des ISglises
reformees du Pays de Gex (Geneva, 1856), page 105. Loride (Estat de l'affaire
pendante aux Conseils du Roy, 11) refers to " telle paroisse ou il n'y a que le
Cure et ceux de sa famille que en soient, tout le surplus faisant profession de la
R. P. R." Also quoted by Claparede, ubi supra. The reader may be reminded
that the three capitals R. P. R. were a customary abbreviation for Religion Pre
tendue Reformee.
2 The churches of Gex formed a separate colloque, or presbytery. By the list
of pastors and churches drawn up in 1620, at the time of the national synod of
Alais, there were thirteen distinct churches and eleven pastors whose names are
given (Aymon, ii. 232). The same number of pastors was reported, six years
later, at the synod of Castres (ibid., ii. 418). Aymon, as usual, blunders
strangely in his spelling of the names both of places and persons.

1661 AFFAIR OF GEX 435
less promptly gave orders for the execution of the council's de
cree.1 Fit instruments were at hand. Some months before, the two
commissioners had been appointed. They were, as usual, a
The intend- Roman Catholic high inofficial standing and a Prot-
antBouchn. estant of insignificant influence. The contrast ap
peared in the titles they bore. The one was " Monsieur Bou-
chu, councillor of the king in his councils, master of requests in
ordinary of his house, intendant of justice, pohce, and finance in
Burgundy, Bresse, Bugey, Valromey, and Gex." The other was
plain " Marc Chevalier, Sieur de Fernex, gentleman of the Pre
tended Reformed Religion." It could not be doubtful which of
the two would have his own way — the owner of a paltry castle,
or the "king's man," strong in the consciousness that he had at
his back the favor and support of the court of Versailles. Nor
did the sequel disappoint expectation. The triumph of the
Roman Catholic church was a foregone conclusion. The com
missioners proceeded promptly to the town of Gex (November),
and there gave audience to the vicar of the Bishop of Geneva
and the titular provost of the cathedral of Saint Pierre in that
city, as well as to the seventeen curates of the bailiwick. To
their united complaints that the Edict of Nantes and the laws
consequent upon it had been violated, all the ministers and
elders of the district were summoned to make answer. Upon
„. n . this hearing Intendant Bouchu rendered his decision.
His decision „. .^
against the Since his Protestant colleague refused to sign it, Bou-
Protestants. chu not only signed it alone, but ordered its immediate
execution. The decision was not a mere concession of all that
bishop and clergy had demanded. It went beyond their peti
tions and the royal council's concession. Of all the places of
worship which the Reformed had enjoyed in the bailiwick, they
should retain only two — the one at Sergy, the other at Fernex —
and these only provisionally, until his majesty's good pleasure
were knoAvn. The exception made in favor of these two was of
the less account, for the reason that in neither place was there,
properly speaking, a church edifice. The place of worship was

1 See the statement in the council's order of August 23, 1662, printed in
Benoist, iii., pieces just., 98.

436 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IX
in each case simply the small and contracted chapel in the cas
tle of the lord of the village. Yet the two chapels were to be
the sole provision for the religious wants of seventeen thousand
worshippers. Nor was this the full extent of the intendant's
arbitrary action. By other Avrits, he prescribed that no foreign
ers, even from the neighboring city of Geneva, should be suffered
to preach, that two schoolmasters must suffice for the instruction
of the children of the whole district, that Protestant burials
could take place only by night, and be attended only by a small
number of persons, that the Protestant consistory should invite
to worship no persons that attended the services of the Roman
Cathohc church. All this Avas accompanied by the threat of
death directed against any converts to that church Avho should
relapse and return to their ancient heresy.
The Protestants appealed from these violent decisions, and
the privy council at first committed the consideration of the
matter to two maitres des requetes for fuller examina-
Confirmed . , . -
by the royal tion ; then changed its mind, and, without waiting for
council! the report of its own appointees, Avithout hearing the
parties or reading their written pleas, fully confirmed Bouchu's
judgment, and indeed added to its severity. This was on the
sixteenth of January, 1662.1 Instantly upon receipt of this in
telligence, the intendant again started from Dijon "to finish
what he had so Avell commenced." Scarcely had four weeks
elapsed before he gave his final decree, not only settling the
fate of the Protestant places of worship, but ordering the arrest
of seven pastors who had continued to preach in spite of his
previous proclamation. The condemned churches Avere to lose
their bells and benches, and, pending the question of their ulti
mate destination, the portals were to be walled with solid ma
sonry. That very day (the thirteenth of February, 1662)
summary Bouchu superintended in person the Avork at the por-
execution. talg of the protestant " temples " of Gex and Cessy ;
on the morroAv, at Grilly, Divonne, Seny, Croset, and Chevrier ;
on the third day, at all the remaining places. The contempo-

1 Arrest du Conseil d'Estat du 16 Janvier 1662 portant plusieurs Reglemens
sur les enterprises des Religionnaires du Bailliage de Gex. Recueil des Actes,
Titres, etc., du Clerge, vi. 454-457.

1662 AFFAIR OF GEX 437
rary letter-writer who jubilantly recounts these bloodless ex
ploits of his hero, warms up and becomes almost eloquent in
describing the zeal displayed by the intendant's wife in helping
to stop up the entrances of the modest buildings in which Cal
vinists had for generations been wont to come together for the
purpose of hearing God's word, of singing psalms in His honor,
and of seeking comfort and strength to bear the sorrows and
trials of their earthly lot. " I should wrong Madame Bouchu,"
he writes, " did I fail to tell you of her rare piety. In supply
ing materials for the masons, she built for herself a fair theatre
of glory. In helping to close the door of a temple, she opened
for herself the doors of grace and of paradise. And I doubt
not that the stones which she furnished the workmen will
one day change into precious pearls to enrich her heavenly
crown."1 In such terms of panegyric did a correspondent write of an
event which, in his estimation, derived its chief significance
from the circumstance that, hke the fiery comet of late seen
hanging over the neighboring city of Geneva, it seemed dis
tinctly to portend the ruin of that Babylon which, for the last six-
score years, had served as a harbor for all the scoundrels of
Europe.2 "Would that the king might recognize the insolence,
the mahce, and the feebleness of Geneva," adds the writer, who
scarcely succeeds in disguising his clerical hand — "her in
solence in still believing that she can defy all the sovereigns
and make herself sovereign of Europe ; her malice in being the
source of every tragedy enacted in the last one hundred years,
even to the death of the king of England, planned and resolved
upon in a consistory (for she cannot tolerate monarchy which
she deems less favorable to her religion) ; her feebleness in that
her party in France is very small and is daily becoming
smaller." It was not enough to have closed Protestant churches, to
have sentenced Protestant ministers, to have carried off even
the beUs that once called the faithful to worship. On the ab-

1 Lettre d'un gentilhomme du Balliage de Gex, page 4.
* " II y a apparence que cette Babyloue, qui depuis six viugt ans a servy de
Retraitte a tout ce qui il y a de Scelerats dans l'Europe, tombera."

438 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IX
surd plea that the Huguenots Avere planning to persecute their
fellow citizens of the other faith by exacting the obligations
which the latter owed them, the king, upon the rep-
debts fofe° resentations of the intendant, gave out another order
ree years. .^ councji wnerei)y aU Boman Catholics Avere for three
years discharged of the payment of their debts.1
Respect for the rights of the republic of Geneva lay as light
upon the intendant, as did regard for the liberties of his sub
jects upon the monarch. Having had the audacity to
toward «e- include among the Protestant churches that were
walled in, one that actually stood upon Genevese terri
tory (at Chalex), and having noAV succeeded in his project to
defraud Genevese creditors, Bouchu had next the effrontery to
make a personal visit to the magistrates of Geneva. At the
hearing granted him, he presented a lettre de cachet, and pre
ferred a modest request for three villages, on the confines of
the district of Gex, of Avhich it was important for the king's in
terests, and for the interests of the bishop of Geneva (Annecy),
that Louis the Fourteenth should have possession, and that he
re-establish the mass therein. To this the grave magistrates,
for all answer, replied that it was in the interest of Geneva not
to surrender them. The discomfited intendant Avithdrew to con
fer with the expectant bishop a f eAV hundred paces from the city
on Savoyard territory ; then went off with vague threats of
Avriting to the court.2 To such insolence had the pride of Louis

1 Abbadie to Brenwald, Geneva, February 10, 1662, speaks of interest as well
as principal — " defenses de trois annees de leur payer aucunes debtes. soit en
somme soit en revenu." The Lettre d'un gentilhomme, on the other hand says :
" Le Conseil a rendu un second Arrest du 26 de Janvier dernier, par lequel le
Roy decharge pour trois ans lesdits Catholiques du payement du Principal de
leurs debtes, en payant l'Interest au denier de 1' Ordonnance seulement, et def-
fend ces rigoureuses poursuittes qui tendoient a, une ruine inevitable des Catho
liques." The text of the order which Benoist prints in his collection of docu
ments (iii. 102) proves that the latter is correct, and shows that the unfortunate
creditors were persons " of the neighborhood of Geneva," and presumably not
subjects of Louis XIV. An attempt to collect the sums due them would have
cost the creditors the forfeiture of the principal, and the officers who might
have attempted to enforce payment, the loss of their places and a fine of fifteen
hundred livres.
2 Lettre du ministre Abbadie a Monsieur Brenwald, Geneve le 10 Fevrier,
1662. Inedited MS. printed in Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist du Prot. franc, i.

1662 AFFAIR OF GEX 439
the Fourteenth and the presumption of his servile followers at
tained, that, forsooth, all Europe must bow to his demands.
A few months later, the king, sitting in council, published an
order which is of special interest from the circumstance that it
The king's details evei7 step and gives every plea in the iniqui-
connclf *ous Procedure. In this order Louis commands the
demolition of all the Protestant churches heretofore
waUed in, and formally declares that the Edict of Nantes and
its provisions, save only in the matter of personal rehgious
hberty of conscience, does not apply to the " Pays de Gex," in
corporated in the kingdom since the promulgation of that
Edict.1 It had almost been more creditable to the king to rob
the unhappy Protestants of their privileges by one act of bold
and despotic tyranny. He would at least have cleared himself
of comphcity in the petty quibbles Avith Avhich the present
order abounds. Nor Avould he have endorsed by implication,
for example, so absurd a statement as that by the free oecu
menical council until the rendering of whose decision upon
matters of faith the Protestants of Gex received a promise, in
1664, to be maintained in the exercise of their religion, was
evidently meant the Council of Trent, which had adjourned in
December of the previous year.
Even now the bishop of Geneva (Annecy) was not satisfied.
I have before me a letter of this worthy successor of the perse
cuting Saint Francis de Sales, in which the prelate begs Louis
the Fourteenth to strip the Protestants of Gex of the solitary
. privilege his decree had left them, by compelling them
saies's sue- to be converted. The document is a foretaste of the
theProtes- arguments used by the clergy, twenty years later, in
peiied to be persuading the same monarch to recall the Edict of
Nantes. Gex would never be thoroughly French and
loyal until thoroughly Catholic. The Huguenots were wavering
in their faith. Surprising conversions daily took place among
469. Bouchu stayed at Geneva from Friday, February 3, to the following Mon
day. 1 Arrest contradictoire du Conseil d'Estat, du 23 Aoust 1662, par lequel Sa Ma
jeste declare que l'Edit de Nantes n'a lieu au Bailliage de Gex, comme ayant
este reuny a la Couronne depuis cet Edit, etc. Eecueil des Actes, Titres, etc., du
Clerge, vi. 199-209. Also in the collection of documents of Benoist, iii. 94-102.

440 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IX
them. Many had acknowledged that fear of their felloAvs alone
restrained them, and had expressed a strong desire that Louis
should command them all to go to mass and profess his religion.
In that case the movement would become universal. "It is an
unavoidable conclusion," said the bishop, "that your majesty
can Avith justice, and Avithout affecting the freedom of conscience
conceded in the rest of your kingdom, oblige your subjects of
Gex to profess the Catholic religion." 1 The king has already
proclaimed the fact that the Edict of Nantes does not apply to
Gex, and the inhabitants have by their disobedience rendered
themselves unAvorthy even of the favor of having the two places
of Avorship at Sergy and Fernex. " Moreover," adds the bishop,
"your majesty may find an example in the other bailiwicks
near to Geneva, from Avhich Charles Emmanuel, Duke of Savoy,
banished Calvinism, revoking, at the persuasion of the blessed
Francois de Sales and under the pretext of a trifling act of dis
obedience, the favor he had done them in granting them three
churches.2 If your majesty acts in like manner, I am certain
not only that you will meet with no resistance, but that in addi
tion you Avill draw down infinite blessings upon your reign,
strike terror into Geneva, and spread the fame of your zeal and
religion throughout all Europe." 3
The bishop was premature in his demands. Neither the
king himself nor France was ready as yet for the execution of
so radical a design. Although Gex had still new acts of in
justice to experience,4 it was reserved for a later time to wit-
' " II est inevitable, Sire, que Vostre Majeste peut avec justice, et sans interes-
ser la liberte de conscience dans le reste de son royaume, obliger ses subjects de
Gex a professer la religion catholique."
2 " Outre que V. M. trouveroit l'exemple dans les autres baillages qui sont
proches de Geneve, d'oii Charles Emmanuel, due de Savoye, baunist le calvin-
isme, revoquant a la persuasion du bienheureux Franpois de Sales et soubs pre-
texte d'une legere desobeissauce la grace qu'il leur avoit faicte de leur accorder
trois temples " On Saint Francois de Sales as a persecutor, see the Huguenots
and Henry of Navarre, ii. 472, 473.
3 Letter of the Bishop of Geneva (Annecy) to the Very Christian King, Gex,
June 28, 1663, printed in Bulletin dela Soc. de l'hist. du Prot. frant;., i. 471,
from the Kirchhoffer MSS., Schaffhausen.
4 See the king's order in council of September 19, 1664, in Recueil des Actes,
Titres, etc., du Clergg, vi. 479-491, and Benoist's collection of documents, iii.
156-165.

1661-1666 GROWING PERSECUTION 441
ness the complete proscription of Protestantism within its bor
ders.1 The incidents which I have narrated affecting a single remote
corner of the realm may serve to illustrate with sufficient dis
tinctness the leading features of the crusade of intolerance to
which the Huguenots were now subjected. Had this crusade
taken the form of declared war, by open measures, upon all the
privileges guaranteed by the Edict of Nantes, the task
Alabyrinth r & ° . J '
of writs and of recording its progress would be comparatively easy.
against the But our history has noAV to deal with a labyrinth of
writs and decisions, judicial and ministerial, given out
in bewildering variety by tribunals of justice, of higher or lower
grade, by parliament and by the royal council, and affecting the
most diverse departments of civil and religious life. Yet all
these documents, however diverse, had but one common end.
While pretending to respect the provisions of the Edict of
Nantes, every order, from whatever source it might emanate,
was in violation of the spirit of that kvvv, and Avas directed
against some one of the privileges expressly granted or neces
sarily implied in the statute of Henry the Fourth.
Happily it is not necessary to attempt the formidable and
barren task of describing the minute details of the attack. A
few words may suffice to convey some notion of its complex
ity. From one point of view we are struck with the vexatious
interference of the courts, at the instigation of the clergy of an
other rehgion, with the particulars of Huguenot worship, with
the times and places of holding the synods and colloquies, with
Vexations *ne hours of burial and the number of persons that
interference. may ^g present at funerals, or with the seasons of the
year at which Huguenot marriages shall be celebrated. The
i Upon the entire Gex episode, see, besides Benoisfs account and the docu
ments published by him and in the Recueil des Actes, Titres, etc., du Clerge, the
important volume of Theodore Claparede above referred to ; the monograph by
A. Crottet entitled "Les preludes de la Revocation de l'Edit de Nantes dans le
pays de Gex," in the Bulletin of the French Protestant Historical Society, i.
292-301, and his particularly valuable pieces justificatives, ibid., i. 464-475 ;
the "Lettre d'un gentilhomme du Balliage de Gex escritte a un de ses amis,"
dated February 20, 1662, an apparently rare document of seven pages, which I
judge, from the copy in my possession, to have circulated as a newsletter.

442 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IX
funeral can only be at dusk or at dawn, and not more than ten
of the friends of the deceased may attend.1 The wedding
must not occur either in Advent or during Lent, because these
are seasons prohibited by the established church.2 Ministers
in their sermons must not speak even euphemistically of the
" misfortune of the times," much less refer to the " persecution "
to which the churches are subjected.3 Their relations to
their flocks are rudely disturbed. The five pastors of Castres,
secretly accused, no one knows by whom, of being the authors
of intrigues and of arrogating to themselves some superiority
over their brethren, are not heard in their defence, but the
king by an act of sheer despotic authority, and in violation of
all ecclesiastical order, summarily commands them, on a single
day's notice, to exchange parishes with five other ministers of
the environs at no inconsiderable distance, whom he directs to
take their places.4 An eastern despot could not have acted
more unjustly than the king of civilized France. At another
time the monarch in council of state deems it not beneath his
dignity to meddle with the very costume Avorn by the Hugue
not pastor. The pastor must not wear a cassock {soutane), nor
a goAvn with sleeves. He must not appear outside of the Prot
estant church in " a long coat," on penalty of three hundred
livres.5 If he visits a prison, he must not preach, but he may
" console " a prisoner, if only he speak in Ioav voice.6 A few
years later, the king having thus settled what a Protestant
1 " Des le matin a, la pointe du jour, ou le soir a, l'entree de la nuit." Orders
of Council, August 7 and November 13, 1662. Benoist, iii., documents,
107. 108.
¦ Order of Council, January 16, 1662. Benoist, iii. 479.
3 Order of Council, October 3, 1663, ibid, iii., documents, 134.
4 Order of the king in council, April 2, 1663, ibid. , iii. , doc. 135. The five
places named are Mazamet, Revel, Avianes. Vabres and Caussade. For Avianes
we must evidently read Viane. These places are situated respectively — Ma
zamet. southeast. Revel, southwest, Viane and Vabres, northeast, and Caussade,
northwest of Castres, at distances varying from ten to over fifty miles. Beuoist
informs us (iii. 546) that the Bishop of Castres was shrewdly suspected of being
the instigator of the order, and that five or six years elapsed before the pastors
were permitted to resume their former charges.
6 Order of the king in council, June 30, 1664, in Recueil des Actes, Titres,
etc., du Clerge, vi. 165.
9 Ibid., vi. 164.

1661-1666 GROWING PERSECUTION 443
minister must not wear outside of the preche, tells us what can
not be worn or seen within one. The Protestant judge, magis
trate or consul shall not don his robes of office, or the hood
designating his station, nor shall the fleurs de lis or royal coat
of arms occupy any place within the heretical conventicle, upon
the walls and woodwork, or on the glass of the windows. No
benches higher than the rest shall be there, reserved for the
accommodation of any officer of the king or of the munici
palities.1 Such were some of the trifles upon which the king
sitting in council did not think it beneath his dignity to ex
pend care and thought.
At another time, blind and unjust prejudice against the Re
formed Rehgion displayed itself in the precipitate haste Avith
which decisions were rendered. It Avas thus that, in the in
credibly short space of about tAvo hours, the royal council dis
posed of some two hundred cases in which the Roman Catholic
and the Protestant commissioners had failed to agree, in al
most, if not in quite every instance, siding with the former.
One order alone passed upon forty-six distinct matters.2 This
haste gave some ground for the suspicion that such matters
were managed much as the lettres de cachet, in which a blank
was left for the insertion of such name as the king's officers
might deem proper to write.3
Now new and stringent laws were issued against " relapsed
persons and apostates." The immunity from prosecution af
forded by the edict of Henry the Fourth to Protestants who,
after having abjured the faith in which they were reared, sub
sequently returned to their first religion, as well as to priests
and monks that renounced their vow of celibacy and married,
was, by a perverse system of interpretation, 'limited in its appli
cation to the past. All persons who, since the publication of
the Edict of Nantes, had relapsed into heresy, all who had
abandoned the so-called "religious" life and contracted matri-
1 Order of the king in council, St. Germain en Laye, February 19, 1672, in
Benoist's collection of documents, v. 79.
* Arret du Conseil d'etat qui vuide les partages faits par les Commissaires en
Languedoc, Vincennes, October 5, 1663, ibid., iii. 120-125. See also the text of
Benoist, iii. 531.
3 Benoist, iv. 4, 5.

444 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IX
monial obligations, Avere pronounced fit objects of the most
severe application of the king's ordinances.1
Blow upon blow fell on the professional and industrial pur
suits of the Huguenots. In order to crush Protestantism it was
generally believed that no more efficacious means could be
Exclusion adopted than the enactment of measures excluding its
from trades adherents from all the trades that might supply them
and profes- . ° « «
sion. a livelihood. Here, it is true, a conflict ot forces made
itself felt. While the more bigoted of their opponents were in
defatigable in efforts to shut the door of one calling after another
against them, Jean Baptiste Colbert, a statesman whose great
abilities Cardinal Mazarin had been the first to discover, saAv in
the activity of the less favored part of the population, one of
France's most promising sources of wealth. He therefore exerted
himself to thwart a suicidal course. For the time he succeed
ed in keeping open to the Huguenots the trades most essential
to the great manufacturing industries of the nation, while the
clergy had their own way in regard to many of those that were
of less conspicuous importance.2 It Avas thus that the great
minister of Louis the Fourteenth was able to delay, if he could
not in the end prevent, the great emigration of skilled workmen
who were later to carry abroad the knowledge of those processes
that enriched Germany, the Netherlands, and Great Britain at
France's expense. As yet, however, the restraints placed upon
Protestants were partial and sometimes more ludicrous and an
noying than positively intolerable. The " marchandes et mattres
ses linger es " undertook to prevent any woman from entering
the ranks of the hnen-drapers who was not a professed member
of the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman church, and petitioned
the king to sanction their regulation, on the ground that their
corporation was founded in the days of that exemplary king
Saint Louis. The king granted their request.3 Sometimes a
regard to a due proportion between the adherents of the two re
ligions was affected. When of the score of notaries at Mont-
¦ Declaration contre les Relaps et les Apostats, April, 1663. Ibid. , pieces justi
ficatives, iii. 109-111.
2 See the remarks of Benoist, iv. 26, 27.
3 Order of the king in council, August 21, 1665. Recueil des Actes, Titres,
etc., du Clerge, vi. 379. Also in Benoist, v., pieces just.

1661-1666 GROWING PERSECUTION 445
pelher about two-thirds were Protestants, the king in council
ordered that no Protestant should be admitted to serve until the
number of Roman Catholic notaries equalled the number of those
of the other faith.1 The reasons were that Protestant notaries
omitted from the wills Avhich they drew up such customary
marks of devotion as the invocation of the Blessed Virgin and
the saints, and that they diverted, or even suppressed, gifts in
tended for pious AA-orks. Generally the ratio of Protestants tol
erated in any trade was still smaller. The parliament of Rouen
ordained that the number of Protestant jewellers should be re
duced until they did not exceed one-fifteenth of the entire num
ber of jewellers.2 It was the same with the mercers 3 and with
the physicians in that city.4
In so general and indiscriminate an assault upon Huguenot
interests, it was not to be expected that Huguenot institutions
of learning, special objects of aversion to their opponents,
institutions should, escape. The colleges of Castres and Nismes
of learning. were the first to suffer. Reared solely by the Re
formed, and at the expense of the Reformed, they had belonged
solely to them. Now, after one-half of their buildings had first
been arbitrarily taken from them and given to the Roman Cath
olics, the latter were next put in control and the Protestants
virtually placed at the mercy of their implacable enemies.5
The rights of the family were particularly invaded by orders
of the king in council, which permitted Protestant children —
Age of con- D°ys a* the age of fourteen and girls at the age of
version. twelve years — to make profession of the Roman Cath
olic rehgion, and then gave them the power of choosing
whether they would live with their parents, as before, or would
go elsewhere and demand a support proportionate to the means
of the family, to be paid in regular quarterly instalments.6
'Order of the Council of State, March 24, 1661. Recueil des Actes, Titres, etc.,
du Clerge, vi. 373.
- Order of Parliament of Rouen, July 13, 1665. Benoist, v., pieces just., 12, 13.
3 Order of the same, July 15, 1664. Recueil des Actes, Titres, etc., du Clerge,
vi. 375.
1 Order of Council of State, May 15, 1663. Benoist, iii. 560, and pieces just., 141.
s See Benoist, iii. 618, etc.
8 The royal Declaration of October 24, 1665, sets forth the successive steps in
this iniquitous legislation. Edits, Declarations, et Arrests, 12, 13.

446 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IX
Nowhere else, however, did the war upon the Huguenots rage
with such intensity as about their beloved places of worship.
Church after church was interdicted and its demolition
terdicted and ordered on the most frivolous of excuses. All the
Protestant churches in the entire diocese of Lucon, in
Poitou, were closed and destroyed by the violent intendant
of the province, in order to gratify his brother the bishop of
Lucon. The rest of the province of Poitou fared scarcely bet
ter ; for, if the right to assemble for the worship of God accord
ing to the rights of the Reformed church, Avas confirmed in a
small number of places, in a far greater number it was sacrificed
to the persistent application of the clergy.1 It was so through
out the whole realm. Where the Protestant commissioner was
loyal to his constituents and made a determined opposition, as
in Languedoc, there was a long list of cases which had to be
carried up to the royal council, and the blow against many a
church was deferred, if not finally warded off. Where, as in the
generality of Soissons, he was weak or corrupt, he instituted
but a feeble resistance and the struggle was short.2 When an
unrighteous decree had been rendered, however clear the proof
might be, it was impossible to obtain a reversal of the sentence
and to secure a decided victory for the right. Even where the
royal council seemed to be convinced of the injustice of a decis
ion rendered against Huguenot places of worship, the decision
was rarely, if ever, annulled. The king found it more conven
ient to suspend the execution of the sentence for an indefinite
time. The decision remained in force and could be called up at
any moment.8 We shall see how, before many years, the work
Avas to be carried out so fully, that, at the formal Revocation of
the Edict of Nantes, there remained to be destroyed but a com
paratively small number of churches, whose claims rested on
such clear proofs that their enemies had been ashamed or afraid
to call them in question. Of eight hundred and thirteen edi
fices consecrated to the worship of God according to the rites
of the Reformed church, Louis the Fourteenth was said to have
: Benoist, iii. 593, 594.
* Ibid., ubi supra.
3 Letter of Ambassador Brisbane (in Schickler, Eglises du Refuge en Angle-
terre, ii. 270), who speaks of it as a customary trick.

1601-1666 GROWING PERSECUTION 447
sanctioned the interdiction or demohtion of not less than five
hundred and seventy, upon one pretext or another, between the
years 1660 and 1684.1 Meanwhile, the first effect of the re
moval of so many of their places of worship in Poitou and else
where, was that immense crowds of Huguenots, in order not to
be deprived of the public exercises of their rehgion,
at public flocked to the few spots that still remained to them.
It was not rare to see ten or tAvelve thousand worship
pers at a single service ; and, as, in the insecurity of the roads,
a good part carried arms for defence against robbers, it was no
wonder that some apprehension was felt of what the Huguenots
might be led to do, if inflamed by the sense of the wrongs they
suffered.2 When we look about for the causes of so extraordinary a par
oxysm of persecuting zeal, Ave are confronted with the fact that,
since the illness of Cardinal Mazarin, and especially since his
death, there had been a systematic attempt to stimulate the re
luctant and to inflame the lukewarm. There could be little doubt
respecting the source of the impulse, and as little respecting its
aim. As yet, indeed, the recall of the Edict of Nantes Avas not
mooted. The assembhes of the clergy of the established
church had not even ventured to suggest it. Indeed, it is the
sober judgment of Elie Benoist, a calm and judicial historian,
that the published memorials of the clergy clearly show that
that body had not as yet turned its thoughts to the Revocation,
and that only the unexpected success attending its first efforts
encouraged the prelates to conceive the design of bringing about
that consummation of all their desires.3 For the present it was
Meynier's content to contribute its part to the work of making
SlSSrd™4 tne best of a hateful law. While the Jesuit Meynier
maxims. wrote a manual to serve in an interpretation of the
Edict of Nantes that might render its provisions for the benefit
of the Huguenots as nearly nugatory as possible, one Bernard
1 See Schickler, ii. 271. According to Benoist, v. 735, the decrease was still
greater, from 760, besides the eglises defief, in 1598, to 50 or 60, in 1684.
1 Benoist, iv. 15.
3 "Iln'est pas malaise de reconnoitre en les lisant, que le Clerge n'avoitpas
encore porte ses vues jusques a la revocation de l'Edit de Nantes," etc. Benoist,
iii. 367.

448 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IX
soon after published his twenty-six " maxims " bearing upon
the course to be pursued in the matter of the "partages," or ties
of votes, of the Roman Catholic and Protestant commissioners
— a very handbook of chicanery.1
The cup of persecution meted out to the Huguenots seemed
full to the brim : a few drops more and it would run over.
General law Again & was reserved for the " archbishops, bishops,
of 1666. an(j other ecclesiastics deputed to the general as
sembly of the clergy " to suggest to the monarch and his minis
ters the perilous addition. Of orders of the king in council
and orders of "chambers of the Edict," there had confessedly
been no lack of late years. But such orders Avere apt to be
little known save by those whom they immediately concerned.
They acquired the force of general laws only when embodied in
royal edicts or declarations, and recorded upon the books of
the parliaments of the realm. It Avould be in the interest of
economy, for it would obviate needless litigation, said the king's
spiritual advisers, to gather all the sparse decisions in matters
affecting the Protestants into one comprehensive law. It would
also, they suggested, be opportune to make a few additions.
Thus much Ave learn from the preamble of the famous royal
Declaration of the second of April, 1666, respecting the circum
stances under which it was compiled.2
We have seen that as often as such a law was drawn up
under clerical inspiration, it was sure to contain hypocritical
professions of attachment to the Edict which its authors hated,
and Avhose kindly provisions they were endeavoring as far as
possible to defeat. The laAv of 1656, which robbed the Hugue
nots of every reward for their loyalty in the troublous times of
the Fronde, opened with the words : " We have always regarded
the Edict of Nantes as a singular work of the perfect prudence
of Henry the Great, our ancestor." The present law, in hke
manner, Avas prefaced by this statement in the name of Louis the
Fourteenth : " The greatest care we have had since our acces-

» Benoist, iii. 484-518, 568-582, and pieces justif., 145-151.
2 Declaration du Roi du 2 Avril 1666, qui regie les choses que doivent ob
server ceux de la R. P. R. In Benoist, v. documents, 16-21. Recueil des
Actes, Titres, etc., du Clerge, v. 700-712.

1CCG GROWING PERSECUTION 449
sion to the crown has been to maintain our subjects, whether
Catholics or of the Pretended Reformed Religion, in perfect
peace and tranquility, observing exactly the Edict of Nantes and
that of 1629." J
The law was not a very long one. Each of its fifty-nine
articles, for the most part the repetition of previous orders in
visitation of council, briefly expressed some unjust decision. I
the sick. shall notice particularly only the forty-eighth article,
perhaps the most iniquitous of all, wherein permission was
granted to the curate of any parish to go, accompanied by a
magistrate, echevin, or consul of the place, to the house of any
sick Protestant, and learn from his own lips whether or not he
desired to die in the profession of the Pretended Reformed Re
ligion. No obstacle was to be thrown in the curate's way.
Thus, after having disturbed the life of the Huguenot almost to
their hearts' content, the priests of another faith Avere allowed
to break in upon the quiet of his dying hours, and obtain from
his weakness, or fabricate at will, the profession of a desire to
become a Roman Catholic. This profession would serve either
to justify a charge of apostasy, should the patient by any chance
recover and resume his Protestant faith, or to secure the con
trol of his children should he die.2
Not unnaturally did the Abbe de Caveyrac in his famous
Apology for Louis the Fourteenth regard this law as a first

'"Le plus grand soin que nous avons eu depuis notre avenement a la
Couronne a ete de maintenir nos sujets Catholiques et de la R. P. R. dans une
paix et tranquillite parfaite, observant exactement 1'lSdit de Nantes et celui de
1629." The text as given by Benoist reads "de 1669," which is, of course, a
typographical mistake. Drion, who also gives the law entire (Histoire chrono-
logique de l'Egl. prot. de France, ii. 96, etc.) makes it " de 1643." But there
was no important edict of that year. Evidently the ' ' Edict of Grace " is meant.
a This article was indeed modified by the 41st article of the law published
three years later (February 1, 1669), which forbade the curates and monks
from going without previous invitation, or unaccompanied by magistrate,
etc. See Edits, Declarations et Arrests, 24. But, as Jurieu observes (Derniers
Efforts de ITnnocence Affligee, 51), a subsequent law virtually granted the
priests all they desired. It was made the duty of the judges to visit every
Protestant whom they learned to be dangerously ill, and in the presence of
two witnesses to inquire into his desires. In case he professed a wish to be
instructed in the Roman Catholic religion, the priests must be sent for with
out delay. Royal declaration of November 19, 1680, in Edits, etc., 68, 69.
29

450 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IX
essay of Revocation.1 Even did not the preamble reveal who
they were that instigated its publication, a comparison of the
statute's provisions with the demands of the assembly of the
clergy just held, and a perusal of the violent address made to
the king in the clergy's name by the Bishop of Uzes, would
sufficiently betray it.2 But the voice of the clergy Avas this
Aajjg of time reinforced by the last injunctions of the king's
dyingto- mother, Avho died on the twentieth of January, 1666.
junction. ~p0T} unmindful of the benefits that she had received
at their hands, Anne of Austria is said to have besought
the monarch her son to exterminate the Huguenots from
France.8 The general law of 1666 had not been published to the world
for many months, before the king received from an ally at least
one manly remonstrance against the injustice with which he was
treating his subjects of the Reformed faith. It was
The Great
Elector of Frederick William of Brandenburg, usually known as
burg remon- the Great Elector, and author of the future grandeur
Fl rft£&5 ^*^
of Prussia, who undertook the bold and humane task
of influencing the proud monarch of France, now almost at the
zenith of his power and renown. Pleading in behalf of men
with whom he professed a common faith, he reminded Louis
that the chief bond that had united his majesty's ancestors to
the Protestant princes of the Empire was the liberty of con
science which the kings of France had granted in many edicts
and confirmed by their royal word. If this knot of concord were
rudely cut by the violence everywhere reported to be exercised
against the persons of the French Protestants and the churches
conceded to them, it could scarcely be but that the effects would
be seen in the altered disposition of his allies, some of whom
had, out of regard for him, accorded freedom to the adherents of

1 "On voyoit alors sans nuage, ce qu'une fausse prevention avoit obscurci,
et la necessite conseilloit de detruire ce qu'elle avoit force d'etablir ; Louis XIV.
en forma la resolution et mit vingt ans a, l'execution. Sa declaration [du 2
Avril] 1666 fut comme l'essai d'une si grande entreprise ; on y voit le monarche
enlever d'une main prevoyante des privileges dont ses sujets calvinistes ont
abuse." Caveyrac, Apologie de Louis XIV., 222, 223.
2 In Recueil des Actes, Titres, etc., du Clerge, v. 454-463.
s Benoist, iv. 63.

1666 THE GREAT ELECTOR'S REMONSTRANCE 451
his religion. The great elector professed so implicit a confi
dence in Louis's sense of justice and clemency, that he dared
affirm that these cruel acts Avere committed Avithout the knowl
edge of the king, whom the multitude of his affairs did not
permit to take cognizance of the concerns of these poor and
oppressed people. The writer stated that his previous com
plaints to M. Colbert on the destruction of so many churches
had been met with a denial that any church had been cast down
that had not been erected since the publication of the Edict of
Nantes ; but the king need only inquire of disinterested persons
to discover that this assertion was quite contrary to fact. He
assured Louis that in this intercession he had not been solicited
by the Huguenots ; but he begged him not to think it strange
that, allied as he was with them in one and the same faith, he
should plead for them and entreat the French monarch either
to accord or to preserve for them their liberty of conscience, as
well as places where without exposure to insult they might
assemble for the purpose of invoking the name of Almighty
God.1 Louis's reply was in a tone of affected surprise and condes
cension. Were it another prince, he said, a prince for whom
Reply of ne did n°t entertain the esteem he felt for the great
Louis xrv. elector, he would not in a matter of such a nature have
permitted him to write, or, at least, would not himself have re
plied. To the letter of his German ally he made answer under
four heads. First, he declared that of affairs of the kind
referred to by the elector nothing, be it great or small, occurred
Avithin the realm of France which was not perfectly well known
to him, nay, which was not done by his command. In the
second place, he gave the elector credit for being moved purely
by compassion for the alleged wrongs of the French Protes
tants ; but he intimated that Frederick William had been mis
led by the false representations of evil-minded persons respect
ing affairs of which he could have no knowledge. Thirdly, none
of the churches of the Protestants had been torn down, except

1 Inedited letter of the Great Elector to Louis XIV., Cleves, August 13, 1666,
printed in the Bulletin de la Societe de I'histoire du Prot. franc., xiii. (1864)
147.

452 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IX
those built since the time of the Edict of Nantes, in defiance of
the royal authority, and by taking advantage of the minority
of kings or of civil wars. Lastly, observed Louis, " It is one
of my chief aims to secure for my subjects of that religion, in
all matters and in all contingencies, the maintenance of every
thing belonging to them, by reason of the concessions of the
kings my predecessors or by my own concessions, in virtue of
our edicts, without suffering them to be violated in any respect.
This is the line of conduct which I prescribe for myself, as well
that I may deal justly by them, as that I may bear witness to
the satisfaction which I feel in regard to their obedience and
their zeal for my service since the last pacification in the year
1629. Everything that you may hear contrary to my state
ments, you must believe to be devoid of all foundation. Mean
while, you will take the little I tell you as one of the great
est marks of consideration that I could show you. For, as I
have already declared to you, I should not have entered into
the discussion of this matter with any other prince than
We are not informed that the great elector believed the as
severations of Louis the Fourteenth, nor indeed, so far as I
know, did he again write him in the interest of the persecuted
Huguenots. On the other hand, not only did he make good the
warning of his own letter, and from an ally become a formidable
enemy of the king, but when the Edict of Nantes sealed the
truth of his assertions and the falsehood of the assertions of the
French monarch, he threw open the doors of his dominions to
> Inedited reply of Louis XIV. to the Great Elector, Vincennes. September 10,
1666, printed ubi supra, xiii. 248. It must be noticed that an extract purport
ing to be made from this letter, and dated September 6, 1666, was inserted in
the documents accompanying Benoist's fifth volume, page 7. The divergencies
are so considerable, that I can account for them only by supposing that some
one who had seen the genuine letter, or had heard it read, subsequently wrote
out this portion from memory. This would appear from the latter part of the
extract, which runs after this fashion : " Car je prens soin qu'on les maintienne
dans tous les privileges qui leur ont et§ concedez, et qu'on les fasse vivre dans
une egalite avec mes autres sujets. J'y suis engage par ma parole royale, et par
la reconnaissance que j'ai des preuves qu'ils m'ont donnees de leur fidelite pen
dant les derniers mouvemens, ou iis ont pris les armes pour mon service, et se
sont opposez avec vigueur et avec succes, aux mauvais desseins qu'un party de
rebellion avoit forme dans mes liltats contre mon autorite."

1666 GROWING PERSECUTION 453
the Huguenot refugees, offering them, in his famous Edict of
Potsdam, the most hospitable of welcomes, and enriching his
states by the industries of an honest and God-fearing people
who had preferred principle to worldly advantage.
As if the general law of which I have been speaking were not
enough to satisfy for a time the most relentless enemy of the
v ,_ Huguenots, I find that Louis the Fourteenth was in-
other hos- -i -i n
tile legisia- duced, on the very same day, to issue not less than six
other papers, taking the form either of " declarations "
or of " orders," all with the same general purpose. One removed
the cases in which " new converts " to the Roman Catholic Reli
gion were concerned, from the Chamber of the Edict at Castres
to the corresponding chamber at Grenoble, on the plea that the
former was too hostile to the converts to do them justice. A
second gave the " new converts " of Languedoc a term of three
years in which to pay their debts. A third altogether removed
the cognizance of the crime of relapsed persons, apostates, and
blasphemers from the Chambers of the Edict. The fourth for
bade Protestants from maintaining academies for the training
of young nobles in the accomplishments becoming their rank.
The fifth prohibited the levy of money by Protestants upon
their brethren for the support of the ministry and for other pur
poses. The last ordered the commissioners to inquire into di
vers alleged violations of the laws ; as a specimen of the charac
ter of which violations it may be mentioned that some Protestant
noblemen had ventured to put stationary benches, fastened to
the walls, in some of their seigniorial churches, thus giving them
the aspect of places for the public exercise of the Reformed re
ligion. There was a dreary uniformity of purpose in all this.
There was also a remarkable similarity in the phraseology of the
inspired by preambles of most of the laws. Each of the orders in
Wy ofthe council began with words significant of the source from
c'ergy. which the attack emanated — " Inasmuch as it has been
represented to the king being in his council, by the archbishops,
bishops, and other beneficed clergymen, deputed to the general
assembly of the Clergy of France " — or expressions to the same
general effect.1 1 See Benoist, pieces justif., v. 21-25.

454 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IX
The first considerable emigration of the Huguenots to foreign
lands, a prognostic of the greater losses that France was at a
The first later time to experience, dates from the publication of
emigration, the laws which Louis gave to the world on the second
of April, 1666.1
As months passed by, the situation of the Protestants became
only the more discouraging. Every place of worship seemed
doomed to destruction. Already out of eighty places in Guy
enne Avhere the Huguenots enjoyed the right to hold public ser
vices, they had, by 1668, been robbed, on some pretext or other,
of all excepting three. In Normandy they retained only the
" places de bailliage " secured to them by the Edict of Nantes.
Nor did remonstrances made through the deputy-general of
their churches, or through special delegations to court, avail
them. One of their deputations failed to receiA'e attention be
cause the king was about to set forth for the scene of war, and
later, when he had returned, it was equally difficult to gain the
monarch's ear, because unless peace were made all Europe
seemed ready to fall upon his armies.2 At length on the second
of May, 1668, the treaty of Aix la Chapelle Avas signed, and for
four years France enjoyed a period of external quiet.
A fresh assault upon the provisions of the Edict of Nantes
was the occasion of bringing into greater prominence than be-
Pierredu f°re OIie 0I the ablest of the Huguenot ministers.
Bosc. Pierre du Bosc, pastor of the flourishing church of
Caen, in Normandy Avas a man of rare erudition and of stiU
more exceptional abilities as a public orator. Ten years before,
when he was barely thirty-five years of age, the fame of his elo
quence having reached Paris itself, Charenton sought in vain to
add his name to the names of its distinguished pastors. The
flattering invitation of Turenne proved as powerless as the still
more flattering and urgent solicitations of Pelisson (later to
obtain an unenviable celebrity after his apostasy), to draw him
away from a church which he loved with an affection as ardent
as that with which he was himself cherished by it. Nor were

i Rulhiere, Eclaircissemens historiques sur les causes de la Revocation de
l'Edit de Nantes, ii. 342.
2 Benoist, iv. 98.

1668 PIERRE DU BOSC 455
the Protestants of the capital more successful, when, on a later
occasion, their entreaties Avere supported by the personal efforts
of the great Jean Claude and of La Fontaine, and when their
enemies displayed such apprehension of the disastrous results
that might be expected to flow from his sermons, should he
accept the call, that the Archbishop of Paris spoke to the king
thrice in a single week, Avith a vieAv to prevent his coming ; or
when, still later, both the Marquis of Ruvigny and his son wrote
urging him to accept another call to the capital, and conveyed
to him the grateful information that Louis the Fourteenth
had acquiesced in the transfer, accompanying his consent with
the gracious words that he had heard nothing but what was
good of Du Bosc — he was an honest man and a loyal subject.1
If Pierre du Bosc was famous for his eloquence, he Avas scarcely
less noted for his wit and tact. It Avas told of him, that being
at one time sent into temporary exile from his church by a lettre
de cachet of the king directing him to repair until further orders
to the city of Chalons, he was very hospitably received by the
exceUent bishop of the place, by birth a nobleman of the house
of Herse Vialart, who repeatedly entertained him at his own
episcopal palace. One day his courteous host, Avhile showing
him the magnificence of his home and its appointments, some
what maliciously asked Du Bosc what he thought of it, and
whether this grandeur appeared to him to be very apostolic.
To this embarrassing question the Huguenot pastor, who would
neither be rude to a kind friend nor untrue to his own pro
fession, promptly replied : " Your lordship has two titles of rank
in this city. You are both count and bishop of Chalons, and
your dignity as count confers upon you rights and privileges
quite distinct from those of the episcopate. I see nothing in
your house that transcends the magnificence becoming a peer
of France."2

'La Vie de Pierre du Bosc (Rotterdam, 1694), 7-12, 78, 101.
4 Ibid., 36. The judgment of the author of the Vie de Pierre du Bosc,
who was his son-in-law, Pierre Le Gendre, and who styles him (page 1) " a star
of the first magnitude," and " one of the most brilliant luminaries that have en
lightened the Christian world since the Reformation," might be received with a
suspicion of partiality, were it not fully corroborated by the favorable estimates
of others not open to any such imputation. Not to speak of his contemporary,

456 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IX
An opportunity now presented itself for the display of Du
Bosc's address, as well as of his eloquence, in the interest of
his f ellow-believers.
' In 1668 the suggestion was offered by the same advisers that
were responsible for his entire course of oppressive legislation
respecting the Huguenots, that Louis should abolish
abolish the the two "chambers of the edict" sitting the one in
of the Paris and the other in Rouen. \ It was represented to
Edict " """"^
him that grave abuses had grown up in connection
with these exceptional tribunals. Not to speak of charges of
venality on the part of the judges, and of the immoderately
long vacations in which the judges were said to indulge them
selves, it was alleged that the course of justice was not unfre-
quently much delayed by the transfer of cases to them by
appeal, when the parliaments were on the point of rendering
definitive decisions. Moreover, the king was assured that the
Protestants Avould suffer little or no practical loss in their priv
ileges through the contemplated measure. It was well knoAvn
that Henry the Fourth originally intended that the Chamber of
the Edict at Paris should consist of ten Roman Catholic and
six Protestant judges. The clamor of Parliament and of the
clergy prevented this equitable arrangement from going into
effect. Instead of six Protestant judges, the chamber as actu
ally constituted contained but one Protestant judge, the other
five counsellors of the same religious faith being assigned in
stead one to each of the chambres des enquetes.1 It was not
difficult to persuade Louis the Fourteenth that the Huguenots

the historian Benoist, who affirms that, without flattery, Du Bosc may be said
to have possessed all the gifts requisite for a Christian orator (Histoire de
l'Edit de Nantes, iv. 99), A. Vinet, no mean judge of the comparative merits
of the great preachers both of former centuries and of our own age, while hesi
tating to assign him the rank of an orator of the first order, places him among
the most interesting and even the most captivating of preachers, and devotes to
his life and works fully one-sixth part of his admirable work, " Histoire de
la predication parmi les reformes de France au dix-septieme siecle " (Paris,
1860), pp. 350-471.
1 In like manner, in the Chamber of the Edict at Rouen there was but one
Protestant among the twelve judges, though there were two other Protestants
who had seats in other chambers. See preamble of the Edict of January,
Benoist, v. , documents, 31, and Benoist's own remarks, i. 379.

1668 PIERRE DU BOSC 457
would be subjected to no substantial injustice by being de
prived of a special tribunal in which they Avere so shghtly
represented, especially as they Avere still to retain their repre
sentation in each of the chambres des enquetes.
Not so thought the Huguenots themselves, and they petitioned
the monarch for permission to plead their cause in his own pres
ence. Their request Avas granted. Choice was made
selected to of Pierre du Bosc as deputy. Louis deigned to admit
remonstrate -, . , , -, . TT -, -, -, .
with the him to a private audience. He even condescended to
signify his good pleasure that the Huguenot should
not be required to present the claims of his fellow-believers
kneeling the while before his august majesty, as even the depu
ties of the national synods, at least toward the last, had been
compelled to do, but that he be permitted to stand. And when
Du Bosc entered the royal cabinet, Louis, who received him
standing with his back to a window and with his head uncovered,
beckoned him to draw near, and listened to what he had to say
not only with attention, but, as the orator waxed warm with his
subject, with eyes and countenance that seemed to show that he
was favorably inclined.
The harangue was a masterpiece of persuasive oratory. After
the customary Avords of loyalty and devotion — words too submis-
ms eloquent s"e an^- fulsome to suit our age, but quite in keeping
harangue, with the spirit of the age in which he lived, Du Bosc
advanced to the main point in his argument. He Avould not en
ter, he said, into the details of the sufferings of the Protestants,
because his majesty had named commissioners to inquire into
these, and from these commissioners he hoped for a faithful re
port. He would confine himself to a consideration of the pro
posal to suppress the " chambers of the edict." At a moment
when the Huguenots were anxiously awaiting a remedy for their
wounds, what words could express the surprise and consternation
created by the receipt of a mortal stab that struck them to the
heart and rendered all hurts incurable. He reminded Louis that
his pubhc declarations, even down to the painful declaration
signed at Saint Germain in 1666, had given assurance to the whole
world of his unalterable determination to observe strictly the
Edict of Nantes. But it would be impossible to maintain that
edict while abolishing the chambers so solemnly established by

458 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IX
it ; inasmuch as the erection of those chambers constituted the
most essential portion of a law which its illustrious author desig
nated as perpetual and irrevocable. To repeal this important pro
vision, the very terms of Avhose enactment showed that it was to
be no temporary arrangement but a permanent safeguard of the
public quiet and concord, could only convey to the Roman Cath
olics the impression that the monarch's intention was to destroy
his Protestant subjects. As to the latter, the edict was regarded
by them as a dike reared for their defence. " But when," ex
claimed Du Bosc in prophetic tones, " when they shall see so
great a breach made in this embankment, they will look for
nothing short of an outburst of the Avaters and a general inunda
tion. Then, in the reigning confusion and fear, every man Avill
doubtless consult his safety by flight. The kingdom Avill be de
populated by the withdraAval of more than a million souls, in
flicting a notable injury upon commerce, upon manufactures,
upon agriculture, upon the arts and trades, upon the prosperity
of the realm in every direction." 1
The beauty and pathos of the peroration made a deep im
pression on his royal hearer. Louis replied by assurances that
he would deal justly by the Protestants. He had lent an ear,
he said, to the plan for the abolition of the " chambers of the
edict," because he had thought that the loss of these Avould in
flict no real damage upon his Protestant subjects. It was other
wise with the proposition that had been broached to do away with
the " chambres mi-parties." " I saw distinctly," said the king,
" that this the measure would not be equitable. These cham
bers are necessary to you. Consequently, I have not consented
to their suppression, nor shall I consent."
The king's patience in listening to the proofs laid before hiin
to make it clear that the " chambers of the edict " were in
tended to be perpetual, unconditional, without limitation of
time, emboldened the Huguenot to declare what he believed to
be the worst feature of the proposed abrogation. The time
selected for effecting it was that inauspicious moment when the

1 Du Bosc's remarkable speech may be read in his Life, pages 51-59, in the
pieces justificatives of Benoist, Histoire de l'fidit, v. 27-30, or in Vinet, Histoire
de la predication parmi les reformus, au dix-septieme siecle, 354-362.

1668 PIERRE DU BOSC 459
Protestants were overwhelmed with alarm and consternation by
reason of the ill treatment of which they were the victims
throughout all the provinces of the realm of Louis, good king
as he was. " We are'-everywhere driven to extremities. Our
The intoier- condition is made not only calamitous, but positively
tion of the nnendurable. Our places of worship are taken from
Huguenots. us_ y^e are excluded from trades. We are deprived
of all the means of gaining a livelihood, and there is no longer a
person of our religion that is not thinking of Avithdrawing from
the kingdom. If therefore your majesty shall proceed to strike
this final blow, at so wretched a time, there will remain no
means of reassuring men's minds, and all your royal power
will be impotent to allay the fright and the terror Avith which
all the members of our communion will be seized. Every man
Avill try to escape. Thenceforth it will be only a confused and
promiscuous flight.1 Do me the favor, Sire, of believing that
I do not say this as a minister. I am not allowing my profes
sion or my rehgion to shape my speech; I state matters as
they are. You hold the place of God, and I act before your
majesty as if I beheld God Himself, of Avhom you are the
image. I solemnly protest in your presence that I state the
truth as it is." 2
The king appeared still more moved by these last words,
and before he gave Du Bosc leave to retire, he exclaimed,
. . , " Ah ! I shall think of the matter. Yes, I promise
Louis a en- *¦
bgyof Dn that I shall think of it." And, as he passed out of his
cabinet into an adjoining chamber, where a goodly
company of nobles was in attendance upon Queen Maria
Theresa, he was heard to remark to her, " Madam, I have just
been listening to the man who of all the speakers in my king
dom is the best." Then turning to the courtiers, he repeated
his favorable opinion : " It is certain that never before had I
heard any one speak so well." 3
Yet, so far as any advantage to accrue to the Huguenots was
in question, the impression made upon Louis was evanescent.

1 " Chacun tachera a se sauver ; ce ne sera plus qu'une debandade univer-
selle." a Vie de Pierre du Bosc, 51-59. s Ibid. , 63, 64.

460 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IX
Du Bosc and his fellow Protestants held subsequent conferences
with the king's ministers, which came to nothing. They took
good care to propose no conditions, lest it should afterward be
said that they had consented to their own undoing. None the
less did the king persist in the iniquitous course in which he
suppression was engaged. By his mandate of January, 1669, he
oersofthe1" f°rniaiiy suppressed the " Chambers of the Edict " of
oary'iM?" ^ax^s an(l 0I Rouen, depriving the Huguenots at one
stroke of the pen of a good measure of the benefits of
his grandfather's great enactment for their protection — the edict
which Du Bosc had described as "the grandest work of his
exquisite wisdom, the sweetest fruit of his labors, the principal
foundation of the union and concord of his subjects and of the
the re-establishment of his state, as he himself expressed it in
the preface of that solemn law." One tires of repeating the
paltry excuses, unworthy of the name of reasons, alleged by
Louis for the repeal. ' It had almost been more charitable to
the Huguenots to inform them brutally that the king was re
solved to wrest from them their cherished privileges by main
force, than to justify the robbery by the repetition of arguments
every one of which had been anticipated and had been shown
to be of no force, in the memorials handed in by the Protestant
deputies.^ It should not escape our notice here that the king
Avas made by his advisers unconsciously to justify the
persistence persistence with which the Huguenots, at the com
mencement of the reign of Louis the Thirteenth, in
sisted upon the restoration of the Edict of Nantes to the form
in which Henry the Fourth originally signed the law, by the
removal of those modifications that were made with the view of
securing its registry by the parliaments. And if, as Louis the
Fourteenth said, the Protestants derived no benefit from the
estabhshment of these exceptional tribunals which they could
not get just as well from the chambres des enquetes, in each of
which then sat a single Protestant judge, the true remedy for
this state of things was to be found not in the discontinuance

1 See Moyens de remedier aux abus pour lesquels on parle de supprimer les
Chambres de l'Edit de Paris et de Rouen ; in Benoist, v. pieces justificatives,
30, 31.

1668 GROWING PERSECUTION 461
of the Chambers of the Edict, but in massing the Protestant
judges, as was first contemplated, in a court where their votes
would be of some avail.1 If the single Protestant judge was of
no more account in the Chamber of Edict at Paris among fifteen
judges of the other communion, the dictate of common sense,
no less than of equity, would have been at once to revert to the
first purpose of Henry the Fourth, and increase the number of
Protestant judges in the tribunal specially erected for their ben
efit to six, by withdrawing them from the five chambres des en
quetes, where for the same reason their influence was so insignifi
cant. I need scarcely say that such an idea never seems to have
entered the mind of Louis the Fourteenth, and that the Protes
tants knew too well with what disfavor he would receive any
suggestion looking to the increase of their privileges to think of
suggesting it. The bigoted monarch thought that he had done
his full duty to his Protestant subjects in providing that,
when the cases in which they were interested came before the
" grandes chambres " of the parliaments, they should enjoy the
privilege of challenging two among the judges who Avere in Roman
Catholic orders and might be supposed to be incapacitated by
reason of partiality from treating reputed heretics with suffi
cient justice.2 In point of fact, however, it was subsequently re
marked as a circumstance highly creditable to the honor of these
clerical judges, that when the frenzy of persecution
Fairness of
the ecclesias- seized men of all ranks of society, and when in partic
ular the highest judges of the land were not ashamed,
in their servile deference to the will of the monarch, to violate
the clearest dictates of natural justice, as well as the plainest
prescriptions of law, in order to condemn the guiltless, the ec
clesiastics proved less pliant than their lay colleagues upon the
bench to the arbitrary commands of the court of Versailles.
Some years later, the ministers of Rouen, in the suit brought

¦ See the 30th article of the original Edict of Nantes, as given by Anquez, His
toire des Assemblees Politiques des Reformes de France, Appendice, p. 466. It
may be compared with the modified article as published, in the Edits, Declara
tions et Arrests, in Benoist and elsewhere.
2 Edit du roy portant suppression des Chambres de l'Edit des parlemens de
Paris et de Rouen, Janvier 1669, in Recueil des Actes, Titres, etc., du Clerge, vi.
395-399, Benoist, v. p. j., 31-33.

462 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IX
against them on the eve of the Revocation, with the intent of
securing the demolition of their place of worship at Quevilly,
declined to challenge any of the ecclesiastics sitting in the
" grande chambre " of the Parliament of Normandy. " They
fared the better for it," observes a contemporary ; " for the ec
clesiastics were the fairest of their judges. " 1 The Abbe Fer-
rare, the Abbe of Argouges, and especially the Dean of Gre-
nonville, the senior judge, opposed as flagrant iniquity the
prosecution of men whom the court recognized to be innocent
of any evil intention, and this merely with a view to the de
struction of the Protestant " temple." " The king," openly said
the dean, " the king is master in his kingdom and possesses full
power to command that the edifice be razed to the ground,
without our being obliged, for the purpose of compassing this
end, to commit an act of injustice that will cover us with
shame." 2
Louis the Fourteenth was not prepared as yet to face the
consequences of pressing his Huguenot subjects too far. The
remonstrance of the Great Elector had possibly made some im
pression upon a prince who might in future have need of Protes
tant allies. The warning of Du Bosc was not altogether for
gotten. The considerable loss which the industries of his
kingdom had sustained in consequence of the recent emigration
spoke with an eloquence quite its own. A daring project had,
moreover, been discovered, set on foot by a French Protestant
named Marcilly, or Marsilly, for the purpose of arousing the
Marciiiys northern poAvers of Europe and Great Britain against
project. Louis, because of his persecution of the Huguenots.
The plot indeed had failed, and its author, kidnapped on foreign
territory, had been brought to Paris and expiated his temerity
by being broken on the wheel; but the impression was not
wholly effaced.3 Somewhat alarmed by the results of his own
1 "lis s'en trouverent bien : car ce furent les plus equitables de leurs juges."
P. Legendre in Vie de Pierre du Bosc, 69.
2 Ibid., 69, 70.
3 The part played in this affair by the Marquis of Ruvigny, the Huguenot
deputy-general, but recently sent by Louis XIV. to England in order to influence
Charles II., was, to say the least, not creditable to him. Benoist, iv. 126, seq.
See the documents relating to the examination and execution of Claude Roux
dit Marsilly, of Nismes, in Depping, Correspondance administrative, iv. 311-318.

1669 GROWING PERSECUTION 463
law of 1666, desirous, also, to soothe the irritation of the Hu
guenots, caused by the abolition of the " Chambers of the
Louis xrv Edict," the king, on the first day of February, 1669,
e&cf 0^666 published another " Declaration," by which he formally
(Feb. 1669). revoked that which he had given out nearly three years
before, and undertook to place the fabric of legislation on an
essentially new foundation.1 The moral effect was good. The
Protestants were overjoyed ; for they inferred that equity had
once more entered into the spirit of the laws. Again they
dreamed of a return to the golden age of Henry the Fourth.2
The clergy of the established church were correspondingly
annoyed and disappointed. In their next assembly the prelates
complained of " so extraordinary a change." Thev
A tm ovflrn c.(*.
and protests loudly protested that the law of 1669 had been issued
' ' without consulting any of their representatives, Avhere-
as the law it repealed was an action deliberately taken after due
investigation,3 in fact, a digest of decisions of the king's council
rendered in cases of difference of opinion between the commis
sioners — " decisions obtained by the Catholics at inconceivable
trouble and expense." 4
It would seem, however, that the Huguenots might have
spared themselves somewhat of their rejoicing, and the clergy
of the Roman Catholic church their wail of disappointment.
For, if the law alleviated the condition of the adherents of the
Protestant faith, the improvement in most regards was more ap
parent than real, more temporary than permanent. The law
restored to them none of the churches that had been torn down
in the past, and gave them no sure guarantees of a secure en
joyment of the churches that remained. It failed to accomplish
much that it pretended to effect. If it seemed by one of its
1 Declaration du Roy, du premier Fevrier 1669, portant Reglement des choses
qui doivent 6tre gardees et observees par ceux qui font profession de la Reli
gion pretendue reformee. Edits, Declarations et Arrests, 14-26. Drion, Histoire
chronologique, ii. 111-117. Benoist, v. pieces justif., 33-38.
2 Benoist, iv. 125.
3 " Avait ete donnee en connaissance de cause."
4 " Lesdits arrgts contradictoires ont ete obtenus par les catholiques avec des
peines et des frais inconcevables." Cahier of the Assembly of 1670, in Lievre,
Du r61e que le clerge catholique de France a joue dans la Revocation de l'Edit
de Nantes, 29, 30.

464 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IX
articles to admit the Protestants to all kinds of trades, and dis
pensed them from everything that might be contrary to their
consciences, it accompanied this grant by restrictions that al
most completely nuUified the advantages they might otherwise
have gained therefrom. It still continued to be the fact that in
certain parts of Languedoc where there Avere ten Protestant in
habitants to one Roman Cathohc, the regulations in force forbade
that there should be more than one Protestant artisan to two
Roman Catholics.1 Such substantial advantages as the law con
ferred Avere lost in the course of time. For, although the laAV,
unlike its predecessor of 1666, was formally, though reluctantly,
registered by the parliaments of the kingdom, it Avas not long
before a neAv series of orders in council began to narrow clown
the privileges of which the Huguenots could boast.
The "remonstrances," or addresses, of the prelates to the
king, in behalf of the assemblies of the clergy, illogical, extrava
gant, and incendiary as they seem always to have been, are al
ways instructive. For, like the more formal " cahiers," or peti
tions, of the same bodies, they indicate the subjects that chiefly
occupied the minds of the ecclesiastics, and they distinctly
point out the particular privileges of the Huguenots
the Bishop against which the next attack will be directed. The
of Uzes. 7
violent speech of the Bishop of Uzes shows that no
provisions of law then in force were more obnoxious to the Ro
man Catholic hierarchy than the regulation in accordance with
which Protestant parents could feel that their children were
safe from the seductive arts of the professed " converters " until
the boys were fully fourteen years of age and the girls twelve.
Scarcely less do the prelates appear to have been annoyed that
the king had not yet seen fit to accede to the request made some
time since by the provincial estates of Languedoc, to take away
from Roman Catholics the liberty to become Protestants. It
was " an odious privilege," the bishop declared, " a detestable
liberty," which the faithful of the kingdom had never asked for
and which* they would only be too glad solemnly to renounce,

1 For a discussion of these facts, and for an elaborate and exhaustive compari
son of the laws of 1666 and 1669, I must refer the reader to Benoist, iv. 110-
122.

1670-1673 GROWING PERSECUTION 465
following the glorious example of their brethren of Langue
doc.1 It was about this time that, by one of those singular turns
of affairs Avhich both amuse and surprise the student of history,
the court was seen voluntarily offering to the Huguenots a
privilege long denied to their requests, and the Huguenots
found themselves declining the gift they had ardently desired.
When the National Synod of Charenton assembled in 1659, the
Protestants were distinctly given to understand that they must
not expect permission to hold any more gatherings of the
kind, unless it should suit his majesty to convene them, for pur
poses of his own. This contingency had now arisen. While the
public project of reducing the Protestants by open
Secret proj- * . r J . ,° ,/ . j
ectotre- attack was in progress, there was 'a secret and more
dangerous plan of bringing them over by means of a
so-called "religious reunion. "J From the days of Cardinal
Richeheu the idea of a compromise whereby, through some
trifling concessions, the adherents of the Reformed rehgion
might be enticed to return to the fold of the established church,
had perhaps never been abandoned. Recently the project had
gained a new lease of life. Fresh negotiations, in the course of
which the court sounded the sentiments of a great number of
the Protestant ministers of France, led the advocates of the
measure to the conclusion that there were good reasons to be
lieve that, were a general convocation to assemble, the friends
of the movement would be found to constitute a clear majority
of the delegates. Under these circumstances the
poses to ai- churches were informed that the government consented
tionai synod to grant them permission to hold another of their
to mfifit
highly prized national synods. But the same reasons
that had led the crown to desire the convocation, forced the
Protestants to look upon it with distrust and to reject the
offer. After a little, their confidence got the better of their
fears and suspicion, and they signified their willingness to
accept; but now it was the government's turn to withdraw.
1 Remonstrance du clergg de France faite en l'annee 1670, par illustrissime et
reverendissime Messire Jacques Ahemar de Monteil de Grignan, Eveque et
Comte d'Uzes . . . contre les entreprises de ceux de la Religion Pretendue
Reformee. Recueil des Actes, Titres, etc. , du Clerge, v. 723-733.
30

466 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IX
The synod was never permitted to come together. But for
several years the effort to win proselytes >vas not abandoned.
A rough sketch of the basis of union proposed found its way
into circulation and has come down to us — a paltry attempt
to meet a grave religious crisis by politic make-shifts— a series
of twenty-five articles wherein not a single great doctrinal
question is touched, but which propose to secure peace by
means of a confession of faith drawn up in general terms, in
cluding only the doctrines upon which the Roman Cathohc and
the Reformed religions are in agreement, and not touching
upon any points respecting which they are at variance. The
matter of the papacy, according to this paper, was to be solved
by the institution of a patriarch dependent upon the king
alone ; that of celibacy, by denying the right to marry to the
patriarchs and bishops, and conceding it to the curates. The
Protestant ministers were to become curates Avith independent
parishes, or as colleagues of the priests of the other religion.
Confession was retained, but images Avere to be abolished. The
liturgy was to be "reformed," and to be mainly in an intel
ligible tongue, but a few hymns or psalms in Latin might be
retained at vespers. It was so on to the end of the chapter.
Communion was to be administered under both species, and the
communicants must kneel before the host, but no one could be
compelled to kneel before it at any time but at the communion.
Baptism and the Lord's Supper were to be " the tAvo greatest
sacraments ; " but in view of the guarded language of the
articles it was somewhat difficult to make out exactly how
many more sacraments there were to be.
A more clumsy attempt to entrap the Huguenots had never
been made.1 For even had it been possible to secure the
majority of the members both of an assembly of the clergy and
of a national synod, in favor of so ill-digested a scheme for the
reconciliation of religious differences, it is very certain that
the laity of neither the Reformed Church, nor the Roman
Catholic would for one moment have acquiesced. The history

1 See Projet pour la Reunion des deux Religions, la Catholique et la Pro-
testante, inserted in P. Jurieu, La Politique du Clerge de France (Amsterdam,
1682), 258-262. Also, in Benoist, v., pieces just., 87-89.

1673 GROWING PERSECUTION 467
of " the churches of the Desert," only a few years later, proved
that the Protestant people loyal to its convictions and well
trained in theological questions, should it be deprived of its
ministers, was quite capable of raising up for itself religious
leaders taken from the ranks. And, on the other hand, a
recent incident that had occurred in Paris itself shoAved con
clusively that the populace of that intensely Roman Catholic
city was by no means ready to renounce any of its beliefs or
superstitions, even at the bidding of ecclesiastical superiors.
The Archbishop of Paris and other prelates, it would appear,
regarding the number of feast-days as excessive, and the
observance as detrimental to trade and agriculture, ordered the
suppression of a certain number of these feast-days, and, at the
same time, directed the removal of some sacred pictures and
images in public places whose presence led the people to neg
lect their work and congregate around the shrines for worship.
But the laity, instead of obeying the mandate, closed their
shops, and, abandoning all business, flocked noisily and ex
citedly to the spots which they had been in the habit of fre
quenting. An attempt to arrest the ringleaders of the dis
turbance, so far from intimidating, only infuriated the mob;
and, in the end, the civil magistrates and the clergy, to avoid
bloodshed and pillage, thought it the part of prudence to re
store to the people both their objects of devotion and their
coveted holy days.1
The project of religious reunion received its death-blow at the
provincial synod of the Isle de France, held in Charenton (May,
Provincial 1673), where a wise and resolute body of pastors and
ciharen°on, elders succeeded by their shrewdness in pronouncing
16T3- against it as ill-adArised and unlawful, in spite of the
royal commissioner, whose efforts to prevent an expression of
their sentiments were respectfully met but conspicuously foiled.2
Meanwhile the condition of the Huguenots had not sensibly
1 The incident rests upon the authority of a short contemporary Protestant
paper which Jurieu has inserted in his Politique du Clerge de France, 266.
Benoist, iv. 260, supplements the details of an affair which was of common
notoriety. 2 Benoist, iv. 263-269, gives a full and very interesting account of the adroit
ness with which the discussion was managed.

468 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IX
improved with the nominal repeal of the ordinance of 1666.
Every year brought new infringements of their rights, with the
prospect of still greater evils yet to come. The number of
churches sacrificed to the malice of their enemies steadily in
creased. Hitherto a Protestant place of worship had perhaps
never been destroyed, save where the commissioners agreed in
decreeing its title to be faulty, or where the commissioners be
ing divided in opinion, the king in council approved the decision
of the Roman Catholic commissioner. For the first time, in
1672, the order Avas given to destroy a Protestant church, in
consequence of the solicitations of the clergy, where both of the
commissioners had found the rights of the Huguenot worship
pers to be Avell grounded.1 Of personal insults and acts of injus
tice, not infrequently arising from the desire to exclude Protes
tants from even those professions and occupations to which the
law still admitted them, there was no lack.3 And the minds of
men were becoming accustomed to the idea of still more heroic
measures for the entirpation of the Reformed religion in France
than any hitherto employed. The Marquis de Chastelet made
The took some noise by the publication of a book entitled " A
tiqine^e1" Treatise on the Policy of France," in Avhich he boldly
France." maintained that, on the simple ground of national ex
pediency, the present monarch should apply himself to the glo
rious Avork of cutting off the last remaining head of " the Hydra
of Heresy " in France. There is reason to believe, he said, that
his majesty will have more than one hundred thousand enemies
in the heart of his states, so long as there shall be Huguenots
in France, who, perhaps, are only awaiting an opportunity to
rise. Thus they are perpetual obstacles to the plans that might
be formed. Though they are weak, they are yet to be feared,
because Ave know Avhat their animosity is.3 Whereupon the
1 Benoist, iv. 218.
- For an aggravated case, see the story of the surgeon of Aix, Lientard by name,
of which an account was given in a petition presented to the king in 1671. Ibid.,
iv. 203.
3Traitte de la Politique de la France, par Monsieur P. H. Marquis de C. [Paul
Hay, Marquis de Chastelet.] Avec quelques reflexions sur ce traitte par le Sr.
L'Ormegregny, pages 68, 69. My copy is of the second edition, Cologne, Pierre
du Marteau, 1677. The first edition appeared in 1669. See an article by Leon
Feer, " Un chapitre de la polemique entre protestaiits et catholiques au dix-sep-

1675 GROWING PERSECUTION 469
marquis proceeds to suggest to the king not less than fifteen
measures whereby the good Avork of OA'erthrowing Protestantism
in France may be consummated, without expelling its adherents
from the kingdom. " I shall not waste time and pains," retorted
a Protestant writer, who replied to Chastelet's book, " in making
remarks on the fourteen [fifteen] methods he proposes for the
purpose of harassing us and of making us weary of our religion,
our country, and our lives. More methods have been discovered
than he suggests. And because the king has within the last
four years had many complications to unravel with the court of
Rome, it has been a part of the policy of France, as often as an
affront was done to the pope, to treat us at the same time with
some extraordinary severity, so as to exclude the suspicion of
heresy." l
The imprudent author of the " Politique de France," was thrown
into prison, whether for the reason that he had incautiously be
trayed the secret designs of the ministry, or because he had
dared to write at all upon matters of state. But he was not the
only person that advocated heroic treatment of the
treated to " Hydra of Heresy." That old and bitter enemy of the
¦Hydra of Huguenots, the Bishop of Uzes, now become Coadju
tor of the Archbishop of Aries, had much to say of the
same fabulous monster, to the existence of which he begged
Louis the Fourteenth, like another Hercules, to give the fin
ishing stroke.2 And as he spoke in the name of prelates in
satiate and peremptory in their demands, his suggestions and
theirs easily became laws. The Huguenots, especially in Lan
guedoc, had endeavored to make up for their losses in public
places of worship by new places of a less ostentatious character,
such as the Edict of Nantes permitted Protestant nobles of high
rank to institute upon estates within the bounds of which, ac
cording to feudal law, they enjoyed the right of the so-called
haute justice. There were parts of the country where for a time
tieme siecle," in Bulletin de la Societe de l'hist du Prot. franc., xxx. (1881), 3,
etc. 1 Reflexions, ubi supra, 151. — The author was Pierre du Moulin, son of the
famous pastor of Sedan, who, at the time he wrote these remarks, was chaplain
of Charles the Second and prebendary of Canterbury.
2 The address was delivered August 17, 1675. Benoist, iv. 296.

470 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IX
these new places de fief more than compensated for the number
of churches recently destroyed. Fresh explanatory ordinances,
interpreting the law of Henry the Fourth to suit the desires of
the clergy of France in the time of his grandson, three genera
tions later, robbed the Huguenots of their newly acquired com
fort, by forbidding the provincial synods to assign any ministers
to hold service in feudal castles or towns.1 A curious circum
stance came to light during the investigations that ensued when
the Protestants vehemently protested against the new act of op
pression. Respecting one of the orders in council of which the
Protestants particularly complained, both the king and his ad
visers professed entire ignorance. The document in question
was at first treated as a myth ; but an examination of the records
revealed the fact that such an order existed. It had been drawn
up by Le Tellier without consulting the king, and a secretary
had certified by his signature to the presence of Louis, although
that monarch had attended no such meeting. The words " Done
in the king's council of state, the king being present," were false
in point of fact.2 Thus Avere matters managed when the Re
formed were concerned.
There was unfortunately little or no doubt that Louis the
Fourteenth was present and consenting when another order
Protestant *n council was given, which provided that Protes-
Iff/orwdto *an* girls received into the House of the Propagation
see their par- 0f the Faith at Sedan should not be forced to see
ents before
abjuring. their parents before abjuring ! The Protestants, as
the document itself tells us, urged that to deny the parents ac
cess was " a rigor equally opposed to equity and to nature,
which gives to fathers and mothers the right to inquire as to
what becomes of their children, and to learn from the mouth of
their children the true motives of their withdrawal, but chiefly
if that withdrawal has been free and purely voluntary." In
reply to which unanswerable plea, founded upon the rock of
natural justice, the clerical voice that speaks in the king's name
can only say that the monarch has made an investigation and

i See the documents of December 27, 1675, and April 15, 1676, among the
pieces justificatives of Benoist, v. 91.
2 Benoist, iv. 309.

1675 GROWING PERSECUTION 471
finds that the admissions are always voluntary, after purpose
expressed, so that the " affected precaution " of the parents can
only pass for an artifice to endeavor to shake the resolution of
their children and move them by tears, it may be, even by re
proaches and threats. Only thus much would the legislator
provide, that the girls be fully twelve years of age, and that the
mother superior at once upon their reception notify the lieu
tenant-general of the bailiwick. The latter was thereupon
directed to proceed in company with the king's attorney, and,
having ascertained the age of the child and her motives for en
tering the conventual house, to communicate the facts to her rela
tions or guardians. " Meanwhile, however, His Majesty orders
that the said girl cannot be forced to see her said parents until
she shall have made her abjuration." x Yes, and if, after that,
she drew back, she made herself liable to the punishment
meted out to relapsed persons, and must be banished from the
kingdom for life, with no room left for mercy on her judges'
part.2 Protracted and annoying as were the vexations to which
the Huguenots of France were subjected, they had hitherto
conversion brought about few conversions, even of the superfi-
of the Prince cial kind which Louis the Fourteenth began to seek,
deTarante 1 o >
and Marshal and with which the clergy seemed content. To no
Turenne. OJ
small extent they were offset by frequent accessions
to the Protestant churches from the ranks of their Roman
Catholic neighbors. The most noticeable gains were among the
nobles, especially such as looked to the favor of the court for
advancement. Two families, whose representatives in former
generations were among the most stanch supporters of the
Huguenot party, had lately been lost, wholly or in part, to
their ancient faith. The Prince de Tarante, grandson of Claude
de la Tremouille, abjured Protestantism ; and his example was
followed by all his children, except his eldest daughter, who
persevered in her religious views and married the Protestant
Prince of Oldenburg. The case of Marshal Turenne was more
1 Order of Council, August 28, 1676. Isambert, Anciennes lois francaises,
xix. 163, 164 ; Benoist, v. (pieces just.) 93.
2 By the law of June 20, 1665. See the preamble of the law of March 13,
1679, in Edits, Declarations et Arrests, 36.

472 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ctt TX
remarkable. Though he is said never to have exhibited any
great zeal for the rehgion of his ancestors, he resolutely re
jected for many years all the seductive offers made, first by
Cardinal Mazarin, and afterward by Louis himself. He might
have been governor of the dauphin at the price of consenting
to be converted. Later the king labored with him in a private
interview and made him the most tempting proposals. He
turned a deaf ear to them all. Yet not long after, apparently
of his own accord, and for reasons which he never divulged,
the marshal submitted to the instruction of the clergy and pro
fessed himself convinced of the truth of the Roman Catholic
religion.1 Some more expeditious method of proselyting was called
for, and the fertile brain of Paul Pelisson suggested it to the
king in a proposal to establish a fund of money for the pur
chase of conversions.2
Paul Pelisson, or Pelisson Fontanier as he called himself from
the name of his mother, Avas no ordinary man. Bom in Be
ziers, in 1624, of Huguenot parentage, he pursued his
son and the studies Avith distinction at Castres, at Montauban, and
conver- at Toulouse. His precocity was such that he was
scarcely of age before he published a learned trans
lation of the Institutes of Justinian. His literary style was so
brilliant that, by the time that he was thirty, he had been elected
a member of the French Academy, without his sohcitation and
in defiance of the rules of that body. Another Huguenot, Con-
rart, the father of the Academy, was his patron. The famous
Madeleine de Scudery was his warm friend. Unhappily the
eyes of Fouquet, the corrupt Superintendent of Finances, fell
upon him, and seeing in the man who Avielded so graceful a pen
a person that could become a valuable assistant, Fouquet en
ticed him into his service. If Pelisson imitated his master's
peculations on a comparatively modest scale, he was none the
1 Benoist, iv. 128-130.
2 It may remarked, however, that Benoist (iv. 350) is inclined rather to give
credit for the invention of this new method of converting the Huguenots to the
Bishop of Grenoble, created cardinal by Innocent XI., and known later as the
Cardinal de Camus. He was certainly the first prelate to put the plan into
execution, and his efforts served, as will be seen, as a model for others.

1676 THE FUND FOR CONVERSIONS 473
less a defaulter to the amount of two hundred thousand livres.
At Fouquet's fall he was thrown into the Bastile. To his credit
it may be said that he used his rare literary abilities in defend
ing the fallen minister, where many would have sought to secure
personal advantages by deserting a patron now in disgrace.
This was in 1661. Five years later, having by skilful flattery
secured the favorable regard of the king, he obtained his release
from prison, not only without being compelled to make restitu
tion of his ill-gotten gains, but with a certain eclat, as a man
whom the prince and the prince's favorites delighted to honor.
Fenelon Avould have us believe that Pelisson left the Bastile "a
humble child of the church," and certainly it is a fact that, in
view of the abjuration which he had engaged to make, but
from motives of decency took good care to adjourn for a time,
he was at once appointed historiographer and received a pension
from the king. More substantial rewards followed the fulfil
ment of his promise, in October, 1670. Pelisson, converted to
the Roman Catholic faith, became a " maitre des requetes," and
the holder of numerous lucrative positions at the disposal of
the crown. To secure the priory of Saint Orems of Auch, the
abbey of Bevenent and other benefices, yielding many thousands
of livres in annual income, he went so far as to enter the eccle
siastical ranks.1
It was in November, 1676, that, with the king's approval, the
" Caisse des Conversions " Avas established — a true Pandora's
box, according to the Protestants. Never had money been
more impudently put to base purposes ; rarely had the attempt
been made to accomplish so much by niggardly expenditures.
Louis at first placed at Pelisson's disposition the income of the
two abbeys of Cluny and of Saint Germain des Pres. The re
sults were so encouraging that he soon added one-third of the
economats, or the revenues of the vacant bishoprics, abbeys, and
other benefices of the kingdom, and occasionally some special
gifts of his royal bounty, besides rewarding the inventor of the
scheme with a liberal sum of money. The bishops were
made the agents of the distribution. Pelisson urged them by
1 See the article of M. O. Douen, " Le Fondateur de la Caisse des Conversions,'*'
Bulletin de la Societe de l'hist. du Prot. franc., xxx. 145-160.

474 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IX
letter to exercise the utmost activity, accompanied by the ut
most economy, and permitted them to draw upon him for all
necessary funds. His correspondence, if we may judge from
the specimen which Jurieu has preserved for us in one of his
timely treatises, was a model of cautious finance. He impressed
upon the bishops that the money was to be used strictly as an
incentive to conversion, and not as a reward to any persons that
might already have consented to be converted. No one need
apply to him in behalf of the latter class of persons. " I have
solemnly renounced, and as it Avere by contract, the right of pro
posing to the king on my own account any other expenditure than
that for conversions yet to be made." : There Avas in Pelisson's
correspondence a quaint and curious sort of piety which might
not haA'e been expected in connection with plans for the pro
motion of the most repulsive and demoralizing form of bribery
ever invented. After encouraging the prelate whom he ad
dressed to call for still greater sums of money, if these sums
would buy more conversions, Pelisson added : " Should you ask
me hoAV this comports Avith the slenderness of our resources, and
with our purpose of prosecuting the work in the same manner
throughout the entire kingdom, I shall place at the head of my
account Him who makes the widow's oil and meal to increase
and who multiplies the five loaves." 2 Scriptural illustrations
have rarely been more singularly employed.
To the bishops the good work done by their colleague of
Grenoble in the Val de Pragelas was held up as a resplendent
example. Helped by the Company of the Propagation of the
Faith of Grenoble and by a few Jesuit missionaries, and fortified
by a distribution of only about two thousand crowns, sent by
several instalments, this prelate had secured well-certified lists
of seven or eight hundred persons brought within the pale of
the church. An expenditure of two, three, four, or five pistoles3

' " Si lui ou sa famille sont convertis il y a quelque terns, il faudroit en parler
au Roy par quelque autre que moi, qui ai renonce solennellement et comme par
contract, a ne proposer de mon chef nulle autre depense que celle des conver
sions a, faire."
2 " Je vous mettrai en tete de mon compte celui qui faite croitre l'huile et la
farine de la veuve, et qui multiplie les cinq pains."
3 In order to make this spiritual price current intelligible, it should be under-

1676 THE FUND FOR CONVERSIONS 475
gained over a whole family consisting of a number of persons.
Still the bishops might on occasion go as high as one hundred
francs to make sure of a family of some prominence ; only, the
greatest economy should be practised in order that the gracious
"dew" — so he was pleased to call the king's bounty — might
reach as many people as possible. By all means, every draft
on the fund must be accompanied by a certificate of abjuration
given by the prelate, the intendant, or some person of standing,
and by a receipt to serve as a voucher. "The prelates and all
others that shall charitably enter upon this work," Avere re
minded that every list of converts would pass under the king's
eyes, and that they could in no other way so effectually pay
court to his majesty as by their judicious expenditure of the
money of which Pelisson was the almoner.1
A convert bought for less than two dollars on the average, a
whole family gained to the true church for four, six, eight, or
Paltry price *en, never more than twenty dollars — certainly this
of converts. wag cneap enough.2 No wonder that the king, whose
eager eyes scanned carefully all the names, was delighted with
his success, and bade the converter in chief go on year after
year, until, in three years' time, the number of abjurations that
had been bought amounted to ten thousand, and in six years,
after the first Dragonnade (1682), to the boasted figure of fifty-
eight thousand one hundred and thirty.3 The only trouble was
that the " conversions " were as worthless as they were cheap.
I scarcely need say that only the most venal of men put up
their religion for sale, and that such wretches had no conscien
tious scruples against repeating the profitable transaction as
often as might be, either under the same names, or, when the
fraud was detected by the too frequent recurrence of the same
stood that the icu or crown was equivalent to three livres or francs, and the
pistole to ten francs.
1 "Messieurs les Prerats ou autres qui entreront charitablement dans ces
sortes de soins, ne peuvent mieux faire leur cour au Roi," ete. See Pelisson' s
letter to the Bishop of Grenoble, Versailles, June 12, 1677, and the Memoire, of
which he sent him a copy, in Pierre Jurieu's Politique du Clerge de France
(Amsterdam, 1682), 149-155.
1 In Poitou, in 1681 and 1682 a convert must be quoted a little higher— at two
dollars and a half.
3 0. Douen, ubi supra, xxx. 154.

476 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IX
designations in the catalogues, under assumed names. How
ever insignificant the deductions that should be made from
Pelisson's figures for this cause, it may be supposed that the
Huguenots did not very seriously deplore the loss which his
" Caisse des Conversions " inflicted upon them ; that, in fact,
they were rather inclined to commiserate their opponents be
cause of the worthless proselytes they had made. Jurieu's sar
casm is pardonable when he congratulates the clergy upon the
" Apostolic " methods in vogue for the conversion of souls.
" Nothing," he remarks, "is more similar to the conduct of the
Apostles, who went from place to place dispensing the riches of
grace and contemned the riches of nature, than the charity of
these gentlemen, who everyAvhere dispense the riches of nature
to draw men to grace." 1
It seems like an irony of fate that the man who distributed
Louis's money to lure men and women to the confessional and
the mass, himself died without confessing his sins to his parish
priest ; and that grave doubts should have arisen as to whether
the arch-converter actually died a Roman Catholic or relapsed,
in his last hours, to the belief Avhich he had bought so many to
renounce.2 The solution of those doubts, were it possible,
would be profitless ; and we may be content to accept the decla
ration of the future Archbishop of Cambray, his successor in
the French Academy, to the effect that death, surprising Pelis
son in the form of quiet slumber, "found him in the state of
preparedness of true believers."3 But it is of more importance
for us to note that the same Archbishop Fenelon, the type of

1 Jurieu, La Politique du Clerge de France, 149.
2 ' ' Toutes les apparences sont que ce f ameux Converti est mort dans la f oi
qu'il avoit abandonnee." Rulhiere, Eclaircissemens historiques, i. 148. But
the great historian Rapin Thoyras, who was a nephew of Pelisson, and who
greatly admired his uncle's abilities, confesses that the inquiries which he made
respecting the matter, when accompanying Lord Portland, who was sent as Brit
ish ambassador to France, in 1698, proved altogether fruitless ; among the con
tradictory statements he could learn nothing positive. See the very interesting
letter to Le Duchat, May, 1722, published first in the Bulletin de la Soc. de
l'hist. du Prot. fr., vi. (1858), 71-77, and later in Raoul de Cazenove, Rapin-
Thoyras, sa famille, sa vie et ses oeuvres (4to, Paris, 1866), App., xviii. to xxvi.
3 "La mort, il est vrai, le surprit, venant sous l'apparence du sommeil : rnais
elie le trouva dans la preparation des vrais fideles."

1678 GROWING PERSECUTION 477
the better class of the Roman Cathohc prelates of his day in
France, had not a word of condemnation to utter respecting the
nefarious traffic of souls in which Pelisson was engaged, but, on
the contrary, referred to him in terms of the highest respect as
a man, who since his conversion had not ceased to speak, to
write, to dispense the favors of the prince, in order to bring
back to the fold brethren that had gone astray.1 If by such
expressions of approval, however cunningly couched in euphe
mistic phrases, the best of the members of the French episcopate
made himself and his consenting colleagues partakers in the ig
nominious barter of Louis the Fourteenth, what shall be said of
the reigning pontiff, Innocent the Eleventh, who addressed to
Paul Pelisson a brief of thanks and congratulation ? 2
The Peace of Nimeguen, concluded by Louis the Fourteenth
with the Netherlands in August, 1678, marks an epoch in the
story of the persecution of the Huguenots. Six vears
Th6 Peace of
Nimegnen, before, the contest had been instituted, with little
cause, on the part of the monarch, beyond the rancor
which he cherished against the republic for having ventured to
favor the " Triple Alliance " formed to resist his encroachments.
It was accompanied by loud protestations that the conflict was
a religious war, waged in behalf of the Roman Catholic Church ;
and, whether the claim was well founded or not, the boast
proved serviceable to that church, by inciting Frenchmen to
distinguish themselves by efforts to overthrow Protestantism
at home.3 Yet, on the whole, the Huguenots had rather fared
better than worse, especially during the last two or three years,
by reason of the fact that the king's time and thoughts were
engrossed in the conduct of a foreign war. The clergy felt less
freedom to urge, the government less inclination to acquiesce in
new proscriptive measures. Now all obstacles were removed.
The king was triumphant. Holland indeed had nobly defended

1 " Depuis ce moment il ne cessa de parler, d'ecrire, d'agir, de repandre les
graces du prince, pour ramener ses freres errans. Heureux fruits des plus
funestes erreurs ! " Discours prononce par M. l'abbe de Fenelon pour sa recep
tion a, 1' Academie Francaise a la place de M. Pelisson, le mardi, 31 mars 1693,
CEuvres de Fenelon, xxi. 130.
2 Douen, ubi sapra. xxx. 153.
3 Benoist, iv. 221, 222.

478 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IX
herself, preferring to sacrifice the rich fields which she had of
old slowly and laboriously Avrested from the grasp of the ocean,
and herself opening her dikes to the incoming waters, in order
to prevent the country from falling into the hands of a prince,
the enemy, at once, of Holland's faith and of Holland's free in
stitutions. And the Dutch republic came out of the fierce
struggle unscathed, and furnishing yet another proof to the
Avorld that of all the virtues intrepidity is the safest. The loss
fell upon Roman Catholic Spain, which paid, by the surrender
of Franche Comte and of Valenciennes, Cambray, and other
strong places along the Flemish frontier, the penalty for its
temerity in presuming to oppose the autocratic claims of Louis
the Fourteenth. Now it was that the king became more than
ever persuaded of his own invincibility and allowed himself to
be styled " the Great." Now it was that, giddy with adulation,
he suffered those triumphal arches to be erected which still
stand on the boulevards — the arch of Saint Denis and the arch
of Saint Martin — to commemorate in stone his military prowess.
The point of Louis's highest exaltation coincides Avith the be
ginning of the more systematic assault upon the rights of his
Protestant subjects.
It was shortly after the return of peace to the kingdom that
the Marquis of Ruvigny obtained permission to retire from of
fice and to turn over the duties which he had so long
The elder
Maranisof discharged to his son, as deputy-general of the Re
signs his of- formed churches. At the same time he promised
to assist his son with his counsel at all important
junctures, and to take an active part when necessary. The
change of deputy was decidedly useful to the Huguenots. The
elder marquis was cautious, dilatory, worldly-wise. Some of
his acts had not been above reproach. It is true that men
to whom such delicate functions are intrusted are wont to be
judged harshly by others knoAving little of the difficulties that
are overcome by their prudence, or of the insuperable obstacles
that defy their best efforts. But in the case of the elder Ru
vigny there is too much evidence to prove that he subordi
nated the interests of his constituents to the Avhim or advantage
of a monarch to whom he owed his appointment, and to please
whom he did not shrink, as in the matter of Marcilly, to con-

1678 GROWING PERSECUTION 479
descend to actions which an honorable man must have loathed.
Nor must it be forgotten that his prolonged absence at the
court of Charles the Second of England (whither he Avas sent
by Louis the Fourteenth to influence that monarch, as only
a Protestant and the official deputy of the French churches
might be expected to influence him) left the Huguenots at the
most critical juncture with no representative at the capital.
I have said that the change was advantageous to the Prot
estants. The younger Ruvigny was in every respect the op
posite of his father — alert, prompt, vigorous, an ene-
ceeded by my of procrastination and indecision. An attractive
portrait is drawn of him by a contemporary. He was
well-proportioned in body, gentle in disposition, wise, enlight
ened, brave without rashness, prudent without meanness, agree
able to the king, beloved of the entire court, welcome to the
ministers of state. His acknowledged merits so favorably im
pressed the courtiers as to disarm both their hatred and their
envy.1 Such was the person, now a mere youth, that was to
retain this responsible post until the very publication of the
Recall of the Edict of Nantes, and Avho then, passing into the
service of William of Orange, was to end his days honorably as
Earl of Galway.
Meantime, the work of robbing the Huguenots of one after
another of their churches, by the slow but sure processes here
tofore employed, continued with little interruption. The king,
by his orders in council, decided in favor of the Roman Catho
lic commissioner almost every case brought before him as a re
sult of the disagreement of the intendant and his Protestant
eoUeague. But even this becoming tedious, some more sum
mary method was needed for the attack of those places of Avor-
sbip whose titles had hitherto proved unassailable. This method
was found in new and severe legislation respecting " relapsed
^ persons." The conversions operated by Pelisson and
Law against f- . i ./
laVed" wonderful " caisse des conversions " were very nu
merous, but they lacked permanence. The miserable
creatures who, for a few francs in hand paid, consented to pass
over to the king's religion, and, after a short makeshift of " in-
1 Benoist, iv. 357.

480 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Cn. IX
struction," attended mass, were not averse, so it was said, to
the repetition of their conversion in some neighboring town or
village, at the price of a fresh payment therefor. In order to
obtain this payment, however, they must first return, or seem to
return, to their ancient religion. Thus the number of the " re
lapsed " increased notably. The fact was admitted with charming
frankness in the preamble of the royal declaration published to
check the practice, although the legislator found fault with and
sought to punish the venality of the converts, instead of con
demning his own stupidity in that he imagined it possible to
purchase sincere conviction with money. " Although we had
reason to believe," says Louis, " that this penalty [of simple
banishment established by a previous law] would restrain those
who might have been converted to the Catholic faith from fall
ing into the crime of the relapsed and apostates, nevertheless
we have been informed that in several provinces of our king
dom, and particularly in those of Languedoc and Provence,
there are many persons who make no account of the penalty con
tained in our declaration of the month of June, 1665, and who,
after having abjured the Pretended Reformed Religion, either
in the hope of partaking of the sums which Ave cause to be dis
tributed to the newly converted, or from other special considera
tions, return to it soon after, and when by reason of this they
come to be condemned, proceed to Geneva, Orange, or Avignon,
Avhere they can easily see their relatives, because of the proximity
of the aforesaid provinces." In order to put an end to this
state of things, the king now added to banishment from the
realm the penalty of a public "amende honorable" in the cus
tomary fashion, and of confiscation of the entire property of the
culprit.1 This was not all. A little later, a second law rendered
its predecessor available as a powerful weapon of assault upon
the churches of the Huguenots. Ostensibly on the pretence
that the " crime " was so secretly committed that it was all but
impossible to execute the punishment pronounced against it,
the monarch now ordained that all acts of abjuration should be
placed in the hands of the king's attorneys, and by them be
1 Declaration du Roy du 13 Mars 1679, in fidits, Declarations et Arrests,
36-38.

1679 GROWING PERSECUTION 481
signified to the ministers and consistories of the Protestant
churches of the places where the persons that had abjured re
sided. If, after this, any such persons should be admitted to
divine worship, the services Avere to be declared suppressed,
the ministers to be deprived of the right to officiate.1
The blow Avas far-reaching. Neither ministers nor consis
tories were omniscient. With the best intentions to observe
Afar-reach- the royal mandate, it was quite impossible for them to
ing meas- know by face each person in a flock that might con
sist of two or three thousand or more. How should
they then distinguish in the throng that entered the church
every person who might have abjured his faith ? Not to speak
of the more open converts, who could say that no evil-inten-
tioned man or woman, desirous of earning an addition to his
dishonest gains, might not insinuate himself into the assembly
of the faithful wearing a disguise that would avert suspicion?
One such miscreant, able to swear that he had attended a Prot
estant place of worship since his conversion to the Roman
Cathohc faith, was sufficient to deprive an entire community of
the services it had enjoyed. For, as it had become a well-
established principle of law to construe every fact to the dis
advantage of the Protestants, judges troubled themselves little
to inquire how far there had been any actual guilt on the part
of those whom the government desired to place in the wrong.
The application of this regulation, sufficiently iniquitous in
itself, occasioned the destruction of a great number of the
churches still remaining in France.
The public conscience was seared ; and it Avas the teachers
of rehgion that had rendered it well nigh insensible. A fearful
The ubi- resPorisibility was assumed by the clergy in recom-
conscience mending the successive steps in the persecution cul
minating in the Revocation. They would have in
curred far less guilt, had they urged at once the summary
recall of Henry the Fourth's edict of Nantes. The king would
'"Et en consequence faisons tres-expresses defenses, tant aux Ministres
qu'ausdits Cousistoires delesy recevoir, surpeine de desobel'ssance, de suppres
sion de Consistoires. et interdiction des Ministres." Declaration du Roy du 10
Octobre 1679, Fontainebleau, in Edits, Declarations et Arrests, 39-41.
31

482 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IX
have been committed to but a single, though a great act of
injustice. He and the majority of the French nation would
indeed have been taught to disregard utterly the inahenable
right of man to the liberty of his religious convictions and of
the expression of those convictions. But, at least, there would
have been something frank and honest, if brutal, in the unequal
treatment of the minority of the nation. But to prompt Louis
to do by indirection what he was not prepared to do in a
straightforward manner, to hunt for quibbles by means of
which to defeat the manifest intention of the law, pretexts for
violating plain provisions, convenient measures for oppression
under cover of legal procedure— all this was a long and relent
less education of the royal conscience and the conscience of the
king's subjects to call wrong right, to obliterate all moral dis
tinctions, and to see in religion only a name to cloak with
decency the most foul injustice.
Thus it was that about this time Louis issued an edict sup
pressing the three " Chambres mi-parties " for Languedoc,
snppres- Guyenne, and Dauphiny, which, eleven years before,
"chamDres ne had assured Du Bosc that he would not suppress,
mi-parties." Decause he saw that they Avere necessary to the Hugue
nots for their protection.1 To do what he had himself volun
teered to say was not " equitable," would under any circum
stances have branded Louis as unfit to rule men. The act
became despicable when, as the pretext for depriving the Prot
estants of an institution intended to shield them from unjust
treatment by the judges of the royal parliaments, he made the
mendacious statement that, fifty years having elapsed since
there had arisen any new trouble caused by the Reformed re
ligion, all animosity between the adherents of the two faiths
had passed away, and when he announced it to be one of his
objects in this act to obliterate the memory of past wars.2

1 See above, page 458.
2 The text of the edict of Saint Germain en Laye, July, 1679. may be read
among the documents printed by Benoist, v. 109-111. This applied only to the
Chamber of Languedoc. Similar edicts were issued respecting the other two
chambers. The judges of the suppressed chambers were incorporated in the
parliaments of Toulouse, Bordeaux, and Grenoble. See the treatise of Judge
Jules Cambon de Lavalette, La Chambre de l'Edit de Languedoc, Paris, 1872.

1680 GROWING PERSECUTION 483
Among the most important influences that were brought to
bear upon the mind of Louis the Fourteenth in the present
crisis of the affairs of the Huguenots must doubtless,
The kiii0"'' 8
Jesuit con- be reckoned the personal influence of the king's con
fessor, Pere de la Chaise. It was a singular instance
of the disappointment of human plans, that the very jealousy
felt respecting the Jesuits led directly to the advancement of
that order to a place of commanding importance. When, in
January, 1604, Henry the Fourth Avas induced, contrary to his
better judgment and to his Avishes, to permit the Jesuits to re
turn to France, some conditions were deemed necessary for the
pubhc safety. Chief among these conditions was the provision
that the Jesuits should be obliged to maintain in the suite of the
king, one of their number, a Frenchman and a man of sufficient
authority in the order to serve as the king's preacher, and to be
held responsible for the actions of the whole Company of Jesus.
The authors of the article would seem to have imagined that
they were officially marking the Jesuits as ecclesiastics of sus
picious loyalty aaIio needed to be constantly watched. In point
of fact they opened to them the door of advancement to the
highest honors and emoluments, by securing for one of their
number at all times the post of the king's confessor.1 How
Pere Cotton used his opportunities under Henry the Fourth,
and Pere Arnoux under Louis the Thirteenth, had been ex
perienced by the Huguenots of former generations. It was now
Pere de la seen to what lengths their successor, Pere de la Chaise,
chaise. would drive Louis the Fourteenth. MeanAvhile, in his
irrepressible zeal, which was balanced by little discretion, he
not only involved himself in discussions from which he reaped
httle glory,2 but impelled the king to a legislation often not less
1 Mezeray first called attention to this curious fact. See Abrege Chronologique
de l'Histoire de France (Amsterdam, 1682), vi. 297. One of the earliest results
of Father Cotton's appointment was the demolition in 1605 of the pyramid of
infamy erected to commemorate Chastel's attempt to assassinate Henry IV., and
the substitution of a fountain, "all whose waters," observes Mezeray, "could
never wash out the memory of so horrible a crime."
2 1 refer to his correspondence (in January, 1680), with the great antiquary,
Jacob Spon, a man of whom Bayle remarks that never were the qualities of a
learned and an honest man more happily united than in him. It is curious to
notice how the great number of bought or reported conversions led such a per-

484 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IX
absurd than cruel. Thus, in April, 1681, the royal confessor
obtained from Louis an order in council, forbidding all Protes
tant ministers and elders from making threats or in any way
attempting to dissuade persons of their communion
itationre- from being converted. In order to secure this end
more certainly, ministers and elders were straitly en
joined " not to enter into houses, either by day or by night,
save to visit the sick and perform other functions of their min
istry, on pain of corporal punishment." Within tAvo months
the king was forced to issue a new order, ostensibly interpret
ing, in reality rescinding, the latter part of his prohibition.
His Protestant subjects convinced him that by his previous
action he virtually cut off the ministers and elders from all in
tercourse with the members of the flock of which they Avere set
to have the oversight. They could neither comfort them in af
fliction, nor instruct them when ignorant, nor reconcile them
when they quarrelled, nor watch over their morals and conduct,
according to the rules of the book of discipline whose exer
cise Avas permitted them in France.1
But if the persecution of the Huguenots had its whimsical
side, the persecutors were nevertheless in earnest. The Prot
estants must be shut out of every Avay of making a
ant may be living, be it of the humblest kind. The king was
made to lower his dignity so far as to prescribe that
henceforth no Protestant should act as a midwife, on the ground
that as Protestants do not believe in baptism as indispensable
son as Pere de la Chaise to write jauntily about the conversion of such a man as
the great student of antiquity from his new religion ; and how triumphantly, in
his long, earnest, and pious reply, Spon demonstrated that the religion of the
Reformed churches was the old religion, as opposed to the innovations of the
church of Rome. Jurieu gives both letters in his Politique du Clerge de France,
155-172. I note an interesting allusion to this correspondence in a subsequent
letter of Spon to the Abbe Nicaise, April 5, 1680 : " Je n'ay point receu de let
tre du P. de la Chaize depuis ce temps-la, bien loin d'en recevoir une abbaye de
vingt mille livres, qui me tenteroit autant que les colifichets qu'Ulysse present-
oit autrefois a Achille. Par la grace de Dieu, tous les biens du monde ne me
touchent point, et je ne crois point, que cent millions de rente vaillent le privi
lege d'une ame en repos." Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du Prot. fr., x. 346.
1 Our knowledge of the order in council of April 19, 1681, is derived from tbe
order of June 16 of the same year (printed in Hldits, Declarations et Arrests,
86-88).

1680 GROWING PERSECUTION 485
to salvation, they might negligently allow an infant to die un-
baptized. Moreover, a Protestant layman could not administer
the ondoyement, or provisional baptism, as a Roman Catholic
was permitted "to do in case of necessity.1 Until this time Col
bert had successfully opposed the incessant efforts of the fana
tical party to drive the Protestants out of the financial admin
istration. Although himself a Roman Catholic, he reposed
confidence, as we have seen, in the integrity and in the
fromnnan- competence of the adherents of the Protestant faith.
But now, reinforced by the influence of the chancellor,
Le Tellier, and of the chancellor's son, Louvois, minister of
war, who had made themselves masters of every other depart
ment of the government, and now longed to add the treasury
to their conquests, the pressure became too great for the enlight
ened Colbert to resist.2 An order of council excluded all mem
bers of the Protestant community from serving in any capac
ity in connection Avith the collection or administration of the
revenues of France. The order carried wide -spread distress
throughout the kingdom.3
Now, liberty of conscience Avas at length taken away from
Roman Catholics — a pernicious right, which, if we may believe
No liberty *ne repeated declarations of the clergy in their assem-
forRoman06 D^es> *ne Roman Catholics had never wanted and
catholics, which they Avished to have removed ! Henceforth no
Roman Catholic could become a Protestant without incurring
the most severe penalties — the amende honorable, banishment,
confiscation of property. The minister who should venture to re
ceive a Roman Catholic in the congregation when he officiated
was deprived of his office, the church forfeited all right to divine
worship. The clerical hand that drew up the kw betrayed itself
in needless and offensive expressions of hatred. " The Catholics
have always held in aversion the Pretended Reformed religion
1 Royal Declaration of February 20, 1680, in Edits, Declarations et Arrests, 49,
50. The real object was to get hold of the children, rightly observes Jurieu,
Derniers Efforts de l'lnnocence Affligee, 52. A subsequent order of the Parlia
ment of Rouen, April 22, 1681, forbade Protestant parents and even ministers
from preventing the ondoyement by Roman Catholic midwives. Benoist, iv. 423.
* Benoist, iv. 411.
3 Order of Council, August 17, 1680, in £dits, Declarations et Arrests, 54, 55.

486 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IX
and those who profess it," said the legislator. " We frequently
see with displeasure that Catholics avail themselves of the liberty
conceded [to the Protestants] to go over to the Pretended Re
formed rehgion, contrary to our intention and the intention of
the kings our predecessors ; to which they are most frequently
led by seduction or by the imaginary interest of their personal
advantage." J No sooner had the king signed the edict than
Pere de la Chaise carried it to the assembly of the clergy in
great glee, exclaiming, " Here is the paper we have so long been
soliciting ! " 2
An additional bait for the greed of such as were disposed to
leave the Reformed religion, AA'as offered in the shape of a license
Postpone- from tiie monarch to all debtors among the " New
mint of tbe Converts " to postpone the payment of the principal
debts of 0f their indebtedness for three years.3 This was an
' ' new con- t t ^
verts." extension to the whole kingdom of the experiment which
the intendant Bouchu had been permitted to try in Gex and its
neighborhood, and which had since been tried in Languedoc,
Guyenne, and Dauphiny. The legislator, in his fancied wisdom,
took no care to except from the operation of his new venture in
finance either letters of exchange or the dealings of French with
foreign merchants ; but the laws of trade are inexorable. In a
few years the king was forced to modify, and, a little later, to
repeal altogether his foolish enactment. It sapped the very
foundations of public confidence, and rendered it impossible, as
he Avas himself constrained to admit, for the borrower to obtain
credit.4 Full of satisfaction at what they had obtained from the king,
full of hope respecting what they might yet obtain, the prelates
of France held, in 1680, another of their periodical assemblies.
1 Edict of Fontainebleau, June, 1680, in Edits, Declarations et Arrests, 51-53.
3 " La voici la piece si longtemps sollicitee." Lievre, du Role que le Clerge
catholique en France a joue dans la Revocation de l'Edit de Nantes, 38.
3 Order of the king in council, November 18, 1680, in Edits, Declarations et
Arrests, 64.
1,1 Cette surseance . . . est a present . . . prgjudiciable non seule-
ment ausdits creanciers, mais encore aux debiteurs avec lesquels personne ne veut
entrer en commerce ni traiter d'aucunes affaires, dans la crainte qu'on a qu'ils ne
se servent de ladite surseance." Arrest du Conseil du 16 Decembre 1686, in
Edits, Declarations et Arrests, 299.

1680 GROWING PERSECUTION 487
The tone of the Bishop of Uzes, who was again their spokesman,
was more exultant than ever before ; but neither he, in his ha
rangue to Louis the Fourteenth, nor his constituents, in their bill
of complaints, forgot to urge the king forward in the path upon
which he had travelled so far. Unable, because of his infirmi
ties, to appear in person before the king to remonstrate against
the new and formidable measures of repression that were pro
posed, the Marquis of Ruvigny addressed to Chancellor
vignytothe Le Tellier a vigorous letter, which showed that the
writer was not wanting in prescience respecting the
still greater disasters that menaced his fellow Protestants. " I
had thought," he wrote,1 " that the gentlemen of the clergy were
fully satisfied with what has been done up to the present time
against the king's subjects who make profession of my religion,
and that they had nothing more left them to do except to render
their thanks to his Majesty. But I learn that in their assembly,
they have decided upon a petition which contains several articles
altogether contrary to the faith of the edicts, to Christian charity
and the pubhc tranquillity. This compels me, my lord, to beg
you very humbly to take measures in such wise that it may
please the king to have no regard to these demands, and to come
to no decision before hearing our deputies who are in his suite.
These matters affect them so closely and appear to me so impor
tant, that it seems to me that his majesty's justice cannot deny
them this favor. I conjure you to do this, my lord, in the name
of a great multitude of people who no longer ask for anything
but life, freedom to pray to God and the opportunity to serve
their master. These are A'ery innocent requests, and you see
clearly that, as their all is at stake, they ought to be treated with
more consideration, and that, at least, they should not be cast

1 Ruvigny's letter was dated July 1, 1680. It is given in the original by Be
noist, v., pieces just., 117, 118, and by Galtier de Laroque, Le Marquis de Ru
vigny, 208-210 ; in an English translation, by Agnew, Protestant Exiles from
France (London, 1871), i. 136, 137. Agnew and Galtier de Laroque are un
doubtedly correct in attributing it to the old marquis, " le vieux depute general."
<fcesar Pascal has shown clearly in the (Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du Prot. fr.,
xiii. (1893) 52, that Benoist also intended to refer it to him, since according
to the established usage, " Ruvigny," could stand only for the head of the
family.

488 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IX
into the deepest despair. Such will doubtless be the result,
should the king abandon them to the rigor and violence of their
enemies. These enemies are pitiless and resemble the grave
which ever receives and never says, It is enough. I hope for
much better things from the equity and clemency of his majesty ;
but should I be deceived in my hopes, I shall be greatly pained ;
since it appears to me that the king's service will receive much
detriment, and his subjects of my religion will believe that they
have been forsaken of his royal protection."
It was a noble appeal, Avritten in distinct apprehension of
the coming result. The warning it contained was heeded neither
by Chancellor Le Tellier nor by his royal master.
The year 1680 is the close of a well defined period. The en
suing year is the epoch from which dates a more open and im
moderate resort to those intolerant measures which can logically
issue in nothing short of the formal abrogation of the Edict of
Nantes. From this time forth the dearest rights of the unfortu
nate Huguenots are trampled under foot Avith little pretence of a
regard for either law or equity. Hitherto violence has affected to
wear a decent exterior, and has veiled perfidious assaults upon
the personal or collective rights of the Protestants of France with
profuse and ostentatious Avords of admiration and attachment
for the legislation of Henry the Fourth. Now the disguise is
dropped, and the enemy stands forth in proper form, insolently
revealing the purpose to effect by force that for which the way
has been prepared by a long practice of hypocrisy. It is
proper that, before advancing, Ave should pause for a moment at
this point.
I have endeavored to indicate the most important blows that
had been directed against the civil life and the religious privi
leges of the Huguenots. There are others which I have been
compelled to pass over, but which, on account of their insidious
character, were fraught with the greater mischief. To prevent
a church, which might count its members by hundreds and even
thousands, from having more than a single school, and in that
school more than a single teacher for the instruction of all the
children, was, in a communion Avkich, like that of the Reformed
churches of France, made of prime importance the training of
the young to be intelligent, as well as God-fearing men and

1680 GROWING PERSECUTION 489
women, a menace of utter destruction.1 It was still worse to in
vade the sanctity of the home, in order, by force or by fraud, to
convert the children to a religion which the parents detested as
false and ruinous. As yet the practice had not become wide
spread ; for the law that had aroused the indignation of the
clergy was still in force : no boy could abjure the faith of
father and mother until he had attained the full age of fourteen
years, no girl until she was fully twelve years old. Only a
few months were now to elapse before there began the system
atic seizure of young children for the purpose of placing them
where, under clerical influence, they would be trained in the
Roman Catholic religion. I shall not therefore refer to the
instances of the practice of a similar iniquity, by no means
rare, which appear before this time. In view, however, of the
very common opinion that the king was, for the most part,.
quite uninformed of the acts of injustice perpetrated
personally' in his name, and therefore in no way responsible for
Active them.^it must be noticed that the official records of
the administration disclose the fact, that Louis the Fourteenth
took a very lively and personal interest in helping the es
tablished church in the work of conversion at the expense of
the sacred rights of the parent. To this end, he did not hesi
tate to exert his authority in as despotic a manner as any east
ern sultan would have done/ "Madame de Montlouet," he
wrote from his palace of Saint Germain en Laye, " learning
that one of your daughters has the intention of being converted
to the Roman, Cathohc and Apostolic faith, I write you this
letter to tell you that my will is that you remain in your house
at Lisy with your daughters, and that you do not leave it
under any pretext whatsoever, until I shall have made known to
you my intention." 2 The same records display the sovereign in
1 This was done by the orders of council of November 9, 1670, and December
4, 1671, as appears from the preamble of the order of January 11, 1683 ; but it
was reserved for this last order to insist that the solitary school should be as
near as possible to the Protestant " temple," and that there should be no board
ing scholars save the two whom the minister was permitted to have at his own
house. The studies that might be taught were "reading, writing, and arithme
tic only." See Arrest du Conseil du 11 Janvier 1683 (Versailles), in Edits, Dec
larations et Arrests, 127, 128 ; also Benoist, v. p. j. 150.
2 Louis XIV. to Madame de Montlouet, July 31, 1670, published in Depping,

490 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IX
an equally unenviable attitude, stooping to acts of injustice where
he does not care to let his oavu participation be knoAvn. A
simple joiner Avho professes the Reformed religion having taken
up his abode at Clermont en Beauvoisis, applies for admission
into the guild of joiners. The king is informed of the circum
stance and that the provost of the town has given sentence,
agreeably to the edicts which admit Protestants to all the
trades, that the mechanic be permitted to submit the custom
ary trial piece that shall secure his reception. Thereupon
Louis instructs Colbert, the controller general of finances, to
write to Machaux, the intendant of the generality to the follow
ing effect : " Although his majesty is desirous of preventing so
far as possible the reception of Protestants into the various
trade companies, yet he does not Avish to exercise his authority
on the present occasion. He therefore bids me instruct you to
intimate to the provost that he must interpose such difficulties
in the way of the joiner's admission as shall effectually prevent
it."1 The monarch's conduct in other cases was in keeping with
his conduct in this instance. Justice was a commodity which
Louis always regarded himself as having a perfect right to grant
or deny at his mere good pleasure. To grant was a favor, to
deny was no AATong of Avhich a subject had a ground to com
plain. This was particularly the case in his dealings with the
Huguenots. Late in 1679 he issued a law forbidding nobles
entitled to the " haute justice " to appoint other than Roman
Catholic judges on their fiefs.2 The law was not retroactive.
The Parliament of Dauphiny, however, of its OAvn authority
ordered the removal of the present Protestant judges. Little
Correspondance administrative sous le regne de Louis XIV. (Collection de Docu
ments inedits, issued by the French government) iv. 319. In another letter
about the same time Louis ordered another mother, Madame de Paulin, to pro
duce a daughter whom she was reported to be keeping concealed " on the sus
picion she has had that her daughter is desirous of being converted." Ibid., iv.
319, note.
J Colbert to Machaux, December 20, 1679, Depping, Correspondance adminis
trative, iv. 324.
s Arrest du 6 Novembre 1679 portant defense a tous Seigneurs Hauts Jus
ticiars d'etablir dans leurs terres des omciers autres que Catholiques. Edits,
Declarations et Arrests, 44, etc.

1680 ELIE BENOIST 491
resistance being encountered, the parliaments of Languedoc and
Guyenne consulted the king as to whether they should follow
this example, and he commanded them to do so. The act was
confessedly unlawful. No tribunal of justice might modify the
existing laws ; for that end a royal Declaration would be neces
sary. It was unavoidable that, when the cases of the aggrieved
parties should be brought up before the Parliament of Paris,
that body of judges would be compelled to decide in favor of
the appellants. Consequently, Chancellor Le Tellier was in
structed, while admitting this view of the matter to be correct,
to assure the officers of the crown, in the same breath, that his
majesty would promptly evoke the consideration of the cases
for his OAvn cognizance, and, meanwhile, forbid the plaintiffs from
applying elsewhere for redress ! 1 Louis the Fourteenth is said
to have informed the Chancellor, when he called his majesty's
attention to the fact that the law forbidding the conversion of
Roman Catholics to the Protestant religion was in contravention
of the Edict of Nantes, that he was superior to the Edict of
Nantes.2 He evidently regarded himself as superior to every
other edict, and to all justice, as well.

The most valuable guide in the study of the period of Huguenot history upon
which we are now engaged is undoubtedly the Histoire de I'fidit de Nantes, in
. five volumes, quarto, published at Delft, 1693-1695. The author,
Benoist's , ,., . ' z1 ,. „, „' . , , . '
"Histoire de who did not place his name upon the title-page, is known to have
Nantes " ^een "^lle Benoist> a minister who at the Revocation of the Edict of
Nantes took refuge in the Netherlands. Here, within a -little more
than a month after the publication of the edict of Louis XIV., he was elected
pastor of the Walloon church of Delft, an office which he accepted and whose
duties he discharged with general acceptance until advancing infirmities com
pelled him to request permission to resign. Although he was made pastor
emeritus in 1715, it was not until 1728 that he died, at the age of eighty-eight.
(Bulletin de la Commission pour I'histoire des Eglises wallonnes, iii. 40.) When
he reached the hospitable territory of Holland, he was in his prime. Having
accumulated a great collection of memoirs, as well printed as in manuscript, he
1 The statements of the text are based exclusively upon the letter of Chancel
lor Le Tellier to the Procureur general of the Parliament of Paris, May 27, 1680,
in Depping, Correspondance administrative, iv. 329.
3 "Le Chancelier parlant au Roy de la premiere de ces deux Declarations,
comme etant contraire a, l'Edit, le Roy repondit qu'il etoit audessus de l'Edit."
Legendre, Vie de Du Bosc, 110.

492 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. IX
soon set himself to the task of composing his great work, a task which he tells
us occupied him fully eight years. (Histoire de l'Edit, v. 1019.) For twenty
years before the Revocation, he had been one of the pastors of the important
church of Alencon, where he distinguished himself for his learning and for
the ability with which he defended the Protestant cause, especially in discussion
with a prominent Jesuit controversialist named De la Rue. Although his
family was humble, his father having been doorkeeper of the residence of the
powerful family of La Tremouille, he had made for himself an honorable posi
tion, not only enjoying the friendship and confidence of the Duchess of la
Tremouille, as would appear from one or two incidental references in his work,
but taking a prominent part in the defence of his persecuted fellow-believers
against the attacks of the government. It does not appear whether Benoist re
fers to himself or to a brother minister in the incident recorded in his history,
iv. 619, which occurred about 1683. " I have seen an intendant blush," he
says, undoubtedly meaning M. de Morangis, "at the reply of a minister to
whom he had asserted that the Reformed could not complain of being wronged
when they were merely forbidden things of which the permission was not
granted in express terms by edict or decree. The minister answered him,
that there were many liberties accorded to them by the edicts which it was pos
sible to make use of, but of which nevertheless they were deprived under a
thousand pretexts. However, if all those could justly be taken away from them
which were not set forth in the edicts in so many words, it was easy for the
clergy to starve all the Reformed to death. It was only necessary to forbid
them to buy bread of the bakers, wheat in the market, and meat at the butcher's
shop, because there was no edict or decree in which the permission to do so was
contained in set terms. The intendant, not knowing what reply to make on the
moment, turned away without answering."
Of Benoist's work the greatest merits are the copiousness and accuracy of the
details given respecting an important part of French history. The first volume,
indeed, covering the fortunes of the Huguenots down to the publication of tbe
Edict of Nantes and the death of Henry IV., contains little that could not easily
be obtained elsewhere ; and the second volume, taken up with the reign of
Louis XIII., errs somewhat in the direction of prolixity. But the last three
volumes are a true treasury of the facts upon which a correct estimate of the
conduct of Louis XIV. and his ministers in relation to Protestantism must be
founded. Writers hostile to the Reformation have, it is true, been accustomed
to sneer at Benoist as a prejudiced and untrustworthy writer, who, in his zeal
to set forth the Huguenots as martyrs, has not scrupled to pervert facts and to
misrepresent the actions and motives of their opponents. According to such
writers the unsupported authority of Benoist is worthless. In view of the
weight I have given in the text to the refugee pastor's statements, of which
the frequent occurrence of his name in the marginal notes is sufficient evidence,
it is scarcely necessary for me to observe that I regard the aspersions cast upon
the honesty, as well as the capacity, of Benoist. as wholly gratuitous, and for
the most part dictated by partisan prejudice. Wherever it has been possible to
compare his narrative with the documents upon which it is based or of which it
gives the summary, the historian's accuracy is as manifest as his good faith.
While this is true in respect to the portions that rest on printed sources long
known to the public, it is even more noticeably true of those portions of the

ELIE BENOIST 493
work upon which fresh light has of late years been thrown by the multitude of
inedited documents discovered* in France and abroad. The relations made by
refugees concerning the circumstances of their escape, and by confessors at the
galleys or in prison of the sufferings to which they were exposed, fully bear out
the accounts more briefly given by Benoist. So far as I have been able to dis
cover, in not a single instance has the historian exaggerated or embellished for
the purpose of effect. In many cases he has wisely tempered his language that
lie might not seem to depart from a judicial impartiality of tone. Benoist
writes, indeed, as not only a Protestant, but a Protestant of decided views. He
does not conceal the fact that he regards the treatment to which the Huguenots
of France had been and were still subjected as the result of a systematic plan
of injustice and oppression due chiefly to the unceasing machinations of the
Roman Catholic clergy. But he rarely is tempted to indulge in denunciation or
to make an assertion the truth of which he could not instantly prove. He tells
a story of almost unparalleled inhumanity with quite as much calmness as could
be expected, or indeed could be desired, of one who was a contemporary and in
part a witness of the events recorded. A colorless narrative of so dramatic and
so exciting a period of history would have indicated an apathetic nature, too
coarse to feel the emotion of pity for human suffering or to experience a
thrill of admiration for the fortitude of men who knew how to endure hardship
for conscience' sake.
Benoist deplores, in the preface to his third volume, the circumstance that
only a portion of the great collection of material laboriously gathered by Tesse-
raud had come into his hands, and blames the indifference or negligence of
those refugees who, instead of minute accounts, had supplied him only with
vague and unsatisfactory generalities respecting their adventures. But tbe
candid reader of his work is more inclined to admire the richness of the fund
of information which is thrown open to him, than to look about for evidence
of insufficient provision. The author has greatly added to the permanent value
of his work by the appendices, containing the text of "edicts, declarations,
decrees, petitions, memoirs and other authentic pieces," intended to serve as
the vouchers- of the facts contained in the history. The documents number not
far from five hundred, and occupy in all about six hundred closely printed
quarto pages. All are of importance, and many it would be difficult to find
elsewhere. M. Paul Pascal has recently published a biography of Benoist
which may be consulted with profit (Elie Benoist et l'figlise reformee d'Alengon,
d'apres des documents inedits. Paris, 1892).

494 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. X

CHAPTER X
PRELUDE OF THE REVOCATION— THE GREAT DRAGONNADES
" A terrible law that strikes dismay into the hearts of
fathers and mothers — a law that will bring us to the determina
tion to go and cast ourselves at the feet of the king,
The terrible .
law of June begging him to grant us either death, or freedom of
conscience for us and for our children, or permission,
leaving behind us our property, to forsake the realm, and drag
out a languishing existence, scattered in every country of the
globe." Thus it was that Pierre Jurieu, in his " Last Efforts of
Afflicted Innocence," characterized a statute of Louis dated on
the seventeenth of June, 1681. Thus was it that he depicted
the consternation which that statute produced.1
The publication of it marked the beginning of the last act in
the tragedy that was being enacted in France, and gave clear
intimation that the catastrophe could not be very far distant.
The laAv authorized children of the tender age of seven years
to renounce the religion of their Protestant parents and em
brace the Roman Catholic and Apostolic religion. It
cnndren of struck a blow at the existence of the family. It rudely
renounce the severed ties esteemed most sacred by all nations and
the'u-'par- all ages of men. The reason alleged was the great
success which the Almighty had vouchsafed to grant to
the monarch's exertions, both by "spiritual excitations" and by
" other reasonable means," to convert his subjects of the Re
formed faith. The avowed object was to undo the mischief
wrought by a previous law, some twelve years old, which, after
a fashion, excluded Protestant children from the privilege of
being converted, until the boys had reached the age of fourteen,
the girls the age of twelve ; whereas it Avas affirmed that at seven
1 Derniers Efforts de l'lnnocence Affligee, 52.

1681 A TERRIBLE LAW 495
years of age they are capable of reasoning and of making a choice
in so important a matte/ as that of their salvation. Having con
ferred upon the child the right to embrace the state religion,
the king forbade parents and relatives from interposing any
obstacles in the way. In fact, he empowered the child to de
cide for itself Avhether to remain at home or to go elsewhere.
In the latter case, the parents were bound to pay for its board,
by regular quarterly instalments, such an annual sum as corre
sponded with their rank and pecuniary means. Protestant
parents were prohibited from sending their children abroad for
study, if the latter were under sixteen years old ; and such as
might have sent them to foreign lands, " in which they could im
bibe maxims contrary to the state and to the fealty they owed
their king," were to be constrained by all proper means, that
is, by full or partial forfeiture of their incomes, or other fines, to
bring them home without delay.1
A cry of mingled indignation and horror Avent up to heaven
from every part of France at the tidings of this new and more
cruel outrage. " Words fail me when I attempt to describe the
agitation Avhich this terrible law created in the minds of all,"
remarks a historian who was also an interested eyewitness.2
So long as the sanctuary of home was left inviolate, all indigni
ties and persecutions were endurable. The loss of civil equal
ity, exclusion from the greater part of profitable pursuits,
studied injustice perpetrated by the guardians of justice and in
the name of the law, the destruction of the schools, even the
suppression of the places of public worship and the enforced
silence of the preacher of the word of God — these things, though
painful and vexatious, were yet tolerable, if only the defences of
the family remained intact, and within this safe enclosure the
parent enjoyed unmolested the patriarchal and prescriptive
right to counteract by faithful instruction the intrusive efforts
of officious proselytism. To the perpetuation of religious tenets
in the hearts of a people no external profession or pubhc cere-
1 Declaration of Louis XIV., Versailles, June 17, 1681, in Edits, Declarations
et Arrests, 88-90. Also, in Benoist, v., pieces just., 128, 129. Drion, Histoire
chronologique, ii. 163-165.
5 " Je manque d'expressions pour decrire 1'alteration que cette terrible Decla
ration causa dans tous les esprits." Benoist, iv. 446.

496 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. X
monial is absolutely indispensable. The family is the last and
safest refuge. But if the family itself is invaded, if a ruthless
hand attempts to snatch the child in the most plastic period of
its existence from the formative influences exerted by the father
and mother, what shall be the result?
Protestants shuddered, and shuddered with good reason at
the prospect. For the law Avas not given in the interest of the
child's freedom of choice, but of interference from without the
home. There was little likelihood that a boy of seven Avould, if
left to himself, deliberately choose to embrace a religion of
whose nature he could understand little or nothing. There was
every reason to apprehend that the devotee of another
struck at religion Avould easily find a pretext to rob the parent
of his right to train his offspring in the faith which, it
might be, he cherished above life itself. The priestly hand that
had drawn up the statute had done his work skilfully. It was
enough that a child exhibited, or was said to havre indicated, in
the most trifling matter, a preference for the Roman Cathohc
church or service. It was enough that the offer of a gaudy rib
bon, or the promise of a sugar-plum, made it consent to say the
Avords, " Ave Maria," or " Hoiv fine a thing the Mass is," or any
one of a hundred other phrases which the fertile mind of a de
votee might suggest. It was enough that the child, not having
said any such words nor shown any such preference, should be
falsely reported to have done so. The child was in the sight of
the law a hopeful subject for conversion, if not an actual con
vert. It was not even permitted to take back its words. Its
very denials of what might be an invention of designing per
sons, who had an eye to the parent's money even more than to
the child's religious welfare, went for nothing. In spite of its
own outcries and puny resistance, in spite of the frantic protests
of father and mother, the clergy could and would tear it from its
loved home, to immure it in one of the houses prepared for the
instruction of such children of Protestants. And the whole
power of the government of Louis the Fourteenth stood behind
the clergy to render resistance futile.
WeU might the Huguenots exclaim that scarcely did another
age or another country, hoAvever barbarous, furnish a parallel
to the refined cruelty Avith which they were treated ; that here

1681 A TERRIBLE LAW 497
was a violation of the most sacred and most venerable laws ;
that here Avas the overthrow of the very foundation of author
ity. " In a word," said they, " such measures were not thought
of in the age of bloody executions and massacres. This is
indeed to wrench our very hearts. All the torments that have
heretofore been inflicted upon us are as nothing in comparison
with this. It is a neAV kind of torture, which will do more to
make men desert France than did all the massacres of the last
century." x
Nor was this law to slumber in the statute-book. It began
at once to be executed, and the years that followed until, and
even long beyond, the formal recall of the Edict of Nantes, were
full of incidents of the most harrowing character.2 Apparently
Lists of the ^ anticipation of the enactment of some such law, de-
^Sls tailed lists of the Huguenots and of their children
children. na(j been made some months before. The list of the
Huguenots inhabiting the city of Alencon, which has come
down to us, is dated on the eighth of July, 1680, and the names
are given by the streets in which the families resided. A later
hand, the hand, doubtless, of an ecclesiastic or of a magistrate
or officer writing at the suggestion of an ecclesiastic, has jotted
Children to doAvn beneath a great number of the families the
froni'tneir names of such children as were to be taken away
homes. from their parents, to be placed in the institutions
known as the Nouveaux Catholiques for boys and the Nouvelles
Catlwliques for girls.
Thus Martha Boullay, a widow, living in the Grande Rue,
has three children : Jean, aged six years, Anne Marie, aged five,
and Joseph, aged six months. " Take Jean and Anne Marie."
A man of more importance, Jean le Conte, and his wife have
but one little girl, Anne, "four years old and weakly." " Take
Anne if she is in condition." Pierre Thifaine and his wife have
three children, Ivan a boy of three, Louise a girl of eight, and
1 1 use the substance of the expressions which Jurieu places in the mouth of
the Huguenot jurist, one of the speakers in his dialogue. Derniers Efforts de
l'lnnocence Affligee, 55, 56.
2 See the article by Alphonse Jobez, "De l'enlevement des enfants protestants
apres la Revocation de l'Edit de Nantes, d'apres les documents ofiiciels, 1684-
1764." Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du Prot. franc., vi. 274^278.
32

498 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION On. X
Marie a girl of five. " Take Louise and Marie." Jacques Arde-
soif, lord of Mares, and his wife fare somewhat better. Hav
ing three boys and three girls — Jacques, Pierre, and Francois,
aged respectively seven and four years old, and fifteen months,
and Marguerite, Elizabeth, and Anne, ten, eight, and three years
old — they are kindly permitted to keep just one-half of their
number, that is, the three that would entail too much trouble
upon the kidnappers. " Take Jacques, Marguerite, and Eliza
beth." These persecutors are less generous with regard to the
little family of the widoAV Anne Ardesoif, consisting of four
children, whose ages unfortunately run from four to twelve
years. " All are to be taken " is the cynical apostil.1
No very vivid imagination is required to enable one to read
under the dry list of names the outlines of a story of domestic
sorrow too pathetic for words.
Alencon was only one of a thousand toAvns and villages where
the foul blow fell. Her Protestant households Avere but a feAV
among the countless households to which the new laAv brought
the agony of apprehension for the most cherished of earthly
possessions — the helpless children whom an enemy might now
at any moment snatch aAvay by cunning or by actual violence.
How protect the defenceless against the wiles of a horde of
devotees trained in dissimulation, now that the monarch him
self stooped to become their ally, now that distrust lurked
everywhere, now that any attention paid to the child of a
Huguenot by a stranger, any caress or favor, any word of praise
and flattery might be the precursor of disaster. There re
mained only flight — not flight from one town to another, but
flight from the kingdom. Upon this hundreds and even thou
sands of families instantly resolved ; although flight meant dan
ger, the sacrifice of a great part, if not the whole of their prop
erty, the sundering of the strong ties that bound them to the
place of their birth, exile in a foreign land of unknown language
and strange habits, destitution or absolute penury. Some, in
deed, with that prescience of coming disaster which was bred of

' The list, after having passed into the archives of one of the families against
whose ancestors stood the direction " Take tJie little boy," is printed in the
Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du Prot. fr., xxv. 259-274.

1681 A TERRIBLE LAW 499
the experience of past acts of persecution, had already made
their way to foreign countries, and were beyond the reach of
the additional acts of cruelty prompted by the king's bigoted
advisers.1 These were fortunate indeed.
There did, it is true, seem to be an alternative — to make an
other appeal to the pity of a monarch whom, with strange
infatuation, his Protestant subjects still believed to be just and
compassionate, but ill informed respecting the results
peal to Louis of his actions and respecting much that was done in
his name. Therefore it was that the Huguenots de
termined to lay before Louis the Fourteenth a fresh remon
strance, confining their arguments to the one law that permitted
the clergy to carry off from their parents Huguenot children of
the most tender age. The task of drawing up this remonstrance
was intrusted to the most celebrated writer and preacher in
their body, the intrepid pastor of Charenton, Jean Claude.
The paper he Avrote has come down to us, an able plea for the
natural rights of the parent, fortified by the direct provisions
of the Edict of Nantes. It showed that if the laAvgiver forbade
the taking away of children from their natural guardians for
baptism and confirmation, much more must he be regarded as
forbidding their removal in infancy to be reared in a religion
other than that of those guardians. It appealed to the recog
nition of the parental rights of Huguenots by the reigning
monarch himself in his law of 1669, wherein no boys of less
than fourteen, no girls of less than twelve, were allowed to ab
jure the faith of their parents. It appealed to both canon law
and civil law, which unite in preventing a person before the age
of puberty from making a valid will, or taking priestly voavs, or
doing any other thing requiring voluntary action. It drew at
tention to the reproach Avhich the Roman Catholic church
would incur in the eyes of the civilized world, should it sanc
tion an attempt, unheard of among Christians, yea, among all
the nations of the world, to limit the authority of the parent
over his child to the first seven years of the child's life, and
that, too, in so important a matter as religion. It appealed to

1 A number of such absentees are noted on the list of the Protestants of
Alencon above referred to.

500 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. X
the declaration of one of the greatest doctors of the Roman
Cathohc church itself, and to the canons of the Fourth Council
of Toledo, which condemned as unjust the practice of baptizing
the children of Jews without the consent of their parents.
It was a forcible paper, worthy of the source from which it
emanated. If it was full of deference for the royal authority,
and far removed as yet from the noble independence of tone of
the author's later indictment of the persecuting king — " Les
Plaintes des Protestaiits cruellement opprimes dans le royaume
de France " — yet it did not fail to foreshadow the resistance
which the Huguenots would institute to a law that coerced
their consciences and trampled upon their parental rights. " It
is your sense of justice, Sire," said the document, " which your
suppliants implore in the excess of their grief. It is to your
justice that they address their voices and their tears, and, with
out failing in the respect which they OAve to your majesty, they
venture to say that they would prefer to suffer all kinds of
disasters and death itself, rather than to see themselves sepa
rated from their children at so tender an age, and be unable to
rear them in their conscientious obligations." 1
The Huguenots of Paris had intended to present the petition
by the hands of Claude himself at the head of a special depu
tation ; but the deputies received notice, Avhile on their way to
Versailles, that they Avould not be permitted to approach the
king. They must intrust the paper to the Protestant deputy
general. Either Louis himself or his ministers remembered the
impression made by the eloquent appeal of Pierre du Bosc, and
bethought them of the possible consequences to the king's equa
nimity, should the equally eloquent Jean Claude be permitted to
speak in the royal presence.2 And thus it was that the elder
Marquis of Ruvigny, who still assisted his son and successor
on great occasions, sought and obtained a hearing. What he
said, and how he was treated by Louis, can best be learned
from the account which Bishop Burnet received from Ruvigny's
own lips, and incorporated in his " History of his OAvn Time : "
1 Requete au roi touchant sa Declaration du 17 Juin 1681, printed in the Bul
letin de la Societe de l'hist. du Prot. franc., xxvi. 307-312. Benoist gives
only an abstract (iv. 455) of what he justly styles " one of the finest pieces of
the time." "Benoist, iv. 458.

1681 PRELUDE TO THE RECALL 501
"Old Rouvigny (Ruvigny), who was deputy general of the
churches, told me that he was long deceived in his opinion of
the king. He kneAV he Avas not naturally bloody. He saw his
gross ignorance in those matters. His bigotry could
Marquis of not rise from any inward principle. So for many years
terceles'with he flattered himself with the hopes that the design
would go on so slowly that some unlooked-for accident
might defeat it. But after the Peace of Nimeguen, he saw such
steps made, with so much precipitation, that he told the king he
must beg a full audience of him upon that subject. He gave
him one that lasted some hours. He came Avell prepared. He
told him what the state of France was during the wars in his
father's reign ; how happy France had been now for fifty years,
occasioned chiefly by the quiet it was in with relation to those
matters. He gave him an account of their numbers, their in
dustry and wealth, their constant readiness to advance the rev
enue, and that all the quiet he had with the Court of Rome was
chiefly owing to them ; if they were rooted out, the Court of
Rome would govern as absolutely in France as it did in Spain.
He desired leave to undeceive him, if he Avas made to believe
tkey would all change, as soon as he engaged his authority in
the matter. Many would go out of the kingdom, and carry
their wealth and industry with them into other countries. And
by a volume of particulars he reckoned hoAV far that would go.
In fine, he said, it would come to the shedding of much blood.
Many would suffer, and others would be precipitated into des
perate courses. So that the most glorious of all reigns would
be in conclusion disfigured and defaced, and become a scene of
blood and horror. He told me, as he went through these mat
ters, the king seemed to hearken to him very attentively. But
he perceived they made no impression. For the king never
asked any particulars or any explanation, but let him go on.
And, when he had ended, the king said he took his freedom
well, since it flowed from his great zeal to his service.
girds him- He believed all that he had told him of the prejudice
to extirpate it might do him in his affairs; only he thought it
would not go to the shedding of blood. But he said
he considered himself as so indispensably bound to endeavor
[to effect] the conversion of all his subjects and the extirpation

502 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. X
of heresy, tliat if the doing it should require that icith one hand
he should cut off the other, he would submit to that." 1
Francis the First had made a somewhat similar vaunt, nearly
a century and a half before, in his speech in the episcopal pal
ace of Paris, after the expiatory mass for the celebrated " Pla
cards " audaciously posted on the walls of Paris and on the
very door of his bedchamber. " Were one of my arms infected
Avith this poison [of heresy]," said he, " I should cut it off ! Were
my OAvn children contaminated, I should immolate them ! " 2
But as Francis failed to check the spread of the nascent Refor
mation, so Louis was destined to fail signally in crushing that
Reformation when it had grown to be an important factor in
the religious life of France.
Marquis Ruvigny, or the historian who reports the interview,
has forgotten to inform us what Louis said in particular respect
ing the Huguenot remonstrance that had occasioned the audi
ence. The omission is of no practical importance. For the
original of the document presented to the king has come doAvn
to our days, and over against the simple and pathetic statement
of the wrongs of a great multitude of human beings, amazed and
horrified at the fresh outrage to Avhich their most intimate and
most sacred relations in life were subjected — over
He will con- . ...... ... „
cede nothing against a calm and judicial exposition of a case where
estant peti- law and equity were both alike with the petitioners —
there stands Avritten but a single word, "Neant" —
" Naught." 3 It is the brutal reply of the monarch who deemed
himself all but a god, and disdained the courtesy Avhich even the
heart of a clown might have led him to use to the unfortunate.
Louis the Fourteenth had nothing to say, he purposed to do
nothing for the relief of the most distressed and unfortunate
class of his subjects, for the descendants of the brave and loyal
men who by the toils they underwent and the dangers they in-

1 Burnet, History of his Own Time (3d ed., London, 1766), ii. 345, 346.
' Rise of the Huguenots of France, i. 176, where I have shown that the in
cident, though apparently discredited by Voltaire (Histoire du parlement de
Paris, i. 118), is of indisputable authenticity.
3M. Frank Puaux, in his monograph on the last years of the ministry of
Claude (Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du Prot. fr., xxxiv. 1885, 204), is my au
thority for this statement.

1681 PRELUDE TO THE RECALL 503
curred, sword in hand, had secured the kingdom for his grand
father and for himself, the Huguenots who Avithin his own times
had, by the avowal of one of his own generals, steadied the
crown of France when it tottered on his head.
While the monarch listened to the piteous entreaties of his Hu
guenot subjects with supreme disdain, it is no wonder that such
of his officers, of higher or lower degree, as could or
Baiffi of dared to emulate his example, heaped insult and ig-
undertakes n nominy upon those whom the king delighted to dis-
theProtes- honor. A royal judge, the Bailli of Charenton, distin-
sion and guished himself for his forwardness. Not content with
having recently issued his mandate, which among other
things enjoined the Huguenots " to abstain, while on their way
to worship, from scandalizing the good Catholics by singing the
psalms of David upon the river or on its banks," x he now took
in hand the services within the " temple " itself and dictated to
the Huguenots what they might and what they might not say, in
the profession of their belief, in their prayers addressed to God
and in their exhortations addressed to one another. It did not
occur to this sapient magistrate to discriminate between the ex
temporaneous utterances of the pulpit and the forms of vrords
consecrated by the usage of a century and a half. It was enough
that the confession of faith and the liturgy of the Reformed
Churches of France contained expressions that offended the ears
of a Roman Catholic. Both confession and liturgy must at once
be " reformed." From the confession must be expunged portions
of the tAventy-fourth and twenty-eighth articles : the one pro
nouncing the resort to the intercessions of the dead, the doctrine
of Purgatory, monastic vows, pilgrimages, and the like to be
a deceit of Satan, and the other "condemning the assem
bhes of the papacy, seeing that therefrom the pure word of God
is banished and therein the sacraments are corrupted," " and all
superstitions and idolatries are practised." From the liturgy
must be erased the touching petition in the prayer for use after
the sermon : " Singularly do we commend to Thee all those our

1 Sentence du Bailly de Charenton du 3 Juin 1681, qui fait deffenses a ceux
de la R. P. R. de s'assembler, ni chanter leurs Pseaumes en public, ni ailleurs
que dans les lieux ou iis font I'exercice de leur Religion. In Edits, Declarations
et Arrests, 84.

504 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. X
poor brethren who are scattered abroad under the tyranny of
Antichrist." These and all other such terms as "idolaters,"
" idolatry," and " superstition " must be expunged from all
copies of " the confession of faith, discipline, and pretended ec
clesiastical prayers," within the space of a fortnight, on pain of
the imposition of a heavy fine on persons that might sell or use
the books.1
What with the interference of meddlesome judges like the
Bailli of Charenton, and the injunctions of the king's ministers,
who warned them that they must not hope to be forgiven any
allusions to the " troublous times " upon which the churches
had fallen, or to their sufferings as " scourges and judgments of
God," or as " afflictions draAvn upon them by their sins," the
Protestants were in no little doubt respecting what those mat
ters were of which they might lawfully speak to their flocks.
" If," said some of them to M. de Chateauneuf, " our pastors
discuss a controversial theme, they are accused of speaking ir
reverently of the mysteries of the Roman Catholic religion. If
they confine themselves to preaching morals and reproving vice,
it is regarded as a crime for them to allege what they have been
wont to employ as the weightiest considerations to deter men
from the commission of sin. What, then, are they to discourse
about ? " " They may discourse about backbiting," was all that
the secretary of state could tell them in reply.2
I have spoken of the indescribable consternation created by
the inhuman statute authorizing the clergy, without process of
law, to tear tender children, barely seven years of
the Dragon- age, from the arms of Huguenot parents, that they

might rear them in the faith of a church which those
parents denied and repudiated. This law was not the sole
cause of the terror of the Protestants and of the precipitate

'Sentence du 2 Octobre 1681, du Bailly de Charenton, pour la reformation
des Prieres publiques qui se font par ceux de la R. P. R. In Edits, Declarations
et Arrests, 98-105. I must remind the reader that the words of the confession
of faith had remained unaltered since it was first drawn up in 1559, iuthe
reign of Francis II. , and as published in the contemporary Recueil des choses
memorables, of 1565 (commonly known as the "Petits memoires de Conde"),
which I have before me, pages 51-69.
• Benoist, iv. 470.

1681 THE DRAGONNADES 505
flight of as many as could at once forsake the kingdom. From
the province of Poitou came intelligence of the institution of a
new and frightful procedure for the purpose of hastening the
work of conversion upon which Louis the Fourteenth had set
his heart. I refer to the method that became famous through
out France, and the world, under the name of the Dragonnades.
Michel de Marillac was at this time royal intendant of the
generality of Poitiers. He was a man of good executive abili
ties, who had but a single ambition — to restore the
Marillac, m- °
tendantof prestige of an ancient but decayed family by attract
ing the attention and earning the favor of the court.
The Protestant churches of Poitou, as we have seen, had, for
the most part, fallen before Marillac's appointment to office.
One place of worship after another had been proscribed, the
victim .of malicious prosecutions none the less effectual that
they were based on the most frivolous grounds. But the mem
bers of the Reformed communion, although deprived of public
religious services, still remained loyal to their convictions.
Pelisson's miserable bribes offered temptations to none but the
most reckless and abandoned of men. Of this Marillac con
vinced himself by personal observation ; for when, in company
with the bishop, he made a circuit of his government, doling out
a paltry sum of two or three croAvns to every new convert AA'honi
he could add to his list, his success was not encouraging. It
was under these circumstances that he bethought himself of
putting to a new use the soldiers whom he'had been employing
to exact from the delinquent tax-payers the arrears of the im
post known as the "taille." It was but a step from an intima
tion to the Huguenot inhabitants that they might relieve them
selves of their burdens by consenting to the will of the king for
their conversion, to the order to quarter upon the recusants a
disproportionate number of dragoons. It was but a step more
to give the dragoons full license to treat their hosts in such a
manner as to force them to yield. Those who were acquainted
The troopers witn tne difficulty of restraining the soldiery of the
hu "mot day, even by the most severe of regulations, knew well
homes. wnat they did when they gave a free rein to brutal
troopers. The peaceful home Avas at their advent transformed
into a scene of wild and wasteful riot. The best chambers were

506 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. X
seized by the new-comers, Avho left the owners but scanty room
in which to live. At their caprice the soldiers stabled their
horses in any part of the house that pleased them, even to the
family sitting-room or the kitchen. All the ordinary rules lim
iting the extent of the demands that might be made upon the
larder or the purse of the citizen Avere disregarded. The soldier
was not ignorant of the object of his mission, and while he
boldly demanded a sumptuous fare, saw to it that he caused as
much loss by his waste as by the profusion of his living. It
was esteemed a rare diversion to be permitted to destroy costly
furniture, or, if the soldier preferred, to carry it out of the
house and boldly offer it for sale to the highest bidder. It Avas
a still more exquisite delight to treat the helpless inmates of the
house that sheltered him Avith every form of cruelty short of
actual murder. I shall not stop to detail these personal out
rages in this place ; for I shall, unfortunately, be compelled later
to return to the repulsive subject Avhen treating of the exten
sion of the Dragonnades to the entire kingdom. Suffice it, for
the present, to say, that every device which a perverted inge
nuity could suggest to make life unendurable was resorted to,
and all in the name of religion. For by some soldiers the cru
cifix was tied to the muzzle of the musket, and this was pre
sented to the Protestant, accompanied by oaths and threats, for
him to kiss in token of acceptance of the Roman Catholic faith.
Profane and ribald talk, with insults intended for the refined
ear of women, were the means by which souls were to be gained
for the church in whose interest the Avhole work was carried on.
Nor did the process cease and the rough band of soldiers m6ve
on to a new scene of their proselyting activity until, worn out
by the violence of their persecutors, the greater number of the
residents of town or village had succumbed. The intendant and
the intendant's officers, with the help of the priests and monks,
daily reported a host of new conversions to Louvois, minister
of war, and Louvois joyfully laid before Louis the Fourteenth
new evidence of the success of his project for the conversion of
the Huguenots. He said nothing, doubtless, of the means by
which the pretended conversions had been effected, of the tor
ture, such as that of the thumb-screw, that had been inflicted on
some ; of poor women hung for hours from the rafters of their

1681 THE DRAGONNADES 507
houses, of men that had received the bastinado, such as Turks
and Algerines resorted to in the punishment of their slaves ; of
men and women and children thrown upon heaps of lighted
fagots, or whose feet were roasted before a blazing fire until
they might be induced to promise to go to mass.1 Of all this
" work of conversion," in which force went in advance and com
pelled submission, and instruction, even of the superficial kind
that was then in vogue, did not come until afterward,2 the pru
dent minister told the king nothing, and, so long as the end Avas
gained, Louis was, we may well believe, content to refrain from
making any close and inconvenient inquiries. Instead, there-
Louis's sat- f ore> °^ reproof f or his cruelty, Marillac received only
MariUac''sat approval and encouragement. "His Majesty has
workof111 learne<l with great joy the great number of persons
conversion, ^hat continue to be converted in your department,"
wrote Louvois to the intendant. " He desires you to continue
to give the matter your care, making use of the same means
that you have found successful until uoav. . . . He has
commanded me to send a regiment of cavalry into Poitou at the
beginning of November next. This regiment will be quartered .
in the places that you will have a care to propose between now
and then. He will be pleased to have the greater number
quartered upon the Protestants, but he does not think that they
should all be quartered upon them. That is to say, that of
Louvois's twenty-six cavalrymen composing a company, if, ac-
inBtructions. cording to a just apportionment, the Protestants ought
to have ten, you may give them twenty, and lodge them all in
the houses of the richest of their number, taking as a pretext
that, when there is not in a place a sufficiently large number of
troops for all the inhabitants to have some, it is just that the
poor should be relieved and the rich be burdened with them.
His Majesty has thought fit, moreover, to issue the ordinance
1 See the accounts in Jurieu, Derniers Efforts de l'lnnocence Affligee, 81-93 ;
Benoist, iv. 472 et seq. ; Lievre, Histoire des Protestants et des Eglises Refor
mers du Poitou, ii. 95 et seq. See, also, the Huguenot petition inserted by
Jurieu, ubi supra, 107-110.
3 " Mais Monsieur le Gazetier nous apprent que le Sieur de Marillac s'entend
bien mieux en conversions. II convertit d'abord les gens ; puis il envoye des
Missionnaires pour les instruire." Jurieu, ubi supra, 82.

508 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. X
which I send you, by Avhich he commands that those who shall
have been converted shall be exempt for two years from the
quartering of soldiers upon them. This ordinance may be
the means of making many conversions in the chief marts of
trade." *
Meanwhile, so violent a persecution could not proceed without
calling forth vehement protests. The outrages perpetrated un-
Protests der the intendant's authority affected persons of all
rStac's'inhu- ran^s in society, from the humblest peasant to the
manity. most distinguished among the nobles of Poitou that
still clung to the Protestant religion. Pierre Jurieu, in his
" Derniers Efforts de lTnnocence Affligee," has preserved for us
a remonstrance evidently intended to reach the eye of the mon
arch, written by a Huguenot marquis who could boast that his
ancestors had held high positions and had shed their blood in
the service of the lawful kings of France, at a time when the
ancestors of Marillac were putting forth all their exertions and
stirring up the people in order to place the crown of France on
the heads of subjects.2 It is doubtful whether this impassioned
appeal reached the king. The minister of state who supplied
the intendant with lettres de cachet by means of Avhich the latter
could secure the arrest of any provincial, however high in rank,
on simply filling in the name on the space left blank for the
purpose, could well guard the avenues to the sovereign. Yet
even without such missives Louis the Fourteenth could not be
ignorant of the general features of the savage work perpetrated
in his name in Poitou. Rulhiere, writing a century later in the
interest of the renewed toleration of the Protestants,
xrv. igno- did indeed endeavor to relieve the memory of Louis
the Fourteenth of cognizance of the cruelties exercised
upon the Huguenots, and, consequently, of responsibility for
them. But the humanity of Louis the Fourteenth could only
be established at the expense of his intelligence. It is incred-
1 Louvois to Marillac, March 18, 1681, in Rulhiere, ficlaircissemens Histo-
riques, i. 201, etc., and Michel, Louvois et les Protestants, 44, etc. I suspect an
error either in the date of the letter or in the time set for the despatch of the
cavalry, which would scarcely have been announced eight months in advance.
¦ That is, in the time of the League. See "Lettre de Monsieur le Marquis
de  ," in Derniers Efforts de 1 Innocence Affligee, 93-100.

1681 THE DRAGONNADES 509
ible that a sane monarch Avho prided himself upon his complete
knowledge of everything that Avas done in his kingdom should
have been kept in ignorance respecting anything that was es
sential to the success of the plan of Marillac. He must have
been worse than an idiot had he not comprehended what was
included in the notion of an excessive number of troopers bil
leted upon an inoffensive Huguenot home. He must have
known that there were involved those milder forms of violence
which his Council of Conscience, meeting every week, taught
him to regard as constituting portions of the "gentle con
straint " which is allowable in the attempt to induce the reluc
tant guest to come into the Great Supper of the Gospel. His
mv definition of violence may indeed have been not dis-
vv nst const!-
tutes"vio- similar to that adopted by the Duke of Vieville, gov
ernor of Poitou, who showed no disapproval of the
intendant's course, and who, when asked the question, " What
then do you call violence ? " replied, " It is \riolence when sol
diers burn the feet of their hosts." 1 But Louis certainly ap
proved, if not every particular of the treatment of the Hugue
nots of Poitou, at least all that was requisite to make it both
unchristian and inhuman.
It was not, however, until the voice of Europe, outside of
France, began to make itself heard, and reinforced the remon-
„ .„ strances of the Huguenots coming through their dep-
Manllac re- n . ° . ° L
called from uty general, the Marquis of Ruvigny, that Louvois
saw the necessity of moderating the inordinate zeal of
Marillac. Louvois's first efforts in this direction were not very
successful. The intendant, doubtless, believed that the minis
ter's injunctions to abstain from permitting illegal exactions on
the part of the troopers and their officers, were given for the
sake of form and with no intention that they should be obeyed.
The same delusion led him to persist in his course, in spite of
reiterated commands, and even to shelter himself behind the
supposed fanaticism and insubordination of the Roman Catho
lics of Poitou. For this blunder on his part Louvois found it
unavoidable to sacrifice him. " His Majesty," wrote Louvois
to him on removing him from his office, "is fully persuaded
' Benoist, iv. 482, 483.

510 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Cn. X
that when an intendant gives an order he is obeyed without an
answer." 1
We are told that, on his return to Paris from the province
the most industrious part of whose population he had ruined
or by his oppression driven into foreign lands, Marillac found
himself the object of aversion and contempt, afraid to salute
any courtier lest that courtier should do him the indignity of de
clining to return his greeting.2 It is true that he subsequently
enlisted sufficient support to secure the appointment to be in-
His defence tendant of Rouen, where he had a fresh opportunity to
of himself, display his persecuting zeal ; but to the end of his days
he displayed a singular sensitiveness to the unfavorable opinion
of Christendom, and his defence of himself, near the end of the
seventeenth century, may rank among the curiosities of histori
cal literature. " I am accused of having oppressed the Protes
tants of the province of Poitou," he remarked to Count Chris
topher of Dohna; " I am represented as their persecutor ; but
wrongfully. It is true that I am the innocent cause of the
Dragonnades, but this is how it came to pass. As the troops
Avere passing through, many of the inhabitants of the Reformed
religion came and declared to me that they were ready to be
come Catholics, provided that they were exempted from the
obligation of lodging the soldiers. I consented, and, seeing
that this means of conversion was as easy as it was useful to
the king's design, I notified the court which availed itself of
it. As for the rest, I never oppressed these poor people in
anything whatsoever."3 History will, however, require some
better vindication of Michel de Marillac before consenting to
obliterate from its pages the record of his foul crime against
humanity. The " terrible " law that placed every Huguenot family at the
mercy of the clergy of an inimical church had a marked ef-

1 See the successive instructions of the minister of war to Marillac, in Michel,
Louvois et les Protestants, 49-54.
- Michel, 54.
3 Memoires originales sur le regne et la cour de Frederic I., roi de Prusse,
par Chris, de Dohna (Berlin, 1833), quoted by G. P. Depping, Correspondance
administrative sous le regne de Louis XIV. (Coll. de Doc. inedits), iv. pages
xxv., xxvi.

1679 AMBASSADOR SAVILE 511
feet outside of as well as Avithin France. If it determined to
instant flight great numbers of Huguenots who had hitherto
wavered in their purpose, it also put an end to the hesitation
of some foreign states, and induced them to extend a heartier
welcome than they had ever before extended to the refugees.
This was, in particular, the case with England. The worthy
ambassador of that country at the French court was
ambassador, Henry Savile, brother of the Earl of Halifax. Not
all the British envoys in the seventeenth century
were able to divest themselves of insular prejudices. But
Savile was a Protestant of broad sympathies. He gloried
in the tie of the common faith uniting all members of the Re
formed churches, and by preference joined in the pubhc wor
ship of the Huguenots. " I hear from England," he wrote on
one occasion, " I shall be forced to keep a chaplain, which I
never less needed, having never failed Charenton one Sunday
since I came into France. Hoav much more that is for the
king's service you cannot imagine, unless you saw hoAv kindly
those poor people take so small a countenancing as mine is." 1
Nor was he annoyed at the playful allusion of Lord Russell to
his "highProtestancy," or his lordship's prophecy that if Parlia
ment should -be sitting at his return, the Mayor and Common
Council would doubtless petition the king to dignify him with the
title of Charenton by way of earldom or dukedom, as his Ma
jesty should think most proper to give or Savile to accept ; 2
any more than at the mixture of seriousness and raillery con
tained in Halifax's reply : " I approve your going to Charen
ton, and your countenancing the Protestants, which I think the
principal work of an English minister in France ; but I am apt
to believe it may make the court there \rery Aveary of you, it
being a thing they have been so little used to that they take it
for an injury." 3 A keen political observer, Savile had well
read the signs of the times, and, through Halifax and others, he
had urged the British legislature to pass a general " Protestant
Foreigners' Bill," and " Act for the Encouragement of Protes-
1 Letter to Halifax, of Paris, June 5, 1079, in the Savile Correspondence,
published by the Camden Society in 1858, 94.
- Familiar Letters, page 18, quoted ibid., 95, note.
" Halifax to Savile, June -ft-, 1679, Savile Correspondence, 98.

512 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. X
tant Strangers to come into and inhabit this Kingdom," which
in spite of the opposition of the ignorant and illiberal, Avould
probably have become a law, had not Charles the Second
quarrelled Avith the Commons and prorogued his new Parlia
ment in March, 1681.1 Savile had written home, on the fifth
of June, 1679, that the French Protestants " tremble
He advocates «»<. • i , ,¦ n j ¦
an •¦ easy for tear of some violent persecution and are ready to
tion " of go into England in such vast numbers as would be a
estants in great advantage to the nation, if you would, by easy
naturalization, make it the least easy to them. I find
those who are rich are afraid our king should meddle with their
concerns, but the crowd and the number talk of nothing but
the necessity of his declaring himself Protector of the whole
Protestant religion, and live upon the hopes of seeing that
glorious day." 2 And now (on the fifth of July, 1681), the new
laAv " about the children of the Huguenots " being signed, al
though not yet published, he Avrote : " Those poor people are
in such fear that they hurry their children out of France in
shoals, not doubting but this edict will soon be followed by an
other to forbid their sending them out of the kingdom. I will
confidently aver that had a bill of naturalization passed in Eng
land last winter, there had been at least fifty thousand souls
passed over by this time." 3 Three days before he had truth
fully Avritten : " Our want of a bill of naturalization is a most
cruel thing in this conjuncture." 4
Charles the Second Avas no ardent Protestant, and he had for
some time been a pensioner of Louis the Fourteenth, but the
" terrible " laAv of his French ally and the urgency of his am
bassador at Paris led him to take decided action in favor of the
Huguenot refugees. From his palace of Windsor he
Charles H.
orders a coi- addressed to the Bishop of London and to the Mayor
London for of that city urgent letters, enjoining them to set on
foot collections for the relief of the great numbers of
French Protestants Avho had sought the shores of England,
and for whom he declared his great compassion, considering
1 F. de Schickler, Les Eglises du Refuge en Angleterre (Paris, 1892), ii. 296,
etc. 2 Savile Correspondence, 93. sIbid., 201.
4 Letter of July 2, 1681, ibid., ubi supra.

1679 AMBASSADOR SAVILE 513
them not only strangers in need of succor, but, above all, Prot
estants that were suffering for their faith.1 Not content with
thus formally taking the refugees under his royal protection, a
few days later Charles issued an Order in Council wherein,
Avithout making any special reference to France, he was " pleased
to declare that he holds himseK obliged in honor and conscience
to comfort and support all such afflicted Protestants who, by
reason of the rigors and severities which are used toward them
upon the account of their religion, shall be forced to quit their
native country, and shall desire to shelter themselves under His
Majesty's royal protection, for the preservation and free exer
cise of their rehgion." In pursuance of the policy thus an-
And prom- nounced, the king proclaimed his purpose to grant the
lettenfof refugees letters of denization under the great zeal of
denization. England without any charge Avhatsoever, together Avith
all privileges and immunities, consistent with the laws, for the
free exercise of their trades ; and promised to recommend the
Parliament at its next meeting to pass an act of general natu
ralization. He freed them from the payment of greater duties
than those paid by native-born subjects, assured their children
access to schools and colleges, exempted the goods and house
hold stuffs they brought Avith them from customs, enjoined upon
all officers, both civil and military, to extend to them a kind re
ception, and provided for " a general brief through his king
dom of England, Dominion of Wales, and Toavu of Berwick, for
collecting the charity of all well-disposed persons for the relief
of the said Protestants who may stand in need thereof." 2
The Enghsh ambassador at Paris wrote of the great joy pro
duced by the news of the solicitude manifested by Charles the
Emigration Second for the Protestants who sought refuge in his
to England, dominions and predicted results that were not long in
following.3 Numbers of Huguenots from the French seaboard
were willing to brave every peril upon the boisterous Channel in
the most treacherous of crafts, that they might reach a place of
1 The text of the two letters of Charles II., dated July 22, 1681, is given, in a
French translation, by Jurieu, Derniers Efforts de l'lnnocence Affligee, 30-33.
2 King's Order in Council, Hampton Court, July 28, 1681. Text in Agnew,
i. 26, 27 and, in translation, in Schickler, ii. 305, 300.
3Schickler, ii. 307.
33

514 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. X
religious freedom. A newspaper, within little over a month,
contained this intelligence : " Plymouth, the sixth of Septem
ber, 1681. An open boat arrived here yesterday, in which Avere
forty or fifty French Protestants who resided outside La Ro
chelle. Four others left with this boat, one of which is said to
have put into Dartmouth, but it is not yet known what became
of the other three." x Soon the neAv-comers Avere to be counted
by thousands.2 Louis took the alarm, and, as will be seen later,
Louis's ef- ^le res* °^ n*s reign was fou °f desperate attempts to
checkemi- Preyent his subjects from rendering his efforts at " con-
gratioa version " futile by escaping to lands where more toler
ant views prevailed. The earliest of these attempts was the
publication of the law of the eighteenth of May, 1682. All sea
men and artisans were forbidden from expatriating themselves
and their families, on the frightful penalty of the galleys for
life for themselves, and a fine of not less than three thousand
livres imposed on all that might contribute in any way to their
escape.3 Nor was England alone in stretching forth a hand of welcome.
Soon it was known that the Duke of Hanau offered to receive
four hundred Huguenot families, that distant Denmark
W g1COU16 63C~
tended to the and Sweden would grant the refugees extensive privi-
by tne nuke leges, while the nearer and ever hospitable Netherlands
and by ' opened the doors wide for their reception. The citv
Den rn ark
Sweden, and of Amsterdam distinguished herself by the liberality
' of the provision made for the distressed French Prot
estants ; for, on the twenty-fourth of September, her magistrates
voted to accord them admission to the ranks of the burgesses
and to the trades, and made arrangements to build a thousand
houses which they might occupy at a very reasonable rental, be
sides making them such loans as they might need for their tem
porary support and for the purchase of the necessary furniture
and outfit.4

1 Agnew, i. 29.
8 See the long lists printed by Agnew, i. 36-58, and iii. 27-71.
3 Declaration du Roy du 18 Mai 1682, portant defenses aux Gens de Mer et de
Metier de la R. P. R. d'aller s'etablir dans les Pais Etranger. Edits, Declara
tions et Arrests, 112, 113.
4 Jurieu, Derniers Efforts de l'lnnocence Affligee, 33, 34 ; Benoist, iv. 492.

1681 PRELUDE TO THE RECALL 515
I should find it impossible, Avere I to attempt the task, to pre
sent a full view of the successive acts of oppression into which
New acts of Louis the Fourteenth AA'as hurried at this period of his
oppression. reign. There was indeed little moderation in the de
mands of the clergy or in the consequent legislation of the king.
In July, 1681, the Jesuits of Sedan obtained the suppression
Academie °^ *^e acadeniie and college of the Reformed in that
of sedan20 c^' wnose buildings they were permitted to appro-
cioBed. priate at a trifling valuation ; just as the new order of
nuns, who called themselves " Filles de V Adoration du Saint-
Sacrament " had, two months earlier, secured the suppression of
the Protestant College of Chatillon sur Loing and had entered
upon possession of it. But, at least, the monarch's spiritual
advisers, in drawing up the order, might have been considerate
enough of Louis's honor to spare him the needless degradation
of certifying in the preamble of the document to a palpable
falsehood. Why make him attempt to justify his arbitrary act
by alleging that it had never been the intention of his Majesty
that the Protestant institutions of Sedan should serve for the
education of any other ministers than those that were needed
for the old principalities of the Dukes of Bouillon ? Did not
all the world know the contrary? Could he not have closed
the schools by a mere exercise of his sovereign authority and
abstained from giving his reasons ? But the deed was in itself
significant. Well might the Huguenots exclaim : " The destruc
tion of our colleges and universities speaks for itself. It gives
us to understand that we have but brief time remaining to abide
in the kingdom. If the king intended to suffer us, he would
permit us to have ministers, and permitting us to have ministers
he would leave us the enjoyment of places Avhere they might
be educated." 1
From malicious injury the clergy proceeded to gratuitous in
sult. The " Pastoral Announcement," which the Assembly of
the Gallican Church that met in Paris in 1682 addressed " to
the members of the Pretended Reformed Religion, to induce

1 Order of the king in council, July 9, 1681, in Edits, Declarations et Arrests,
96, etc. ; Benoist, iv. 437, and v., p. ]"., 126 ; Jurieu, Derniers Efforts de l'lnno-
cence Affligee, 72, 73.

516 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. X
them to be converted and to be reconciled with the Church,"
may with propriety be denominated an insult.1 The designa
te cie tion of the "Pretended Reformed Religion," coming
^plstoai fr°m *ne D°dy that styled itself exclusively the Gal-
inent™oethe nca11 Church assembled by authority of the king, Avas
tneR^formed none the less an insult that the Reformed Churches
Religion. 0f France had for years been compelled by the exer
cise of the authority of that king and that king's predecessor to
submit to be called by the opprobrious name.
The body of the document was in keeping with the super
scription. It began with pompous protestations of love and
compassion; it ended with scarcely less ostentatious threats.
If, after such pressing exhortations as Avere here given, the
Huguenots Avould neither be moved by the prayers, nor be
its open me- garned over by the endearments, nor hearken to the
nace. Avarnings of the clergy, " the angels of peace," they
were told, " would Aveep bitterly." If the Huguenots refused
a prompt reconciliation Avith the church, the grace of peace
Avhich the church had so sincerely offered Avould return to her
bosom, and God would no longer hold her accountable for their
souls. " And inasmuch," said the church's representatives, " as
this last error will be more criminal than all the others, you
are to expect disasters incomparably more terrible and more
baleful than all those which up to the present time your rebel
lion and schism have draAvn upon you." The menace Avas un
disguised. For the rest, the " pastoral " treated a religious
movement which had maintained itself in Christendom for one
hundred and fifty years, Avhich had enlisted in its defence the
ablest scholars of the world, which in France, in particular,
counted among its adherents the most enlightened portion of
the population, as a split dating but of yesterday, the result of
ignorant perversity, a thing to be renounced without argument.
The Protestants were addressed as "poor sick folk" having
great need of a physician. They Avere asked what more oppor
tune time they could choose for returning as prodigals to the
'Benoist prints the entire document, entitled " Avertissement Pastoral de
I'Eglise Gallicane assemblee a, Paris par l'autorite du Roi. a ceux de la R. P. R.
pour les porter a se couvertir, et a, se reconcilier avec I'Eglise,'' in the pieces
justificatives of his last volume, pages 139-144.

1682 THE PASTORAL ADMONITION 517
Father's home than that in which so great a king as Louis
reigned, and so holy a pope as Innocent the Eleventh governed
the apostolic church of Rome. Of the former the bishops
said : " This great prince lately expressed to us the longing he
feels for your return in a manner Avhich of itself would make
him deserve the name of Very Christian, when he protested
that so passionately did he desire your reunion to the church
that he Avould esteem himself happy to contribute to it by his
oavti blood, and even by the loss of that invincible arm with
which he has subdued so many enemies and made so many
conquests. Will you then, dearly beloved brethren, any longer
prevent your king, after having vanquished such formidable
powers, carried such strong places, subjected such great prov
inces and heaped triumph upon triumph, from now plucking
this last palm Avhich he values more than all the rest ? "
Having composed so arrogant an epistle, the clergy took
good care that it should not be left to the good pleasure of
the Protestants to Avhom it Avas addressed whether to
thempaswrai8 read it or to treat it with the contempt which they
aiuheProt-0 might think that so weak a production deserved at
SstorieT1' tne bands of intelhgent men. They obtained a letter
from Louis the Fourteenth addressed to every arch
bishop and bishop of the kingdom, and directing him to take
part in the holy work of advancing the conversion of the Prot
estants, so happily begun, and to co-operate with the royal com
missioner (that is, the intendant) in each of the various prov
inces, with the view of effecting the objects set forth in the
accompanying pastoral. The pastoral was to be made known
to every consistory of the Protestant churches.1 Nor were the
prelates reluctant to undertake, either in person or, as was more
commonly the case, through their vicars general, the congenial
task committed to them. The king would seem to have be
lieved that the defences of Heresy would crumble into dust
at the summons of his priestly advisers and at his own com
mand, as readily as the walls of Jericho fell before the blasts
of the trumpets of the Israelitish host ; and the clergy were

'Circular of Louis XIV., Versailles, July 10, 1682. In Benoist, v., pieces
just., 145.

518 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. x
quite Avilling to try the experiment. And now, in every part of
France, the pastors and elders of the Huguenots received no
tice of an intended visit from the representatives of the king
and of the established church. Charenton, as the seat of the
most important congregation of the French Protestants, was
honored with the first visit. As the mode in which the affair
was managed at Charenton served as a model that was copied
by the members of other churches with very general faithful
ness, it will be sufficient to indicate briefly AA'hat occurred there.
The presumption of the intendant, M. de Mesnars, at first
led him to insist that the pastoral of the Roman Catholic prel
ates should be read to the entire Protestant community at its
public religious services. The firmness of Claude and
How it "wns
read at his associates in resisting the intrusion saved the Hu
guenots from this indignity. Claude maintained, and
the court sustained him in the assertion, that the text of the
king's letter distinctly contemplated that the pastoral admoni
tion should only be delivered to the consistories. This point
gained, the Protestant ministers and elders of Charenton re
ceived their visitors with the most punctilious courtesy and with
unsurpassed dignity. One of the younger ministers, attended
by three elders, met the intendant and his escort as they alight
ed at the entrance to the grounds of the great " temple," and
honorably conducted them across the courtyard to the room in
Avhich the consistory was wont to assemble. There, at the
head of the board, sat Jean Claude, the senior pastor, with the
other ministers and elders in their accustomed seats. When
the intendant and his suite had been assigned the places of
honor made ready for them at the other end of the table, the
former set forth in a few words the commission he had received
to be present Avhen the vicar general of the archbishop of Paris
should deliver the pastoral admonition of the assembly of the
clergy of France. This done, the vicar was about to perform
his part by reading the document in question, both in Latin
and in French, Avhen the Protestant moderator arose from his
seat, and, Avith that grave eloquence which had made the name
¦of Claude famous the world over, addressed the representative
of the crown. "My lord," he said, "we recognize in you the
character of the royal authority of our august monarch ; and

1682 THE PASTORAL ADMONITION 519
that authority will ever be with us sacred and inviolable. We
also honor in your person that singular and extraordinary
merit that distinguishes you and attracts the eyes and
ciaude's the esteem of every one. As regards the gentleman
that accompanies you here, to read to us a paper
Avritten by the assembly of the clergy, and said to be addressed
to the members of our communion, permit us, my lord, to say
in your presence that we regard these gentlemen as persons
that hold a very considerable rank in the state and the vicar
general himself as a man of reputation and merit. As for the
document, which has been published to the world, we have
found in it many things there imputed to us which do not
apply to us, and to which a reply has often been made hereto
fore. We can regard it as in no Avise an act implying that
these gentlemen have any authority over us in matters of faith,
rehgion, or discipline. H it be an act of charity, we shall
answer it by our desires, by mutual good wishes, and by prayers
to God." Of the A'icar's long address there is no need to speak.
When presently he began to read the pastoral, his voice was
for a time drowned by the sound of the Huguenot psalms sung
in the neighboring church of the Reformed ; but the intendant
kindly preferred to intermit the reading for a few minutes,
rather than order the Protestant worship to cease, as the eccle
siastic requested. When, quiet having been restored, the read
ing was at length concluded, the moderator again addressed the
intendant alone, and confined himself to the single remark :
" My lord, you may see to what length go our respect and sub
mission to his majesty, by the sacrifice we offer to him of the
pain and mortification with Avhich we have listened to this
reading." At leaving, after renewed civilities, the intendant
expressed his curiosity to see the church, a stately edifice,
which he examined with some interest, and within whose walls
the apostolic notaries that waited upon the vicar distributed
copies of the pastoral to all that would take them. After this
the intendant was accompanied to his carriage with as much
ceremony as had attended his coming.1

' "Rellation de ce quy c'est passe dans le temple de Charenton sur la signifi
cation de I'advis pastoral de Messieurs du clerge de France." Contemporary

520 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. X
I have intimated that the occurrences at Charenton, published
throughout France, prepared the Protestants of other parts of
The consis- *ne kingdom to deport themselves Avith equal dignity
tn"m8se1ve'srt under equally or even more trying circumstances. In
ne'ssanddig- some places the vicar, or curate, that represented the
nitJ'- bishop acted with greater insolence than the represen
tative of the Archbishop of Paris had wished or had dared to
show to the great Claude in the presence of the courteous Mes-
nars. The Protestants of Aubusson, in the province of Marche,
for example, having, it would seem, no special room for the
meetings of their consistory, Avere compelled to listen in their
imperti- sacred edifice itself to an impertinent diatribe against
Seal rep- tiieir religion. Dr. Francois Augier, a priest, who de-
resentatives. livered it, not content Avith accusing the Protestants of
having "mutilated and falsified the Word of God," declared that
the Reformers had "renounced the priesthood in order to wal
low in all sorts of abominations." J But, whatever the temper
either of intendant or of ecclesiastic, the Protestant pastor
everywhere stood his ground Avith manly determination. At
Caen the great Protestant orator Du Bosc, like Claude at Cha
renton, made but a single remark to the intendant : " My lord,
after the speech [of the grand penitentiary] , and the reading to
which we have just listened, I shall add nothing save that Ave
have listened to both because of the respect which we OAve to
the king's orders, without recognizing, however, in the gentle
men of the clergy any right of jurisdiction over us." 2 At greater
length, Le Sauvage, pastor of Alencon, insisted upon
sauvage, at the independence of the Protestant churches in words
well worthy of being recorded. " These gentlemen of
the clergy," said he, " have no power, no jurisdiction over us
with regard to religion and its discipline. We live in a com
munion distinct from theirs, and are not of the number of their

manuscript account printed by C. L. Frossard, in the Bulletin de la Soc. de
l'hist. du Prot. fr., xxix. 456-460. Benoist also gives a summary, iv. 563-506.
' "Falloit-il que vos re f orm ateurs renon9assent a la prestrise pour se A-antrer
en toutes sortes d'abominations." We have the whole text of this scurrilous
address officially attested by the intendant, Le Coux de la Berchere. Bulletin
de la Soc. de l'hist. du Prot. fr., xxx. 293-295.
- Legendre, Vie de Pierre du Bosc, 135.

1682-1685 THE PASTORAL ADMONITION 521
sheep. So far as regards the reunion of us all in one church,
Ave ardently long for it. But, hoAvever desirable this may be,
-Peace is we do not, nevertheless, desire it at the expense of the
butteutb'is tiuth. Peace is beautiful, but Truth is Sacred." To
sacred." the calumnies contained in the bishops' pastoral, Le
Sauvage made this rejoinder : " These are accusations which Ave
have often answered. Our rehgion is orthodox. It is pure in
its faith and in its Avorship. It is a religion altogether divine,
which tends only to serve God Avithout rendering any religious
worship to the creature. It is a religion founded exclusively
upon the Word of God, the Sacred Scripture, which is the basis
of infallible certitude. As to the reasons that keep us in a
communion separated from yours, these reasons are public and
knoAvn. They cannot be ignored, all our books are full of them.
We are fully persuaded that God has made known to us His
truth, because we ask Him every day in our prayers, and be
cause we ceaselessly consult the Holy Scriptures Avherein that
salutary truth is contained. We here protest solemnly before
God and before you, my lord, that, by His grace, we shall al
ways be good Christians and good subjects, faithful to God and
to our sovereign. And we are sure that God will bless this holy
disposition of ours, and will enable us to persevere in it to the
last breath of our lives." 1
Only a few more of the almost numberless measures adopted,
about this time, for the purpose of harassing the Huguenots
and reducing them to extreme perplexity need be mentioned.
The king in council directed that, when, by the closing of
. neighboring places of Protestant worship, the attend-
ordinances ance at the services of such as had been spared became
for Profccs-
tantwor- greater, there should be no increase in the number of
ministers or pastors who might attend to the spiritual
wants of the people.2 The government's purpose was avoAvedly
'I have before me full accounts of the notifications given at Charenton, Sep
tember 20, 1682; at Metz, May 19, 1683, and at Aubusson, May 22, 1683, pub
lished in the Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du Prot. fr., xxix. 456, etc., xxvii.
409, etc., and xxx. 291, etc., and of that at Alencon, July 4, 1683, printed by
Paul Pascal, in his Elie Benoist et I'Eglise reformee d'Alencon (Paris, 1892),
178-186. - Arrest du 24 Novembre 1681, concernant le nombre des ministres de la R.
P. R. , Edits, Declarations et Arrests, 105, 106.

522 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. X
to inconvenience, not to accommodate, the king's Huguenot sub
jects. " So much the worse for you," Chancellor Le Tellier is
said to have answered a Protestant deputy's remonstrance upon
the impossibility to which his colleagues Avere reduced of fur
nishing proofs to maintain their just claims to certain places of
worship. " So much the Avorse for you ! We shall profit by it." '
For the same reason, the Huguenots were denied permission to
enlarge their overcrowded " temples," or even to add galleries.2
Parliaments and devotees, in their zeal, outran the king and
would have pushed matters to still greater lengths. The Parlia
ment of Toulouse, eArer the most violent of the high
The Parlia- •
ment of Ton- judicatories, distinguished itself on this occasion. It
exacted of the Protestants of the little town of Saint
Affrique, whose gallant defence was one of the glories of the last
Huguenot war,3 the repayment of ten thousand livres for certain
buildings which it was alleged had been torn down at the time
of the civil commotions, over fifty years before ; and the judges
winked at the violent execution of an unrighteous decree. The
same parliament having issued a writ enjoining that all illegiti
mate children of either sex should be reared in the Roman
Catholic Church,4 there were those who subsequently undertook
to make an inquest into the laAvfulness of the birth of men and
women of mature age, Avith the vieAv of excluding old persons of
sixty or eighty years of age from the services of God's house
which they had been in the habit of attending from their infancy.
A third regulation, adopted by the same parliament, required
that a distance of at least one hundred paces should intervene
between every Protestant " temple " and the nearest Roman
Catholic church. It afforded the ground for a claim to tear
doAvn more than one hundred of the Huguenot places of wor
ship.5 Only when some measure dictated by enmity toward the
Huguenots was so extreme as to border upon absurd or insane

' Benoist, iv. 506.
sIbid., iv. 507.
3 See above, Chapter VI.
4 The king himself adopted this principle in his Order in Council of January
31, 1682. In Edits, Declarations et Arrests, 107.
6 Benoist, iv. 507, seq., under 1081.

1682-1685 PRELUDE TO THE RECALL 523
zeal did Louis the Fourteenth close his ears to the solicita
tions of his priestly advisers. Early in the year 1682 it was
An absnrd said that some persons were at the pains of drawing-
proposal re- up the form of an edict Avhich strictly forbade Protes-
jected. , . . J
tant ministers from celebrating any marriage between
members of their churches in case the bride was less than forty
years old. This method of bringing about the gradual extinc
tion of Protestantism did not commend itself to the king, and
he refused to sign the proposed law.1
But the monarch had no scruples about excluding the Hu
guenots from one after another of the means of gaining a live-
Exdnsion uno°d- He now declared to the world that he was
ciaTof& determined to have no more Protestant judicial officers,
and, indeed, that that had been his intention as ex
pressed in previous laws running back many months.2 Inas
much as his majesty had repeatedly confirmed the Edict of
Nantes, which, by one of its principal articles, proclaimed the
adherents of the Reformed religion to be eligible to all such
positions equally with Roman Catholics, it would be hard for
an intelligent and impartial man to avoid the conclusion that
Louis had once more proved himself untruthful ; and this, de
spite the fact that he maintained that the Edict of Nantes only
said that Protestants might hold such offices, but did not either
compel the monarch to appoint them or forbid him from de
manding the resignation of such as might already be in office.
Arbitrary despotism is more endurable when it boldly asserts
the will of the tyrant, and enforces obedience by a display of
secretin- irresistible strength, than when it stoops to mask in-
to?udioI18to lus^ee ^11 a semblance of respect for the forms of
withhold law. It is because the government of Louis the Four
teenth denied their rights to a large portion of his
subjects, at the very moment he professed to be dispensing
justice to them, that the monarch has earned the contempt of
honest men for all time to come. Not content with disregard-
1 Letter of Jalon to Christophe Guntzer, Metz, March 7, 1682. Bulletin de la
Soc. de l'hist. du Protestantisme franc., xxvii. (1878) 404.
3 Royal Declaration of Versailles, June 15, 1682, and Order in Council, of
Chambord, September 29, 1682. In Edits, Declarations et Arrests, 113, 124.
See, also, Benoist. iv. 545.

524 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. X
ing his own obligations, the monarch trained his subordinates
to copy his example. It Avas not enough that governors and
soldiers should be instructed to violate the dictates of equity;
the very judges were directed to pervert the plain prescriptions
of the laAvs which they had been appointed to execute, and to
frustrate the reasonable expectations of those who came to
plead before the royal tribunals.
A single illustration will serve our purpose, especially as we
are not dependent for the facts of the case upon the assertion
of enemies who may have been misled by passion or prejudice,
but derive them wholly from the secret correspondence of the
king's ministers with the trusted officials of the provinces.
One Rotisset, inhabiting the city of Laon, sought to enter the
company of mercers of the place. The circumstance that he
was a Protestant did not debar him from admission, for the
Edict of Nantes threw open all trades to Roman Catholics and
to members of the Reformed communion indifferently. None
the less did the judge provost of the place, in his officious zeal
to favor the work of exclusion, issue an order forbidding the
Huguenot's reception. When Rotisset's complaint against this
high-handed act reached Versailles, Louis was not a little
vexed at the clumsiness of the magistrate ; and the intendant
of Laon was promptly instructed to inform him in his majesty's
name, "that he ought not thus to have excluded the said
Rotisset by sentence and in an open manner, but only to have
prevented his entrance into the community of mercers by other
methods."1 However, the blunder had been committed, and the
mischief could not be undone. Still provision must be made
against the possibility that the Protestant might secure his
acknowledged rights. When Rotisset appealed to a superior
court, the same secretary of state that had reproved the pro
vost's error, directed the intendant to command the judges be
fore whom the appeal was to come, "to render no judgment,
but to leave the matter undecided."2 And later, the unfortu-
1 " Qu'il ne devoit pas ainsy par sentence ouvertement exclure ledit Rotisset,
mais seulement l'empescher par d'autres voyes d'entrer dans ladite communaute
des merciers." Marquis de Seignelay to Levoyer, Versailles, July 16, 1683.
Depping, Correspondance administrative sous le regne de Louis XIV., iv. 357.
- " De ne point rendre de jugement sur cet appel, et de laisser la chose in-
decise." The same to the same, October 20, 1683, ibid., 358.

1682-1685 PRELUDE TO THE RECALL 525
nate tradesman being about to bring a formal charge of a denial
of justice before the Parliament of Paris, the secret correspond
ence of the same minister reveals the last act in the extraor
dinary drama. The Marquis of Seignelay wrote to the attor
ney-general to inform him that, as the presidial judges of Laon
had executed the king's instructions to give no judgment on
Rotisset's appeal, so his majesty now ordered him to prevent
parliament from passing upon the Huguenot's petition for re
dress.1 There is no doubt that the attorney-general duly obeyed
his instructions, and that the members of the highest appellate
tribunal in France acquiesced in the refusal to consider Rotis
set's just demands with as much alacrity as had been mani
fested by the inferior judges of Laon.2
It was formally ordered by the king that all the legacies
which pious Protestants had left to the consistories of their
, churches for the benefit of the poor — the right to hold
Trust funds . r .-,.,»
of Protestant such legacies was specially recognized in the fortA7-
transferred second of the " particular articles " of the Edict of
catholic nos- Nantes, and expressly confirmed by the twelfth article
of Louis's own law of February, 1669 — should be
turned over to the nearest of the Roman Catholic hospitals,
and that Protestants and Roman Catholics should be admitted
to these hospitals indifferently. The spoliation was covered
by the pretext of greater care to accomplish the pious ends
for which the bequests had been made.3 Ten days later, his
"'Et parce que ledit Rotisset veut se pourvoir au parlement comme pour
deny de justice, S. M. m'a ordonne de vous en donner advis, et de vous dire
d'empescher qu'il ne soit rendu aucun arrest sur sa demande." Seignelay au
procureur-general, November 27, 1684, ibid., 363.
2 The reader will recall a somewhat similar procedure in the case of ¦» poor
joiner of Clermont en Beauvoisis, to which reference was made in Chapter IX.,
supra, p. 490. At such delays Louis was an adept. He tells us himself in his
Memoirs how, in 1666, he dealt with a case in which the Huguenots were in
terested. (It was the claim that "the Grands Jours of Languedoc," which
Louis instituted, trenched on the jurisdiction of the chambre mi-partie of Castres.)
" Je trouvai neanmoins," he says, " une maniere pour eluder insensiblement
leur pretention, sans avoir besoin de la condamner expressement ; car cher-
chant, a toute heure, de nouveaux pretextes pour differer la decision qu'ils
proposoient, je fis, de jour en jour, passer le temps, durant lequel enfin I'afEaire
se trouva consommee," etc. Memoires de Louis XIV., ii. 241.
3 Declaration of Louis XIV., Versailles, January 15, 1683. In Edits, Decla
rations et Arrests, 128-131.

526 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. X
majesty gravely issued a law prescribing that no Mohamme
dans or Idolaters that might determine to become Christians
should be permitted to be instructed in, or make pro-
medan or f ession of any other religion than the Roman Cath-
become a olic. The presence of a converted Moslem or pagan
Protestant j- a u
in a Protestant place of worship would entail conse
quences as disastrous to pastor and to church as the presence
of a Protestant newly converted to the established religion.1
So complaisant was the king to every whim of the clerical ad
visers that he issued strange and contradictory edicts.
inconsistent In March, 1683, in obedience to their suggestions he
not only increased the penalties incurred by the Prot
estant pastor that admitted to the church edifice any "new
convert," but forbade the presence of any Roman Catholic on the
same penalties.2 Scarcely had two months elapsed when " the
general agents of the clergy of France," having discovered their
blunder, begged Louis the Fourteenth, on the contrary, to
command that a special place should be set apart in every
Protestant church for the reception of Roman Catholics ! " It
is useful for the Catholic religion," said the preamble of the
law which they secured, " that men learned in it should
Every " tern-
pie " shall attend the ' temples,' and hear what the ministers say
for Roman in their sermons, in order not only to be able to re-
troversiai- fute them, if need be, but also to restrain them by
ists. their presence from advancing anything contrary to
the respect due to the Roman Catholic and Apostolic rehgion,
and hurtful to the State and the welfare of our service." 3
Many were the vexations to which the strange prescription gave
rise, many the contentions between the Protestant elders, on
the one hand, and domineering officers, acting under the direc
tion of meddlesome bishops and priests, on the other. The
selection of the form which was to be occupied by their un
sympathetic visitors was not left to the discretion of the pastor
and consistory, but dictated by the enemy. The Protestants
would have removed an object which they viewed as "an
1 Declaration of Versailles, January 25, 1683. In fidits, Declarations et Ar
rests, 131.
- Edict of Compiegne, March. 1683. Ibid., 133.
3 Declaration of Versailles, May 22, 1683. Ibid., 137-139.

1683-1685 PRELUDE TO THE RECALL 527
abomination of desolation standing in the holy place " into
some obscure corner of the sacred edifice. But no incon
spicuous place, on the sides or under the galleries, would suit
their opponents. It must be the best and most prominent
position, directly in front of the pulpit, where the unfriendly
priests and monks might hsten to every word, where they
might by their restless deportment, by their conversation among
themselves, or by their laughter and sneers, distract and, if pos
sible, disconcert the preacher, where they might even rise and
controvert his statements. The seats, if too contracted, must
be moved according to their fancy, to give them more room.
At any rate, a conspicuous inscription must mark the place
reserved for the Roman Catholic interlopers, and be a visible
token of the humiliation of the congregation. Occasionally
the populace received intimations of the change about to be
made in the Protestant temple, and flocked to the scene, as to
a show, in hope of creating and profiting by the attendant
Disorder and disorders. It was so with the people of Rouen, Avho
mob at Que- betook themselves in such "an incredible crowd" to
villy near
Kouen. ^g sllburb of Quevilly, where the Protestant worship
was held, that they seemed about to tear the spacious edifice
down, and could neither be dismissed nor controlled by the
deans of the Parliament of Normandy and the king's attorney
whom they followed. The deans and the attorney themselves
wrangled with one another respecting the bench which they
should appropriate to the use of the ecclesiastics, the attorney
insisting upon the most convenient spot for incommoding the
Protestants, while the deans were content with the most honor
able place in the auditorium. Unable to come to an agree
ment among themselves, the commissionaries actually wrote to
court to obtain instructions, and the court ordered the royal
intendant to visit the church in person and complete the great
work. Whereupon, parodying the line of the ancient poet, one
of the pastors Avittily wrote :
" Tantte molis erat Romanum condere scamnum." '

' Philippe Legendre, Histoire de la Persecution faite a I'Eglise de Rouen sur
la fin du dernier siecle, 3, 4. (Rotterdam, 1704. Facsimile reprint of Rouen,
1874.) Bianquis, La Revocation de l'Edit de Nantes a Rouen (Rouen, 1885),
xxiii.

528 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch, X
It does not appear how far the bigots were successful in their
object (which the Reformed protested could not be the king's
intention, as it was not within the terms of his majesty's edict)
" to turn the Protestant churches into scenes of public dispu
tations, the perpetual source of divisions and seditions." x The
yearly, almost daily, suppression of churches throughout France,
gradually diminished the number of places that might serve
the purposes of ambitious missionaries of the Roman Catholic
clergy. The arrangement is said, hoAvever, to have had one
unexpected result. Among those who came to occupy the
bench "reserved for the Catholics in execution of the king's
declaration," there are said to have been many Avho were con
verted to the Protestant doctrines to Avhich they here listened
for the first time.2
The attentive reader has long since learned that it was no
part of the plan of the government of Louis the Fourteenth
that the conduct or the privileges of the Huguenots should be
measured by one unvarying standard of equity. WheneA'er the
spirit of the law Avas distinctly in their favor, recourse was
„Tw0 taken to the letter, Avhich, by a system of interpreta-
twogmea™a ^i°n as aDSUrd as iniquitous, was made to rob them of
m'e9-" the very rights accorded by the statute. When, on the
contrary, the letter of the law bore upon its face the justice of
their claims, a pretence Avas made of searching in the intention
of the legislator for the ground of annulling his most specific
prescriptions. There could be no doubt, for example, that the
seventh article of the Edict of Nantes conferred upon such
nobles as held fiefs to which the extensive jurisdiction known as
" haute justice " attached, the right to maintain upon their es
tates divine worship according to the Reformed rites not only
for themselves, their f amilies, and- their vassals, but for all such
other persons as might choose to frequent it. The only limita
tion imposed was, that Avhereas the worship could be celebrated
1 So says a Protestant memorial handed in to tbe Marquis of Ruvigny (MS. in
the National Archives and published for the first time in the Bulletin de la
Soc. de l'hist. du Prot. fr., iii. 60-62), adding the significant remark: "Les
temples ont este donnez a, ceux de ladite Religion pour y faire les exercices de
leur Religion et nou pour y entendre des missionnaires."
2 Bulletin, etc , iii. 60, note.

1682-1685 PRELUDE TO THE RECALL 529
at all times at the principal family residence, it could be cele
brated at other places only at such times as the lord " haut-jus-
ticier " was present. The lawgiver could scarcely have expressed
with greater distinctness his intention that any Protestant,
possibly at a distance from another convenient place of wor
ship, might freely avail himself of his proximity to one of these
seigniorial churches. Yet a royal Declaration, of the
residents fourth of September, 1684, undertook to perform the
"fief" feat of interpreting the article as intended to exclude
nlmrches all but the family and dependants of the possessor of
the fief. To a sophistical argument a lying preamble was appro
priately prefixed. What better way could there be of diverting
attention from the robbery of Huguenot rights that was to be
perpetrated than to raise a hue and cry against the Huguenots
as habitual thieves ? " Experience has taught us," said the king,
" that the adherents of the pretended Reformed religion, tak
ing advantage of the troubles that agitated our realm during
the reign of our late father and during our own minority, have
endeavored to extend the privileges accorded to them by the
edicts of pacification. Whenever these undertakings have come
to our knowledge we have been obliged to use our authority to
stop their course." To this class of unauthorized and aggres
sive movements his majesty next applies himself to prove that
the practice of the majority of the chief Protestant noblemen
belongs ; since, for the most part, they admit to their worship
all sorts of persons indifferently. But this is absolutely con
trary to the design of the edicts of pacification, whose spirit
has been to admit only the family and the vassals of the lords,
with such other persons as may be actually domiciled within
the extent of their jurisdiction, though not their vassals.
" For," adds the king — and it is the only reason he alleges—" if
the lords were permitted to receive to the worship they hold,
all sorts of persons, there would be no important difference be
tween a public worship and a worship conceded to a lord."
Inasmuch, then, as it is important to forestall the disastrous
results of these ill-founded pretensions, which might forsooth
furnish an opportunity for holding assemblies prejudicial to the
king's service and to the public quiet, his majesty sets the seal
of his approval upon that explanation of the permission ac-
34

530 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Cn. X
corded by Henry the Fourth to all that shall choose to frequent
the services in the houses of the lords hauts-justiciers, which
limits it to persons that actually reside within their jurisdiction.
The defect of logical cogency in the argument is compensated
by the severity of the penalty pronounced. The unauthorized
worshipper of God must pay a fine of five hundred livres, to
be applied to the use of the nearest hospital ; while the lord
who has allowed him to worship within his house forfeits the
right to have service there in future, as does also the minister
that has preached the right to officiate anywhere within the
realm.1 The Protestants were at their wits' end. A perpetual menace
hung over their few remaining places of worship and the pastors
that ministered to them. How were they to avert the blow
that might fall upon them at any moment and secure their
ruin, however circumspect their deportment might be ?
The destruction of the great Protestant church of Mont
pellier that had triumphantly withstood the storms of more than
one hundred and twenty years, was a portentous oc-
pmtestant currence. The catastrophe came about through the
Moutpeiiier admission of a young girl, Isabeau Paulet, to the
public religious services. Isabeau's father, formerly a
Protestant minister, had been converted to Roman Catholicism.
His wife and child remained firm. He had caused Isabeau to
be placed for a time in a convent for nuns in the Cevennes.
Here she was said to have abjured Protestantism. She herself
denied the statement, and for five years, since her return to her
home, she had been a worshipper, in company with her mother,
in the Protestant " temple." There is reason to believe that
she had never apostatized. Yet on the groundless accusation
of having permitted a " new convert " to worship God within
1 There were two documents respecting the Protestant worship allowed by the
Edict of Nantes to noblemen, signed on September 4, 1684 — an arret of the
Council and a declaration of the king. It is to the latter that reference is made.
See Benoist, Histoire de l'Edit de Nantes, v. p. j. 159, 160; fidits, Declarations
et Arrests, 167-169 ; Isambert, Recueil des anciennes lois francaises. xix. 457,
458. A subsequent arret of Council, February 5, 1685, further explained the
residence required of attendants upon divine worship in seigniorial houses as a
continuous abode of not less than one entire year. Benoist, v., pieces justifica
tives, 160.

1683-1685 PRELUDE TO THE RECALL 531
its walls, one of the oldest and most flourishing of the Hugue
not churches was destroyed, the great edifice razed to the
ground, the five pastors silenced, and four of the number treach
erously thrown into prison until the AA'ork of devastation had
been completed.1 If so considerable a church as that of Mont
pellier, Avith its twelve thousand members and adherents,2 could
be disposed of in so summary a fashion, upon false or frivo
lous charges, what could be hoped for by other and less con
spicuous churches ?
A few months earlier, each of the remaining churches of
Poitou had received from Lamoignon de Basville, royal inten
dant of that generality, a long list of names. They were the
names of all the former members of those churches who had
been converted. The king had commanded him to send them,
How could with strict orders to enforce the penalty of the law
converts'" be upon any church that should permit a single one of
excluded? these persons even to enter its precincts.8 In utter
despair of being able to escape the toils in which their enemies
must surely take them, the Protestant churches of Poitou, tak
ing counsel of their fears, resolved to close their doors altogether
for the time. They could have done nothing that Avould have
pleased their adversaries better, unless it had been to induce
all their brethren throughout France to imitate their pusil
lanimous example." This happily their brethren, for the most
part, declined to do, preferring to struggle on against hope, and
adopting every device that ingenuity could devise to defeat the
1 Philippe Corbiere, Histoire de 1'F.glise Reformse de Montpellier, 230, et seq.
The Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du Prot. fr., xxxv. (1886), 62-73, published
the two decisions of the Parliament of Toulouse, of November 16, 1682, and
May 5, 1683, respectively. Isabeau, it appears from these documents, declared
that the paper purporting to be her abjuration was a forgery. It is equally
plain from the date given in the first decision that Isabeau was, at the time of
her pretended abjuration, less than twelve years old, and could not therefore
legally have changed her religion. See, also. La Sortie de France pour cause
de religion de Daniel Brousson (Paris, 1885), 13, et seq.
! Corbiere, 235, note.
3 "ArrSt du Conseil d'Etat portant defenses aux Ministres et Consistoires de la
R. P. R. de souffrir que les nouveaux Convertis, denommez dans les Listes a
eux signifiees, entrent dans les Temples, et assistent a aucun des exercices de
ladite Religion." Versailles, June 17, 1682, in Benoist's documents, v. 139.
4 Benoist, iv. 549.

532 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. X
wiles of the clergy. Generally, perhaps, the elders neglecting
their usual duties, and doing violence to their religious instincts,
posted themselves at the doors of the sacred edifices to scan
the face of every comer to God's house, and forbade, instead of
inviting, the unhappy apostate, hoAvever penitent for his weak
ness, to join the company of his former brethren.1
In the southern provinces a more virile spirit displayed it
self — the remains of the resolution that nerved the Huguenots
of a previous age to armed resistance, the prognostic of the de
termination which, twenty years later, aroused the Cevenol
Camisards to desperate combat.
Never had the Protestants stood in greater need of concert
ed action, yet never was concerted action more difficult. The
presence of the royal commissioner, not, as formerly, a member
of their own communion, but now uniformly a Roman Cathohc,
destroyed all possibility of friendly conference in the provincial
synods or the colloquies. The very oversight of their common
interests, which, for over a century, had been left, by tacit un
derstanding, to the churches in the chief toAvns of each colloquy,
, as to a permanent commission during the intervals be-
The board of Jr . °
"directors" tween the sessions ot the synods — as, for example, to
Languedoc, Nismes, Uzes, and Montpellier, in Languedoc — it had
now become difficult and dangerous to exercise. To
meet the emergency, a body of six " directors " was secretly
chosen by the Protestants of Lower Languedoc, and the ex
ample of Lower Languedoc was imitated by Dauphiny, by Vi-
A'arais, and by the Cevennes. By means of the correspondence
of each of these bodies with the others it was hoped to secure
a community of counsels and of action.2 Under their auspices
a meeting for joint deliberation Avas held at Toulouse, in the
month of May, 1683.
Possibly, in order to avert suspicion, the most intensely
bigoted city of southern France had been selected, and so
well was secrecy maintained, that the persons composing the
gathering — sixteen according to most accounts, twenty-eight
according to others3 — came and went without attracting at-
1 Benoist, iv. 598-606. '- Ibid., v. 633, et seq.
3 Benoist and La France Protestante, s. v., give the former number; Leopold
Negre (Vie et ministere de Claude Brousson, p. 21) gives the latter.

1682-1685 PRELUDE TO THE RECALL 533
tention. Claude Brousson, at whose house they assembled,
was the leading spirit of the convocation — an ardent and in
trepid lawyer, himself Avithout personal fear and a
Touioulein friend of bold measures, who had for some years
ciaude distinguished himself for the advocacy, at the bar of
the chambre mi-partie of Castres, and elsewhere, both
of the poor among his fellow Protestants and of the Reformed
churches, in the storm of chicanery and injustice to which they
were exposed. The future martyr for his faith either found, or
infused in his associates, a resolution kindred to that which ex
isted in his own breast. It was resolved to cry a halt in the
course of craven submission to the dictates of a clergy insatiable
in the demands which it made upon the monarch for the op
pression of his Protestant subjects. The proverbial patience de
Huguenot must be shown to have bounds.1
The famous " Project " which was adopted contained a num
ber of distinct recommendations. The most notable was that
the congregations of all the churches that had been closed by
order of government should assemble again for the
The " Proj- °
ecfandits worship of Almighty God on Sunday, the twenty-
seventh of June, 1683, and should not only attend to
exhortation and prayer, but sing the Divine praise, celebrate the
sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper, and solemnize
the ordinance of marriage. They were neither to court nor to
shun publicity, neither to affect to worship on the very sites of
their former " temples " or in public streets and squares, nor to
seek out spots where their gatherings might escape the observa
tion of the authorities. For it was to be the purpose of the
Huguenots that their zeal for the glory of God should be known
by the court, and that this might correspond Avith the respectful
protestations which they intended to make to the king in the
form of a general petition setting forth the determination of his
majesty's Reformed subjects to suffer everything in order to
continue to render to the Almighty the solemn service which
Avas due to Him. On the succeeding Lord's Day a fast was
to be observed. Where there were no ministers on the spot,
they were to be obtained from some neighboring place, or else,
1 La France Protestante, iii. 223.

534 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. X
if that were impracticable, the elders and deacons would read
the Word of God, the prayers of Calvin's liturgy, and such
sermons as they might have at hand. " The psalms that are
adapted to our condition," it was provided, " will be sung by us
kneeling." The doors of the sanctuary were to be thrown wide
open to all that would come, apostates and the priests of a hos
tile communion Avere alone to be requested not to attend ser
vices which their presence would compromise. So far from en
couraging the ministers of the gospel to leave the kingdom, the
" Project " proposed to forbid them to do so.1
The conception was bold, the steps determined upon were
taken advisedly. In the universal ruin that threatened to carry
a vMe doAvn every Huguenot church, to the very last, it Avas
measure. 0f prime importance to the Protestant community that
the courage of those that were loyally attached to the faith of
their ancestors, should be sustained by the knowledge that
there were many men and women of like mind, Avho both prized
their religion and were willing to encounter suffering in behalf
of it. And it was almost equally vital to the continued exist
ence of French Protestantism that its oppressors, beginning
Avith the king and his priestly advisers themselves, should be
speedily and thoroughly disabused of the notion that the Hu
guenots had come to hold very lightly by their religious views,
and would readily surrender them either for a paltry bribe of
money, as Pelisson's converts had done, or whenever a little
salutary constraint should be applied. It was especially with
this object in view that the Toulouse assembly dreAV up and
forwarded to Louis the Fourteenth a protestation of the sincer
ity of their purpose and of their unalterable resolution to suffer
the loss of all their earthly possessions and even of life itself
rather than prove recreant to the serA'ice of their God.
The P rotes-
tantmani- It would be needless to reproduce here a paper in
every respect worthy of the best age of Huguenot hero
ism,2 but sadly out of place at a time when counsels were divided,
and when a considerable part of the adherents of the Reformed
' A summary of the Project is given by Benoist, v. 637, etc. ; Haag, La France
Protestante, s. v. Claude Brousson ; Drion, Chronologie historique, ii. 191-193.
'' See the summaries in Benoist, v. 639, and Haag, La France Protestante, iii.
224, 225.

1682-1685 PRELUDE TO THE RECALL 535
faith either had lost their pristine love, or had embraced such
exaggerated ideas of the duty of blind obedience to constituted
authority as to be incapable of responding to the most impas
sioned appeals.
The government met the emergency with successful craft.
Duplessis Mornay had at one time denominated the two depu
ties general of the Reformed, " the tAvo eyes without which the
churches must have groped their Avay and lived in darkness." 1
The deputy The solitary deputy general, taken from the nobihty,
SSSSfS, whom the Present king permitted the Huguenots to
movement. nave> was spare(j rather that he might serve as a con
venient means of deluding and discouraging the members of his
religious communion.
The younger Marquis of Ruvigny, though more zealous for
the interests of his fellow-believers than his father when in
office had been, was yet a firm upholder of the royal prerogative
and an uncompromising advocate of submission. Obedient to
the desires, if not to the expressed command of the court, he
wrote a letter to the consistories of the Protestant churches of
the kingdom, in which he threw cold water upon the Project of
the Toulouse assembly. On the one hand, he showed the dan
ger that the faithful would incur of drawing down upon them
still greater severities, should they persist in attempting to
gather for worship despite the king's prohibition ; on the other
hand, he held forth hopes that, should they patiently submit
to their present trials, he might obtain from the pity of the
monarch some alleviation of their lot.2 There were many others
Timidity of wno> ""om excessive caution, or from worldly wisdom,
Slote1 entertained the same sentiments. The consistory of
consistories. Charenton, felt the influence of the capital, and with
held its co-operation. Timid men throughout the realm took
refuge in the principle that the subject is never authorized to
resist the king's commands. A plan that possibly might have
effected something, by wringing concessions from the fears of
' The Huguenots and Henry of Navarre, ii. 449.
2"Onne douta point, " remarks Benoist, " que cette lettre, datee du vingt-
huitieme de Juillet, quoi qu'elle exprimat les sentimens du Depute General, ne
lui eut ete dictee; et qu'il n'eut autant snivi en l'ecrivant les ordres de la Cour,
que ses propres inclinations." Histoire de l'Edit de Nantes, v. 643.

536 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. X
the antagonists of the Huguenots, fell through, when the zeal of
the greater number of the Huguenots themselves was dampened
by those who should have given encouragement.
The only result of the famous " Project " was to aggravate
the condition of the Protestants of the Southeast, and to furnish
an excuse for pitiless butchery. Vivarais and Dauphi-
vivarais and ny suffered most. Here, as elsewhere, opinion was di
vided respecting the advisability of following the course
proposed by the Protestant directors, and division of opinion
frustrated the object, so far as uniformity of action was con
cerned. The Huguenot worshippers assembled, it is true, in
great numbers, but, instead of the appointed time, on different
Sundays at different places. Their vigilant enemies, misrepre
senting the gatherings, called upon the government to repress
what they styled seditious assemblies. In a few instances, fore
warned that they would be attacked by armed bands, the Hu
guenots themselves took with them such weapons of self-defence
as they could find. In rare cases there were combats of armed
men. Near the little town of Bordeaux, or Bourdeaux, in Dau
phiny, a detachment of Huguenots defended themselves with
such courage against the royal dragoons that the officers of the
latter declared that they had never seen so stubborn a fight.
None the more on that account did the Huguenots obtain those
terms which valor is wont to extort from an enemy that respects
courage. Cosnac, Bishop of Valence, within whose diocese the
incident occurred, tells, with evident satisfaction, that the royal
commander, M. de Saint Ruth, burned more than two hundred
of the unfortunates in a barn where they had taken refuge. Af
ter that there was no further resistance. The prisons in his dio
cese were all full to overflowing Avith Protestants pitilessly des
tined to the gallows, and sent to the gallows as fast as, in rapid
succession, Lebret, Intendant of Dauphiny could try and sen
tence them. The bishop admits that it was " a terrible spec-"
tacle," and he claims credit for having saved the hves of over
two thousand men, by obtaining from the king the pardon of
such and such only as would repent and consent to be converted.
Accordingly, when the intendant travelled from prison to prison
condemning the Huguenots to death, Cosnac accompanied him,
receiving abjurations of Protestantism as the sole condition of

1682-1685 PRELUDE TO THE RECALL 537
escape from the halter. A truly apostolic visitation of his dio
cese, forsooth.1
For the most part, as I have said, the soldiers met an unre
sisting enemy, and, in place of the display of bravery, history
has only to record a heartrending tale of savage cruelty vented
above all upon the weak and defenceless. In a war waged os
tensibly for religion, the women and the children are Avont to
bear the brunt of the most savage and atrocious indignities. It
was not otherwise on this occasion. The great number of sol
diers Avhom Louis the Fourteenth maintained, even in time of
peace, that he might strike terror into the minds of his neigh
bors, and be prepared at any moment to avenge the slightest in
sult, from whatever quarter it might come, furnished the means
of prompt repression. The troops, who were perpetually moving
from one province to another, successively ravaged Dauphiny,
Vivarais, and the Cevennes ; the news of what happened in one
province being kept back from the others, that all might be
taken at unawares. And now complaints were heard, a presage
of coming disaster, as the court of Versailles was warned of the
ruin of those branches of industry which AA'ere almost wholly in
the hands of the Protestants, and to which the present disorders
would administer a death-blow.2 What the Huguenots of the
three provinces of Dauphiny, Vivarais, and Lower Languedoc
suffered in a material point of view, may be inferred from the
fact that the presence of the troops quartered upon the single
town of Saint Hippolyte, during the extraordinarily severe win
ter of 1683-84, entailed upon the unhappy inhabitants, chiefly
by wanton waste and needless exaction, a crushing expense of
nearly a quarter of a milhon livres.3
1 Memoires de Cosnac, ii. 115-117.
2 In a fresh remonstrance addressed to the crown by the " directors " of Lower
Languedoc, after dwelling upon the recent sufferings of this province and its
neighbors, the king was informed that so intimate were the relations of the Roman
Catholics and the Protestants, that the ruin of the latter would entail the ruin of
the former. All the manufactures of the provinces, where they had until re
cently been so flourishing, were prostrate, inasmuch as the whole trade of the
region was dependent upon the toil of the Protestants. Benoist, v. 661. I must
refer the reader to the pages of this accurate and well-informed historian (v. 645-
667) for a detailed account of the disturbances to which I allude as briefly as
possible in the text.
3 More precisely, 244,400 livres. Ibid., v. 663.

538 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. X
By preaching at places where Protestant worship was pro
scribed, by exhorting their flocks to constancy, by instructing
the people that their loyalty to Almighty God and to their own
conscientious convictions stood above the duty of obedience to
an earthly king, the Protestant pastors of the Southeast had
made themselves the objects of the special vengeance of the in
tolerant government and of the clergy at whose dictation the
government acted. Or, more properly speaking, the part which
they now played furnished a plausible excuse for the exhibition
of the hatred previously entertained. Did this not sufficient
ly appear in the barbarity Avith which Daniel Chamier, a
lawyer of Montelimart, was treated, being broken upon the
wheel alive, chiefly for the unpardonable offence of being the
great-grandson, and for bearing the name of the great pastor and
defender of Montauban, in its famous siege by Louis the Thir
teenth ? Tlie old Huguenot heroism was not yet dead.
matron's When young Chamier underwent his horrible torture,
for the scene of which, by a refinement of cruelty, the
street in front of his paternal home had been selected, it was
his mother that chiefly urged him to fortitude in suffering for
the faith. " I have yet," said she, " three children whom I shall
cheerfully give up if they be called to die for religion's sake."1
The lives of ministers Avho had preached in places where
Protestant worship was proscribed, were not safe in France.
Reformed pastors had been expressly excepted from
refugee pas- the delusive amnesty published by the government.
comed at The majority made good their flight and were wel
comed with the utmost readiness by the magistrates
and people of Geneva ; for that city still deserved the honor-
1 " Ce a quoi il avait ete fortement exhorte par sa mere, qui avait mgme de
clare qu'elle avait encore trois enfants, qu'elle etait prete a donner s'ils etaient
destines a, mourir pour la religion." Extracts from the Gazette of Harlem
(translated by M. Enschede, librarian and archivist of Harlem), under date of
Paris, October 4, 1683, in Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. duProt. fr., xxviii. (1879),
410. See Benoist, v. 651, and La France Protestante (2d ed.), iii. 1038. One of
the " three children " of the magnanimous mother of the martyr was an older
brother, Adrien, also an advocate, who, in the language of the list of refugees
about to be mentioned, "a este aussi contraiut de sortir du royaume a cause
qu'apres la mort de son frere qui a este execute au Montelimar pour le fait de
religion, on l'a cerche pour le prendre," etc. Bulletin, etc., xix. 314. His de
scendants have occupied a distinguished position in Great Britain.

1682-1685 PRELUDE TO THE RECALL 539
able title — earned, over a century before, by kindness to men
and women persecuted for righteousness' sake— "God's hos
telry." I have before me a list of thirty-seven pastors and six
proposants, or licentiates, drawn up at the time, with a brief
comment upon the condition of each and the needs for whose
supply the hospitable gifts of the citizens were freely made.
The solitary crime these fugitives had committed was that they
had dared to proclaim the word of God in a spot where his
majesty Louis the Great had ordered that it should not be pro
claimed, or, in a few cases, that they had served as " directors "
of the rehgious affairs of the Protestants.1
The fate of Isaac Homel, pastor of the village of Soyons, on
the right bank of the Rhone, a little below Valence, shows what
Pastor Isaac tne refugee ministers escaped. Homel had done
keTonthe" neither more nor less than they. He had not advo-
wheel- cated a resort to arms. He had. not preached sedi
tion. He had uttered no word of defiance against the crowned
tyrant who was striving to impose his own religion upon sub
jects that held different sentiments. He had merely warned
his flock to obey God in such matters rather than man. At
most it could only be said against him that he had not remon
strated with those who came to join in the exercises of divine
worship provided with some slight weapons, to ward off the un
authorized attacks of such of their enemies as were ready to
take advantage of their defenceless condition. Yet for no other
fault than this, an old man of seventy-two years, of which he
had spent forty-two in the exemplary discharge of his duties as
a minister of the gospel, was arraigned before the intendant, M.
d'Aguesseau, father of the famous chancellor of France, and by
him condemned, apparently without pity, and certainly with no
manifestation of subsequent remorse, to the death reserved for
vile malefactors. The agony produced by the most excruciating

1 " Estat des pasteurs, proposans et autres des provinces de Dauphine, bas
Languedoc, Cevennes et Vivarez, que ont este contraints de sortir du royaume
de France," drawn up and verified by the signature of the first Syndic De Nor-
mandie, November 30, 1683. MS. in the Archives of Geneva, and printed in
the Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du Prot. fr., xix. 307-318. Besides the minis
ters, the list contains the names of fifteen laymen, advocates in parliament, etc.,
most of them specially excepted from the general amnesty.

540 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. X
of all the modes of execution known to a bloodthirsty legisla
tion, Avas enhanced by the malice which purposely delayed the
last and most merciful blow that should end his misery. At
every new stroke of the hammer, during the hours the gray-
haired victim lingered bound to the wheel, the savage minister
of the law would interrupt the prayers which Homel continually
raised to heaven with the taunting words : " Precheras-tu en
core ? " " Are you again going to preach ? " The brutality of
the wretch, who purposely protracted Homel's agony, and the
insensibility of the crowd, of spectators, who would not have
tolerated such cruelty had the sufferer been a highway robber or
a murderer, appear less strange than the equanimity with which
a judge esteemed "austere in morals and singularly pious" au
thorized the execution, and a great jurist, his son, relates the
event. "It was at least a great consolation for my father,"
wrote Chancellor d'Aguesseau, in recording, for the benefit of
his own children, the encounters with those whom he is pleased
to style rebels, "It was at least a great consolation to my
father, so far as he was personally concerned, that he was able
to finish this great affair Avithout its costing his humanity more
than a single execution. The minister Homel was the solitary
culprit whose blood atoned for the crime of all the rest. My
father condemned him to the wheel, after having tried him ac
cording to the customary forms." *
The judicial murder of the venerable Isaac Homel was the
first in a long catalogue of atrocious executions of Protestant
a judicial ministers in the reigns of Louis the Fourteenth and
murder. Louis the Fifteenth. A series of sufferers, equally
innocent, true martyrs of the faith, illustrate the annals of the
church of the Desert, far on in the succeeding century. Of
these Homel was popularly regarded as the protomartyr. And
it is interesting to note in connection with the singular forms
of enthusiasm that were to acquire so great a development in
the ensuing years of persecution, that strange and supernatural
manifestations are said to have occurred at the death of Isaac
Homel. There were many that asserted, says a contempora-
' Discours du chancelier d'Aguesseau, sur la vie et la mort de son pere, CEuvres
(Paris, 1789), xiii. 48.

1682-1685 PRELUDE TO THE RECALL 541
neous account, that when the coup de grace had been given, and
the soul of the dying man was leaving his bruised and bleeding
songs in b°dv> it caused the familiar tunes of the Protestant
the air. hymns— doubtless, the loved psalms of Clement Marot
and Theodore Beza — to be heard in the air. The very exe
cutioner averred that he heard them ! 1
Strange as it may now appear, in the midst of so many
tokens unmistakably pointing to the approach of the direct
and complete recall of the Edict of Nantes, that is, to the pro
scription of Protestantism in France, the majority of the Hu
guenots even yet hugged the delusive persuasion that matters
would never come to that pass.
There was indeed no lack of signs that the king and his ad
visers were resolved to make it increasingly difficult for one to
be a Protestant and yet live in France. Under the forms of
law — in fact, under the pretext of executing the very edict
which was infringed in all points— churches had been succes-
The de- srver7 closed in one spot after another, until it had
ofHnue come *° Pass *^a* ^e Huguenots retained in their
churches Possessi°n ou* a small fraction of those held in the
time of Henry the Fourth. Of these the titles must
indeed have been good beyond cavil, since they had stood the
inspection of judges who made free use of every technical
ity, who admitted all presumptions against and none for them,
who demanded documentary evidence and would make no ac
count of deeds or other records lost, mislaid, or stolen. But
with the recent laws relating to the exclusion of "new con
verts," and the omniscience that was required of a Protestant
church officer in detecting an apostate under any disguise, no
church edifice was secure for a single day against demolition,

1 Discours du grand Homel, ministre du saint evangile de notre Seigneur
Jesus Christ, sur la roue, MS. of the 17th century in Charles Coqnerel, His
toire des Eglises du Desert, i. 75, 76. The most extended account of Isaac
Homel is from the pen of his daughter : Histoire de la mort et du martyre
de Monsieur Homel, pasteur de I'Eglise de Soyon, en Vivarets, composce par
demoiselle Anne Homel, sa fille, reprinted in Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du
Prot. fr., ix. 312-330. See, also, Derniers heures d'Isaac Homel, ibid., ix.
134-137. Benoist, v. 667, 668. Needless to say, the Mercure Galant and other
inimical writings misrepresent Homel as an instigator of a recourse to arms, etc.

542 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. X
no pastor safe for a single day against interdiction. At Mer, a
flourishing church was closed for three paltry reasons: some
children " newly converted " had been admitted, so it was said,
to the services; some Protestant Avomen had been helped in
childbirth by Protestant midwives ; the elders were charged
Avith having met Avithout permission and levied an assessment
for the support of the ministry ! 1 Elders and deacons might
station themselves at the doors and do their very best to dis
criminate between those Avhom they were allowed to admit and
those whom they must turn away under penalty of exemplary
punishment for themselves and ruin to their cherished edifice.
They could not hope to succeed. And if they protested on the
impossibility of accomplishing their task, they were likely to
receive a reply similar to that which a monk addressed to some
that complained in his hearing : " It must be a possible thing ;
for the king commands it, and he does not command what is
impossible." 2 But how was it, if, as was sometimes the case
(unless these ecclesiastics were grossly maligned), priests and
monks purposely contrived to introduce into the Protestant
services the very " neAv converts " whose presence would insure
the suppression of those services ? 3
Deprived of possibly nine-tenths of their places of Avorship,
the Huguenots that stood firm seemed condemned by the gov
ernment and clergy to relapse into utter irreligion. A malicious
pleasure was taken in thwarting their efforts to serve Almighty
God. At LTsle en Jourdain there stood a Protestant church
to which the devout flocked from fifteen or twenty miles around,
inasmuch as every one of their " temples " in the neighborhood
had been interdicted. The edifice was too small to contain
them. Yet, as injustice never is at a loss for a pretext, a reason
for tearing this church was found in the circumstance that but
seven Protestant families, consisting of some tAventy-five or
thirty souls, resided in LTsle en Jourdain itself.4 Eighteen
months later, a general law suppressed every Protestant church
of the realm situated in a town where there were less than ten

' P. de Felice, Mer : son Eglise Reformee, 130.
5 Benoist, v. 695. 3 Ibid., v. 080.
4 Memoires de Foucault, 88.

1685 PRELUDE TO THE RECALL 543
Protestant families exclusive of that of the pastor, and banished
him to a distance of at least six leagues.1
It was on a Saturday night that the ministers of Marennes re
ceived notice that they must not officiate, and the next day ten
thousand people, some of whom had come as far as from the
islands of Re and Oleron, Avere deprived of the opportunity to
join in divine worship. Over a score of children brought to re
ceive baptism had to be carried long distances — some of them
seven leagues — and there were those that died of the exposure
in an inclement season of the year.2 Yet nothing in the form
of difficulty or hardship quenched the thirst of the masses of
the Huguenots for the preaching of the gospel, and the pastors
who had thus far been spared were overwhelmed with the neAV
labors entailed by the crowds that came from afar. Then it
was that the king issued a laAv forbidding the Protestants from
going to worship outside of the bailiwick in which they re
sided, thus cutting off three-quarters of their number, it may
be, from any opportunity to attend public services.3
The law itself gives us a picture, not wanting in graphic dis
tinctness, of the pious pilgrimages of men and women who,
. . that they might enjoy the coveted privilege were will-
ureofHu- ing to go fifty or a hundred miles, travelling by day
grimages to and by night, on the highways and on the rivers, and
public wor- making the air resound with their hymns of praise.
If we strip off the words manifestly prompted by
partisan hatred and malice, the description may well stand as
a faithful reproduction of scenes that occurred in many a part
1 Declaration of December 26, 1684, in Edits, Decl. et Arrests, 176.
5 Benoist, v. 681.
3 The law, as might have been expected, was given in answer to a suggestion
of the Roman Catholic clergy. We have before us (in the appendix to Puaux's
edition of Claude's " Plaintes des Protestants cruellement opprimes," Paris,
1885, 125-131) the very curious petition of the Assembly of 1685, with the
king's answer opposite each one of the twenty -nine articles, signed by him and
dated Versailles, July 9, 1685. In art. 9, the clergy begs " that those of the
R.P.R. be forbidden to go to hear preaching or perform any other service of
their religion in another province, save in case of necessary journeys, under
pain of interdiction of the place of worship and demolition of the ' temple '
where they shall have been received." Over against this article, his majesty
promises immediately (incessamment) to give the necessary orders. He kept
his word. The law was issued sixteen days later.

544 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. X
of France at this period. " We have been informed," says
Louis the Fourteenth, " that since the prohibition of the ser
vices of the Pretended Reformed Religion and the demolition
of the ' temples ' in many places of our realm, either because of
their having been established contrary to the Edict of Nantes
or in consequence of violations of our edicts and declarations,
our subjects professing that religion come from different baili
wicks and senechaussees to the ' temples ' that remain standing,
although these may be distant more than thirty leagues ; in
such wise that this concourse of people occasions great gather
ings in the places in which the service is permitted, scandal in
those places through Avhich the people pass, in consequence of
the irreverent acts they commit in front of the churches,1 and
quarrels with the Catholics, by their marching both by night
and by day, during Avhich march they sing their psalms with a
loud voice, despite the fact that this has been forbidden by
divers orders and declarations." 2
The Roman Catholic church has always insisted upon bap
tism as indispensable for salvation, and the Roman pontiff
claims all baptized persons as in some sense belonging to him.
It. would not answer for Louis the Fourteenth to assume the
responsibility of exposing Protestant children to the danger of
dying unbaptized, or even of growing up without receiving the
external mark of the Christian religion. At one time there was
a serious discussion of the propriety of issuing an edict making
Roman Catholic baptism compulsory upon all children. But
the government thought better of the matter. It was not yet
ready to encounter the desperate resistance which would cer
tainly be called forth by the attempt to snatch new-born infants
1 Presumably, the " irreverent acts " consisted in the neglect of the sturdy Hu
guenots to uncover, kneel, or cross themselves at the door of the church ;
and the "quarrels with Catholics" consisted in their resenting and defending
themselves against insult.
2 " Declaration du Roy, du 25 Juillet 1685, portantque ceux de la R. P. R.
ne pourront aller a I'exercice aux temples hors des bailliages oil iis sont de-
meurans." jfidits, Declarations et Arrests, 220, 221. Also in Benoist's pieces
justificatives, 177. See also ibid., v. 811. Of this description, Lievre says
truly (Du role que le clerge catholique de France a joue dans la Revocation de
i'Edit de Nantes, p. 47), "that there are few of these portraitures of manners
and customs in the legislation of Louis XIV. against the Reformed."

1685 PRELUDE TO THE RECALL 545
from their mothers' arms to be baptized by the priests of the Ro
man Catholic church. In this emergency the singular course was
The-ovem- resolYed uPon of commissioning a limited number of
me?\ aEr f pastors of the Reformed faith to administer baptism
points rTOt- ,_ ^„, . -^
estant^past- to the children of the members of their communion,
Bant!e£ wrtnoilt venturing to discharge any other function of
their sacred office. The attempt was made a year or
more before the formal Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. It
met with little success. Some of the strange provisions of the
laAv could not easily be executed — notably that provision which
required that the ceremony be performed, in the presence of
the royal judge of the place or certain other named officials,
within twenty-four hours of the birth of the child, and this
under a heavy fine.1
Many Protestants declined to have any ministers with the
limitations imposed by the law; while, on the other hand,
some of manv ministers declined, from conscientious motives,
whom de- to serve on the commission. Cambois du Roc vie-
clmetoserve. « _ ^
terred to pay a fine for his refusal, and justified his
action in writing. The intendant of Montauban, Foucault,
himself informs us that several ministers whom he invited to
come and baptize the Huguenot children of that city refused to
do so, because the law did not permit them to visit and comfort
the sick, and because it required the presence of a magistrate.
The people themselves would not choose a minister. There
upon the intendant suggested to the Marquis of Chateauneuf,
that the king make the appointment, and, in case the Protes
tants did not employ the person thus selected, that their chil
dren should be forcibly taken from them for baptism in the
Roman Catholic churches. Louis accordingly chose one Bories,
but for two months not a Huguenot child was brought to him.
Parents preferred to carry their infant children to Villemadon,
though the exposure cost the lives of some of the number.2 It is
an interesting circumstance, well worthy of notice here, that the
historian Benoist, who claims to have inspected the original
minute of the law, found its provisions clearly written out, with
some interlineations in the hand of the secretary of state, the
1 Benoist, v. 704 et seq. 2 Memoires de Foucault, 89, 90.
35

546 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ca X
Marquis of Chateauneuf, but the preamble in which should be
set forth the reasons for its enactment left blank. It was no un
common thing for the king's advisers to resolve upon
negligent a course of action before settling the grounds upon
which it should be justified. The monarch did as he
pleased, and afterward a quest was made for reasons. Often,
indeed, the latter task being left to some inferior clerk, his con
jectures were not happy, and laws of great importance were
published to the world, of which the alleged considerations
were pitifully weak.1 A letter of Louis the Fourteenth, dated
within less than four months of the Revocation, lets us into the
secret of the kind of ministers whom he preferred for the baptis-
Lonis's mal commission. " My intention," writes his Majesty
intentions. to ^& intendant of Limoges, " is that, in selecting
ministers for baptizing the new-born infants, you be careful not
to choose the ablest, but, on the contrary, those that enjoy the
least credit among the Protestants (ceux de ladite religion) ; in
order that less confidence may be reposed in them and they
may be looked to only in the matter of administering bap
tism."2 Despite all the particular acts of injustice of which they were
the victims, or, rather, perhaps I ought to say because of these
very acts of injustice, the majority of the Huguenots, as I have
hinted, still refused to be persuaded that Louis the Fourteenth
would ever revoke the Edict of Nantes. "Why," said they,
"these numberless, and often inconsistent, orders in council,
decisions, declarations, and edicts ? Did the august monarch of
the most powerful state in Europe really purpose the abroga
tion of the great charter of our liberties, Avould he condescend
to occupy himself with such paltry details as these have respect
to? Would he not rather make quick work of the whole affair
and at once put us out of our present miserable condition of un
certainty ? " And in point of fact, some of the laws that were
enacted in 1684, and even in the early part of 1685, make it incon-
1 Benoist, v. 704.
'* " De ne choisir pour cela les plus habiles, mais bien les moins accr§dites parmi
ceux de ladite Religion, afin que l'on prenne moins de confiance en eux," etc.
Louis XIV. to M. de Gourgues. June 29, 1685. Archives of War Department.
Printed in Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du Prot. fr., xxxiv. (1885) 283.

1685 PRELUDE TO THE RECALL 547
ceivable even now that so speedy an abrogation of the Edict of
Nantes was contemplated. In the month of August, 1684, Louis
issued an extraordinary law in which he seemed to make pro
vision for the continued existence of Protestants and of Protes
tant worship in France for an indefinite number of years. In
this enactment, after a reference to the success attending his
No pastor to efforts to lead his Protestant subjects to recognize
thre™eaT tteir errors and embrace the Roman Catholic relio-ion
monepiace. he asserted that one of the chief obstacles that he had
encountered was the blind deference entertained by the people
for pastors long settled in one place. With the view of remedy
ing this evil, Louis, in the law before us, forbids that any minis
ter shall hereafter be allowed to remain the pastor of a church
for more than three consecutive years.1
Certainly it must be admitted that the legislator took a good
deal of needless trouble, if he had at this time the intention of
doing away with Protestant churches and of setting a price upon
the head of every Protestant minister remaining in France,
within httle more than a twelvemonth.
For the change of purpose to Avhich all signs unmistakably
point, a cause may be found in the success that had attended
indications tlae efforts to close> by fair measures and by foul, al-
otpu^ose6 most every Protestant place of worship in the king-
partheMngs ^om" -^ second cause was the king's belief, sedulous
ly encouraged by the court, that the labors which he
had put forth for the conversion of the Protestants themselves,
through the expenditure of money and otherwise, had borne
such abundant fruit as to demonstrate the slenderness of the
attachment of the Huguenots to the errors in which it was their
misfortune to have been reared, and the ease with which they
would be gathered into the ancient church from which their
fathers had strayed.
On the first point there could be little or no doubt. The
same methods that had closed the great majority of the Hugue
not " temples " must infallibly lead to the overthrow of the few
1 Edit du Roy, du mois d'Aout 1684, portant que les ministres de la R. P. R.
ne pourrant faire leurs fonctions plus de trois ans dans un meme lieu. lEdits,
Declarations et Arrests, 153-155.

548 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. X
that still remained standing. The Huguenots had, in the " gen
eral agents" of the clergy, a sleepless and indefatigable enemy
watching for time and opportunity to strike decisive Woavs.
Aetivit and ^n<* *ne c^e:cSJ itself looked on with undisguised de-
c?er°f inethe %ki as one " temple " after another fell into the toils
worl of sup- an(j its doors were closed against the throng of the
pressing ° *-*
p-roteBtant faithful that sought admission. The prelates and m-
places of ° x
worship. ferior clergy were convened in general assembly, Avhen
the Bishop of Boulogne reported the receipt of tidings of the
closing of the " temple " of Guines, one of the most important
Protestant churches in his diocese, Avithin whose walls more
than ten thousand Huguenots had communed at the last admin
istration of the Lord's Supper. He asked the support of his
colleagues in securing the demolition of the edifice, a support
which the company, having, as the official minute informs us,
received the news with great joy, Avere prompt to afford.1
Nor was this a solitary instance. A fortnight before, the Arch
bishop of Bordeaux was thanked for communicating information
that orders of arrest had been secured against the pastors of
Begle, and that the hope was entertained that sufficient proofs
would be obtained to justify the government in tearing down
the church edifice in which they ministered. On this occasion,
too, there was " universal " joy, for it was at Begle that the
Protestants of Bordeaux worshipped.2
The closing and razing of the Huguenot churches was an un
doubted fact. Louis's ministers of state and his spiritual ad
visers persuaded him that the conversion of " the larger and
better " part of the Huguenots themselves was equally unde
niable. And, indeed, if the daily bulletins that reached the
court, at Versailles or at Fontainebleau, could be depended
upon, there was nothing more certain than that pretty much the
whole Reformed population of the realm was flocking to be of
the religion which the king claimed as his own.
It is noticed by Rulhiere, that, when the dragonnades
initiated by Marillac, intendant of Poitou, Avere for the time
' Assemblee du clerge (June 30, 1685), p. 586, apud Bulletin de la Soc. de
l'hist. du Prot. fr., xxxiv. 283.
2 Ibid., xxxiv. 281. What i n justice was practised in this matter, may be seen
from Benoist's account, Hist, de l'Edit de Nantes, v. 763.

1685 PRELUDE TO THE RECALL 549
suspended, the disastrous law was suffered to remain in force
that served as the warrant of the dragonnades. The royal de
cree of the eleventh of April, 1681, exempting all newly con
verted persons from having troops quartered upon them, for the
space of two years after the renunciation of their former faith,
indicated a very practicable method of playing upon the fears
of a terrified household and of offering instant relief to any
Protestants that would merely consent to utter the single Avord
denoting submission.1
Francois Michel de Le Tellier, son of the aged chancellor,
and better known as the Marquis of Louvois, is undoubtedly to
TheMarg.nis be credited with having devised the resumption of the
nuJtetoof dragonnades after the four years of desuetude into
war- which they had fallen. Ambitious and unscrupulous
beyond his contemporaries and rivals for the royal favor, Lou
vois was the evil genius through whose inspiration those acts
were committed that are the deepest blot upon the name and
reign of Louis the Fourteenth. It was Louvois that planned
the renewal of the dragonnades. It was Louvois that urged the
formal revocation of the great edict solemnly confirmed by so
many promises of successive monarchs. It was Louvois, that,
not content with the innocent blood which he caused to be shed
in his own land, instigated, three years later, the fearful devas
tation of the Palatinate. The traveller who visits the banks of
the Neckar to admire the stately palace of the ancient electors
palatine, beholds in the ruins of the castle of Heidelberg a
startling but impressive token of the malice of a sanguinary
statesman who deemed the destruction of the homes and fields
of a hundred thousand peaceable and inoffensive peasants, with
all the concomitant horrors, no excessive price at which to pur
chase the protection of the eastern border of France from pos
sible invasion.
At the beginning of the year 1685, Louvois found, or feared,
that his occupation and influence as minister of war were gone,
unless, in lieu of the military achievements precluded by the

1 Rulhiere, Eclaircissemens historiques sur les causes de la Revocation de
l'Edit de Nantes (1788), i. 286. The law in question may be read in Edits, De
clarations et Arrests, 79, 80, and in Benoist, v. (pieces justificatives) 128.

550 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. X
existing peace, he could offer the king his master the conversion
of the Huguenots as an equivalent. It Avas about the month of
March, 1685,1 that he definitely laid his plans. A fortuitous in
cident and the discovery of a suitable agent conspired to fix the
point of beginning.
For somewhat more than a year the office of intendent at Pau,
in Beam, had been held by Nicolas Joseph Foucault, who pre
viously occupied a similar position at Montauban. He
Foucault, in- ^ . . , , . , , .
tendant of was a man in whom the most adverse and incongruous
qualities seemed to coexist, and the periods of whose
life were distinguished, less by the successive stages of his in
tellectual development, than by the varying moods of his zeal.
He that reads of Foucault as an enthusiastic friend of letters,
never more at home than when unearthing the buried antiqui
ties of France or recovering manuscript treasures long hidden
and forgotten in conventual libraries ; he that reads that Foucault
was an indefatigable inquirer, Avhose chief exploit, Avhile inten
dant of Caen, Avas the identification and exploration, not far from
that city, of the site of the ancient town of the Celtic tribe of the
Viducasses, as the glory of his earlier intendancy at Montauban
Avas the discoA'ery, in the ancient abbey of Moissac in Quercy,
of the lost Treatise of Lactantius on the Deaths of the Persecu
tors ; he that reads of Foucault, in fine, as a scholar that died at
a good old age "respected for his erudition, his mildness of
manners, and his benevolence," 2 — he that reads this, I say, will
be slow to believe that he has before him the partial and incom
plete biography of a supple courtier whose fair exterior and
honeyed words concealed an inquisitor's soul,3 the biography of
1 Rulhiere, i. 287.
* Nor are the writers who give such estimates of Foucault's character in the
popular biographical works so much to be censured as it would appear at the
first glance. Chancellor d'Aguesseau, while denouncing Foucault's conduct in
respect to the Protestants, says: "He was one of my father's friends and of my
own friends, a man of a gentle spirit, amiable in society, adorned by much
learning and having a taste for letters, as well as for those that cultivate letters."
Discours sur la vie et la mort de Mr. d'Aguesseau, Conseiller d'Etat, par son fils.
CEuvres (Paris, 1789), xiii. 51.
3 The description is given by Henri Martin, a calm and moderate historian,
who designates Foucault as " cet homme infatigable et impitoyable, ame d'in-
qnisiteur sur les dehors d'un courtisan doucereux." Histoire de France, xvi.
52.

1685 PRELUDE TO THE RECALL 551
the restorer of the detestable methods of Marillac, of the model
converter of Huguenots to the king's religion, in short, of a per
secutor who apparently felt no compunction for his crimes
against mankind, or disgust for his inhuman task, and who never
dreamed of comparing himself Avith any one of those Roman em
perors the lives and tragic ends of Avhom the Latin father whose
treatise he edited had so graphically narrated.
With all his classical and literary attainments, Foucault pos
sessed the firm conviction that against the enemies of the king's
religion no wiles were too base, no punishments too cruel. In
these matters he is condemned for the most part out of his own
mouth. The intendant had not been long at Pau, before he received
permission to go up to Paris to see his father. He embraced
ms scheme ^e opportunity to lay before Louis the Fourteenth, in
to suppress an audience granted to him at the castle of Fontaine-
FT Oft1 &r illlt. _ , ^
worship in bleau, his plan for hastening the conversion of Beam.
Beam. TT °
Upon a map of the district which he had had ex
pressly prepared, he pointed out the cities and towns where
there were Protestant churches. He found no difficulty in
proving to the monarch's satisfaction that there were too many
of them and that they were too near to one another. Instead
of twenty places of worship, five Avould be quite enough.
When the king acquiesced in this view, Foucault saw the suc
cess of his plan for the complete suppression of Protestantism
secured. "I made it a point," says this equitable magistrate,
" to leave standing only those churches, just five in number, in
which the ministers had committed an infringement of the
regulations that involved as penalty the demolition of the edi
fices and of which parliament was to take cognizance. Accord
ingly, by this means not a single Protestant church was to
remain in Beam." x Upon his return to Pau the programme
" ' J'affectai de ne laisser subsister que les temples, justement au nombre de
cinq, dans lesquels les ministres etoient tombes dans des contraventions qui
emportoient la peine de la demolition du temple, dont la connoissance £toit
renvoyee au parlement, en sorte que, par ce moyen, il ne devoit plus rester de
temples en Beam." Memoires de Foucault, publies et annotes par F. Baudry
(Collection de documents inedits), 112, 113. The king's edict to this effect,
dated Versailles, February, 1685, with its insultiDg preamble, may be read in
Edits, Declarations et Arrests, 609-613.

552 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. X
was accurately carried out. The consternation of the Protest
ants was great when they saw fifteen of their beloved churches
ruthlessly torn doAAm, Avithout form or process of laAv, but they
submitted to irresistible force. Then the suits against the five
remaining edifices Avere pressed to a speedy and inevitable
issue. In six weeks Foucault's wish and intention Avas realized.
Not a church Avas standing, and the Protestant ministers, dread
ing the severities which they foresaw only too clearly, Avere
scattered abroad.1
Not content Avith robbing the Protestants of Beam of all
their places of worship, Foucault next applied himself to rob-
The great bing them, so far as he might, of their faith, by com-
nadls'begin pelling them to profess acceptance of the Roman
inBoarn. Catholic religion.
For the accomplishment of his purpose a considerable body of
troops that had been sent to Beam to watch the Spanish fron
tier, was an instrument ready to his hand. The memoirs left
us by Foucault maintain a discreet silence respecting the pre
cise manner in which the dragoons and other soldiers were to
be employed by their officers, under the intendant's general
supervision, in effecting the conversion of the Huguenots in the
ancestral kingdom of Jeanne d'Albret and Henry of Navarre.
In the drama of ambition and false religious zeal, now to be
enacted in France, no word savoring of violence or compulsion
must be dropped by any of the performers, that gentle com
pulsion alone excepted to which reference Avas made with nau
seating frequency. It is true that here the probabilities were
not always observed ; the charge of obstinacy universally laid
to the account of the heretics comported ill with the facility
with which it was represented that their errors were over
thrown, and this, not by the laborious arguments of learned
divines, but at the bare announcement of the monarch's good
pleasure. But consistency is not always possible ; least of all
in a structure built up of insincerity and falsehood. Monsieur
de Foucault has much to say of the utility of soldiers in such

1 Memoires de Foucault, 115. Foucault's implied condemnation of the cow
ardice of "the false shepherds" who "by their desertion left me the field free
for conversions " will impose upon no intelligent reader.

1685 THE GREAT DRAGONNADES 553
a work as that in which he is engaged, but so far from admit
ting that the soldiers were to do even the slightest harm to the
Huguenots, he expressly disclaims the suggestion and volun
teers to pledge himself that the Huguenots shall not suffer.
" On the eighteenth of April, 1685," he writes, " I asked Mon
sieur de Louvois to send me orders in blank to have one or
more companies take up their quarters in the towns filled with
Protestants, it being certain that the approach of the troops
alone would produce a great number of conversions; and I
stated to him that I should see to it so carefully that the sol
diers committed no violence, that I would hold myself respon
sible for all the complaints that might arise." And he adds
later, that, Monsieur de Louvois having despatched to him a
number of the blank orders for which he had made requisition,
more than six hundred persons in five towns were converted
" on the simple news that the companies of soldiers were com
ing." 1 It might well be asked how gentle and free from vio
lence these same troopers were, that not their actual
force and presence merely, but the bare announcement of their
terror approach, wrought such wonders. For Terror went
with Foucault and his soldiers whithersoever they turned their
steps — a fact which he does not care to conceal. When the
Marquis of Croissy proposed to send ministers to baptize the
children of the remaining Protestants, the intendant opposed a
plan which would only fortify the wavering and confirm the
obstinate. As an additional reason, he gave the astounding
information that in his own last circuit he had converted five
thousand souls. He stated confidently that, before the fifteenth
of June, at least as many more would be converted. He hoped
within two months to complete the conversion of all the twenty-
two thousand Huguenots of Beam.2
I have said that the memoirs of Foucault do not allude to the
methods employed in obtaining such surprising results. Yet
they indirectly place the stamp of entire trustworthiness upon
the accounts that come to us from other sources of the barbarity
visited without stint upon an innocent population. None but
a procedure of the most extreme severity could have induced

i Memoires de Foucault, 118, 119. sI»id., H9. 120-

554 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. X
thousands of persons, of all ages and of every rank of society, to
yield to the call made upon them to accept a rehgion which
education or experience had made them detest. None but the
most intolerable outrage could have spread so terrible a report
that the advent, and even the threatened approach, of the con
verting dragoons, induced stout-hearted men and brave
a la sear- Avomen to succumb. Conversion a la Bearnaise must
have been a frightful reality to have spread such re
nown. We have a truthful description of the famous " circuit "
during which the intendant made his boasted five thousand con
versions. He led his troops from town to town, from village to
village. They entered every place with drawn swords. They
were billeted upon the Protestants alone. They lived at free
quarters, and committed the most inhuman actions that brutal
ity, fury, and rage can inspire when granted full license. They
practised these deeds of cruelty, not only by the permission,
but by the express order of Foucault, who even taught his
troopers novel methods of overcoming the firmest courage.
Among other secrets into which he initiated them, he bade
them to prevent those who refused to j-ield to other means of
torture from falling asleep, and his faithful soldiers relieved one
another, in order that they might not themselves succumb to
the distress which they were inflicting on others. The beating
of drums, loud cries and oaths, the breaking or hurling about of
the furniture, were customary means of keeping the Huguenots
awake. If these annoyances did not suffice, the soldiers com
pelled their hosts to stand, or to move continually from room to
room. They pinched them, they prodded them, they hung
them up by ropes, they bleAv the smoke of tobacco into their
nostrils, they tormented them in a hundred other Avays, until
their unhappy victims scarcely kneAv what they were doing, and
promised Avhatever was exacted of them.
As a single house frequently contained a number of persons
who must each be kept from sleeping, whole companies of sol
diers Avere quartered upon it, and these wretches, who knew that
they could do anything Avith impunity, plundered, broke, and
burned all the domestic goods, and wasted in a day more food
and drink than might have supported them six months at their
ease, had a little care been shown in the distribution. They com-

1685 THE GREAT DRAGONNADES 555
mitted unspeakable acts of indecency. The officers were not
more respectful than the soldiers under their command. They
spat in the faces of women, made them lie down on burning
coals, made them put their heads into ovens whose hot fumes
stifled them. The cries and tears, the bodily suffering and the
mental distress of the victims, afforded their tormentors rare
enjoyment, and called forth boisterous laughter.
So writes Benoist,1 Avith much more to the same effect which
there is the less need that I should reproduce here, because the
same infamous treatment was soon to be the lot of the Hugue
nots of a great part of France, and because some individual
cases must perforce claim our attention. And Benoist's state
ments, based upon the firm foundation of contemporaneous ac
counts, will be seen to be fully borne out by the great number
of sufferers of similar atrocities whose narratives have, some in
our own times, tardily and unexpectedly found their way into
print. Never had there been such a " conversion " of almost an en
tire region to Mother Holy Church as the present work, at each
Foucault's successive step of which Nicolas Joseph de Foucault
was careful to keep the king and his secretaries advised.
Midsummer had scarcely come before he could report that of the
twenty- two thousand former Protestants, there were not left one
thousand unconverted. No necessity now of ministers to bap
tize the children of heretics, as Croissy suggested, but necessity
in very deed of the presence of the absentee bishops of Lescar,
Oleron, and Dax, and of missionaries to instruct people converted
to they knew not what. And here the intendant, who was not
stupid, whatever his other faults might be, and could on occa
sion tell the simple truth, lets us into the real situation of af
fairs, when, writing to Croissy, he says : " We must have an ex
traordinary mission that shall go through the whole of Beam,
and the best preachers are not too good for this purpose, to take
the place of their ministers, who preached. All the curates of
Beam are ignorant, and frequently they are immoral men." 2
1 Histoire de l'Edit de Nantes, v. 833, 834.
2 " Les meilleurs prgdicateurs n'y sont pas trop bons pour tenir la place de
leurs ministres, qui prechoient. Tous les cures du Beam sont ignorans et sou
vent de mauvaises mceurs." Foucault to Croissy, July 14, 1685, in Memoires,

556 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. X
And Louis the Fourteenth and the sycophantic crowd about
him, at Versailles and Fontainebleau, read and reread with
joy of Louis avidity all the successive messages that Foucault
courages sent, like bulletins from the scene of war, announcing
Foucault. daily new triumphs. Pere de la Chaise, in particular,
wrote to the ambitious intendant of the great pleasure which
his majesty took in perusing the letters and relations which
Foucault transmitted detailing the conversions in Beam, and
informed him that, instead of throAving them aside, the king
actually kept them.1 The minister of war, Marquis Louvois,
did better ; for besides acquainting Foucault with Louis's " great
joy," he conveyed to him Louis's desire that the good work
should be carried to its completion, and announced that the
king, with the view of breaking down the resistance of any few
obstinate nobles that might remain, had ordered that a writ be
sent him compelling every gentleman in Beam to submit for
verification his titles to nobility.2 How any " obstinate " Hugue
not nobleman would fare in the circumstances, it is needless to
remark. A fortnight later, with new expressions of the royal
pleasure, came enlarged powers, to banish such among the
gentry as might appear to be the chief obstacles to the conver
sion of their fellow Protestants.3
And thus, by the application of military force in its most

121. The curates of Poitou, to which Foucault was shortly transferred, were
apparently little superior to their brethren of Beam ; for the intendant writes of
them (October, 1686) : " La plupart des cures n'ont pas de talent pour precher
convenablement," and suggests to Louvois the propriety of sending him good
" controversial " preachers, to be stationed especially where there formerly were
"temples," men who should " preach on Sundays after the manner of the
ministers, that is to say, expound the Gospel and offer prayers at the end of
their sermons." In reply, Louvois gave him the king's promise to send him, at
his own expense, twelve or fifteen extraordinary preachers to remain in Poitou
until Pentecost (Whitsunday). Foucault to Croissy, July 14, 1685, in Memoires,
159, 160.
1 Ibid., ubi supra.
2 Louvois to Foucault, July, 1685, MS. Department of War, printed in Adolphe
Michel, Louvois et les Protestants, 95.
3 "Sa Majeste a charge M. de Croissy de vous adresser les ordres neces-
saires pour faire exiler ceux des gentilshommes qui vous paroitront les plus
appliques a, empecher les religionnaires de se convertir." Louvois to Foucault.
July 31, 1685, ibid., 96.

1685 THE GREAT DRAGONNADES 557
frightful shape, by the invasion of the sanctuary of the home
with armed and riotous soldiers that stopped at no outrage short
of rape and murder (though instances even of these crimes were
unfortunately not rare), the conversion of virtually an entire
province was duly reported to the king. It mattered little
that the only evidence of conversion was a single word or
a vague promise extorted by violence. The intendant was
not very particular about a matter which regarded the clergy
rather than a layman Hke himself, and as long as the clergy
were satisfied he gave himself no further concern. And the
clergy, in view of the great multitudes brought to them hke
flocks of sheep, had neither time nor inclination to
tory abjura- inquire very minutely. Submission was, after all, the
one essential point, and submission could be indicated
by the use of the sign of the cross, by uttering the words
Jesus, Maria, by repeating the Lord's Prayer or the Creed in
Latin, or by simply saying Je me reunis. The very abjurations
in writing were such papers as men draw up when they wish
rather to appear to vouch for something, than actually to do so.
Some wrote that they " were reunited in order to obey the
will of the king." Easy-going priests accepted from many of the
"new converts" a declaration that "they embraced the Roman
Cathohc and Apostolic Church, to follow therein all the Chris
tian and orthodox truths it teaches, conformably to the doctrine
of our Lord Jesus Christ and his holy Apostles." In fact,
Benoist tells us that he had himself seen a paper, purporting
to be an abjuration and accepted as sufficient by some ignorant
or accommodating ecclesiastic of Bourbonnais, couched in these
terms : " I recognize and confess the Roman Catholic and
Apostolic Church as it was in the time of the Apostles ; and I
renounce and abjure all the errors which have crept in since
that time." But this was in the early part of the Dragonnades.
By and by the clergy thought better of the matter, and began
to demand a subscription to all the tenets and practices of the
church, such as even many of its old adherents could scarcely
have made with a clear conscience.1
Meanwhile, of so flimsy and insincere a character were the
1 Benoist, v. 846, et seq.

558 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. X
twenty thousand or more pretended conversions in Beam, that
they lasted only so long as the constraint lasted, and the tes-
Ephemerai trmony °f a well-informed writer of the established
conversions, church, about a dozen years later, was to the effect that
the fact could not be disguised, that the greater part of these
new converts had, up to the time at which he wrote, performed
their duties, as members of the Roman Cathohc communion, in
a very unsatisfactory fashion.1
Like some foul contagion, the Dragonnades spread from
Beam first to the nearer provinces, thence to the more remote,
and in the end to every part of the kingdom where
nadesm the Huguenots existed in any considerable numbers.
upper Lan- The rare good fortune of Foucault in being able to
earn the commendation, by delighting the heart of
Louis the Fourteenth, because of the unexpected results of his
attempts at proselyting, kindled the zeal of the other inten
dants. Each one of these in his " generality" resolved to emu
late, if he could not hope to surpass, the " miracles of grace,"
as they were profanely called, that had been wrought at the
foot of the Pyrenees. In truth, however, the Avork was not left
to the individual ardor of the intendants. Barely had Foucault
reported his task completely accomplished, when Louvois is-
Louvois sued what has been well styled the first order for the
nrst8order great and famous Dragonnades. It was addressed to
Drag™?6"' *ne Marquis of Boufflers, commandant of the troops
nades. which had done so good service in Beam. It in
formed him that the occasion that had brought the army to
Beam had been removed, inasmuch as the Spaniard had made
every concession demanded by Louis the Fourteenth. This
being so, it announced his Majesty's determination to make use
of the troops under Boufflers's command, during the remainder
of the year, in diminishing, as far as possible, the great num
ber of Protestants in the two generalities of Bordeaux and
Montauban, and to endeavor to procure as large a number of
conversions as had taken place in Beam. Boufflers was re-

1 "On ne peut pas dissimuler que la plupart de ces nouveaux convertis ont
jusqu'a present mal fait leurs devoirs." Pinon, Memoire concernant le
Beam et la basse Navarre, 1698. In Michel, Louvois et les Protestants, 102.

1685 THE GREAT DRAGONNADES 559
quested to confer with the intendants of the two extensive dis
tricts where his field of operations would lie, De Ris and De la
Berchere, from whom he would learn what places had the
largest Protestant population. Provided with a great number
of royal orders signed by his Majesty, but with blanks left for
the names to be inserted, he was directed to send such a num
ber of cavalry or infantry as might be agreed upon. These
troops were to be quartered solely upon the Protestants, and to
be withdraAvn and sent elsewhere, as soon as the whole or the
greater part of the Protestants should be converted.
The plan was certainly not the result of long deliberation,
but originated in the new hopes bred of the unlooked-for suc
cess met in Beam. So far from being well matured, the scheme
betrayed a singular ignorance respecting matters of vital im
portance. The king had been informed that there were one
hundred and fifty thousand Protestants in De Ris's jurisdiction,
he had not yet learned how many there were in that of De la
Berchere, though he presumed there was a very good number.
In this public despatch, meant for the king's eye, there is not
a suggestion of persecution. The foot -soldier could demand
it contains *en sous a day for himself; the cavalryman and
koto! vi£ dragoon were empowered to exact as much more for
lence. their horses. That was all. The general was en
joined to punish very severely any officers or privates that
might go beyond his commands. Nor were the troops to tarry
until they should have effected the conversions of all the Prot
estants of any place. They were to be content with diminish
ing the number, until the Roman Catholics should be twice or
three times as numerous as the Protestants, " in such wise that,
when eventually his Majesty shall be pleased no longer to per
mit the exercise of that religion in his kingdom, there may be
nothing to apprehend from what the small number of Protes
tants remaining might undertake to do." Evidently neither
Louvois nor his royal master looked for a speedy proscription
of Protestantism by means of the revocation of the Edict of
Nantes, within less than three months.1

'The despatch of Louis to BoufHers, of the 31st of July, 1685, is given entire
in Rulhiere, Eclairoissemens historiques, i. 295-301, together with extracts

560 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. X
Now began the repetition on a larger scale of the scenes at
tending the work of conversion recently prosecuted in Beam.
Hoav scrupulously were the instructions publicly given to
The savage Boufflers and the intendants carried out in the severe
execution. repression and punishment of any violence, of any ex
action beyond ten or twenty sous a day for the support of the
soldiery quartered upon the Huguenots ? Possibly the ques
tion may be more impressively answered by the plain recital of
what befell a single family in the very city of Montauban, than
by many pages of general statements respecting the hundreds
of thousands of victims in Upper Languedoc and Guyenne.
Samuel de Peschels was a Huguenot gentleman of the old
stamp, a worthy descendant of that ancestor of his, four gen
erations back, Pierre de Peschels, respecting whom
samnei de Theodore Beza writes, in his history of the French
PcscIieIs Protestant churches, that, in the perilous period at the
beginning of the Reformation, he invited the first believers of
Montauban to assemble for worship in the inner court of his
mansion, where, on Whitsunday, in the year 1561, the Lord's
Supper was celebrated by Gaspar de la Faverge according to
the forms of the liturg}' of John Calvin.1
" On the twentieth day of August, 1685," writes Samuel de
Peschels in his autobiography, " the troops entered Montauban
in great numbers, and were quartered upon the Protestant in
habitants. With the full approval of their superiors, officers
and soldiers vied Avith each other in the commission of violent
and disorderly acts. All the inhabitants belonging to the Re
formed religion, Avithout distinction of age or sex, were called
on to suffer to such an extent from threats, blows, and the plun
dering of their goods, that the city was as badly treated as if it
had been a rebellious city taken by assault. The gentry,
legally exempt, by reason of their quality, from having soldiers
billeted upon them, were nevertheless overburdened with them,
Avithout discrimination, and those Avho, by the grace of God,
were so happy as to remain faithful to their religion, were com
pletely ruined. "
from despatches of August 24 and 30, and instructive comments by Rulhiere
himself. 1 Histoire ecclesiastique £glises Reformees, i. 527.

1685 THE GREAT DRAGONNADES 561
On the twenty-sixth, an officer came to Peschel's house, and
demanded money for the support of the twenty men he was
going to bring, not only for the future, but for the six days that
had elapsed. He exhibited an order, but Avould not leave it in
Peschel's hand. " Shortly," says Peschels, " my house was full
of officers, soldiers, and horses. They took possession of all
my rooms Avith so little reserve that I could not retain a single
one for my family. I found it impossible to make the wretches
understand that I made no resistance and that I offered them
everything that I possessed. They burst all the doors, broke
open the chests and closets, preferring to plunder my property
in this brutal fashion, rather than accept the keys which my
wife and I offered and begged them to use. They converted
into stables my barns full of wheat and flour, which they saA--
agely made their horses tread under foot. They treated in like
manner the bread destined for the nourishment of my little
children, without our being able to stop their brutal fury. I
was put out of the house with my wife, who was on the eve of
her confinement, and with our four little children. We were
allowed to take with us only a cradle and a little linen for the
child whose birth was expected. The street being full of peo
ple who rejoiced at seeing us thus plundered, Ave were for a few
moments unable to go beyond the door, and the soldiers emp
tied upon us, from the windows, buckets of water, the better
to divert themselves at our sad situation." In this plight Pes
chels bethought him that the Marquis of Boufflers, the comman-
Boufflers. dant general, was in Montauban — that savage officer
antTthi" beneath whose portrait, in the satirical series of the
troopB- so-called "Heroes of the League," a contemporary
wrote the inscription, " Boufflers, general de la. dragon-
nerds," accompanied by the biting lines,
" Cette procession me doit toute sa gloire,
C'est moi qui ay tout fait, qui ay tout dragonne.
J'ay viole, tu§, pille, emprisonne' :
Et suis persecuteur d'eternelle memoire." '
But Boufflers had taken good care that no one the bearer of
such complaints as Peschels brought should gain access to
' Raoul de Cazenove, ubi infra, 33, 34.
36

562 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. X
him, and the highest officer whom the Huguenot could reach
bluntly informed him that the treatment to which he was now
subjected would not cease unless he changed his religion.
" With God's help, that I shall never do," exclaimed Peschels.
To which the other replied: "You have a good opinion of
yourself." Another order from the intendant was shown to Peschels,
which the bearer refused to give into his hands. His perse
cutors had no intention to afford him anything that might serve
as documentary proof of the violence and injustice of which he
was the recipient. The paper authorized the sale of all his
effects to pay his indebtedness to the very persons who had been
plundering him. At last, on the first of September, the troopers
were withdrawn, but only to be succeeded the next day by a
fresh detachment of soldiers who called themselves " mission
aries," and whose behavior was the more insolent that they
found the house less able to provide for them the pillage of
which they were in quest. At brief intervals, the number was
increased by new allotments, until the place could scarcely con
tain any more. Nothing was spared, even to the tongs and
andirons on the hearth. The private papers and the consider
able library of books which Peschels possessed, were carried
off and sold. " Then," he Avrites, " the soldiers went to plunder
my farms. They carried off my cattle and proceeded to sell
them in the market with as much freedom as if they had been
the veritable owners. Often they threatened to tear down my
house and sell the materials, boasting of the full powers which
their chiefs had conferred upon them." Meantime, with diffi
culty had the poor wife found a refuge in the house of a sister,
where her child was happily born ; although pursued even there
by the terrors of soldiers encouraged in their brutality and in
decency by the very officers that should have restrained them.
The material ruin of the family was complete. Of all their
property nothing remained ; for Samuel de Peschels had stead
fastly refused to utter the simple Avords, "I submit," which
would instantly have put an end to his troubles and freed him
of his persecutors. "God be praised," said he, "for all His
favors, especially for having given us courage to prefer the
loyalty which we owe to Him above all earthly goods. The Lord

1685 THE GREAT DRAGONNADES 563
gave, the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the
Lord!" A few months later, Peschels was robbed of his children and
was himself thrown into prison. After many months and sev
eral changes in the place of his confinement, he was brought
out only to be transported as a slave to America. But these
events, as well as his escape from the island of San Domingo
to Jamaica, his return to England, and his service under Will
iam of Orange, in Ireland, belong to a period posterior to the
Edict of Revocation and cannot be narrated here.1
Samuel de Peschels remained constant to the end. So did
his wife. So did many others in every part of France over
character which the torrent of persecution poured. These were
"braver- the most heroic souls, men and women of the stuff of
eions." which martyrs are made. The greater number, un
doubtedly, bent before the storm. Harassed by importunity,
Avearied in body and mind, vexed by the loss of property ruth
lessly destroyed before their very eyes, distracted by the out
rages done to themselves, still more by the dastardly outrages
done to their wives and children whom they were powerless to
defend save by the utterance of the fatal words of submission,
and seeing all these things done in the name of the king, in
obedience, as it would seem, to his commands, and by the
officers and soldiers of his armies, with the approval of his
" intendants of police, justice, and finances," they took the only
course that promised them instant relief. That they yielded to
overwhelming force, no one knew better than did their perse
cutors. That their submission was involuntary and insincere,
they did not conceal, and could not have concealed, had they
desired so to do. The brutal agents in their so-called " con
version" were quite indifferent to the honesty of the trans
action. The bishops and the clergy, at whose instigation those

1 Memoires de Samuel de Pechels, publies par Raoul de Cazenove. Toulouse,
1878. Among the many singular events that may appropriately be styled re
venges of history, I may mention the fact that the convent of Sainte Claire, in
which Pechels informs us that his mother and youngest sister were imprisoned
by the intendant's order, is now the home of the principal theological seminary
of the Reformed Church of France, supported by the State (Ibid., 44, note of
M. de Cazenove).

564 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. X
agents did their Avork, thoroughly understood that it was worth
less from the point of view of morality, and were willing to have
it so. The temptation was strong, with many persons over
whelming, to regard the fault of yielding, under such circum
stances, if not as small — there were few that so regarded it —
yet as venial, because of the nature of a promise extorted by
compulsion and therefore possessed of no binding obligation.
The converts had, from the start, no intention of fulfilling the
engagement, and sought only to gain time. Some hoped that the
sudden tempest once past, the clouds would be dissipated and
the sun of prosperity might shine upon them as of old ; for the
edict, after all, still stood upon the statute-book. Others, and
the sequel showed that their number was far greater than either
friends or foes suspected, merely waited until opportunity
might occur for them to flee, with their families and with such
a part of their fortunes as could be saved from the general
wreck, to those foreign and hospitable lands that offered them
the right to worship God according to the dictates of their
conscience. It becomes him who has undertaken to narrate the history of
the Huguenots, at this point in their fortunes, neither to become
the apologist for their weakness nor to show himself the severe
censor of their frailty. " Let him that standeth beware lest he
fall." Yet should the reader not treat lightly the estimate of
the trial to which the Huguenots were exposed, made by so
calm a contemporary writer as the philosophic Bayle, who, ad-
Bayie on the dressing the Roman Catholics of his age, maintained
thepersecu- *na^ ^ne persecutions of the early Christians at the
tion- hands of the pagan emperors of Rome were far easier
to withstand than the persecutions of the Protestants at the
hands of the myrmidons of Louis the so-called Great.1 " Think
you that to die upon a scaffold for one's religion, Avhich is a re
splendent action, is more terrible or more difficult for a man to
consent to, than to see himself devoured by soldiers Avho treat
him with a thousand indignities, who blow a trumpet in his ears,
who prevent him from sleeping, or, at the least, ruin him and

' "De sorte qu'il est beaucoup plus difficile de vous resistor, que de resister
aax Empereurs Payens."

1685 THE GREAT DRAGONNADES 565
put him in such a condition that he sees no end of his woes,
either by flight or by death ? You close all the seaports and all
the outlets of the kingdom ; you condemn to the galleys those
who would flee ; you prevent those that do not change their re
hgion from obtaining the means of subsistence. They see no
end to their wretchedness. You begrudge wretched men the last
refuge that would free them of their pains, that is to say, death,
and after that do you glory that you hang no one ? This is a
new kind of cruelty more insupportable than that which your
fathers inflicted. For under their direction, at least, men had
this gratification, that they did not suffer for a long time, and
that they died for the cause they had espoused ; whereas, after
the fashion in which you act, offering a Protestant a long pros
pect . of wretchedness, without other resource than patience
(which easily becomes exhausted when men know not how long
it will be needed), you take aAvay all comfort and reduce the
soul to the most forlorn condition in which it can be placed." *
From Guyenne and Upper Languedoc the Dragonnades ex
tended to Saintonge, Aunis, and Poitou, on the west, and to Vi-
Spreadofthe varais and Dauphiny, on the east. Next came the
£rro!gho^tes turn of the province of Lyonnais, of the Cevennes, of
the kingdom. Lower Langue(i0C) of Provence, of Gex. Later still
the Huguenots of the rest of the kingdom became a prey to
the hideous work of the " booted mission," as it was called —
Normandy, Burgundy, and the central provinces, even to far-
off Brittany, and to Paris itself.
The horror the dragoons inspired, the crimes they perpetrated,
the sufferings the wretched victims endured, the losses they sus
tained, I shall not undertake further to describe. Let the curi
ous read the fearful indictment Avhich the eloquent Jean Claude
drew up in his thrilling " Plaintes," where the bare recital of the
general facts occupies many consecutive pages of his immortal
work. Better still, perhaps, let him take the Huguenot histories
of ancient towns or provinces, and convince himself, by an in
spection of names and places, of the widespread havoc which
1 The treatise of Pierre Bayle, entitled " Ce que c'est que la France toute catho
lique sous le regne de Louis le Grand," from which I take these words (vol. ii.
345, of the edition of his works published at The Hague, in 1737) is not the least
interesting of the philosopher's writings.

566 THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION Ch. X
the savage soldiery inflicted upon hitherto peaceable communi
ties of God-fearing men and women, sparing neither age, nor
rank, nor sex. Best of all, let him carefully pemse some one of
those affecting narrations of the personal experience of a single
household, wherein the hand of one of the sufferers has chroni
cled the way in which a home of thrift and pious contentment
was turned into an abode of intolerable wretchedness, parents
and children being torn from one another, often never again to
meet on earth, happy if only they might succeed in finding their
way into exile. From these various sources of information,
whose truthfulness it is impossible to impeach, he will obtain an
impression more clear and more vivid than any words of mine
could convey of the price at which the armed hand of the French
monarch sought to make his extensive realm " all Catholic."

END OF VOLTJMK I.

THE HUGUENOTS AND THE REVOCATION
OF THE EDICT OF NANTES

In Two Volumes. Octavo

Uniform with the " Rise of the Huguenots" and the "Huguenots
and Henry of Navarre" $7.50.

In this history, which concludes the historical series of which the two
works heretofore published form a part, the author treats a theme different
but not inferior in interest to the story told in those works. The scene opens
with the Edict of Nantes, the Magna Charta of Huguenot rights, in full
force, at the death of its author, Henry IV. of France. Before long the
attempt to abridge the privileges guaranteed to the Huguenots is made.
The immediate consequence is seen in three successive wars, in which the
interest centers about the person of the brave and chivalrous Henry of Rohan
and the gallant defense of the city of La Rochelle. With the fall of La
Rochelle the Huguenots as a political party disappear from history ; but
under the tolerant regime of the two cardinal ministers, Richelieu and
Mazarin, they become as noted for their advance in the arts of peace as they
had previously been distinguished in war. Their prosperity is rudely inter
rupted when Louis XIV., reaching his majority, begins his personal reign ;
and with that reign is inaugurated a. petty, but unrelenting, persecution
which culminates in the formal recall of the Edict. The Dragonnades that
preceded and accompanied the recall, and the great emigration which was
one of its direct fruits, have attained a world-wide fame. Professor Baird
has depicted this period in its tragic detail. His work contains in particular
an account, fuller, perhaps, than has elsewhere been given in English, of
that romantic episode.'the War of the Camisards — a struggle in itself worthy
of the treatment here accorded to it as a distinct and complete transaction.
It was not, however, by force of arms that the Huguenot cause was to be
resuscitated. That honor belongs to the more quiet but not less heroic
virtues of the preachers of the so-called "Desert" — Antoine Court, Paul
Rabant, and their associates. Their work receives, consequently, full recog
nition at the hands of the author. It constitutes, in some regards, the most
fascinating part of the subject of the book. The reign of proscription ends
with the Edict of Toleration issued by Louis XVI., and the Declaration of the
Rights of Man at the beginning of the French Revolution. In the formal
acknowledgment of Protestantism as the religion of a considerable part of
the French nation, made by Napoleon Bonaparte as First Consul, in the second
year of the nineteenth century, the history reaches its natural conclusion.

HISTORY
OF THE
RISE OF THE HUGDENOTS OF FRANCE
By HENRY M. BAIRD
PROFESSOR IN THE UNIVERSITY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK

With Map, Two Volumes. Octavo. $5.00
The rise of the Protestants of France was one of the most important, as it was one
of the most brilliant and heroic, of those great struggles for civil and religious liberty
that followed the Reformation. But it has hitherto wanted a historian who could bring
to its treatment the peculiar talent which makes such a period fairly living to the
reader's mind. The intense action and striking scenes included in the half-century
which these volumes cover, are hardly surpassed in modern history. Professor Baird
has told the story with a vigor and force which make it stir the reader with the true
spirit and feeling of the time. The high praise may be given to his history, that,
accurate and judicial as it is, it cannot be read coldly.

CEITICAL -CsTOTICZES-
" A harmonious and symmetrical history of one of the most stirring and desperate struggles
for freedom of thought and liberty of opinion which the world has witnessed.71 — Boston A dvertiser,
" Prof. Baird's ' History of the Rise of the^ Huguenots of France * is the most important and
original work of its class that has appeared in this country for several years." — Philadelphia Press.
" To the vital merit of fidelity — making no sacrifice of truth for dramatic effect — the book
adds the charm of an animated and lucid recital of the thrilling events of the period under con
sideration." — New York Observer.
11 With an accurate, clear, and calm judgment, the author has expressed himself in a style
most suitable for such a history — simple and attractive from its plain and unimpaired, and there
fore most trustworthy statements." — Episcopal Register.
"Prof. Baird's narrative is founded on thorough researches, and is an accurate and impartial,
and at the same time vivid description of the progress of the Reformation in France, from its
beginning to the close of the reign of Charles IX. — Prof. Fisher in the New Englander.
" This book is written in a style clear and vigorous, spirited and very attractive ; the narrative
never flags in interest, and is all along enlivened by the most interesting personal details. Not
less noteworthy is the excellent balance of judgment in the estimate of character and events." —
Hartford Courant.
" Prof. Baird's work is so finely constructed and so perfectly put together that no hint as to
the nature of this or that part can present any fair idea of the whole. We regard it as, in some
respects, the best example of historical writing on foreign subjects which this country has yet
produced." — The Churchman.
*' The two solid volumes of Prof. Henry Baird's ' Rise of the Huguenots of France ' seem to
os likely to take a classical position among American historical writings. ¦ . . Looking for a
word with which to characterize Professor Baird's work, we are tempted to use neatness. . . .
To find the results of clean, scholar-like investigation, expressed in a lucid, consecutive, and
sober narrative, gives a sense of positive satisfaction to the critical reader which the finest of fine
writing is powerless to bestow."- — Nation.
''The fruits of the author's studious labors, as presented in these volumes, attest his diligence,
his fidelity, his equipoise of judgment, his fairness of mind, his clearness of perception, and his
accuracy of statement. . . . While the research and well-digested erudition exhibited in this
work are eminently creditable to the learning and scholarship of the author, its literary execution
amply attests the excellence of his taste, and his judgment and skill in the art of composition.
. . . The mort conspicuous features of his writing are purity and force of diction, with felicity
of arrangement ; but there are not infrequent passages in the narrative equally striking for their
simple beauty and quiet strength. His work is one of the most important recent contributions to
American literature, and is entitled to a sincere greeting for its manifold learning and scholarly
spirit." — New York Tribune,

The Huguenots and Henry of Navarre
By HENRY M. BA1RD
PROFESSOR m THE UNIVERSITY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK ; AUTHOR OF " THE
HISTORY OF THE RISE OF THE HUGUENOTS OF FRANCE,"

With Maps. Two Volumes. 8vo. $5.00.
Professor Baird gives an account of the persistent struggle of the Huguenots of
Prance to secure a fair degree of religious liberty, such as they finally attained in
the Edict of Nantes ; fifteen years of the struggle (1574-1589) falling in the reign of
their deadly enemy, Henry HI., and nine more (1589-1598) in the reign of the friendly
Henry of Navarre, now known in history as Henry IV., of France. The book
narrates the story of the heroic and unflinching determination which finally secured
the Edict of Nantes, the last chapter giving a sketch of the halcyon days of
Protestantism in France under the Edict, and down to the death of Henry IV.
The work, while distinct in itself, is supplementary to the author's "The Rise of
the Huguenots of France.*'

CRITICHL NOTICES,
" Professor Baird, of New York, is the only living American author worthy to compare with
Irving, Prescott and Motley, as writers of the history of foreign countries."
— Philadelphia Evening Bulletin.
u The narrative is written with a grace and finish which remind one of Motley, there is the
same ease of manner and the air of understanding the subject perfectly, the writer having studied
it diligently from many sides." — Brooklyn Union.
" Professor Baird has established for himself a high and secure position among American
historians  His style is very clear and correct, his preparation is conscientious and
thorough ; he possesses great skill in the selection and arrangement of his material, and he has
given us a thoroughly interesting and valuable work." — Nation.
" The professor belongs to the advanced wing of the modern school of historians. His mind
is as free from prejudice as possible. His researches are minute and patient, omitting no details
which shed even the faintest light upon his great subject. His narrative style is animated, com
paring favorably with that of Motley while differing from it. . . Qualifications such as these
would make almost any history interesting. When the theme is the varying fortunes of the
Huguenots during the most critical epoch of their struggles for religious liberty, gifts like those of
Professor Baird shine to extraordinary advantage." — N. Y. Journal of Commerce.
" Professor Baird's * History of the Rise of the Huguenots of France * published some years ago,
was so well received on all hands, that to the writer was assigned a place by the side of the best
American historians. . . . The present volumes are a continuation of the story so well told and
so full of interest to the lovers of freedom in religion as well as in the State."— New York Times.
" It was indeed a stirring drama which was enacted in these two reigns, and the rapid succes
sion of incidents and sudden development of unexpected situations offer a tempting subject for the
historical writer. Professor Baird has already made so distinguished a reputation by the closeness
of his researches into Huguenot records, his patient study of original and not very accessible
authorities, and the strength of his sympathies, that it is almost superfluous to call attention to the
fresh display of these qualities in the present volumes. He is entitled to a prominent place among
the American scholars who have treated history not as a mere literary exercise but as an exact
science.'*— New York Tribune.

PROF. BAIRD AND HIS WORK

' ' Several years ago Professor Baird published a ' History of the Rise of the
Huguenots in France,' which was characterized by judicial moderation of tone, and by
a rare faculty of seizing and emphasizing outstanding points in the history of the time.
. . . It was only natural that the author, whose success in depicting the period
of reverse had been acknowledged, should be encouraged by that success to continue
his labors in the same field. The result is seen in the work on ' The Huguenots and
Henry of Navarre.' It puts on the stage the second act in a great drama. . .
Professor Baird indicates in the preface to the work a desire, if not an intention, to
complete his labors by writing the history of the Catholic reaction in France. There
is every reason to hope that he may be induced to fulfill this purpose. He has shown
capacity for historical investigation and he has alighted on an interesting period of
European history. It is an interesting, but not an unaccountable, fact that the
struggle for freedom of conscience both in the Netherlands and in France should have
strong attractions for American writers. The aim of Professor Baird is the same as
that of Mr. Motley, though in a different part of the field." — Scotsman, Edinburgh.
"Professor Baird is entitled to a place among the distinguished Americans who
take high rank among modern historians. Some of them, like Prescott, Motley, and
Bancroft, are become at least as popular abroad as with their countrymen. . . .
Much must depend, no doubt, on the choice of a subject, and so far as the selection of
his subject goes, Mr. Baird has had everything in his favor. The story of the rise and
struggles of the Huguenots must enlist the sympathies not merely of earnest Protestants,
but of all the admirers of freedom and progress. Mr. Baird has undertaken to eluci
date the history of an epoch that is rich in the many materials of romance. He has
to dilate on the serene constancy of martyrs and the chivalrous courage of soldiers and
gentlemen. He has succeeded in throwing new and original lights upon characters
who have been flattered or abused in the hottest spirit of partisanship, and whose way
ward changes of conduct and policy have made them standing enigmas to students of
the times. He has studied his subject conscientiously. . . . Mr. Baird has done
justice to a theme which deserved a sympathetic and eloquent historian. His arrange
ment is admirably lucid ; his style is clear, terse, and vigorous ; his facts are carefully
marshalled in chronological order, while they are made to converge towards the com
mon center of interest at the Parisian Court ; the lights and shades of his characters
are dashed in with an assured hand, on a comparison of the most reliable contem
porary evidence ; and the manners and the stirring scenes of the times are depicted
with a picturesqueness which leaves little to desire." — The London Times.
" Mr. Baird has proved himself an able and earnest champion of the French
Huguenots. . . . We thoroughly endorse his interesting narrative of their vicissi
tudes and persecutions, their loyalty and courage, and their steadfast determination
to uphold and practice the tenets of their religion. The various stirring events that
culminated in the Edict of Nantes have been skillfully handled, and they either suc
ceed or are fitted into one another in a masterly manner." — Spectator, London.

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