BOOK III. FROM THE PROMULGATION TO THE REVOCATION OF THE EDICT OF NANTES. (1598-1685.) (continued 3)

Rulhières confesses these errors of mind and conduct, while he strives to elevate the character of Louis XIV. in a memoir, which was intended for the perusal of Louis XVI.: “During these alternatives of dissoluteness and scruples,” says he, “while he passed from error to remorse, and from remorse to error, he hoped to redeem his transgressions and merit more decisive grace from heaven, by labouring with greater fervour for these conversions.”[89]

One of the means that Louis XIV. employed with this view, was the purchase of consciences for money; a fresh proof of the detestable religious education he had received from his mother and the Jesuits.

He consecrated to this vile traffic the third of the économats or benefices, which fell to the crown during vacancy. The amount was not large; but it was increased afterwards by leaving benefices vacant expressly to pay for the abjurations of the heretics.

Pellisson had the administration of this fund. Although born in the Reformed communion, he had embraced (Roman) Catholicism very opportunely for his fortune, and from a convert had become a converter. Doubly an object of suspicion to the king from his Huguenot origin, and his connection with the superintendent Fouquet, he perceived that he must do much to gain the favour of Louis. Nor did he spare his efforts.

The establishment opened by Pellisson was a bank, or commercial house, organized according to the rules of [establishments of] the kind, with its correspondents, who were generally priests or bishops, its tariff, its letters of change, its provincial agents, and its regular balance-sheets of expenditure; and it was made necessary to send certificates of abjuration duly signed, and acquittances in proper form, indicating the sum disbursed for each person, or for each family of proselytes.

The object of this bank was naturally to procure conversions at the lowest figure: they cost from five to six livres, sometimes one or two pistoles, and, in extraordinary cases, from eighty to one hundred francs. There is a curious letter on this subject from Pellisson extant, which is the circular of a consummate merchant. “Although you may go to the extent of a hundred francs,” [he writes,] “you are not thereby to understand that this sum is to be always given, since it is requisite that the utmost economy should be observed; first, in order that this beneficent dew may be dispersed over the greatest number of persons; and secondly, because, if a hundred francs is given to persons of low rank without any family following them, those who have ever so little position, or draw after them a number of children, will demand much larger sums. This will not, however, prevent, where important strokes may be effected, on my being first advised thereof, larger remittances to be furnished, accordingly as his majesty shall, on representation made to him, think proper.” (June 12th, 1677.)

Pellisson regularly presented lists of six and eight hundred converts with the certificates to the king, and caused his miracles to be inserted in the Gazette. He took care, however, not to publish that they were nearly all folks belonging to the dregs of the people, or rogues who made a trade of their consciences, or wretches who took the money that they might have the wherewithal to buy a piece of bread, without any intention of renouncing their religion. The king was greatly astonished at his conquests; the prelates applauded; the Jesuits triumphed; but sensible people put no faith in them.

In effect, frauds multiplied to such an extent, that it could no longer be concealed from the king. Instead, however, of giving up this unworthy traffic, he published, through his council, in the month of March, 1679, a law of greater severity against those who relapsed. “We have been informed,” he says in the preamble, “that in several provinces of our kingdom, there are many persons, who, after having abjured the pretended Reformed religion, in the hope of participating in the sums that we have caused to be distributed to the new converts, return to it again.” And the law pronounced against them, besides the former penalty of banishment for life, was that of public recantation and forfeiture of property.

What a mass of injustice and contradictions! In buying souls it could not but be supposed that they believed in nothing, and after having bought them, they were punished for changing anew,—as if they had believed in anything. What should so degraded a devotion inspire in the minds of all respectable people? Is it pity or contempt? It is both the one and the other.

The peace of Nimeguen, concluded with all the powers of Europe in 1679, was the apogee of the fortunes of Louis XIV. He [then] received the surname of “the Great.” Courtiers and men of letters were profuse in [offering] the most humble adulations, and treated him as a demigod. This incense completed his intoxication—he regarded himself really as the sole and rightful owner of all the territory of his kingdom, the sole legislator and supreme judge, the living impersonation of the whole state! He ended by thinking that the minds of his subjects were as much his slaves as their bodies, and considered every conscientious opposition to his sovereign will to be a crime of high treason. Unfortunate prince! He never so debased himself as when he carried the excess of his pretensions so high.

Madame de Maintenon [now] began to assume a stronger dominion over him. The grand-daughter of Agrippa d’Aubigné, one of the firmest defenders of the Calvinist faith, and herself deeply devoted to her religion in childhood, she had abandoned it in 1651, when sixteen years of age. When the Reformed saw her growing in the confidence and intimacy of Louis XIV., they imagined that she would remember the communion of her grandfather, and use her influence to protect it. But having been “born ambitious,” as she confesses in one of her letters, she felt, even more than Pellisson, the necessity of causing her heretic origin to be forgotten, and hoped to retain the king’s heart by fostering in him a strict devotion.

Gifted with much cleverness and still more tact, she had easily discovered Louis XIV.’s profound repugnance for the heretics, and tried to conform herself to it. It appears, nevertheless, that she had some compunctions of pity for the oppressed. We read in the Memorial of Saint Cyr, that the king said to her one day: “I fear, madam, that the moderation you would have me display for the heretics arises from some remains of affection for your old religion.” And she writes elsewhere: “Ruvigny is intractable; he has told the king that I was born a Calvinist, and that I was one until my coming to court. This compels me to approve of things quite opposite to my sentiments.”

This avowal is the clue to her conduct. Madame de Maintenon, if left to herself, would have employed only mildness and charity, as she recommended to her brother; but being desirous above all things of pleasing Louis XIV., she joined with Father La Chaise in devising every means for the ruin of heresy.

The plan of destruction became systematic and invariable after the peace of Nimeguen. Governors, commandants, intendants, soldiers, lawyers, finding that Louis had finally decided upon the extirpation of the Huguenots, became animated with a great desire for proselytism, and undertook in their turn to become missionaries and converters. Their chief care was to despatch long lists of abjurations to the court, or at least reports of worship interdicted, of places of worship razed, and of flocks dispersed. The privy council was sometimes alarmed at so much zeal; notwithstanding which it dared not arrest it, lest the victims might be encouraged in their resistance; and soon, itself drawn along by the force of circumstances, it transformed into a general declaration what it had blamed at first.

Whenever a councillor or a magistrate more humane than the others, deplored these extreme measures, the only answer was, “God uses all means for His ends.”

The populace, as might have been expected, acted its part in these persecutions. In the towns of Blois, Alençon, and in other places, bands of wretches invaded the places of worship, tore the holy books, broke the pulpits and the benches, and set fire to the buildings: the authorities, instead of suppressing these riots, sanctioned them by the interdiction of worship and the exile of the pastors.

Louis XIV. persisted, nevertheless, in talking to the Protestant powers of Europe of his respect for the Edict of Nantes. We read in a declaration so late even as 1682, that he was resolved upon doing nothing contrary to the edicts, by virtue of which the pretended Reformed religion was tolerated in his kingdom! Under the Valois, persecution was cruel, but freely avowed; under Louis XIV. it cloaked itself for a long time in hypocrisy: the Jesuits were the moving power.

XV.

As we gradually approach [the period of] the revocation, the ordinances already so numerous, as we have seen, multiplied with striking features of aggravation. We will class the most important under distinct heads.

Public Offices.—The exclusions were extended by degrees to all employments without exception. The Reformed were disabled from being councillors, judges, assessors, treasurers, clerks in the financial departments, consuls, municipal magistrates, advocates, notaries, procurators, serjeants, ushers, physicians, apothecaries, librarians, printers, employés in the post [offices], and public conveyances, members of corporations, &c. &c. Even midwives of the religion were no longer permitted, “because they did not believe,” said the ordinance of 1680, “baptism to be necessary, and could not christen children on emergency.”

In certain cantons it was physically impossible to execute these edicts; for how could the Reformed be excluded from all employments and every office in those places where they formed nearly the whole of the population? It was necessary to select consuls and municipal councillors from adventurers living in the suburbs, and from people of no character, which caused inexpressible disorder.

Civil Rights.—There were no longer any guarantees in the courts of justice. The chambers of the Edict, at Paris and Rouen, had been abolished in 1669. The mixed chambers of the Parliaments of Toulouse, Grenoble, and Bordeaux were abolished in 1679; “seeing,” said the preamble, “that all animosity was extinct!” Derision was added to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes!

It was not an unfrequent occurrence to hear the (Roman) Catholic party invoke this argument, in affairs purely civil: “I plead against a heretic;” and when a member of the Reformed faith complained of an unjust sentence, he was coolly answered: “You have your remedy in your hands; why do you not become a Catholic?”

Marriage and Paternal Authority.—Alliances were no longer permitted between the Reformed and (Roman) Catholics, even in the case of former relations that marriage had legitimized. The Reformed were not allowed to have (Roman) Catholic valets, for fear the latter should be seduced; and soon, by an inverse excess, they were prohibited from having any other than (Roman) Catholics, because such could be employed as spies. The nearest relations were prohibited from being guardians or curators. Fathers and mothers were forbidden to send their children into foreign countries before the age of sixteen. It was ordered that all illegitimate children, of every age and condition, should be held as (Roman) Catholics, and educated in that religion: and as this ordinance was made to act retrospectively, results flowed from it as ridiculous as they were odious. Persons of sixty and eighty years of age were summoned to enter the church of Rome, because their illegitimate condition had legally rendered them (Roman) Catholics.

Matters even went further than this. An edict of the 17th of June, 1681, declared that the children of the Reformed might abjure at the age of seven. “We will, and it pleaseth us,” said the ordinance, “that our said subjects of the pretended Reformed religion, as well male as female, having attained the age of seven years, may, and it shall be lawful for them to, embrace the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion, and, for this end, that they be received to make abjuration, without their fathers and mothers and other relatives offering the least impediment, under any pretext whatsoever!” These children were free to withdraw themselves whenever they liked, and the parents were bound to provide them with a pension for their maintenance.

Fearful consequences attended [the passing of] this law. Every family was disturbed. Friends, (Roman) Catholic neighbours, servants, the slightest mark of kindness to their children on the part of a stranger, were mistrusted. A priest, an envious acquaintance, an enemy, a discontented talebearer, might declare before a justice that such and such a child had made the sign of the cross, or kissed an image of the Virgin, or desired to enter a (Roman) Catholic church; and this was often sufficient to justify their abduction, particularly of those who were rich enough to pay an allowance, and to shut them up in some convent under the direction of monks, nuns, and the [secular] clergy.

Even Madame Maintenon made use of this abominable law. Having vainly endeavoured to convert her relation, the Marquis de Villette, who had replied to her: “It would take me a hundred years to believe in infallibility, twenty years to believe in the real presence,” and so on, she deprived him of his children; among others of a little girl, who afterwards became the Marchioness de Caylus. We read in the Memoirs of this lady: “I cried a great deal, but I found next day the royal mass so beautiful that I consented to be a (Roman) Catholic, on condition that I should hear it every day, and that I should be insured from all whipping. This was all the controversy employed, and the only abjuration I made.”

Contracts and Imposts.—The newly-converted were permitted to delay the payment of their debts for the space of three years, which attracted all involved or dishonest debtors to (Roman) Catholicism. These same converts were also exempt for two years from imposts and military quarterings; while a double imposition of billets, taxes, or arbitrary contributions, called office taxes, were inflicted upon the refractory, so that the treasury might not suffer by its liberality. Colbert complained in vain of the disorder and confusion which this caused; religion, however, took the precedence of financial regularity.

Attacks upon Property.—All the funds, rents, and other property of every kind which belonged to the condemned churches, were confiscated in favour of the (Roman) Catholic hospitals: so likewise were all those destined to the poor of the religion, even in the places where its exercise had not been interdicted; and testamentary dispositions containing charitable legacies for the consistories were annulled. We shall see, as we proceed, to what point the attack upon private property was (also) carried.

Liberty of Conscience and of Worship.—Physicians, surgeons, and others, who should assist the sick of the Reformed religion, were commanded to give notice thereof to the magistrates of the locality, under penalty of a fine of five hundred livres; and the latter—consuls, judges, or magistrates—were required to visit the sick, willingly or by force, with or without a priest, to ask them if they would abjure.

The pastors were forbidden to speak of the misfortune of the times in their sermons, to attack the Romish church directly or indirectly, to reside at a distance of less than six leagues from the places of interdicted worship, and of less than three leagues from the places of contested worship. The people were forbidden to assemble in their places of worship under pretence of prayer and singing psalms, except at the usual hours. The conferences were definitively interdicted; and the consistories were obliged to admit a (Roman) Catholic commissioner. It was prohibited to contribute alms for the maintenance of the sick of the Reformed religion, or to take care of them in private houses; the order was to transfer them to the hospitals, where they fell under the action of Roman proselytism.

The crowning measure of oppression was the prohibition to receive any new converts in the places of worship, under pain of banishment and forfeiture of property, as regarded the pastors, and of privation of religious exercises, as regarded the flocks. At this last blow the Reformed were ready to abandon themselves to despair. Many deliberated whether they ought not to renounce all public service, and confine themselves to the adoration of God within their own houses. What refinement of barbarity! To force them themselves to watch the door of their places of worship, and to drive away the brethren, who had doubtless quitted them, but who returned perhaps with tears of repentance! Besides, by what signs was a new convert distinguished? How was it possible to know all those who had abjured? Might not one traitor procure the condemnation of an entire church? The places of worship at Bergerac, Montpellier, Saint Quentin, and Montauban, were demolished in this way: the same fate threatened all the others.

It appeared as if the condition of the Reformed could not become worse. It did so, however, by the intervention of the Marquis de Louvois, who wanted, according to the expression of Madame de Caylus, to mix up the soldiery with the affair. He was annoyed that he was, after the peace of Nimeguen, no longer necessary to his master, and saw with displeasure devotion replacing gallantry in the heart of Louis. He tried long and fruitlessly to bring the king back to Madame de Montespan; but when he was convinced that his intrigues were useless, and that the sole means of pleasing Louis was to second his efforts for the conversion of the Huguenots, he entered into them with all the violence of his character, being only too happy to play the first part with the help of the troops at his disposal. What miseries, what shameful calculations in that court, so renowned, and all under the mask of Catholic piety!

Louvois wrote to Marillac, intendant at Poitou, in the month of March, 1681, that he was about to send a regiment of horse into that province. “His majesty,” he said, “has heard with much joy of the great number of persons, who continue to be converted in your department. He wishes you to persist in your endeavours, and desires that the greater number of horsemen and officers should be billeted upon the Protestants. If, according to a just distribution, ten would be quartered upon the members of the Reformed religion, you may order them to accommodate twenty.” Louvois also enjoined that the communication of his orders should be made to the mayors and authorities, not by writing, but by word of mouth, so that it might not be said that the king used violence towards the Huguenots.

Such was the origin of those dragonnades, which have left an indelible stain of disgrace upon the reign of Louis XIV., and of horror in the mind of the inhabitants. The march of Marillac’s troops was ordered, as if they were in an enemy’s country, exacting arrears of taxes, exempting those who became converts, and throwing all the burden upon the obstinate. From four to ten dragoons were billeted in the houses, with directions not to kill the inhabitants, but with authority to do anything short of that, in order to extort an abjuration. Curates followed the soldiers in the towns and villages, shouting: “Courage, gentlemen, it is the will of the king.”

Without a check upon their passions, the military committed horrible excesses: a horde of brigands had penetrated into the heart of the kingdom. The Journal of Jean Migault, published in these later times, will give an idea of their barbarities. Devastations, pillages, tortures, cruelties [prevailed; in fact,] they hesitated at nothing.

Elie Bénoit has filled page after page of his History of the Edict of Nantes [with a narrative of these cruelties]; we will only extract one or two passages: “The horsemen,” he writes, “fastened crosses to the mouth of their musquetoons to compel the people to kiss them by force, and when they met with any resistance, they thrust their crosses into the face and stomach of their unhappy victims. They spared children as little as persons of more advanced age, and without the slightest regard for their years; they loaded them with blows with the flat of their swords, or with the butt-end of their musquetoons; such was their violence that in many instances many were crippled for life. These infamous wretches took a pleasure in maltreating women. They beat them with whips; they struck them in the face with canes in order to disfigure them; they dragged them by their hair in the mud and over the stones. Sometimes the soldiers, meeting labourers on the road, or with their carts, drove them to the (Roman) Catholic churches, pricking them like cattle with their own spurs, to hasten their unwilling march....”[90]

Crowds of unfortunates fled to the woods; others hid themselves in the houses of their friends; many determined to fly the kingdom at all hazards; and there might be seen men, women, and children, half-dead, stretched upon the stones or rugged rocks. Many at length consented to abjure under the sabre of the soldier; but what an abjuration! Numbers went mad, or died of grief, or put an end to their days in paroxysms of remorse and despair. There were some who, flinging themselves upon the road, beat their breasts and filled the air with wailings. “When any two of these unfortunate converts met,” still further relates Bénoit, “when one beheld the other at the foot of an image, or in any other act of Catholic devotion, their cries redoubled, and their grief burst out anew. The labourer, abandoned to his reflections during his work, felt the sharp stimulus of remorse, and quitting his waggon in the midst of his fields, threw himself upon his knees, and while prostrate on the earth, sought for pardon, and took all nature to witness that it was violence alone that he had obeyed.”[91]

Madame de Maintenon wrote to her brother, who was about to receive a gratuity of eight hundred thousand francs: “I beg of you carefully to use the money you are about to receive. Estates in Poitou may be got for nothing; the desolation of the Huguenots will drive them to sell more. You may easily acquire extensive possessions in Poitou.” (September 2nd, 1681.)

The emigration, suspended in 1669, recommenced upon a vaster scale, and thousands of families quitted France. The Protestant countries, England, Switzerland, Holland, and Denmark, offered them shelter by official declarations. The court became alarmed, above all when the heads of the administration of the navy complained of the desertion of a great number of sailors, who, having readier means of flight, escaped en masse. Marillac was recalled, and the other intendants received orders to act with less severity.

The ordinances, which interdicted departure from the kingdom, were again put in force, with the addition of the penalty of perpetual imprisonment at the galleys against the heads of families, a fine of three thousand livres for those who should encourage them to fly, and the nullification of all contracts of sale made by the Reformed one year before their emigration. This last article overturned all private transactions, and it became necessary to supply a remedy on its execution.

The laws against emigrants and those who relapsed, placed a double-edged sword in the hands of the persecutors. If the new converts re-entered a place of worship, they were stricken with a terrible punishment, and they were equally so if they endeavoured to quit the kingdom. The government would consider them only as (Roman) Catholics in France; on the frontier they were seized as heretics. Rulhières, always led by a desire to justify the memory of Louis XIV., says that “the misfortunes of the Reformed were principally due to the combination of these two laws, of which their originator, Father La Chaise, boasted, as master-pieces of genius.”

The assembly of the clergy, who had to secure the pardon of the Roman See for the temerity of the four propositions of 1682, sent a pastoral notice to all the consistories of France, in which it was said that the bishops looked upon the Huguenots as strayed sheep, and would welcome them with open arms, but that they would be discharged from the care of their souls, if the heretics were not convinced by these charitable words. “This last error,” the prelates wrote, “will be more criminal in you than all the others, and you must expect misfortunes incomparably more dreadful and disastrous than all those your revolt and schism have drawn upon you at present.”

This notice of the clergy was read in the consistories by the express command of the king. It converted nobody; but every one foresaw fresh sufferings; for those who uttered the prediction had influence enough to work its accomplishment.

XVI.

It is evident how intolerable the condition of the Reformed must have become. They had no longer rights of any kind, guarantees or safety; their persons, their children, their property, were all at the mercy of the oppressor; the sword of proscription hung incessantly suspended over their heads. What race in the Christian world was ever more unhappy than this?

A multitude of fugitives already filled Europe with their complaints and their wailings. Jurieu, who had found an asylum in Holland, wrote in 1682, in his book upon the Politique du Clergé de France, “We are treated as if we were enemies of the Christian name. In places where the Jews are tolerated, they have all kinds of privileges; they encourage the arts and commerce; they are physicians; they are consulted; they are intrusted with the health and lives of Christians. And we, as if we were infamous, are forbidden to approach newborn children; we are banished from the bar and the faculties; we are kept from the presence of the king; we are despoiled of our offices; we are forbidden the use of all the means of providing against perishing of hunger; we are abandoned to the hatred of the populace; we are deprived of that precious liberty that we have bought with so many services; our children, who are a part of ourselves, are torn from us.... Are we Turks? Are we infidels? We believe in Jesus Christ; we believe Him to be the eternal Son of God, the Redeemer of the world; the maxims of our morality are so pure that none dare gainsay them; we respect kings; we are good subjects, good citizens; we are as much Frenchmen as Reformed Christians.”[92]

Jurieu spoke in vain. The books of heretics could not pass the frontier. It was even attempted in the interior of the kingdom to destroy the ancient works which attacked (Roman) Catholicism. The archbishop of Paris drew up a catalogue comprising the names of five hundred authors, and domiciliary visits were paid in the houses of the ministers and the elders, in order to burn all the condemned books that might be found in their libraries.

The Reformed transmitted petition after petition to the court, the council, and to the king himself. Their cause was pleaded by the deputy-general, or by special delegates. Sometimes they recapitulated their grievances in general requests, conjoining the most humble protestations of obedience and respect.

All was useless. The ministers of state disputed the best-supported facts, and threatened the petitioners with still direr treatment. The king closed his palace, or when, after long remonstrance, they were admitted, his words were cold and constrained. The deputy-general Ruvigny, having represented to him the great misery of more than two millions of Frenchmen, Louis XIV., it is said, answered him that to “bring all his subjects back to the Catholic unity, he would give one of his arms, or would cut off one of his hands with the other.” This saying filled the Reformed with the darkest presentiments.

Nevertheless, they persisted in believing that Louis XIV., the grandson of the Béarnese, would have compassion upon them, if he knew the extent of their sufferings, and filled with this idea, they resolved to make a last effort.

Sixteen deputies from Languedoc, Cevennes, Vivarais, and Dauphiny, met secretly at Toulouse, in the spring of 1683, and drew up a draft in eighteen articles, destined to restore their liberty of conscience and of worship, without, however, doing the slightest act which could bear the appearance of rebellion. After enjoining repentance, prayer, and union among the faithful, they decided that on the 27th of June following, all the interdicted assemblies should recommence at the same time, without ostentation, but also without mystery, with open doors, or upon the ruins of the razed places of worship. Those who had performed a forced abjuration were to assemble separately, for fear of furnishing the pretext for fresh persecutions. On the 4th of July, a solemn fast was to be celebrated in all the churches. The pastors were exhorted to remain courageously in the midst of their flocks, and not to quit them, but with the leave of a conference, or in the most imminent peril. Lastly, the deputies framed a petition to the chancellor and all the ministers of state, in which they pledged their obedience to the king in everything that was not absolutely contrary to their duty to God. “What is our situation?” they said; “if we obey, it is pretended that we are converted, and our very submission is made use of to deceive the king.”

The chief object of this bold measure was to prove to Louis XIV. that the abjurations en masse, which were recounted to him, were unworthy fabrications. Unhappily, there was not sufficient unanimity among the oppressed. The prudent, the timid, those who had not suffered so much as others, those who saw danger only when it was upon them, determined to abstain from the enterprise, and stood apart.

On the appointed day, however, a great many houses of worship were reopened, the assemblies were reconstituted, and religious service was again performed in many places where it had been interdicted. The military governors and the intendants immediately took alarm; they believed, or feigned to believe, that a general insurrection was taking place, and troops were sent against these poor peasants, who, pleading the solemn promises of the Edict of Nantes, had met together to read the Bible and to pray.

The Marquis d’Aguesseau, the father of the illustrious chancellor of the same name, and intendant of Languedoc, advised that a stop should be put to the barbarities of the soldiers; but Louvois refused, and ordered frightful executions. The peasants were tracked in the woods, and slaughtered by hundreds. “It was a butchery without a combat,” says Rulhières. “Their places of worship were thrown down, and their houses razed. Pardon was offered to the prisoners on condition that they should abjure: they would not comply, and were hanged!”

The Reformers of Vivarais and Dauphiny, reduced to despair, sought to defend themselves by force. Louvois promised them an amnesty, but his promise was derisive. All the ministers and fifty other prisoners were exempted from it, without counting those that were sent to the galleys. The pastor, Isaac Hornel, an old man of seventy-two, who was accused of having fomented the disturbances, was condemned to be broken alive on the wheel, although the most inveterate criminals were never subjected to so terrible a punishment in those times. The executioner, who made himself drunk for the task, inflicted more than thirty blows upon him before he killed him, accompanying the torture with dastardly insults. Hornel died with the constancy of a martyr (16th of October, 1683).

In several provinces there were left no more than one or two places of worship, and these were interdicted under the least pretext. The church of Marennes, in Saintonge, for instance, which still remained, was soon suppressed in its turn, with accompanying circumstances of an odious nature. This church comprised from thirteen to fourteen thousand persons; but because, as was pretended, some who had relapsed, and some children of new converts had entered the places of worship, their services were prohibited by a decree notified at the very last moment, on the night before Sunday (1684).

On the sabbath, more than ten thousand of the faithful arrived before the doors of their place of worship, and among them were twenty-three children, who had been brought a distance of seven leagues for baptism. As the weather was extremely inclement, several died on the way. “The people, as they withdrew,” says Elie Bénoit, “loudly expressed their grief. Nothing was heard but cries, and weeping, and wailing. There was no restraint either in the streets or in the country. Parents and friends embraced in tears and without uttering a word. Men and women, with clasped hands, and eyes raised to heaven, clung to the holy place whither they had come, regardless of the severity of the season, to find consolation in praying to God; and yet, amidst so sad a scene, it was necessary that they should be watchful to give no new hold to their persecutors, by remaining in such numbers upon a spot where the decree against the pastors rendered such meetings unlawful.”[93]

It is gratifying to add, that if the persecution was great, the very sufferings of the people strengthened their piety. There were provinces where the faithful made a journey of fifty and even sixty leagues to be present at the religious service; and not only did men in the vigour of manhood, but old men of eighty took the road, on foot, with staff in hand, enduring all the fatigues and dangers of the journey, in order that they might have the consolation of praying together with their brethren for the last time. The first-comers found an asylum in the place of worship, while the others halted around it, singing psalms or reading prayers. And as these assemblies would have been esteemed unlawful without the presence of a minister, the preacher passed the night with them, exhorting them by his tears as much as by his discourses, to remain steadfast in the faith.

Elsewhere, as all the ministers had been exiled or imprisoned, the intendants were under the necessity of summoning pastors from other places, to baptize the children, and to celebrate marriages, “without the addition of any sermon, exhortation, or service of the pretended Reformed religion.” These pastors were kept under guard, as if they were pest-smitten, and they were taken back as soon as they had given to the acts of the heretics the civil sanction, which in those times was confounded with the religious blessing.

The court was not yet satisfied. Louis XIV., who had just contracted a secret marriage with Madame de Maintenon, had passed from ignorant devotion to outrageous bigotry. He was irritated by the obstacles that delayed the general conversion of the Reformers, and, governed by the triumvirate of Father La Chaise, Madame de Maintenon, and the Marquis de Louvois, his mind gradually familiarized itself with the idea of altogether abrogating the Edict of Nantes.

The Marquis de Châteauneuf, who had the charge of ecclesiastical affairs, was opposed to precipitating matters, saying, that “it was unwise to put too much fuel upon the fire.” Louvois himself seemed for a moment to incline towards moderation. The other secretaries of state were of the contrary opinion; and the aged chancellor Letellier,—a false and unfeeling man, of whom the Count de Grammont said, when he saw him come from an interview with the king, “I see a ferret licking his muzzle, bloody with the slaughter of fowls,”—wanted the work to be accomplished before his death.

Madame de Maintenon thus wrote on the 13th of August, 1684: “The king is prepared to do everything that shall be judged useful for the welfare of religion. This undertaking will cover him with glory before God and man.” Glory! She did not foresee that, far from increasing the glory of Louis, the Edict of Revocation would impress an indelible stain upon his reign, and that posterity would inquire whether he had not, by this single act, more injured the material power and the policy of France than he had benefited it by his conquest of Flanders, Alsatia, and Franche-Comté.

In the month of May, 1685, the clergy held a general assembly, and complimented the king upon the admirable success, which had attended his efforts to extirpate heresy. Louis was extolled above the greatest princes of Christian antiquity. The bishop of Valence and the coadjutor of Rouen said, “he had found the (Roman) Catholic church cast down and enslaved; but he had re-established it by his zeal; he had without violence and without arms induced all rational persons to abandon heresy, had subdued their minds by winning their hearts with his favours, and had led back wanderers, who would perchance never have returned to the bosom of the Church, had it not been for the flowery path he had thrown open to them.” We copy these words as they were actually spoken, and will add nothing to them!

Rulhières, who was permitted to search the state papers, when speaking of the intervention of the priests in the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, says, “I hold in my hands a collection of the letters of the clergy, some of which cause me to shudder.”

XVII.

Troops had been encamped in Béarn, in 1685, to watch the movements of the Spanish army; and as Spain had sought a truce, Louvois, mindful of the plan adopted by Marillac in Poitou, obtained the king’s permission to despatch some regiments to the districts inhabited by the Huguenots.

The Marquis de Boufflers, commander of the troops, and the intendant Foucault received, in July, the order to complete the conversion of the Béarnese. The latter brought a refined and systematic cruelty to his task, and perfected more than one species of torture. This was the recommencement of the dragonnades, which were soon to spread over all France.

Foucault announced that the king commanded all the Huguenots to return to the (Roman) Catholic unity, and to make a beginning of the business, drove some hundreds of Béarnese into a church by force, where the bishop of Lescar officiated. The doors were closed, and the unfortunate people were made to kneel by the force of blows, in order to receive the bishop’s absolution from heresy: they were then admonished that if they returned to the Protestant church, they would be punished for relapsing.

The Reformed fled to the fields, the forests, the wildernesses, and the caverns of the Pyrenees. Foucault ordered them to be pursued like wild beasts; and when they were brought back to their dwellings, he loaded them with military billetings. The horrors committed in Poitou were renewed and even surpassed.

The dragoons or other soldiers (for troops of all kinds were employed), entered the houses of the Reformers with drawn swords, shouting: “Kill! kill! or let them become Catholics!” They wasted provisions, spoiled furniture, and destroyed or sold everything that fell into their hands to the peasants of the neighbourhood. Nor were the persons of the Calvinists spared. “Among other secrets taught them by Foucault,” says the historian of the Edict of Nantes, “he ordered them to keep strict guard over those, who would not succumb to other tortures. The faithful executioners of these furious orders watched in relays, that they might not themselves sink under the torments they inflicted upon others. The sound of drums, blasphemies, shouts; the crashing of furniture, or throwing them one upon another; the agitation in which they kept these poor folks, to compel them to remain standing, and to keep their eyes open, were the means they employed to deprive them of repose. Pinching, pricking, buffeting, and suspending them with ropes, blowing tobacco smoke into their nostrils and mouths, and a hundred other cruelties, were the sport of these ruffians, who by such means reduced their hosts to a condition of not knowing what they did, and of promising everything to rid themselves of such barbarians. The women were forced to suffer indescribable indignities.... The monsters never showed signs of pity until they saw some one ready to die, and fainting with exhaustion. Then, with cruel compassion, they restored the sufferer to sense, in order that renewed strength might preserve their victim for fresh violence. Their whole study and endeavour was to invent torments which should be painful without being mortal, and to afflict these unhappy objects of their fury with every [suffering], which the human body could endure without dying.”[94]

They had been forbidden to kill [their victims]. Alas! how often was even this limit outstepped! How many unfortunates perished under this frightful treatment, not slain, it is true, but more cruelly immolated, than if they had fallen by the blade of the dagger!

Impelled by their fears, the Béarnese hastened to the priests in crowds to abjure. Of twenty-five thousand Reformers that had been counted in this province up to that time, not a thirtieth part remained. The clergy celebrated their triumph by a high mass, at which the Parliament were present in a body, and by general processions, in which the new converts were dragged along.

This success encouraged the court to employ the same means of conversion elsewhere; and in less than four months, Languedoc, Guienne, Saintonge, Aunis, Poitou, Vivarais, Dauphiny, Cevennes, Provence, and Gex, were scoured by similar dragonnades. A little later, the system was extended to the centre of the north of France, but with more precaution, lest the cries of the victims should trouble Versailles, where, as Madame de Sévigné relates, brilliant carousals, with promotions of the knights of the Holy Ghost, were held that year.

The most creditable historians are agreed respecting the excesses that accompanied these dragonnades. It was almost the same scene everywhere as at Béarn. Neither sex, age, nor degree was spared. Aged cavaliers, who had shed their blood for their country, had to suffer the same outrages. Even those, who were of high birth, and hoped to find a refuge in Paris or at the court, were maltreated or thrown into prison by lettres de cachet.

If any Huguenots held out against all this torture, they were, after being despoiled and ruined, flung into dungeons, whilst the women were immured in convents! Missionaries for the former, and Sisters of Mercy for the latter, who left their prisoners no single moment of peace until they had promised to abjure, followed upon the heels of the soldiers.

If, sinking under these persecutions, they fell into a state of stupor, imbecility, or insanity, they were made to sign mechanically a piece of paper containing an abjuration, or to pronounce words, of which they no longer knew the meaning, and then they were reputed to be (Roman) Catholics. Or again, they were drawn into an ambush, as happened to the barons de Montbeton, de Meauzac, and de Vicose, and people, posted for the purpose, forced them down upon their knees, that the bishop might give them absolution.

The abjuration of the head of the house was not sufficient; he was not exempt from the billeting of soldiers until he had induced his wife, children, and servants to follow his example; and if any fled, the father of the family was responsible for them until they were recaptured.

The Reformers were summoned to a general meeting, before the arrival of the soldiers; at which, according to the time and the intention, the commanding officer of the troops, the bishop or some other authority, announced that the king would no longer suffer heretics in his dominions, and that all must, willingly or unwillingly, embrace (Roman) Catholicism immediately. Care was always taken to gain over some persons beforehand, who by their station or advice, might help to influence the rest.

When the poor folks answered that they were ready to sacrifice their property and even their life for the king, but not their conscience, then the dragoons were brought on the scene. After a few days, there was a new convocation, a new appeal, and generally all resistance ceased. The terror became at length so great that the mere announcement of the approach of the military, was sufficient to drive the Reformed people, conscious of their helplessness, to pronounce the formula of abjuration. It was the opinion of many that it might be lawful to bend before violence, provided their internal faith remained intact; many also abjured, to secure the opportunity of flight.

It is also to be remarked that the formulas of recantation were often drawn up in such a way that they did not bind the conscience very strictly. What the public officers and the priests were most desirous of, was a large number of proselytes. Many of the Reformers simply said: “I rejoin.” Others were even authorized to frame their act of abjuration in these terms: “I acknowledge and confess the Catholic and Apostolic church of Rome, as it was in the time of the apostles;” or, “conformably to the doctrine of our Lord Jesus Christ;” or, again, “while loving God and Jesus Christ, and adoring Him only with the fitting worship.”

But this was, at least on the part of the priesthood, only a concession for the moment. “They were soon revisited after a few days,” says the pastor Claude in his Plaintes des Protestants de France, “and did not escape until they had signed another formulary, whereby they were entirely committed; and what was most impudent, is, that they were obliged at the same time to acknowledge that they embraced the Romish religion of their own free will, and without any inducement through fear, or other extraneous cause. If, after that, they made any difficulty about going to mass, if they did not communicate, if they were not present at processions, if they did not confess, if they did not tell their beads, if they allowed a sigh or a murmur of complaint to escape them, they were chastised with fines, and with a recommencement of the billeting of soldiers upon them.”[95]

What made a particular impression upon the population was the material fact of the dragonnades. The spiritual circumstance of the compulsory communions could but strike the thinking and the pious man much more forcibly. To open, one may say, the mouths of the heretics with the point of the bayonet, and to thrust the host into them,—that sacred host of which the (Roman) Catholic church teaches that he who receives it unworthily is guilty in the highest degree—[could but do so]; and thus was a crime enjoined even by those who proclaimed [an unworthy communion] to be the greatest of crimes! Is there at this day a bishop, or a priest, who does not recoil with horror from the bottom of his heart from the thought? The Spanish Inquisition had at least the decency to prevent its prisoners from receiving the communion, and being present at mass. There were, indeed, some noble and pious protests [offered] in the era of Louis XIV., in particular by those of the Jansenist party, to whom we shall have to refer; but the majority of the clergy, led on by the Jesuits, compelled the unfortunate beings to take the host, “whose pallor and tremblings,” writes Basnage, “showed that their whole soul revolted from the act.”

The king’s council, which cared only for external acts, were no less astonished than rejoiced at the innumerable abjurations. Louvois wrote to his father, the chancellor, about the beginning of September, 1685: “Sixty thousand conversions have been made in the district of Bordeaux, and twenty thousand in that of Montauban. So rapid is the progress, that before the end of the month ten thousand Reformers will not be left in the district of Bordeaux, where there were one hundred and fifty thousand on the 15th of last month.”

The Duke de Noailles informed Louvois, at the same time, of the conversions at Nismes, Uzès, Alais, Villeneuve, &c. “The most influential people of Nismes,” said he, “abjured in the church, the day following my arrival. There was a slackening afterwards, but matters soon assumed a proper face, with the help of some billetings upon the dwellings of the most obstinate.... The number of Reformers in this province is about two hundred and forty thousand; I believe that all this will be expedited before the termination of the month.”

It was thought necessary to make these abjurations more secure by a legal measure; Louis XIV.—surrounded and besieged by his chancellor and his minister of war; ill-informed, perhaps, of what was passing in his kingdom—for he lived in the midst of favourites, like an Asiatic sultan in the seclusion of his palace—Louis XIV., to whom Louvois and La Chaise had promised that the work should not cost one drop of blood; having also consulted, it is said, the archbishops Harlay and Bossuet—Louis XIV. signed the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes on the 18th of October, 1685. God still permitted him to sit thirty years longer upon the throne, that he might bear the burden of the crime he had committed.

The preamble of the act of Revocation bears testimony to the monstrous lie, with which the king’s mind had been abused: “We now see,” it says, “with that just gratitude we owe to God, that our endeavours have terminated as we proposed, since the better and the greater portion of our subjects of the pretended Reformed religion have embraced Catholicism, and the Edict of Nantes therefore remaineth useless.”

Here is a recapitulation of the Revocatory Edict: Prohibition for the future of all lawful exercise of the Reformed worship in the kingdom. Exile of the pastors after the lapse of fifteen days, and, in the interim, prohibition to perform their functions, under penalty of the galleys. The promise to the pastors who recanted, of a pension greater by one-third than that they before enjoyed, with a reversion of one-half to their widows. Dispensation from academic studies for those of the pastors, who were desirous of entering the profession of the law. Parents were prohibited from instructing their children in the Reformed religion, and were enjoined to have them baptized and sent to (Roman) Catholic churches, under penalty of a fine of five hundred livres. All the refugees were ordered to return to France within four months, or to suffer confiscation of their property. The Reformers were forbidden to emigrate, under pain of the galleys for the men, and imprisonment for life for the women. Finally, the laws against those who relapsed, were confirmed.

The last article gave rise to a cruel mistake. It ran in these words: “At the most is it lawful for the said persons of the pretended Reformed religion, pending the pleasure of God to enlighten them, to dwell in the towns and places of our kingdom ... without being molested or troubled, under pretext of the said Reformed religion, on condition, as aforesaid, that there shall be no exercise of worship.” It would, therefore, appear that liberty of conscience at home, within the bosom of a family, was respected. The Reformed rejoiced at this relief amidst their misfortunes, and some even suspended their preparations for departure; but never was hope more bitterly disappointed.

The event showed, that these words, “pending the pleasure of God to enlighten them,” signified, pending their conversion by the dragoons, like their co-religionists. Louvois wrote to the provinces: “His majesty desires that the severest rigour should be shown to those who will not conform to his religion, and those who seek the foolish glory of wishing to be the last, must be pushed to the utmost extremity.”

The 18th of October, 1685, must be counted among the darkest days of France. It brought trouble, poverty, and humiliation upon many a generation.

The policy of Henry IV., of Richelieu, Mazarin, and even of Louis XIV. himself, was struck to the core. It was no longer possible to preserve the natural allies of France in Protestant Europe, when the world resounded with the piteous cries of the Reformed. All Protestantism rose against Louis XIV.: it found a leader in the prince of Orange, and the Parliamentary revolution of 1688 was the answer to the royal attempt of 1685.

Less powerful abroad, the country was weakened within. Emigration, of which we shall speak in the next book, assumed immense proportions. The wise Vauban wrote, only a year after the Revocation, that “France had lost a hundred thousand inhabitants, sixty millions of money, nine thousand sailors, twelve thousand tried soldiers, six hundred officers, and its more flourishing manufactures.” The Duke de Saint-Simon says in his memoirs, that “commerce was ruined in every branch, and a quarter of the kingdom was sensibly depopulated.”

From this moment (as all historians have remarked), the fortunes of Louis XIV. declined; and some years after, beaten at Blenheim, Ramilies, and Malplaquet, this king, so fortunate and so superb in the beginning of his reign, humbly sued to Europe for peace: and hard, indeed, were the conditions which he obtained at Utrecht.[96] Throughout the whole of the eighteenth century, the kingdom bore the pain of this humiliation; and even down to our own times, at the Congress of Vienna.

The prestige of royalty was deeply wounded by the same blow. If there still remained the appearance of submission and respect, the mind began to revolt against the omnipotence of the monarch. It was asked, whether nations ought to confide every right and every power to a single man, who might be governed by a female favourite, by a confessor, by a foolish or a senseless passion for personal glory. In England, and in Holland, popular liberty had vehement apologists. In France, the pious Fénélon took the initiative, and was followed by Massillon, Montesquieu, Rousseau, the Abbés Mablay and Raynal, the Protestant Necker, and Mirabeau. These men, although of such different origin, ideas, and objects, all belong to the same family.

This was the political side of the question. In a social and moral point of view, the edicts promulgated from 1660 to 1685, the dragonnades, the Revocation, and the acts which were its inevitable consequence, attacked the very foundations, as it concerned two or three millions of Frenchmen, of the sacred and inviolable principles of all human society, religion, family, and property. The Socialists of modern times have never carried their theories to such an extent, as did Louis XIV., the Jesuits, the (Roman) Catholic priesthood, and the magistracy against the Reformed. Let every one of these, then, take their share of the responsibility.

Finally, in a religious point of view, properly speaking, M. de Châteaubriand’s sentence respecting the massacre of Saint Bartholomew,[97] which we have already mentioned elsewhere, has at this point a new and striking application. Beholding the narrow and pernicious bigotry of the king, the hideous profanations sanctioned by the body of the [Roman Catholic] clergy, the military transformed into missionaries, mourning and blood mingled with religion, all laws, human and divine, trodden underfoot by those, whose especial duty it was to defend them, beholding all this, the upper classes of the nation threw themselves into the wildest scepticism. On the death of Louis XIV. the court was full of unbelievers, and Voltaire sprung ready armed from the bosom of that generation.

It has been pretended that the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes was popular. If this were true, it would be the most overwhelming accusation against the Church of Rome, that it had thus educated and fashioned France. But it is only half true. The Revocation was popular among the priests, who, by the mouths of Fléchier and Bossuet, exhorted their hearers to make the heavens resound with their thanksgivings and their acclamations. It was popular with courtiers, the Marquis Dangeau and Madame de Sévigné, who worshipped the very footsteps of the monarch. It was popular with the lowest classes of the country, particularly in the southern provinces, who blindly obeyed the inspirations of their spiritual guides. Perhaps, at the furthest, it was popular with some ministers and government officials, who saw no hope for civil and political unity, but through religious unity. But was the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes popular among the officers of the army and navy, among the provincial nobility, even among the court nobility, who had not entirely sacrificed their independence of mind, or even among the middle classes, destined to rise in influence in the eighteenth century, and to govern in the nineteenth? Good reason for doubting it may be gathered from what we have stated above; and if we can now perceive but few traces of their opposition, it is because it was difficult to utter a single word freely under Louis XIV.

To sum up all in one word—everything suffered by the Revocation; royalty suffered; the political strength of France suffered; national wealth, industry, and morality suffered; the spirit of religion suffered; nay, even the (Roman) Catholic clergy suffered. Thus evil begets nothing but misfortune!