BOOK V. FROM THE EDICT OF TOLERATION TO THE PRESENT TIME. (1787-1851.)

I.

This division of our history will be shorter than its predecessors. The period it embraces is not extensive; and it comprises no memorable events, or great successes and calamities; and it is more remarkable for ideas than for facts. But the recital of facts, not the discussion of ideas, is the object of our labours, and we will follow this plan to the end with the greater fidelity, in that we are nearer to the present generation. We have no desire to exchange the pen of the historian for that of the polemic.

This will explain the brevity of certain details, and even the absence of certain subjects, which perhaps excited, in their day, the most considerable interest. We omit them neither out of forgetfulness nor indifference, but from respect for our duty. It would be inconvenient in many ways, to eulogize or blame men still living, or to take part in questions yet under debate. This is a task that will be better accomplished hereafter.[134]

We step into a new world from the moment that we enter upon the history of the Revolution of 1789. Before that period, every petty reform had to be won by long negotiations, arrangements, and agreements of various kinds. The Edict of 1787, although it granted less than had been given by Henry IV. in the Edict of Nantes, cost twenty years of efforts. Now, on the contrary, we shall behold everything advancing with a firm and rapid step. The timorous scruples of the monarch, the subtle contrivances of his counsellors, the blind resistance of the privileged classes, no longer presided over the public affairs. A great assembly, the faithful interpreter of general intelligence and conscience, shook off the shackles of the past which had only sustained itself with artificial props, and enunciated principles that must resolve the most important problems of political and social order.

From the 21st of August, 1789, the Constituent Assembly overthrew the barriers, which had until then debarred the admission of Protestants to offices of state. Article 11 of the Declaration of Rights was thus conceived: “All citizens, being equal in the eye of the law, are equally admissible to every public dignity, place, and employment, according to their capacity, and without other distinctions than those of their virtues and their talents.”

With some slight differences of expression, this article was subsequently reproduced in each of the French constitutions. It may have been still disregarded in practice, as it has been, indeed, frequently, since 1814; but the principle was definitively won. It triumphed only after ages of persecution, iniquities, and combats. So tardy are human laws to inscribe the maxims of truth and justice!

The eighteenth article of the Declaration of Rights was destined to guarantee liberty of conscience and of worship. The committee of the National Assembly had drawn it up at first in these words: “No one shall be molested on account of his religious opinions, or disturbed in the exercise of his religion.” This was clear, precise, and unequivocal; but a curate proposed a restriction, which was adopted. The new article bore the appearance, in its embarrassed style, of the impress of the legislator’s hesitation: “No one shall be molested on account of his opinions, or even for his religious opinions, provided that he does not, in manifesting them, disturb the public order established by the law.”

This addition was superfluous in one sense, since it is evident that every religion must respect legal order in its acts. In another sense it was dangerous, since it seemed to confer upon the civil power more authority than it ought to have possessed in such matters. The priest, who was inspired with this unfortunate thought, ought to have foreseen that he placed a weapon in the hands of the politicians, which they would perhaps turn against [the members of] his own communion. Did the persecutors of 1793 invoke anything else than the duty of maintaining the order established by the law?

Rabaut Saint Etienne, who had been nominated a member of the Constituent Assembly by the seneschalry of Nismes, perceived the danger, and pointed it out in a speech, which obtained great applause throughout the country. It is one of the most admirable specimens of advocacy that has ever been pronounced in favour of religious liberty: such an oration has a place in history.

The speaker began by showing that those who have opposed toleration in every age, have never alleged any other pretext than that adduced by the imprudent curate. “The Inquisition always said, in its soft and guarded language, that assuredly no attack should ever be made upon thought; that every one is free as to his opinions, provided he does not manifest them; but that, as this manifestation might disturb public order, the law ought to watch it with scrupulous attention; and under the favour of this principle, the intolerant classes have arrogated to themselves that power of inspection which has subjected thought, and enchained it during so many centuries!...

“I discharge a holy mission,” continued the orator; “I obey the voice of my constituents. I represent a seneschalry of three hundred and sixty thousand inhabitants, of whom more than one hundred and twenty thousand are Protestants, who have intrusted their delegates to solicit from you the complement of the Edict of November, 1787. Another seneschalry of Languedoc, and other places of the kingdom, have expressed the same hope, and ask that you should give the non-Catholics the liberty of their worship....” (All! All! shouted a crowd of deputies.)

Rabaut Saint Etienne then appealed to the rights already sanctioned by the Assembly. “Your principles are that liberty is common property, and that every citizen has an equal right to it. Liberty, then, should belong to all Frenchmen alike, and in the same manner. Every one has a right to it, or no one has; he who would deprive others of it, is not worthy of it himself; he who distributes it unevenly, does not know what it is; he who assails the liberty of others, no matter in what [fashion it may be], assails his own, and deserves to lose it in his turn, as being unworthy of a gift, of which he cannot estimate the value.

“Your principles are that liberty of thought and opinion is an inalienable and indefeasible right. This liberty, gentlemen, is the most sacred of all; it is above the control of men; its refuge is in the depth of the conscience, whither it retreats as to an inviolable sanctuary, where no mortal has the light to penetrate; it is the only liberty that mankind has never submitted to the laws of universal society. To constrain it is unjust; to attack it is sacrilege.”

Approaching the special question of the Protestants, he established [the fact] that the Edict of 1787 permitted the continuance of a shameful inequality between the religious communions, and that the penal laws against the worship of the Reformed had never been formally abolished. He claimed their rights as Frenchmen for two millions of useful citizens. It was not toleration he asked for, it was liberty. “Toleration!” he exclaimed; “sufferance! pardon! clemency! ideas supremely unjust towards the dissenters, so long as it is true that difference of religion, that difference of opinion, is not a crime! Toleration! I demand that toleration should be proscribed in its turn, and it will be,—that iniquitous word, that deals with us as citizens worthy of pity, as criminals to whom pardon is granted!...

“I demand for all non-Catholics that which you ask for yourselves—equality of rights, liberty; the liberty of their religion, the liberty of their worship, the liberty of celebrating it in buildings consecrated to that object; the same certainty of not being disturbed in their religion as you have in yours; and the perfect assurance of being protected as you, as much as you are, and in the same manner that you are by our common laws.”

Some speakers had cited the intolerance of certain Protestant people in justification of their own. “A generous and free nation,” answered Rabaut Saint Etienne, “will not permit that the example of these intolerant countries, who proscribe its worship among themselves, should be cited before yourselves. Your high place is to set examples, not to receive them; and because there are unjust people, are you to be so too? Europe pants for freedom, waits upon your teaching, and you are worthy to lead it.”

The speaker conjured up before the bar of the Assembly the great body of proscribed whom he was defending. “They would present themselves to you,” said he, “dyed with the blood of their fathers, and would exhibit to you the mark of the fetters wherewith they have themselves been bound. But my country is free, and I would forget with her both the ills we have shared, and the yet greater evils, of which we have been the victims. What I ask is, that my native land should show herself worthy of liberty, by distributing it equally among all her citizens, without distinction of rank, of birth, or of religion.”

In concluding, Rabaut Saint Etienne enunciated that every religion demands a worship in common; that one set of Christians cannot refuse it to another without contradicting their own maxims; and that every restriction placed upon the public exercise of a religion, is an attack upon the basis of all creeds, since belief inevitably produces worship, which corresponds to it.

Notwithstanding the logic and eloquence of Rabaut Saint Etienne, the Right, succumbing to religious prejudices, the Centre, governed by political views and pre-occupations, and the priests of the Left, obeying their doctrinal antipathies, formed a majority, which accepted the proposed restriction. Each party had occasion to repent of their resolution.

Four months after this memorable debate, the National Assembly confirmed, on the 24th of December, 1789, by the following decree, the admissibility of Frenchmen to all offices and employments. “1. That the non-Catholics, who should otherwise have complied with all the conditions prescribed by the preceding decrees, with regard to electors, and [such as were] eligible, might be elected to every department of public administration. 2. That the non-Catholics were capable of receiving appointments to every civil and military office, without exception.”

The opportunity of applying this law in the most striking manner soon presented itself. On the 15th of March, 1790, Rabaut Saint Etienne, the son of the long-proscribed pastor, who had been glad to shelter his venerable head under a hut of piled stones, was nominated president of the Constituent Assembly; he filled the chair of the Abbé de Montesquieu. It was on this occasion that he wrote to his father these words, that mark so well the change of ideas and situations: “The president of the National Assembly kneels at your feet.”

Rabaut Saint Etienne was born at Nismes in 1743. He completed his theological studies in the seminary of Lausanne. On his return to France, he was ordained to the ministry of the Gospel, and fulfilled his functions most courageously in the emergency when the Parliament of Toulouse condemned the pastor François Rochette, the three gentlemen glass-makers, and Calas to death. In the front of these execrable scaffolds, he unceasingly preached resignation, obedience to the law, and the duties of fraternal love.

In 1779, he pronounced, as we have elsewhere said, the funeral oration of M. Becdelièvre, bishop of Nismes. This discourse having been printed and communicated to Laharpe, by M. Boissy d’Anglas, that illustrious critic replied: “You have sent me an admirable composition, replete with true eloquence, that of the soul and of feeling. It is clear that everything which flows from the pen of the author, is inspired by the virtues which he celebrates.”

Rabaut Saint Etienne published other discourses, and a book entitled: Amboise Borély, or the Old Cévenole. In this last work he painted, under a dramatic form, the sufferings of the French Protestants at the period of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and during the eighteenth century.

Chosen by the seneschalry of Nismes first among the eight deputies of the Third Estate, his noble character, his oratorical talents, and his devotion to the public good, immediately obtained for him great influence in the Constituent Assembly, over which he was elected to preside on several occasions.

Having been sent to the National Convention by the department of Aude, Rabaut Saint Etienne brought to his place in the Assembly a wise moderation, as well as a generous love of liberty. He sided with the party of the Girondists, and boldly confronted the popular passions, by refusing to vote for the death of Louis XVI. “The nation,” he said, “has sent you to delegate its powers, not to exercise them all at once; for it is impossible that it should have desired only to change its masters. As for myself, I avow it, I am weary of my part in despotism; I am fatigued and harassed with it, and loathe the tyranny which I share in exercising; I sigh for the moment when you shall have created a national tribunal that will divest me of the features and the aspect of a tyrant.”

At the sitting of the 3rd of May, he presented the report of the Commission of Twelve who represented the party of the Gironde, and maintained an obstinate struggle against the violence of the Mountain. Its doom awaited so firm a courage. His arrest was decreed, and his retreat having been discovered, he was dragged before the Revolutionary tribunal, who ordered, upon his simple identification, that he should be executed within twenty-four hours. Rabaut Saint Etienne perished on the scaffold on the 3rd of December, 1793.

Let us return to the Constituent Assembly. A member of the Left, the Carthusian Don Gerle, a man of singular, but unsettled ideas, who had begun to experience some disquietude about the course he was following with his new associates, suddenly proposed, on the 12th of April, 1790, that (Roman) Catholicism should be declared the religion of the State, and that no other religious worship than the Romish should be authorized. The Right and a few Jansenists hailed this unexpected motion with transport. The bishop of Clermont even asked that it should be voted by acclamation, as a homage paid to the (Roman) Catholic religion.

The majority seemed for a moment to be undecided, and the sitting was adjourned until the following day. In the interval, the defenders of religious liberty had time to combine. Charles Lameth had already appealed to the maxims of the Gospel in favour of the dissenting communions. Public opinion, in the meanwhile, became agitated; tumultuous crowds gathered round the building occupied by the legislative body; Mirabeau recalled to mind the horrible recollections of the Saint Bartholomew massacre; and Don Gerle, by this time aware of the dangers of his proposition, withdrew it.

The Constituent Assembly hastened to give the Protestants new proof of its good-will. It ordered the restitution of property confiscated on account of religion, which was still in the possession of the State, to the heirs of the lawful proprietors. By another decree, it restored all the rights of French citizens to the descendants of the refugees, on the sole condition that they should return to France and take the civic oath. Finally, the constitution of 1791 sanctioned the liberty of religious creeds in these terms: “The Constitution guarantees to every man the exercise of the religious worship to which he is attached.”

The legislature had fulfilled its task by proclaiming true principles; the people had next to fulfil their duty. But if, in former periods, the manners of the nation were in advance of the laws, the laws were at this epoch in advance of popular manners, at least in the southern districts, where there existed greater ignorance and stronger religious passions in combination.

The province of Vendée did not rise until 1793, because it contained scarcely any Protestants within its territory. In the south, on the contrary, where they were very numerous, the old antipathies between the two communions began to explode from the year 1790. These facts were accompanied by results of grave importance, which require illustration.

II.

In the earliest days of the Revolution, the (Roman) Catholics and the Reformed lived in concord throughout the south of France, as in other provinces. “Everything worked easily and naturally by the concurrence of wishes,” says the historian of the disturbances of Gard, “and the only noise heard was that of rejoicing, on the receipt of the news of some favourable event at Paris. In many communes, the Protestants assisted at the Te Deum of the (Roman) Catholics, and the (Roman) Catholics (it is a well-known circumstance), were also present at the thanksgivings of the Reformed.”[135]

But differences began to manifest themselves from the day that the Constituent Assembly decreed, on the proposition of the Bishop Talleyrand, the sale of the property of the clergy (2nd of November, 1789). The priests and the monks persuaded the multitude that it was intended to destroy the Church, to abolish religion, to persecute the (Roman) Catholics; and the lower orders of the south, not being able to vent their anger upon the philosophers and the Jansenists, of whom they knew nothing, turned all their fury against the Protestants, who were entirely strangers to the measures of which they complained.

Violent separations and burning enmities were the result. The elements of discord were kept alive, increased, and envenomed by some members of the privileged classes, who hoped, with the help of religious collisions, to give the signal for a counter-revolution in the southern provinces, afterwards to raise the west, then to march upon Paris, and once more to seize upon their ancient prerogatives. This fact has not only been avowed, but was publicly boasted of in 1814 and 1815, as an admirable combination to restore the cause of royalty, the priesthood, and the aristocracy.

Among others, there was a certain François Froment, afterwards cabinet secretary to Louis XVIII., who published, in October, 1815, a pamphlet entitled, An Account of my Operations for the Defence of Religion and Royalty during the Course of the Revolution. He relates therein, with a frankness that blushes at nothing, all the details of this conspiracy, of which he was one of the principal agents. His recital is accompanied by official documents, with which he substantiates his narrative.

“I went secretly to Turin,” he says, “to solicit the French princes for their approbation and assistance. At a council which was held on my arrival, January, 1790, I demonstrated to them that if they would arm the partisans of the altar and the throne, and combine the interests of religion with those of royalty, it would be easy to save both. I was then, as I am now, convinced of this truth, that a strong passion must be smothered by one still stronger, and that religious zeal could alone smother the rage of republicanism.”

François Froment reasoned correctly from his point of view. The people of the country and the towns would not willingly have defended privileges, by which they were the first to suffer. They were instinctively led to cherish a revolution, which had freed them from tithes and feudal services, and had bestowed upon them civil equality. But by appealing to their religious passions, by re-awakening their traditional hatred against heretics, they might have been roused to arm against a cause hostile to their own, and, once excited, might have been blindly urged further than they would have desired. This is the secret of all conspirators, and beneath many a flag recourse will be had to these tactics so long as ambitious men are found on one part, and ignorant or fanatical men are met with on the other.

Froment had little difficulty in procuring the adoption of his project. The emigrant princes (we continue to use his own narrative), confided to him the charge of forming a royalist party in the south, and of organizing and commanding it. Money was given to him, with the promise of men and ammunition, as soon as the struggle should begin. He returned to France, travelled through the south, communicated with the nobles and priests, whose opinions corresponded with his own, and soon after the two towns of Montauban and Nismes were deluged in blood.

The conspirators pursued everywhere a pre-arranged and uniform course. They circulated atrocious calumnies against the Protestants, and even scattered about the streets and public squares, incendiary libels without number. The following extract, by no means the most violent, from one of these pamphlets, will serve as a specimen of their style: “Close against the Protestants the door of public offices and civil and military honours. They seek to participate in the advantages which you enjoy; but you will no sooner have associated them with yourselves than their only aim will be to despoil you; and they will shortly succeed. Ungrateful vipers, whose benumbed strength, disabled from hurting you, warmed by your benefactions, only recover to kill you. They are your born enemies!”

These odious provocations did not fail to produce their effect upon the masses of the people. The Protestants were systematically excluded from all the municipal councils; and generally from all elective offices. This was a first step: the communal authority might be now wielded to the advantage of the counter-revolution, and an appearance of legality thrown over the plans of the faction.

A second line of action was to excite the (Roman) Catholics to sign addresses demanding unity of religion. Many conferences were held upon this subject, usually at the houses of the curates, or in the convents. The devotees flocked to sign, thinking they obeyed the will of God by attacking the most sacred rights of human conscience, and their fanaticism increased to a frenzy. The women of the populace, particularly, enslaved by a servile bigotry, abandoned themselves to the most savage fury. The Protestants, on their side, were profoundly irritated, when they saw that their opponents were bent upon soliciting a new Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. All this had been foreseen by the conspirators, and formed a feature of their plan.

But more was wanted: an armed force was necessary. The regular troops were faithful to the government that had issued from the Revolution. In the national guard, many Protestants had obtained high rank, because they generally possessed more intelligence and ampler fortunes than the (Roman) Catholics. How were soldiers to be obtained? Companies of volunteers were organized, who obeyed concealed leaders. Recruited for the most part from among the dregs of the people, or agricultural labourers, their ignorance was a guarantee for their docility, and the contest might be ventured upon with no mean prospect of success.

These miserable partisans not only raised the cry of “Long live the King, and the Cross!” but they shouted also: “Down with the Nation!” as if they did not belong to a nation that had just resumed its rights and its liberties. Many wore, instead of the national cockade, a white cross, in imitation of the old Leaguers. The brotherhoods of penitents, who dated so far back as the religious wars of the sixteenth century, furnished their contingent of devotees. The League in fine was resuscitated, the League without the Guises; the League without Philip II. and Sixtus V., the League after Voltaire—an empty phantom summoned in vain from its bloody tombs!

On the 10th of May, 1790, the day of the Rogations, which had been chosen by the municipal council to visit the convents about to be suppressed, the people rose at Montauban. Six dragoons, or picked national guards, of whom five were Protestants and one a (Roman) Catholic, were killed at the Hôtel de Ville, before they could defend themselves. Many others were shamefully maltreated and thrown into prison, where, however, they found a refuge from the bloodthirstiness of the assassins. We forbear from relating the details.

On the 13th of June in the same year, the struggle known under the name of bagarre began at Nismes, and lasted four days. The official report laid before the Constituent Assembly after a most searching inquiry, shows who were the provokers and aggressors in this ill-fated collision. The conspiracy is evident; and it is easy to discover its origin, to follow its windings, and to convince oneself that religion was only used as a pretext for bringing about a counter-revolution.

The (Roman) Catholics of the lowest order, whom the leaders of the faction had armed and collected, committed the most atrocious acts. We will only cite one instance, that happened on the 14th.

The youth Peyre, fifteen years of age, was carrying victuals to his brother, and on his way passed before a company posted on the bridge of the Isles: a man asked him if he were a (Roman) Catholic or a Protestant. The lad answered: “I am a Protestant.” Whereupon the man shot the child dead. A companion of the assassin exclaimed: “You might as well have slain a lamb.” “I have promised,” rejoined the ruffian, “to kill four Protestants as my share, and this youngster will count as one.”[136]

Negotiations were opened; but the reports of some guns fired from a convent, interrupted them. The (Roman) Catholics, attached to the cause of the Revolution, joined the Protestants, and fearful reprisals were exacted. On one side and the other, a hundred and thirty-four individuals were deprived of life during these fatal days; for which let those who prepared, organized, and excited these insurrections be responsible to posterity! It is gratifying and consoling to add, that several curates of the neighbourhood of Nismes, hearkening only to the voice of their consciences, hastened, at the head of the national guards of their communes, to aid in restoring order and peace between the two communions.

In the report read to the Constituent Assembly, M. Alquier attests in the most formal terms that it was not the Protestants, who had provoked these conflicts.

“They became,” said he, “the objects of the hatred of a party, as soon as a party was formed against the Constitution, at the period of your first decrees respecting the property of the clergy; and loaded with the vile outpourings of calumnies, fabricated against them in order to excite disturbances, and the outbreak of a counter-revolution, their only enemies have been the enemies of the Revolution itself.”

At Toulouse, Bordeaux, Montpellier, Marseilles, where the Protestants were of too small numbers to afford the opportunity of throwing more importance into the religious than into the political question, there was no stir. The attitude of these places preserved the south from civil war, and the conspirators were driven to seek the aid from foreign powers, which their own country refused them.

When quiet was restored at Nismes, the Reformed opened a place of worship there, according to the right which had been guaranteed to them by the Constitution. They placed this inscription upon the front: “An edifice consecrated to religious worship by a private society: peace and liberty.” The venerable Paul Rabaut pronounced the inaugurative prayer, with a faltering voice and tearful countenance.

In the other provinces of France, the Protestants also applied themselves to their new organization, paying the pastors from their own purses, as they had long been accustomed to do, and no longer seeking from the civil power anything else than the preservation of their liberty under the safeguard of the common laws.

The Revolution, however, daily exhibited a more hostile feeling towards the (Roman) Catholic clergy. After having deprived them of their property, it was determined to impose upon them a constitution and an oath. This was the work of the Jansenists, and particularly of the representative Camus. They were irritated by the remembrance of the long injuries inflicted upon them by the majority of the priests, and they were unfortunately powerful enough to draw into their quarrel the party of the Left in the Constituent Assembly, which had a presentiment it was about to commit a serious mistake. The Protestants took no part in this debate.

The Civil Constitution imposed upon the (Roman) Catholic church, precipitated the Revolution out of the limits, which it ought to have respected. A great part of the clergy resisted. The priests, who were refractory or had not sworn, fled to the woods and caves, pursued by the insults of that same people, who had so many times outraged the pastors of the Reformation. France had not been taught by her spiritual leaders to bow before the independence of the human conscience, and the ministers of Rome were now the victims of the lessons of persecution they had themselves taught. Woe to them, who take the sword of intolerance; sooner or later it recoils upon themselves!

These sad conflicts do not belong to our subject. The (Roman) Catholic clergy, we say freely, did their duty then, and the politicians failed in theirs. They outstepped the boundaries of civil authority by pretending to regulate ecclesiastical points in which doctrine was necessarily implicated; and having been guilty of this first error, they committed a second—that of attacking, and of proscribing religion itself, in order to take revenge for the lawful resistance with which they had been met.

It is true that no express law was ever passed against religious liberty. The Constitution of 1793 still contained an article (22), which professed to guarantee to the whole French people the free exercise of their worship. But the Convention by the arbitrary acts of its agents, overthrew the rights it had inscribed in its legislation, and itself passed decrees which assailed every religious communion. Thus, on the 22nd September, 1793, it replaced the ancient division of the week by that of the Decade, and attempted to compel all the French people to work on the Sabbath, whatever might be their scruples of faith.

This unjustifiable tyranny was not exercised without opposition, in spite of the terror which weighed upon France. The younger Rabaut relates, in his Ecclesiastical Repertory, a circumstance connected with the Protestant communion, which happened in the commune of La Salle (Gard): “A country labourer, called Alègre, about sixty years of age, was arrested and thrown into prison for not having worked on a Sunday. A week after, this man, dressed in his best clothes, presented himself before the committee. Being asked what he wanted, he replied that he was now an old man, that he had worked the whole week long, that he absolutely required rest; that if he went to work on the Sabbath he would be only robbing his employer, and that he preferred to be put in prison. The committee, who expected that he was about to denounce some one, were surprised by his answer and sent him home.”

On the 7th of November, 1793, Gobel, the constitutional bishop of Paris, abjured the (Roman) Catholic faith at the bar of the Convention, accompanied by some priests, who were well worthy to follow in his rear. He laid down the insignia of his office upon the table, declaring that there was no necessity for any other worship than that of liberty, equality, and morality. Certain members of the Assembly, (Roman) Catholic and Protestant ecclesiastics, followed his example. The Bishop Gregory alone had the courage to ascend the tribune and disavow this apostasy. Rabaut Saint Etienne was then absent and proscribed.

The abjuration of Gobel was the signal for the invasion of the churches and the abolition of all religious worship. No one spoke any longer, according to the language of the period, but of invoking reason, of listening to the voice of nature, of lighting the lamp of truth upon the altar, and of rendering mankind happy by stifling the monster of superstition.

The temples of the Protestants, which had been opened only the day before, were closed like the churches of the (Roman) Catholics, and the pastors were compelled to abstain from their functions under pain of being held as suspected, and consequently liable to capital punishment. The delegate of the Convention in Gard and Lozère, published, on the 16th Prairial, in the year II., a decree commanding the priests and the pastors to withdraw, within the space of eight days, to a distance of twenty leagues from the communes where they had exercised their ministry. The Terrorist had invented nothing new; he merely copied or reproduced an ordinance dictated by the Jesuits in the reign of Louis XIV.

Some of the pastors perished by the Revolutionary axe; others were imprisoned, and among them the veteran of the desert, Paul Rabaut, who was led to the citadel of Nismes upon an ass, as his age and infirmities had deprived him of the strength to travel on foot. “He had seen his eldest son die upon the scaffold, had wept over the proscription of two other children (Rabaut-Pomier and Rabaut-Dupuy), and he was in his turn incarcerated himself. We are witnesses of the resignation he displayed at this painful moment. Imperturbably calm with respect to his own fate, he showed anxiety only for his children and for his fellow-captives, whom he consoled and supported by his example.”[137]

Protestantism counted as many victims in proportion to (Roman) Catholicism, if not more, either pastors or laymen, in the days of 1793. The Dictionary of the Condemned indicates, for the department of Gard, where the Reformed did not constitute half of the whole population, forty-six Protestants, ninety-one (Roman) Catholics, and one Jew. The members of the Revolutionary tribunal of Nismes were, with one exception, all (Roman) Catholics. The French Reformation, to use the expression of M. Aignan, was never named in the mourning and terror of France, and it paid the tribute of blood twice over,—first to the intolerance of Rome, next, to that of impiety.

We find it impossible to trace the Protestant religion at this epoch. It appears that at Sainte Foy and the neighbourhood, the public exercise of religion was never completely interrupted. Doubtless the memory of the aged has also preserved other instances, but books make no mention of them. Piety, which had generally been greatly weakened, nearly everywhere secluded itself in the depth of the conscience, or in the asylum of the domestic roof.

The day of the 9th Thermidor marked the term of this oppression, for as soon as public opinion dared to raise its voice, it demanded and obtained religious freedom. A decree of the 3rd Ventose, year III. (21st February, 1795), authorized the free exercise of religious worship, leaving to the faithful the care of making a provision for it out of their own subscriptions, and prohibiting them from celebrating any worship upon the public highways. The constitution of the year III. confirmed this regulation by the following article: “No one shall be prevented from exercising the worship he has chosen, provided he conforms to the laws; no one can be forced to contribute to the expenses of any creed; the Republic salaries none.”

A police law, issued on the 7th Vendémiaire, year III. (28th September, 1795), commanded that a preliminary declaration should be made before the opening of places of worship, and obliged the ministers of the different communions to sign this formula: “I acknowledge that the universality of French citizens is supreme, and I promise submission and obedience to the laws of the Republic.” The condition of an oath to the following effect was afterwards added: “I swear hatred to royalty and to anarchy, attachment and fidelity to the Republic and to the Constitution of the year III.” The promise of obedience to purely political laws was just; the order to swear hatred to royalty was not so, and excited legitimate remonstrances.

Some Reformed churches seized the opportunity, offered by the appeasement of the public mind and the protection of the authorities, to re-establish themselves. This restoration was laborious and slow. There were but few pastors; some had died during the Revolutionary tempest; others had definitively abandoned the ministry of the Gospel; and the youths of the seminary of Lausanne were dispersed. The laity also displayed little zeal: the scandal of apostasies had produced a deplorable impression upon them, and many had given themselves up to the negations of scepticism, or to the chimeras of theo-philanthropy.

In the midst of this painful re-establishment of Protestantism, Paul Rabaut gave up his soul to God. He had been set at liberty after the 9th Thermidor; but the weight of his years no longer permitted him to participate in the reconstruction of the sanctuary. He died at the age of seventy-six years, on the 26th of September, 1795, invoking the name of the Lord, whom he had confessed before four generations of Christians.

III.

The first consul found the affairs of the (Roman) Catholic church in great disorder. Sworn and unsworn priests assailed each other in violent controversies, and divided their flocks. Buonaparte’s advisers almost unanimously recommended him to abstain from interfering in the religious question, assuring him that the advantage he could reap would be but small, while the difficulties were infinite; and that it would be better to leave the Church itself to pacify, as it could, its internal struggles. The new chief of the state did not adopt this advice, and opened negotiation with the Holy See. We are assured that he confessed, fifteen years afterwards, that this was the greatest mistake of his reign.

A Concordat was signed between the first consul and the legate of Pius VII., on the 26th Messidor, year IX. (15th July, 1801). This re-establishment of the alliance between the temporal and the spiritual powers was necessarily destined to react upon the position of French Protestantism.

The pope had strongly insisted that the (Roman) Catholic religion should be proclaimed as the state, or at least as the dominant religion. Neither the one nor the other of these pretensions were admitted, lest, as the negotiator of the consular government stated, the supposition might be excited of the return of an intolerant and oppressive religion. The following declaration was merely inserted in the preamble of the Concordat: “The government of the Republic recognises the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion, as the religion of the great majority of the French people.”

This was nothing more than the enunciation of a simple fact. Nevertheless the council of state conceived that it was bound to remove any interpretation that might be unfavourable to the Protestants. We read these remarkable words in a report submitted to the Consuls in the beginning of 1802: “While the government has declared that Catholicism is in the ascendant in France, it has not intended to authorize any civil or political pre-eminence in its favour. It has simply signified the priority of the measures it has taken to secure the independence, which it proposes to guarantee to all creeds. Protestantism is a Christian communion, which unites in the same belief and the same rites a very great number of French citizens. On that ground alone, this communion is entitled to the protection of the government. In other respects it deserves marks of consideration and favour. Its founders were the first to spread liberal maxims of government in Europe; they gave an impulse to morals, philosophy, and the useful arts and sciences. In later times, the Protestants were the first to hasten to the standard of liberty, and have never deserted it. It is, therefore, the duty of the government to insure its protection to the peaceable assemblies of this enlightened and generous minority of citizens, met together in their temples with the praiseworthy view of hearkening to the precepts of the religion of Christ.... Everything that is secured to the different Christian communions by the articles agreed upon between his holiness and the government of the Republic, is equally guaranteed to the Protestants, with the exception of pecuniary subvention.”

The Protestant pastors were therefore to receive no salary from the public treasury, while the bishops and the priests had one. This was returning to the decree of the Constituent Assembly, which granted incomes in effect to the ministers of the (Roman) Catholic creed only, but different reasons were relied upon. The Constituent Assembly regarded the salary of the clergy as an indemnification for the loss of their property. The council of state of 1802, left out this consideration altogether. It justified its intention of paying the priests without paying the pastors, upon three grounds. Firstly, certain expenses might be imposed upon all for the interest of the majority. Next, the voluntary offerings raised by the priests for the maintenance of the (Roman) Catholic worship, begot prodigality and abuses, which, for different causes, did not exist among the Protestants in the same degree. Finally, “in the articles agreed upon between the head of the Roman church and the government of the Republic, the burden imposed upon the State was compensated by the right acquired by the government, to interfere directly and efficaciously in the administration of the Church by its nomination of the principal ministers and its control over the subordinate ministers.”

Thus there arose two very distinct positions for the (Roman) Catholics and the Protestants. For the former, a state salary, but also the intervention of the government in the appointment of the bishops and cantonal curates: the civil power provided the money, and by its money acquired the right of interference in the affairs of the Church. For the latter, no salary, but also a full liberty of internal action [was permitted]. [There was to be] no sacrifice of money on the one side, no sacrifice of independence on the other.

In reality a decree of nine articles was drawn up, on the 21st Ventose, year X. (12th March, 1802), by which there was no question [admitted] but of general measures of police and common right for the communion of the Protestants. Buonaparte wrote in the margin of the minute of this decree, that two articles were wanting,—one respecting the oath of the Protestant ministers, another respecting the manner of their appointment; but the project went no farther.[138]

It may be thus seen that the Reformed communion narrowly escaped completely realizing the separation of Church and the State. The obstacle came from the first consul, who, anxious to secure authority over Protestantism by the oath and the appointment of the pastors, felt at the same time that he must, in compensation, support the Reformed faith at the cost of the public treasury; and out of the desire to possess this influence flowed the law of the 18th Germinal, year X. (7th April, 1802).

If we had proposed to ourselves to write observations upon the history of French Protestantism instead of relating the history itself, we might ask what would have been the destiny of their churches, and what would be their position to-day if Buonaparte had adopted the advice of his council of state, and had left them wholly independent without granting them any endowment. Opposite opinions might be maintained upon this question with equal good faith; but the examination of this subject would lead us away from our subject.

The historical fact, which is the only point that engages our present attention, is, that the majority of the Protestants, both pastors and laity, right or wrong, hailed the law of the 18th Germinal as an inestimable favour. They cared less for the sacrifice of a part of their religious independence than for the advantages they hoped for from a state endowment; in which they beheld two great advantages,—a legal and incontestable recognition, and the official pledge of a perfect equality with the Roman Catholics.

Rabaut-Dupuy, who presided in the legislative body in 1802, made himself the organ of the feelings of gratitude and joy of his co-religionists at the closing of the session. “Legislators,” he said, “this law of justice has been received with thankfulness by all Christians; the Protestants have recognised all its value.... Restored to the freedom of civil, political, and religious rights, now that the law organizes all creeds in a parallel manner, they will be the firmest supporters of a protecting government.”

He also said, in 1807, in a letter addressed to the Reformed of the Empire: “You, who have lived like us under the yoke of intolerance, the relict of so many persecuted generations, see and compare.—It is no longer in deserts, and at the peril of your life, that you pay to the Creator the homage which is due to Him. Our places of worship are restored to us, and every day new ones spring up. Our pastors are recognised public functionaries; they are salaried by the government; the sword of a barbarous law is no longer suspended over their heads.... Alas! those whom we have outlived, ascended the mountain of Nebo, whence they beheld the land of promise; but we alone have gone in to possess it.”

At the same time, however unanimous the Protestants of that epoch may have been in their sentiments concerning the law of Germinal, it must be acknowledged that it has in many essential points changed the constitution of the French Reformation, and has made it pay dearly for the advantage of the political equality of the religions.

In bringing the new organic articles before the legislative body, the councillor of state, Portalis, afterwards minister of worship, announced that the law had been made upon verbal or written instructions taken from the Protestants. “If it appertains,” he said, “to the laws to admit or to reject different creeds, the different creeds have an existence by themselves, which they cannot hold of the law, whose origin is not thought to take its source in human wishes.” One would thereupon suppose that the government had confined itself to interrogating the Protestants upon their articles of faith and discipline, and that it had simply sanctioned them. But we have only to compare, in order to undeceive ourselves, the law of the 18th Germinal with the rules established by the national synods.

According to the ancient order, which is the system of Calvinistic presbyterianism, religious society exists in and by itself. It has its supreme authority, its secondary authorities, its doctrine, its discipline, its means of government, and its penalties. In the new order, religious society having no longer any confession of faith officially recognised; having no power to establish another without the permission of the civil magistrate; possessing no longer any general and fixed rules outside or independent of its relations with the state, and, controlled in the conduct of its internal affairs by the secular power, having no government, in the true sense of the word; it seems to lean for its very existence on a strength that does not emanate from its own foundation.

Formerly, it was the pastors and the elders who, assembled in conferences, in provincial synods, and in national synods, sovereignly decided upon all ecclesiastical questions. They appointed ministers, tried and adjudged disputes arising in the flocks, inflicted spiritual penalties, ordered changes that were thought to be useful; directed, in short, the churches in their quality of churches, in everything that concerned piety, morals, edification, and Christian life. Under the régime of 1802, there was nothing that did not seem to originate with the temporal authority, and everything centres in it one way or another—the confirmation and removal of pastors, dogmatic decisions, modifications in discipline, the projects of ministers of worship or of the consistories, and disputes among the flocks. Does not this seem to be an essentially civil organization substituted for an essentially ecclesiastical organization?

The chief differences, which exist in the general outline, are also reproduced in the details.

The primitive element, which corresponded to that of the commune in the political society, that is to say, the individual church, having its consistory and its pastor, is suppressed, at least in its proper and distinct authority, by the articles of 1802, and replaced by the creation of the consistorial church, which is composed of a certain number of agglomerated Protestants. The five or six particular churches of which it consists, are nothing more than sections or fragments of the body, and their consistories have no legal title. It is absolutely as if all the communes in the domain of the state were suppressed with their municipal councils, and absorbed in the purely conventional existence of the cantons.

The law of the year X. concentrates the consistorial capacity in the ranks of the persons paying the largest amount of direct taxes. Twenty-five of these tax-payers nominate the first consistory. Then the consistory itself designates the notables, who are, in concert with itself, to provide for the re-elections to the vacancies. The two conditions of piety and of fortune may doubtless be found in union; but when they are not so, it is wealth that will prevail, if the legal text be strictly complied with. The mass of the faithful, or the people, according to the expression of the ancient discipline, have no right of election, of veto, nor of consent.

In the place of the provincial synods, which reckoned from thirty to forty members, and occasionally more, since each particular church of the province deputed a pastor and an elder to them, the law of Germinal instituted district synods, formed of five consistorial churches. The assembly, therefore, can consist of ten members only, and may last only six days. It has no privilege of meeting but with the permission of the government, after having informed it of the matters for discussion, and in presence of a prefect or sub-prefect. Even farther, all the decisions which emanate from these synods, of whatever description they may be, must be submitted for the approbation of the civil power. And yet, for nearly half a century, there has been, in spite of these excessive precautions, only one district synod, that of Drôme, which was convoked in 1850.

Lastly, there is no longer a national synod; for the organic articles having stated nothing about the composition and the attributes of this assembly, and not having even pronounced the name, while they carefully determined everything concerning the district synods, it is beyond all doubt that the silence of the legislature is equivalent to an entire suppression.

The law of Germinal, therefore, is not the confirmation of the ancient discipline of the Reformed, as might be inferred from the speech of M. Portalis; it is, in some respects, its destruction. It is true, that the change of ideas and manners must necessarily induce modifications in ecclesiastical regulations, and that no intelligent man could have desired a complete restoration of the past. It is also true, that the internal defects of Protestantism have done more harm to liberty than the organic articles, and that faith might have corrected in many respects the vices of the law. Let us not impute to the legislator what must chiefly be laid to the charge of the Protestants themselves. Nevertheless, the régime of 1802, established after the recent excesses of liberty, bears the marks of an extreme reaction. No subsequent government would have exacted so many sacrifices of independence, and the unanimous opinion of French Protestantism, in the present day, is, that the revision of the articles of the year X. is imperatively required. Some members of that communion demand more, others less; but all desire a law that shall more fully guarantee the freedom of the churches.

It was not so, as we have seen, in the time of the Consulate. A memorial was simply presented to the political authority, soliciting the formation of a central commission, which would have been composed of a pastor and an elder from each district synod. This commission, subjected to all the rules imposed upon the inferior synods, would have endeavoured to establish some unity in dogma, worship, and discipline, under the eye of the government commissioner. But the memorial produced no effect.

Twenty-seven consistorial presidents were summoned to the coronation of Napoleon. In a preliminary conference, they discussed whether they ought to assist at the religious service, and after some hesitation, they decided in the affirmative, either because the emperor was pledged to take the oath to protect the liberty of worship, or because they feared that their absence might be injurious to the interests of the Reformed churches. “It would be absurd to suppose,” they said, in a deliberation recorded upon the registers of the consistory of Paris, “that any pastor-president could be compromised, or have any scruple of conscience respecting a mute assistance at ceremonies,—religious it is true in their nature, but which require no consent, no outward sign of adoration on the part of the spectators,—ceremonies which are so intimately associated with the civil ceremonies, that they almost lose the peculiar character imparted to them by the Roman Catholic creed.”

M. Martin, the president of the consistory of Geneva, which was then a French town, presented his homage to the emperor in the name of his colleagues and of all the Protestants. The answer of Napoleon deserves to be remembered in history: “It is with pleasure that I see the pastors of the Reformed churches of France here assembled. I gladly avail myself of this opportunity to express how much I have always been satisfied with everything that has been told me of the fidelity and good conduct of the pastors and citizens of the different Protestant communions. I am desirous it should be known that my intention and my firm will are to maintain freedom of worship. The empire of the law ends where the indefinite empire of the conscience begins; and neither the law nor the sovereign can prevail against this freedom. Such are my principles and those of the nation, and if any member of my family, whose lot it may be to succeed me, should forget the oath I have sworn, and, deceived by the inspiration of a false conscience, should violate it, I devote him to public animadversion, and I authorize you to style him a Nero.”

The emperor kept his promise faithfully. There was no persecution against the Protestants during his reign; [they suffered] no violence of any kind against their civil or religious rights; [they enjoyed] a full and continued security. But it was an internal liberty confined within the walls of the places of worship. There was a strict prohibition against any disturbance, or any movement in religious matters. Neither journals nor associations, neither controversy nor proselytism were permitted; and if by any act or thought it was ventured to pass beyond the precincts wherein they were restrained, the iron hand of Napoleon immediately drove them back.

We have heard it said that a (Roman) Catholic village having formed the design of entering the Reformed communion, a pastor, conceiving that he had the right of doing so, visited it for the purpose; but he immediately found himself confronted by the imperial government, which ordered him to return home and remain quiet. The pastor was compelled to submit and obey. How many circumstances [there were] like this are unknown!

If Napoleon forbade the religious sects to step beyond their places of worship, he reserved the privilege of entering and commanding there himself whenever he thought expedient. For instance, on the 19th of February, 1806, he instituted two fêtes upon the simple report of the council of state; one for the anniversary of his birth, the other for that of his coronation and the battle of Austerlitz. The decree ran, “A discourse shall be preached in the churches and in the places of worship, by a minister of religion, upon the glory of the French armies, and upon the extent of the duty imposed on every citizen to consecrate his life to his sovereign and the country.”

And, indeed, French Protestantism has, properly speaking, no history during the fourteen years of the Consulate and the Empire. Weak in numbers, scattered, without bond or union, without a common discipline, constrained to be humble and silent, and to avoid all occasion of disturbing the official classification of religions, the community of the Protestants dragged on a uniform and obscure existence. “The ministers preached,” says M. Samuel Vincent, “and the people listened; the consistories met, and worship preserved its forms. Beyond this, no one troubled himself, no one thought, and religion was a thing beyond the life of all. This lasted a long while.”[139]

We are not aware of the publication of a single important book upon dogma, ecclesiastical history, or sacred eloquence, in the course of Napoleon’s reign. A few occasional sermons, some courses of religious instruction, some abridgments of sacred history, three or four translations of English and German works, constitute the Protestant literature of this epoch. We do not comprise such works as the Essay of Charles Villers, in which literature, arts, and philosophy engaged the attention more than religion.

If we confine ourselves to the actual limits of France, there were not more than two hundred pastors in 1807; the number is more than double now. The flocks of many were spread over so wide a breadth of country, that the pastors were necessarily compelled to lead a kind of nomade life, which, in itself, would be a sufficient reason for not judging them severely. Nor can we, indeed, form an idea of all the good they did in their humble labours, of all the unfortunates they consoled, the poor they succoured, or all the souls they edified and brought back to God. Their burthen was heavier than that of the men who succeeded them, and their task was less thankful. They had to contend at the same time against the too great extent of their ecclesiastical districts, and against the lukewarmness of the people, who cared for nothing but the military triumphs of Napoleon.

Some of these pastors maintained relations with the German societies of the Moravian Brethren, and gathered round them the faithful, who were influenced by the same convictions. “They were in general,” says M. Vincent, “peaceable and inoffensive people, who dogmatized little, and made religion to consist of love, particularly of love for Jesus; whilst they assembled in small numbers, without show or pretension, with the intention of a very mild and moderate proselytism.”[140]

The French seminary of Lausanne had been transported to Geneva; but as it was inadequate to the wants of the pastoral body, the emperor created a Faculty of Protestant theology at Montauban (1808-1810). The chain of associations was thus renewed for one of the most ancient and celebrated of the chief towns of the French Reformation. Montauban had lost its theological academy in 1661 by the intrigues of the Jesuits; Napoleon restored it. Men pass away, and persecutions expire; but the institutions necessary to human intelligence and conscience fall only to rise again.

Projects of reunion between the Christian communions were proposed about this period. Public authority did not interfere again as in the time of Richelieu and Louis XIV.; it did not even appear to attach the slightest importance to the notion, which simply originated with a few private individuals.

The archbishop of Besançon, M. Claude Lecoz, who had been a member of the Legislative Assembly, a constitutional bishop in 1791, and the author of some very severe pamphlets against Pope Pius VI. on the subject of the civil constitution of the clergy, felt it incumbent upon him to evince his zeal for the (Roman) Catholic faith. In the month of November, 1804, he addressed a public letter to MM. Marron, Rabaut-Pomier, and Mastrezat, pastors at Paris, in which he invited them to profit by the visit of Pius VII. to France, in order to return to the Romish church. “With what eagerness,” said he, “would the pontiff acquiesce in every means of reconciliation compatible with the rights of truth! With what joy would he open his arms to children, whose estrangement distracts his paternal bosom!” The pastors of Paris replied, that no project of reunion was practicable with the condition of returning as erring and repentant sheep to the Church of Rome; and that, moreover, complete religious unity seemed to them utterly impossible.

M. de Beaufort, a lawyer of some talent, entered the lists in his turn; taking up the question on political grounds, he contended that a word from Napoleon would reunite the different churches. M. Lecoz answered this new antagonist with some asperity; M. de Beaufort rejoined in vehement terms, and the project of reconciliation terminated in reciprocal invectives.

M. Tabaraud, formerly a priest of the congregation of the Oratory, also published a book with reference to the union of the Protestant communions. He had defended their civil lights in 1788, against a diatribe of the bishop of La Rochelle, upon the edict of Louis XVI.; and as he was an inflexible adversary of Ultramontane opinions, and an enlightened Jansenist, he had a stronger title than the generality of his cloth to be listened to with favour. His attempts, however, had no greater success than the preceding, and we have only to admire the learning he displayed in the historical exposition of his subject. Where can be the point of junction between the absolute authority in matters of dogma, which Rome will not renounce, and the right of examination, which the Reformation cannot be induced to surrender? The most ingenious combinations must fail to supply the want of a common ground.

IV.

When the dynasty of the Bourbons returned in 1814, the Protestants made no effort to form a distinct political party. As agriculturists, proprietors, members of the liberal and enlightened classes, they did not regret the military domination of Napoleon. Those among them, who were merchants and engaged in industrial pursuits, rejoiced at the prospect of a peace that opened a wider field to their activity. If they could not repress some disquietude in seeing a descendant of the prince who had revoked the Edict of Nantes upon the throne, their recollections reverted to the king who had bestowed it, and the memory of Henry IV. reassured them against that of Louis XIV.

It might have been expected that the Bourbons, who had to contend with so many adversaries, would not causelessly have irritated a million and a half of peaceable citizens; and who could have supposed, moreover, that they would have attacked Protestantism in France, when Louis XVIII. said that he owed his crown, next to God, to a Protestant prince, the regent of Great Britain.

The first acts of the restoration were dictated by a spirit of impartiality and prudence. The Count d’Artois, afterwards Charles X., having gone to Nismes in 1814, gave a very gracious reception to the Reformed, and distributed several decorations of the Legion of Honour among them. Policy, perhaps, had as much to do with this as confidence; but the Protestants, satisfied with the protection promised to them, might refrain from scrutinizing intentions.

The charter given by Louis XVIII. said, in its 5th article, “Every one professes his religion with equal liberty, and obtains the same protection for his form of worship.” It is true, it added in the 6th article, that the Catholic, Roman, and Apostolic religion was the religion of the state. Nevertheless, the equality between creeds having been proclaimed first and formally, the distinction granted to (Roman) Catholicism would be, according to the terms of the Constitution, nothing more than a simple privilege of honour, without any hurtful or oppressive privilege, and the Protestants were all disposed to concede the honour of the first place to the Romish church, provided their rights were as much respected as those of the (Roman) Catholics.

If the charter, therefore, had been well understood by the masses of the (Roman) Catholics, duly carried out by people in power, and sincerely admitted by the members of the ancient privileged orders, there would have been no Protestant party, in the political sense of the word, nor collision of any kind. But the first were wanting in intelligence; there was no spirit of justice in the next, or love of liberal institutions in the last.

In the south, particularly, the workmen and the peasants, who belonged to the Romish church, openly threatened the Reformed with new persecutions, and were not sufficiently contradicted and repressed by the local authorities. Sinister reports were spread abroad. It was rumoured that the places of worship would be closed, and the public services of the Reformed interdicted. (Roman) Catholics of the lower order, when they met Protestants in the streets, shouted out: Vive le roi! (long live the king), as if they were the only royalists. Those of the highest classes, who called themselves respectable people, openly insulted the most honourable men of the Reformed communion.

The emigrants, who had returned with the Bourbons, and others of the nobility, who, shut up for five-and-twenty years in their castles, had only learned to curse the Revolution, were indignant at the liberties granted by Louis XVIII., and, ignorant of any direct means to abolish the charter, they fell into the old plans of the conspirators of 1790. A religious contest, which should make a second Vendée of the southern provinces, might bring the fundamental law into question; and the occult government, so frequently denounced by the sincerest friends of the Bourbons in the two legislative chambers, began its secret work. It has been said that these men were more inveterate royalists than the king himself. But it was not so: they had interests wholly different from those of the king, interests of position and caste, and their aim was to satisfy and secure them at any price, were it at the expense of the kingly office itself.

Fresh addresses were signed, as in 1790, demanding that there should be only one religion in France. Handbills were distributed in many of the churches, with these words: “The faithful are requested to say five Paters and five Aves every day, for the prosperity of the kingdom and the re-establishment of the Jesuits.” The anti-Protestant controversy reappeared in many of the pulpits under the most bitter and violent forms, denouncing heresy as a public calamity; and the Reformed, pursued with as many provocations, were in a manner forced to adopt political opinions in unison with their religious convictions.

We wish to do justice without delay to those, to whom justice is due. The fault of the attempt, which we are about to narrate, is not chargeable to the majority of the (Roman) Catholics; on the contrary, they were as indignant against them, and regretted them as much as the Protestants. Nor must it be allowed to fall on the majority of the priests. They were no longer to be seen in the foremost ranks of persecution, as they had been in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The populace, excited by some of the secret leaders, acted without the priests, and often in spite of the priests. Many of the Roman ecclesiastics courageously interposed to shield the victims. We shall have occasion to cite an admirable instance of this.

Such was the situation of the south when the emperor disembarked upon the coasts of France. The Protestants of Nismes offered the Duke d’Angoulême their services as royal volunteers. The prince was ready to accept them, when the fanatics repulsed them with this insult: “We will not endure these rascally Protestants!” Their purses were, however, taken, if not their persons.

On Napoleon’s re-entry into Paris, the Protestants resumed the places and the legitimate influence, of which they had been deprived. They could count upon the protection of the laws, and testified a satisfaction that may be easily comprehended. But they were far from committing the excesses with which they have been reproached. The faction of 1815 felt it necessary to accuse them with expressly invented crimes, in order to extenuate their own. All the massacres of the Hundred Days, which have been ascribed to them, are confined, as the official documents attest, to the death of two royal volunteers, who were killed at Arpillargues (Gard), in a disturbance they had themselves provoked, by obstinately persisting in marching through the village with fifty of their companions, sword in hand.

As soon as the defeat of Waterloo was known at Nismes, the royalist bands were reorganized, and ordered the municipal council to declare immediately for the government of Louis XVIII., although no order of any kind had arrived from Paris. The council replied that it was necessary to wait for official instructions, and published a proclamation, in which it said: “Fellow-countrymen of every opinion, for whom we have equal solicitude, in the name of the efforts we have made to avert the disasters which threaten our country, in the name of your dearest interests, in the name of God, who enjoins upon you clemency and concord, do not be deaf to our voice.” (18th July, 1815.)

The following day a courier announced the return of the king to the capital, and the Reformed population quietly resumed the white cockade. This prompt submission did not satisfy the men who had adopted the white and green colours, attesting by this that they served another cause than that of royalty. Then terror rose and spread itself over the south.

On the 14th of July, a hideous populace, recruited at Nismes, Beaucaire, and the surrounding places, attacked the garrison, which, weakened by the numerous desertions after the news of the emperor’s fall, did not reckon more than two hundred men. These brave soldiers, besieged in their barracks, were aware that any resistance would produce only a useless effusion of blood, and consented to capitulate. The next day, at break of dawn, having laid down their arms in compliance with an express arrangement, they marched out of their quarters, four abreast, with firm though sorrowful demeanour. But the miscreants through whom they had to pass, fired upon them in treacherous violation of the surrender, and trampled underfoot the corpses of the murdered veterans.

All regular authority was at an end in Nismes. Pillage, incendiarism, and assassination, desolated this great city. The details are horrible. “Of crimes upon crimes,” says M. Lauze de Peret, with energetic eloquence, “shall I have to speak; of wretches without fear, of peace without repose, of entire submission without security, of a city without guardianship, of victims without defence, and of chiefs mute without being absent.”[141]

The Count René de Bernis, the royal commissioner, and the Marquis d’Arbaud-Jonques, appointed prefect of the department after the Marquis Jules de Calvières, who was only provisional prefect, have published justificatory memoirs. These have, however, been contradicted upon almost every point by M. Madier de Montjau, in his petition to the Chamber of Deputies, and by other respectable citizens. It is right that persecutors should learn that truth has necessarily its day; it is also right that they should remember that history does not stop to pick from the gore the names of the subordinate cut-throats, but that it casts the blame and odium upon those who ought to have withheld and punished them.

This spirit of savage fanaticism soon spread beyond the precincts of Nismes. The whole surrounding country was abandoned to the fury of some hundreds of brigands, who, while they imposed ruinous contributions, devastated property, sacked houses, maltreated the most inoffensive citizens, insulted women, profaned the sacredness of the burial-grounds, and finally massacred those, whose position or some false rumour marked out for popular vengeance, huzzaed for the Cross! and the King! committing at the same time crimes equally opposed to the holiest interests of religion and royalty.

If the unhappy Protestants assembled anywhere in arms for their common defence, or for the protection of the asylum of the aged and the cradle of the young, they were treated as factious rebels. They were dragged before judges, who would not, or dared not do them justice; and these contemptible tribunals raged against the victims, instead of striking the murderers.

Among other towns, that of Uzès had been invaded by a band of robbers, on which occasion a priest evinced remarkable self-devotion. The authorities were either alarmed or were accomplices, and the national guard remained passive. “One single man, a worthy minister of the law of charity, a priest of the God, who has commanded all mankind to live together as brethren, the abbé Palhien, set a different example. He encountered Graffan (Quatretaillons) near the church of Saint Etienne; he prayed, he insisted, he knelt to him: but he followed him in vain to the fatal place, he pleaded in vain the words of religion to this bandit armed for the defence of the altar and the throne. On this memorable day, Uzès appeared to contain but one single Christian, one single Frenchman.”[142]

Terror lasted for several months. Towards the end of August, four thousand Austrians arrived in the department of Gard. They had been made to believe that the Protestants menaced public tranquillity, and that it was necessary to defend both law and order against their hatred. They advanced with great precaution, sword in hand, as if they had entered an enemy’s country, and were surprised to find a peaceful population, abandoned to the fury of robbers, and decimated by assassination.

It may be asked how such disorders could have happened without exciting universal indignation, at such a period and in a country like France. The answer is, that the whole country was at that time delivered up to a violent reaction. There was no liberty of the press; no right, save that of the conqueror; the spirit of party oppressed and disorganized everything. The official journal of Gard, which was published in the police offices or in those of the prefecture, did not hesitate to contest the most evident facts, nor to deny the most authentic,—to boast of the clemency and the generosity of the enemies of the Protestants, with the corpses of the victims before their eyes. And if any one, even away from this unfortunate province, uttered a free thought respecting these atrocities, he was reputed as a calumniator and a rebel.

M. Voyer-d’Argenson experienced this, when in the session of the 23rd October, 1815, he demanded an inquiry, affirming that his heart bled to hear the reports of the massacres of Protestants in the south. He was violently interrupted with cries of order, and notwithstanding the forms of speech which he employed in his explanations were expressive of doubt, the call to order was agreed to by a large majority. Did the chamber of 1815 think that by stopping M. Voyer-d’Argenson’s mouth, it could smother the terrible cry for blood and the voice of truth?

The government was better instructed than it cared to make known. Louis XVIII. was an enlightened prince, who was aware of the true position of affairs, and he was not a little anxious respecting the impression which the crimes of the south would produce upon the opinion of France and of Europe. England and Prussia, the two countries whose armies had restored his crown on the battle-field of Waterloo, began to show signs of disquietude; and the cabinet of London, interrogated in the House of Commons, appealed to the guarantees of the charter in favour of the French Protestants.

The Duke d’Angoulême was sent, in the month of November, to the southern provinces. He found the places of worship of Nismes closed,—all public exercise of religion had been suspended from the middle of July,—that a part of the Protestant population had been driven from their homes by the dread of massacres,—that others were hidden in their houses as if they were a proscribed race, whilst assassins stalked boldly abroad, the magistrates powerless, and the laws inoperative.

Some delegates of the consistory, confounded by the crowd of civil functionaries, in order that they might avoid the ill-treatment of the populace, went to pay their respects to the duke, and met with a most favourable reception. He gave them an order to reopen their places of worship from the following Thursday, the 9th of November. But none were opened until Sunday, and then but one. The result proved that too much reliance had been placed upon the good disposition of the people and their leaders. Tumultuous assemblages collected round the religious edifice, shouting: “Down with the Protestants! Death to the Protestants! Let us have back our churches! Scourge them back to the desert!” The doors were broken open, and a band of wretches burst into the place of meeting. The General Lagarde, who was endeavouring, with some fellow-officers, to repress the assailants, was shot through the heart; and perhaps this disaster prevented the commission of still greater crime; for the populace, struck with dismay, hastily fled, thinking only of their own safety.

This assassination of a soldier of high rank, committed before the whole town, obeying the orders of a prince of the blood, left the government no longer the opportunity of denying the excesses of the reaction or of temporizing. On the 21st of November, Louis XVIII. published an ordinance with the following preamble: “An atrocious crime has stained our town of Nismes. Despite the constitutional charter, which recognises the Catholic religion as the religion of the State, but which guarantees to other creeds protection and liberty (the minister thought of this very tardily), seditious crowds have dared to oppose the opening of a Protestant place of worship. Our military commandant, whilst striving to disperse them by persuasion before using force, has been assassinated, and his murderer has fled from the officers of justice. If such a crime were to remain unpunished, public order and government would be at an end, and our ministers guilty of not executing the laws.”

Notwithstanding the more than usual solemnity of this ordinance, which commanded the arrest not only of the assassin of General Lagarde, but also of the authors, fautors, and accomplices of the disturbance of the 12th of November, the judges punished no one. Even the murderer of the general was acquitted; and the other bandits, who had devastated half the province with incendiarism and assassination, were allowed to display an insolent and odious impunity upon the very scene of their misdeeds. Witnesses were afraid to come forward to give testimony against them, and mysterious protectors gained their absolution.

The Protestant worship was at length re-established in Nismes, after an interruption of six months, on the 17th of December, 1815. Yet the apprehensions of the Reformed were not calmed, and security did not fully return until the issue of the ordinance of the 5th of September, 1816, which again raised the hopes and the strength of the liberal party.

We will not terminate the narrative of the troubles of Gard, without paying a just tribute of respect to the pastors of this province. Some threw themselves before their armed parishioners, conjuring them in the name of the Gospel, not to return evil for evil. One particularly, M. Juillerat Chasseur, now president of the consistory of Paris, who was called to officiate on the fatal day of the 12th November, continued his prayers with a serene countenance and unfaltering voice, in the midst of the shouts of death from an enraged populace, and compelled the respect of these madmen, who had cast aside all reverence for the majesty of the sanctuary. He felt that the least sign of weakness on his part might have led to a frightful catastrophe. Such courage is both more grand and rare than that of the soldier on the battle-field.

In the other departments, saving two or three exceptions of little importance, the Protestants were neither molested in their worship, nor assailed in their persons or their property. Public opinion came to the assistance of the law, and deprived intolerance of its hope of again renewing the persecutions of the olden times.

V.

After the re-establishment of order, two opposite influences began to act upon the conduct of political power towards the Protestants; whence there ensued more or less contradictory acts, and a singular mixture of good-will and hostility until the Revolution of 1830.

On one side the promises of the Charter; the desire of not alienating so many citizens, who reckoned, in proportion to their number, more electors than the (Roman) Catholics; respect for opinion, the national conscience, which would have revolted against every direct measure of persecution; the fear, in short, of giving new weapons to the opposition, which was ready to take up the cause of the Protestants as their own; these reasons were quite sufficient to recommend to the Bourbons and their ministers the maintenance of a prudent reserve.

But on the other side, the natural and intimate alliance, which existed between the ancient dynasty and the old religion; the necessity of meeting the requirements of the clergy in order to gain their support in the struggle against the new spirit; the growing influence of the Jesuits, and the congregations, particularly under the reign of Charles X.; the conduct and the demands of the members of the Right, who laboured incessantly for the restoration of (Roman) Catholicism for the sake of political interest; perhaps also some vague distrust of the tendencies of Protestantism, and some disagreeable recollections of which the descendants of Louis XIV. have never been able to rid themselves completely; all this explains the hostility, sometimes hidden, sometimes avowed, which the Reformed might complain of after the Restoration.

To look first of all at the favourable side, we will remark that the numbers of the Protestant faith sensibly and constantly increased. New pastoral districts were created, new places of worship built, and more abundant means of elementary instruction were granted out of the public purse. This increase was even more rapid under Charles X. than under Louis XIII.; and the cause of this is easy to be indicated: whatever was given to the Protestants, facilitated the passing of the prodigal grants which were lavished upon the (Roman) Catholics, and a few thousand more francs for the former, covered with a varnish of impartiality the millions distributed to the latter.

In the annual presentations of public bodies, the two kings never failed to reassure the Protestants of their protection and good-will. When he ascended the throne, Charles X., who felt that he was under a still greater obligation than his predecessor to give solemn guarantees to liberty of conscience and of worship, said to the consistory of Paris: “Assure yourselves, gentlemen, of my protection, as you did of that of the king, of whom you have been deprived. All Frenchmen are equal in my eyes; all Frenchmen have an equal right to my love, my protection, and my favour.”

A Protestant committee, composed of peers and deputies, was formed under the ministry of M. Decazes, and was continued under that of M. de Villèle. Not only did the government offer it no opposition, but it approved and seconded this non-official commission. In 1824, M. Georges Cuvier was placed at the head of the Faculties of Protestant theology; and four years later, under the ministry of M. de Martignac, he exercised the functions of director of the non-Catholic worship. The learning and integrity of this illustrious man were well fitted to inspire the Protestants with confidence against the enterprises of the clerical party.

From 1817 to 1830, in a word, we have to complain of no important act of intolerance; we might relate favours sometimes, and always security for the mass of the Protestant population. It is but justice due to the elder branch of the Bourbons, and we do it with the more willingness, that the last of the race is an exile from his country.

But the same justice also requires that we should present the reverse of the picture, always taking care to add, in order that nothing owing to great misfortunes may be omitted, that for the words and acts unfavourable to the Protestants, the imprudent counsellors, who surrounded the princes, are more responsible than the princes themselves.

A powerful and restless faction was bent on interpreting after its own fashion, the article of the Charter which constituted the (Roman) Catholic religion the religion of the state. It was no longer merely a question of the first rank of honour, but of a real pre-eminence applied to every institution, and to every measure of public authority. According to these strange commentators upon the fundamental law, the 6th article, which granted an official prerogative to Roman Catholicism, ought to override the 5th article, which established equality of protection and liberty for every creed, whilst according to common sense, logic, and the very order in which the articles were placed, the special privilege should be subordinate to the general principle.[143]

The Jesuits and their allies openly declared that to put all religious communions upon the same footing, was an anti-Catholic, anti-social, and impious maxim. A ministerial bishop did not hesitate to declare that the non-Catholic creeds were only tolerated, and M. de Peyronnet pronounced these imprudent words in his defence of the law of sacrilege in the tribune: “I recognise an equality of protection promised to the creeds sanctioned in the kingdom, and I respect it; but an equality of creeds, I do not recognise at all.”

The law, of which we speak, confounded the spiritual with the temporal, and importing the (Roman) Catholic dogma into the domain of legislation, established a great inequality between the two creeds. No profanation of Protestant worship any longer incurred the penalty of imprisonment, whilst profanation of the (Roman) Catholic worship was punished with the pain of death, and even, in the project of the government, with that against parricides. This alone ought to have told Charles X. and his ministers that they were pursuing a fatal course. Protestantism lost nothing by the measure; the cause of the Bourbons and the priests suffered immensely.

Another consequence, which it was attempted to deduce from the principle of the state religion, was that non-Catholics should be compelled to do some act, if not of adoration, at least of homage and indirect participation in certain ceremonies of (Roman) Catholicism. Thus it was insisted that they should hang the fronts of their houses with tapestry on the passage of the (Roman) Catholic processions, under penalty of process and fine. Yet it had already been made a question whether processions without the precincts of the churches were not a violation of the organic articles, and generally whether, in a well-organized society, any creed whatsoever should have the right of transporting the celebration of its particular rites into the public streets and highways. But without insisting upon these two points, it may be conceived that the Protestants would energetically refuse to decorate their houses; for they must perceive in this, a serious attack upon their ancient discipline, a defiance of the independence of their personal faith, and an attempt against the equality of creeds, and against their very liberty itself.

In order to try the point, the Jesuits had put forward some functionaries of subordinate degree, such as the Count de Narbonne-Lara, sub-prefect of Florac, who suddenly and upon his own authority, published a circular ordering the inhabitants, of whatsoever religion [they might be], to decorate the front of their houses against the passing of the Holy Sacrament. The consistory of Barre answered this sub-prefect, on the 19th of May, 1818, with a categorical refusal, appealing at the same time to the discipline of the Protestants and to the Charter.

Similar attempts were made in other places, and several citizens were fined for not having obeyed this iniquitous assumption. But there was one M. Paul Roman, of Lourmarin, who would not submit to the sentence of the inferior tribunals. He appealed to the supreme court, and won his cause after a prolonged hearing. M. Odillon Barrot supported him with his eloquence, and proved that religious liberty was altogether involved in the question. “This cause,” he said, “is not that of a Protestant; it is not even that of the Protestants solely; it is that of every citizen, whatever may be his religion, whatever may be his religious opinions, apparent or not apparent; the whole body of citizens are represented by M. Roman in this matter.”

The Court of Cassation passed a decree on the 20th November, 1818, conformable to justice, law, and the rights of minorities. An affair of the same kind was also tried at Marseilles in 1820, and decided in like manner to that we have mentioned, in favour of the Protestant appellant. The government itself renounced this illegal exaction, in spite of the clamours of the fanatics, and the point was definitively settled.

Another pretence was set up, more dangerous in its principles, more serious in its effects, more obstinate in every respect, and from which even the politicians of the present day have not yet completely freed themselves. This consisted in restricting the Protestants to certain boundaries, as if Protestantism was such an evil that it was necessary to confine it within the narrowest possible limits. It appeared as if the disciples of the Reformation were told, “Since you exist in the kingdom, we tolerate you; but remain where you are, and guard yourselves from trespassing. Unity of faith is our rule, dissent the exception; and far from authorizing it to spread, we will restrict it to the fullest extent of our power.”

Nothing could be more opposed [than this] to the Charter, which assured equal liberty to all creeds. For as the Romish clergy had always and everywhere the right of proselytizing in the bosom of Protestantism, it is evident that if the pastors were refused the privilege of making proselytes in their turn among the (Roman) Catholics, equal liberty was nothing but a bitter mockery.

The Charter would not be respected, at least in one sense, unless the priests were interdicted from converting Protestants, as well as the pastors from converting (Roman) Catholics. Now this was a condition, which the Roman clergy would never accept; it could not; it ought not [accept it]; it would have been a disgraceful prevarication on their part, and they would have been right in not subjecting themselves to it, even in Protestant countries. But then there is no logical or legitimate resting-place, but the common right, or liberty of proselytism for all.

The government of the Restoration did not always do its duty in this matter. It invented administrative fetters, judiciary obstacles, and obstinately relied upon the 21st article of the penal code, according to which no association of more than twenty persons, could be formed without the concurrence of the authorities. By applying this article to religious assemblies, it was clear that the establishment of every new assembly, the opening of any new place of worship, depended upon the pleasure of the civil authority. Liberty of religion ceased to exist for the French Protestants beyond, or without those places of worship which were counted and numbered by the State. This was almost returning to the vicious maxims of the first years of the reign of Louis XIV.

Incessant contests, as might have been expected, were the result of such an application of the law. We will cite only two circumstances, in which the two greatest towns of France were concerned. In 1825, the consistory of Paris, although it demanded the free exercise of religion, not for converted (Roman) Catholics, but for Protestants by birth, was hindered from opening a place of worship in the commune of Ageux, “because,” ran the administrative decree, “the establishment of feeble fractions of a dissenting population in the midst of a population of an homogeneous creed, would not be without inconvenience!” This was the very language of the persecutors of the sixteenth century. In 1826, some communes of the neighbourhood of Lyons expressed a desire to hear the doctrines of the Reformation preached; the authorities interposed in spite of the reclamations of the consistory. But in these two cases the hands of government were strengthened both by this version of the law, and public opinion.

While the attempt was made to imprison Protestantism within its official walls, all the doors were thrown wide open to the proselytism of the (Roman) Catholic clergy. Three pastors having embraced the Romish faith under the Restoration, their pamphlets against the communion they had abandoned obtained the honour of being printed at the royal press, and they were even rewarded with a pension.

The idea was also conceived of resuming the ambulating missions of the seventeenth century, with a double task, instead of one; for they were charged with the conversion of the followers of Voltaire, as well as those of Calvin. These vulgar declaimers travelled with their crosses from town to town, and village to village, vociferating in the public places senseless invectives against the Reformation and philosophy. Far from winning either Protestants or unbelievers, they only disgusted the more healthy and enlightened portion of the (Roman) Catholics. Many respectable priests were themselves ashamed of such discreditable auxiliaries, feeling that the power of (Roman) Catholicism was not to be re-established by scenes, in which the populace were the chief actors.

The defenders of the two communions maintained controversies in a higher region, which did not at least do violence to the laws of public decency. Some men of eminent reputation, although but mediocre theologians,—M. de Bonald, M. Joseph de Maistre, and M. de Lamennais, who has since refuted his own opinions more effectually than any of his antagonists could have done, assailed the Reformation with extreme pertinacity, and were much more successful in assailing it than the justness of their arguments warranted. They were creditably met, however, by MM. Stapfer, Samuel Vincent, Henri Pyt, and others, opponents who, less known to fame, indeed, defended the Protestant creed with more logic and vigour.

The substance of these polemics did not, generally, bear much resemblance to the great discussions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Religion, in those times, was supported on each side for the sake of religion itself; it was dogma, and particularly the dogma of the Holy Supper, that engaged controversialists. Under the Restoration, the most renowned advocates of (Roman) Catholicism took up another ground. Religion had become a political weapon. Putting aside doctrinal matters, the [disputants] exerted themselves to effect the establishment of the position, that the unity and authority of the Roman (Catholic) Church secure the power of princes, obedience to the laws, and the maintenance of social order better than Protestantism. Heavenly interests were of secondary importance to those of the earth, or were not considered at all.

Doubtless it might be possible to meet with some discussions purely dogmatical or ecclesiastical, at this period; but they attracted little notice, and awakened no echo amongst the masses of the country. The tide of humanity seems to have retreated from its ancient landmarks, to hollow out a new bed on unknown shores.

There is no other fact deserving mention in the external condition of French Protestantism, until the Revolution of 1830. The 3rd article of the Charter, which declared all citizens to be equally admissible to civil and military offices, might, and ought to have been observed under certain circumstances. The professorial chairs of instruction were rarely conferred upon, and were as lightly taken away from, the Protestants. The same partiality was shown, although in a less degree, in the distribution of public appointments; where the merit was equal, to say no more, the (Roman) Catholic nearly always prevailed against the Protestant; and this dislike continued to increase every day, as the ill-fated Charles X. gave himself up more unreservedly to the counsels of those who ruined him.

VI.

In treating of the internal condition of Protestantism, we shall make mention, as we have done when speaking of the preceding periods, less of opinions considered in themselves, than of the men who were their most distinguished representatives.

When the peace of 1815 had allayed the storms which had shaken thrones and nations, the popular mind experienced a calm approaching to the void. The illusions of glory, the dreams of distant conquests vanished. There was now leisure to breathe, to think of oneself, and the want of something, upon which to fix the mind, was experienced. One class turned itself to the cultivation of the sciences, literature, social questions, historical studies, or to industrial works; another, much less numerous, sought from religious belief a satisfaction of the wants of their conscience and their heart.