Volume 12 — VOLUME XII (continued 5)

Though these boundaries appear to be given with definiteness and precision, a controversy, notwithstanding, arose at once between Penn and Lord Baltimore, which outlasted the lives of both of them, and, being continued by their representatives, was not in fact closed until the Revolutionary War.

The charter vested the perpetual proprietaryship of this territory in William Penn and his heirs, on the fealty of the annual payment of two beaver-skins; it authorized him to make and execute laws not repugnant to those of England, to appoint judges, to receive those who wished to transport themselves, to establish a military force, to constitute municipalities, and to carry on a free commerce. It required that an agent of the proprietor should reside in or near London, and provided for the rights of the Church of England. The charter also disclaimed all taxation, except through the proprietor, the governor, the assembly, or Parliament, and covenanted that if any question of arms or conditions should arise it should be decided in favor of the proprietor. By a declaration to the inhabitants and planters of Pennsylvania, dated April 2d, the King confirmed the charter, to ratify it for all who might intend to emigrate under it, and to require compliance from all whom it concerned.

By a letter from Penn to his friend Robert Turner, written upon the day on which the charter was signed, we learn that the proprietor designed to call his territory "New Wales"; but the under-secretary, a Welshman, opposed it. Penn then suggested "Sylvania," as applicable to the forest region; but the secretary, acting under instructions, prefixed "Penn" to this title. The modest and humble Quaker offered the official twenty guineas as a bribe to leave off his name. Failing again, he went to the King and stated his objection; but the King said he would take the naming upon himself, and insisted upon it as doing honor to the old admiral.

Penn now resigned the charge of West New Jersey, and devoted himself to the preliminary tasks which should make his province available to himself and others. He sent over, in May, his cousin and secretary, Colonel William Markham, then only twenty-one years old, to make such arrangements for his own coming as might be necessary. This gentleman, who acted as Penn's deputy, carried over from him a letter, dated London, April 8, 1681, addressed "For the Inhabitants of Pennsylvania; to be read by my Deputy." This was a courteous announcement of his proprietaryship and intentions to the Dutch, Swedes, and English, who, to the number, probably, of about three thousand, were then living within his patent.

Penn's object being to obtain adventurers and settlers at once, he published Some Account of the Province of Pennsylvania, in America, lately granted, under the Great Seal of England, to William Penn. This was accompanied by a copy of the charter and a statement of the terms on which the land was to be sold, with judicious advice addressed to those who were disposed to transport themselves, warning them against mere fancy dreams, or the desertion of friends, and encouraging them by all reasonable expectations of success.

The terms of sale were, for a hundred acres of land, forty shillings purchase money, and one shilling as an annual quit-rent. This latter stipulation, made in perfect fairness, not unreasonable in itself, and ratified by all who of their own accord acceded to it, was, as we shall see, an immediate cause of disaffection, and has ever since been the basis of a calumny against the honored and most estimable founder of Pennsylvania.

Under date of July 11, 1681, Penn published Certain Conditions or Concessions to be agreed upon by William Penn, Proprietary and Governor of the Province of Pennsylvania, and those who may become Adventurers and Purchasers in the same Province. These conditions relate to dividing, planting, and building upon the land, saving mulberry-and oak-trees, and dealing with the Indians. These documents were circulated, and imparted sufficient knowledge of the country and its produce, so that purchasers at once appeared, and Penn went to Bristol to organize there a company called "The Free Society of Traders in Pennsylvania," who purchased twenty thousand acres of land, and prepared to establish various trades in the province.

Yet further to mature his plans, and to begin with a fair understanding among all who might be concerned in the enterprise, Penn drew up and submitted a sketch of the frame of government, providing for alterations, with a preamble for liberty of conscience. On the basis of contracts and agreements thus made and mutually ratified, three passenger ships, two from London and one from Bristol, sailed for Pennsylvania in September, 1681. One of them made an expeditious passage; another was frozen up in the Delaware; and the third, driven to the West Indies, was long delayed. They took over some of the ornamental work of a house for the proprietor.

The Governor also sent over three commissioners, whose instructions we learn from the original document addressed to them by Penn, dated September 30, 1681. These commissioners were William Crispin, John Bezar, and Nathaniel Allen. Their duty was that of "settling the colony." Penn refers them to his cousin Markham, "now on the spot." He instructs them to take good care of the people; to guard them from extortionate prices for commodities from the earlier inhabitants; to select a site by the river, and there to lay out a town; to have his letter to the Indians read to them in their own tongue; to make them presents from him—adding, "Be grave; they love not to be smiled upon"—and to enter into a league of amity with them. Penn also instructs the commissioners to select a site for his own occupancy, and closes with some good advice in behalf of order and virtue.

These commissioners probably did not sail until the latter part of October, as they took with them the letter to the Indians, to which Penn refers. This letter, bearing the date October 18, 1681, is a beautiful expression of feeling on the part of the proprietor. He does not address the Indians as heathen, but as his brethren, the children of the one Father. He announces to them his accession, as far as a royal title could legitimate it, to a government in their country; he distinguishes between himself and those who had ill treated the Indians, and pledges his love and service.

About this time William Penn was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in London, probably by nomination of his friend, Dr. John Wallis, one of its founders, and with the hope that his connection with the New World would enable him to advance its objects.

With a caution, which the experience of former purchases rendered essential, Penn obtained of the Duke of York a release of all his claims within the patent. His royal highness executed a quitclaim to William Penn and his heirs on August 21, 1682. The Duke had executed, in March, a ratification of his two former grants of East Jersey. But a certain fatality seemed to attend upon these transfers of ducal possessions. After various conflicts and controversies long continued, we may add, though by anticipation, that the proprietaryship of both the Jerseys was abandoned, and they were surrendered to the crown under Queen Anne, in April, 1702.

Penn also obtained of the Duke of York another tract of land adjoining his patent. This region, afterward called the "Territories," and the three "Lower Counties," now Delaware, had been successively held by the Swedes and Dutch, and by the English at New York. The Duke confirmed it to William Penn, by two deeds, dated August 24, 1682.

The last care on the mind of William Penn, before his embarkation, was to prepare proper counsel and instruction for his wife and children. This he did in the form of a letter written at Worminghurst, August 4, 1682. He knew not that he should ever see them again, and his heart poured forth to them the most touching utterances of affection. But it was not the heart alone which indited the epistle. It expressed the wisest counsels of prudence and discretion. All the important letters written by Penn contain a singular union of spiritual and worldly wisdom. Indeed, he thought these two ingredients to be but one element. He urged economy, filial love, purity, and industry, as well as piety, upon his children. He favored, though he did not insist upon, their receiving his religious views. We may express a passing regret that he who could give such advice to his children should not have had the joy to leave behind him anyone who could meet the not inordinate wish of his heart.

In the mean while his deputy, Markham, acting by his instructions, was providing him a new home by purchasing for him, of the Indians, a piece of land, the deed of which is dated July 15th, and endorsed with a confirmation, August 1st, and by commencing upon it the erection which was afterward known as Pennsbury Manor.

All his arrangements being completed, William Penn, at the age of thirty-eight, well, strong, and hopeful of the best results, embarked for his colony, on board the ship Welcome, of three hundred tons, Robert Greenaway master, on the last of August, 1682. While in the Downs he wrote a Farewell Letter to Friends, the Unfaithful and Inquiring, in his native land, dated August 30th, and probably many private letters. He had about one hundred fellow-passengers, mostly Friends from his own neighborhood in Sussex. The vessel sailed about September 1st, and almost immediately the small-pox, that desolating scourge of the passenger-ships of those days, appeared among the passengers, and thirty fell victims to it. The trials of that voyage, told to illustrate the Christian spirit which submissively encountered them, were long repeated from father to son and from mother to daughter.

In about six weeks the ship entered the Delaware River. The old inhabitants along the shores, which had been settled by the whites for about half a century, received Penn with equal respect and joy. He arrived at New Castle on October 27th. The day was not commemorated by annual observances until the year 1824, when a meeting for that purpose was held at an inn, in Laetitia court, where Penn had resided. While the ship and its company went up the river, the proprietor, on the next day, called the inhabitants, who were principally Dutch and Swedes, to the court-house, where, after addressing them, he assumed and received the formal possession of the country. He renewed the commissions of the old magistrates, who urged him to unite the Territories to his government.

After a visit of ceremony to the authorities at New York and Long Island, with a passing token to his friends in New Jersey, Penn went to Upland to hold the first Assembly, which opened on December 4th. Nicholas Moore, an English lawyer, and president of the Free Society of Traders, was made speaker. After three days' peaceful debate, the Assembly ratified, with modifications, the laws made in England, with about a score of new ones of a local, moral, or religious character, in which not only the drinking of healths, but the talking of scandal, was forbidden. By suggestion of his friend and fellow-voyager, Pearson, who came from Chester, in England, Penn substituted that name for Upland. By an act of union, passed on December 7th, the three Lower Counties, or the Territories, were joined in the government, and the foreigners were naturalized at their own request.

On his arrival Penn had sent two messengers to Charles Calvert, Lord Baltimore, to propose a meeting and conference with him about their boundaries. On December 19th they met at West River with courtesy and kindness; but after three days they concluded to wait for the more propitious weather of the coming year. Penn, on his way back, attended a religious meeting at a private house, and afterward an official meeting at Choptank, on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake, and reached Chester again by December 29th, where much business engaged him. About twenty-three ships had arrived by the close of the year; none of them met with disaster, and all had fair passages. The new-comers found a comparatively easy sustenance. Provisions were obtained at a cheap rate of the Indians and of the older settlers. But great hardships were endured by some, and special providences are commemorated. Many found their first shelter in caves scooped out in the steep bank of the river. When these caves were deserted by their first occupants, the poor or the vicious made them a refuge; and one of the earliest signs both of prosperity and of corruption, in the colony, is disclosed in the mention that these rude coverts of the first devoted emigrants soon became tippling-houses and nuisances in the misuse of the depraved.

There has been much discussion of late years concerning the far-famed Treaty of Penn with the Indians. A circumstance, which has all the interest both of fact and of poetry, was confirmed by such unbroken testimony of tradition that history seemed to have innumerable records of it in the hearts and memories of each generation. But as there appears no document or parchment of such criteria as to satisfy all inquiries, historical scepticism has ventured upon the absurd length of calling in question the fact of the treaty. The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, with commendable zeal, has bestowed much labor upon the questions connected with the treaty, and the results which have been attained can scarcely fail to satisfy a candid inquirer. All claim to a peculiar distinction for William Penn, on account of the singularity of his just proceedings in this matter is candidly waived, because the Swedes, the Dutch, and the English had previously dealt thus justly with the natives. It is in comparison with Pizarro and Cortes that the colonists of all other nations in America appear to an advantage; but the fame of William Penn stands, and ever will stand, preeminent for unexceptionable justice and peace in his relations with the natives.

Penn had several meetings for conference and treaties with the Indians, besides those which he held for the purchase of lands. But unbroken and reverently cherished tradition, beyond all possibility of contradiction, has designated one great treaty held under a large elm-tree, at Shackamaxon (now Kensington), a treaty which Voltaire justly characterizes as "never sworn to, and never broken." In Penn's Letter to the Free Society of Traders, dated August 16, 1683, he refers to his conferences with the Indians. Two deeds, conveying land to him, are on record, both of which bear an earlier date than this letter; namely, June 23d and July 14th of the same year. He had designed to make a purchase in May; but having been called off to a conference with Lord Baltimore, he postponed the business till June. The "Great Treaty" was doubtless unconnected with the purchase of land, and was simply a treaty of amity and friendship, in confirmation of one previously held, by Penn's direction, by Markham, on the same spot; that being a place which the Indians were wont to use for this purpose. It is probable that the treaty was held on the last of November, 1682; that the Delawares, the Mingos, and other Susquehanna tribes formed a large assembly on the occasion; that written minutes of the conference were made, and were in possession of Governor Gordon, who states nine conditions as belonging to them in 1728, but are now lost; and that the substance of the treaty is given in Penn's Letter to the Free Traders. These results are satisfactory, and are sufficiently corroborated by known facts and documents. The Great Treaty, being distinct from a land purchase, is significantly distinguished in history and tradition.

The inventions of romance and imagination could scarcely gather round this engaging incident attractions surpassing in its own simple and impressive interest. Doubtless Clarkson has given a fair representation of it, if we merely disconnect from his account the statement that the Indians were armed, and all that confounds the treaty of friendship with the purchase of lands. Penn wore a sky-blue sash of silk around his waist, as the most simple badge. The pledges there given were to hold their sanctity "while the creeks and rivers run, and while the sun, moon, and stars endure."

While the whites preserved in written records the memory of such covenants, the Indians had their methods for perpetuating in safe channels their own relations. They cherished in grateful regard, they repeated to their children and to the whites, the terms of the Great Treaty. The Delawares called William Penn Miquon, in their own language, though they seem to have adopted the name given him by the Iroquois, Onas; both which terms signify a quill or pen. Benjamin West's picture of the treaty is too imaginative for a historical piece. He makes Penn of a figure and aspect which would become twice the years that had passed over his head. The elm-tree was spared in the war of the American Revolution, when there was distress for firewood, the British officer, Simcoe, having placed a sentinel beneath it for protection. It was prostrated by the wind on the night of Saturday, March 3, 1810. It was of gigantic size, and the circles around its heart indicated an age of nearly three centuries. A piece of it was sent to the Penn mansion at Stoke Poges, in England, where it is properly commemorated. A marble monument, with suitable inscriptions, was "placed by the Penn Society, A.D. 1827, to mark the site of the Great Elm Tree." Long may it stand!

Penn then made a visit to his manor of Pennsbury, up the Delaware. Under Markham's care, the grounds had been arranged, and a stately edifice of brick was in process of completion. The place had many natural beauties, and is said to have been arranged and decorated in consistency both with the office and the simple manners of the proprietor. There was a hall of audience for Indian embassies within, and luxurious gardens without. Hospitality had here a wide range, and Penn evidently designed it for a permanent abode.

With the help of his surveyor, Thomas Holme, he laid out the plan of his now beautiful city, and gave it its name of Christian signification, that brotherly love might pervade its dwellings. He purchased the land, where the city stands, of the Swedes who already occupied it, and who purchased it of the Indians, though it would seem that a subsequent purchase was made of the natives of the same site with adjacent territory some time afterward by Thomas Holme, acting as president of the council, while Penn was in England. The Schuylkill and the Delaware rivers gave to the site eminent attractions. The plan was very simple, the streets running north and south being designated by numbers, those running east and west by the names of trees. Provision was made for large squares to be left open, and for common water privileges. The building was commenced at once, and was carried on with great zeal and continued success.

%LAST TURKISH INVASION OF EUROPE%

SOBIESKI SAVES VIENNA

A.D. 1683

SUTHERLAND MENZIES

After the defeat of the Turks at Lepanto, in 1571, the Ottoman power in Europe slowly declined. But under the Sultan Mahomet IV the old Moslem ambition for European conquest reawoke, as if for a final effort. And such it proved to be. By the disaster before Vienna, in which John Sobieski, King of Poland, once more saved Europe from their incursions, the Turks were driven back within their own confines, where they have since, for the most part, remained, making many wars, but no successful inroads, upon European powers.

In 1682 the Hungarian magnates, who were resisting the oppression and persecution of their people by the Austrian Government, called upon the Turks for assistance. Listening to the proposals of Tekeli, the Hungarian leader, who had secured the aid of Louis XIV of France, Mahomet IV decided to break the truce he had made with Austria in 1665. In vain the Emperor Leopold I sent an embassy to Constantinople to dissuade the Sultan from his purpose.

Early in the spring of 1683 Sultan Mahomet marched forth from his capital with a large army, which at Belgrad he transferred to the command of the Grand Vizier Kara Mustapha. Tekeli formed a junction with the Turks at Essek. In vain did Ibrahim, the experienced Pacha of Buda, endeavor to persuade Kara Mustapha first of all to subdue the surrounding country, and to postpone until the following year the attack upon Vienna; his advice was scornfully rejected, and, indeed, the audacity of the Grand Vizier seemed justified by the scant resistance he had met with. He talked of renewing the conquests of Solyman: he assembled, it is said, seven hundred thousand men, one hundred thousand horses, and one thousand two hundred guns—an army more powerful than any the Turks had set on foot since the capture of Constantinople. All of which may be reduced to one hundred fifty thousand barbarian troops without discipline, the last conquering army which the degenerate race of the Osmanlis produced wherewith to invade Hungary.

Hostilities commenced in March, 1683; for the Turks, who had not been accustomed to enter upon a campaign before the summer season, had begun their march that year before the end of winter. Some prompt and easy successes exalted the ambition of Kara Mustapha; and in spite of the contrary advice of Tekeli, Ibrahim Pacha, and several other personages, he determined to besiege Vienna. He accordingly advanced direct upon that capital and encamped under its walls on July 14th. It was just at the moment that Louis XIV had captured Strasburg, and at which his army appeared ready to cross the Rhine: all Europe was in alarm, believing that an agreement existed between France and the Porte for the conquest and dismemberment of Germany. But it was not so. The Turks, without giving France any previous warning, had of themselves made their invasion of Hungary; Louis XIV was delighted at their success, but nevertheless disposed, if it went too far, to check them, in order to play the part of saviour of Christendom.

It was fortunate for the Emperor Leopold that he had upon the frontiers of Poland an ally of indomitable courage in King John Sobieski, and that he found the German princes loyal and prompt on this occasion, contrary to their custom, in sending him succor. Moreover, in Duke Charles of Lorraine he met with a skilful general to lead his army. Consternation and confusion prevailed, however, in Vienna, while the Emperor with his court fled to Linz. Many of the inhabitants followed him; but the rest, when the first moments of terror had passed, prepared for the defence, and the dilatoriness of the Turks, who amused themselves with pillaging the environs and neighboring chateaux, allowed the Duke of Lorraine to throw twelve thousand men as a garrison into the city; then, as he was unable with his slender force to bar the approach of the Turkish army, he kept aloof and waited for the King of Poland.

Leopold solicited succor on all sides, and the Pope made an appeal to the piety of the King of France. Louis XIV, on the contrary, was intriguing throughout Europe in order that the Christian princes should not quit their attitude of repose, and he only offered to the Diet of Ratisbon the aid of his arms on condition that it should recognize the recent usurpations decreed by the famous Chambers of Reunion,[1] and that it should elect his son king of the Romans. He reckoned, if it should accept his offers, to determine the Turks to retreat and to effect a peace which, by bringing the imperial crown into his house, would have been the death-stroke for Austria. All these combinations miscarried through the devotedness of the Poles.

[Footnote 1: The Chambers of Reunion were special courts established in France by Louis XIV (1680). These courts declared for the annexation to France of various territories along the eastern frontier.—ED.]

When Leopold supplicated Sobieski to come to his aid, Louis XIV tried to divert him from it; he reassured him upon the projects of the Turks by a letter of the Sultan, he made him see his real enemies in Austria, Brandenburg, and that power of the North, which the Dutch gazettes had begun to call "His Russian Majesty"; he reminded him, in fine, that the house of Austria, saved by the French on the day of St. Gothard, had testified its gratitude to them by allowing the victors to die of hunger and by envenoming their difference with the Porte. But it was all useless; hatred of the infidels prevailed, and the Polish squadrons hurried to the deliverance of Vienna.

Count Rudiger de Starhemberg was made commandant of the city, and showed himself alike bold and energetic in everything that could contribute to its defence. The Turkish camp encircled Vienna and its suburbs, spreading over the country all round to the distance of six leagues. Two days afterward, Kara Mustapha opened the trenches, and his artillery battered the walls in order to make a breach. Great efforts, moreover, were made in digging mines, with the design of blowing up bastions or portions of the wall, so that the city might be carried by assault, wherein the Turks hoped to find an immense booty. But the besieged made an obstinate defence, and repaired during the night the damage done on the previous day. During sixty days forty mines and ten counter-mines were exploded; the Turks delivered eighteen assaults, the besieged made twenty-four sorties. Each inch of ground was only obtained by dint of a hard and long struggle, in which an equal stubbornness both in attack and defence was exhibited.

The hottest fighting took place at the "Label" bastion, around which there was not a foot of ground that had not been steeped in the blood of friend or foe. However, by degrees the Turks gained a few paces; at the end of August they were lodged in the ditches of the city; and on September 4th they sprung a mine under the "Bourg" bastion; one-half of the city was shaken thereby, and a breach was rent in the bastion wide enough for an assault to be delivered, but the enemy was repulsed. Next day the Turks attacked it with renewed courage, but the valor of the besieged baffled the assailants. On September 10th another mine was sprung under the same bastion, and the breach was so wide that a battalion might have entered it abreast. The danger was extreme, for the garrison was exhausted by fighting, sickness, and incessant labor. The Count de Starhemberg despatched courier after courier to the Duke of Lorraine for succor: "There is not a moment to be lost, Monseigneur," he wrote, "not a moment;" and Vienna, exhausted, saw not yet her liberators arrive. At length, on the 14th, when the whole city was in a stupor in the immediate expectation of an attack, a movement was observed in the enemy's camp which announced that succor was at hand. At five o'clock in the afternoon the Christian army was descried surmounting the Hill of Kahlen, and it made its presence known by a salvo of artillery. John Sobieski had arrived at the head of a valiant army. The Electors of Saxony and of Bavaria with many princes, dukes, and margraves of Germany had brought with them fresh troops. Charles of Lorraine might then dare to march against the Moslems, although he had yet only forty-six thousand men.

The army of Sobieski reached Klosterenburg, Koenigstetten, St. Andre, the Valley of Hagen and Kirling, where it effected its junction with the Austrians and the Saxons who had arrived there in passing by Hoeflin. On Sunday, September 15th, in the earliest rays of a fine autumnal day, the holy priest Marco d'Aviano celebrated mass in the chapel of Kahlenberg, and the King of Poland served him during the sacrifice. Afterward, Sobieski made his son kneel down and dubbed him a knight in remembrance of the great occasion on which he was going to be present; then, turning toward his officers, he reminded them of the victory of Choczim, adding that the triumph they were about to achieve under the walls of Vienna would not only save a city, but Christendom. Next morning the Christian army descended the Hill of Kahlen in order of battle. A salvo of five cannon-shot gave the signal for the fight. Sobieski commanded the right wing, the Duke of Lorraine the left, under whose orders served Prince Eugene of Savoy, then aged nineteen. The Elector of Bavaria was in the centre. The village of Naussdorf, situated upon the Danube, was attacked by the Saxon and imperial troops which formed the left wing, and carried after an obstinate resistance. Toward noon the King of Poland, having descended into the plain with the right wing, at the head of his Polish cavalry, attacked the innumerable squadrons of Turkish horse. Flinging himself upon the enemy's centre with all the fury of a hurricane, he spread confusion in their ranks; but his courage carried him too far; he was surrounded and was on the point of being overwhelmed by numbers. Then, shouting for aid, the German cavalry, which had followed him, charged the enemy at full gallop, delivered the King, and soon put the Turks to flight on all sides. The right wing had decided the victory; by seven o'clock in the evening the deliverance of Vienna was achieved. The bodies of more than ten thousand infidels strewed the field of battle.

But all those combats were mere preludes to the great battle which must decide the fortune of the war. For the Turkish camp, with its thousands of tents, could still be seen spreading around as far as the eye could reach, and its artillery continued to play upon the city. The victorious commander-in-chief was holding a council of war to decide whether to give battle again on that same day, or wait till the morrow to give his troops an interval of rest, when a messenger came with the announcement that the enemy appeared to be in full flight; and it proved to be the fact. A panic had seized the Turks, who fled in disorder, abandoning their camp and baggage; and soon even those who were attacking the city were seen in full flight with the rest of the army.

The booty found in the Turkish camp was immense: three hundred pieces of heavy artillery, five thousand tents, that of the Grand Vizier with all the military chests and the chancery. The treasures amounted to fifteen million crowns; the tent of the Vizier alone yielded four hundred thousand crowns. Two millions also were found in the military chest; arms studded with precious stones, the equipments of Kara Mustapha, fell into the hands of the victors. In their flight the Mussulmans threw away arms, baggage, and banners, with the exception of the holy standard of the Prophet, which, nevertheless, the imperials pretended to have seized. The King of Poland received for his share four million florins; and in a letter to his wife—the sole delight of his soul, his dear and well-beloved Mariette—he speaks of that booty and of the happiness of having delivered Vienna. "All the enemy's camp," he wrote, "with the whole of his artillery and all his enormous riches, have fallen into our hands. We are driving before us a host of camels, mules, and Turkish prisoners."

Count Starhemberg received the King of Poland in the magnificent tent of the Grand Vizier and greeted him as a deliverer. Next day Sobieski, accompanied by the Elector of Bavaria and the different commanders, traversed the city on horseback, preceded by a great banner of cloth of gold and two tall gilded staves bearing the horse-tails which had been planted in front of the Grand Vizier's tent, as a symbol of supreme command. In the Loretto chapel of the Augustins the hero threw himself upon his face before the altar and chanted the Te Deum. Vienna was delivered; the flood of Ottomans, that had beaten against its walls one hundred fifty-four years previously, had returned more furiously, more menacing still, against that dignified protectress of European civilization, but this time it had been repelled never to return.

Thus vanished the insane hopes of the Grand Vizier. If Demetrius Cantemir may be believed, Kara Mustapha had desired to capture Vienna to appropriate it to himself and found in the West an empire of which he would have been the sovereign. "That subject," says the historian, "who only held his power from the Sultan, despised in his heart the Sultan himself; and as he found himself at the head of all the disciplined troops of the empire, he looked upon his master as a shadow denuded of strength and substance, who, being very inferior in courage to him, could never oppose to him an army like that which was under his command. For all that concerned the Emperor of Germany, he appeared still less to be feared: being a prince bare and despoiled so soon as he should have lost Vienna. It was thus that Kara Mustapha reasoned within himself.

"Already he casts his eyes over the treasures which he has in his possession; with the money of the Sultan he has also brought his own; all that of the German princes is going to be his; for he believes that it is amassed in the city he is besieging. If he needs support, he reckons upon the different governors of Hungary as devoted to his interests; these are his creatures, whom he has put into their posts during the seven years of his vizierate; not one of those functionaries dare offer an obstacle to the elevation of his benefactor. Ibrahim Pacha, Beylerbey of Buda, keeps him in suspense by reason of the influence that his fame gives him over the army and over Hungary; he must be won over before all else, as well as the chief officers of the janizaries and the spahis. Ibrahim shall be made King of Hungary. The different provinces comprised in that kingdom shall be divided into timars for appanage of the spahis, and all the rest of the soldiery shall have establishments in the towns, as so many new colonies; to them shall be assigned the lands of the old inhabitants, who will be driven out or reduced to slavery. He reserves for himself the title of Sultan, his share shall be all Germany as far as the frontiers of France, with Transylvania and Poland, which he intends to render subject or at least make tributary the year following." Such are the projects that Cantemir attributes to Kara Mustapha; the intervention of Sobieski caused these chimerical plans quickly to vanish.

The Emperor Leopold, who returned to Vienna on September 16th, instead of expressing his thanks and gratitude to the commanders who had rescued his capital, received them with the haughty and repulsive coldness prescribed by the etiquette of the imperial court. Sobieski nevertheless continued his services by pursuing the retreating Turks. Awakened from his dream of self-exaltation, the Grand Vizier retook the road toward Turkey, directing his steps to the Raab, where he rallied the remnants of his army. Thence he marched toward Buda, and attacked by the way the Styrian town of Lilenfeld; he was repulsed by the prelate Matthias Kalweis, and avenged himself for that fresh check by devastating Lower Styria. He crossed the Danube by a bridge of boats at Parkany; but the Poles vigorously disputed the passage with him, and he again lost more than eight thousand men taken or slain by the Christians. Shortly after, the fortress of Gran opened its gates to Kara Mustapha. The Grand Vizier barbarously put to death the officers who had signed the capitulation; he threw upon his generals the responsibility of his reverses, and thought to stifle in blood the murmurs of his accusers. The army marched in disorder as though struck with a panic terror. Kara Mustapha wished that a Jew whom he despatched to Belgrad should be escorted by a troop of horsemen. "I have no need of an escort," replied the Jew: "I have only to wear my cap in the German fashion, and not a Turk will touch me."

The enemies of the Grand Vizier, however, conspired to effect his ruin at Constantinople; and the results of the campaign justified the predictions of the party of peace. Mahomet IV, enraged at these disasters, sent his grand chamberlain to Belgrad with orders to bring back the head of the Vizier (1683): it was, in fact, brought to the Sultan in a silver dish.

%MONMOUTH'S REBELLION%

A.D. 1685

GILBERT BURNET

James II was scarcely seated on the English throne in 1685 when serious disturbances began in his realm. The King had inherited the peculiar traits of the Stuarts. His first purpose was to overcome the Parliamentary power and make himself absolute ruler. He was likewise a Roman Catholic, and one of his objects was the suppression of English Protestantism.

During the first days of his reign the Protestant peasants in the west of England rose in revolt. They supported the claims of James Fitzroy, Duke of Monmouth, to the throne. Monmouth was the (reputed) illegitimate son of Charles II and Lucy Walters. With other exiled malcontents, English and Scotch, he had taken refuge in Holland. One of those exiled was the Earl of Argyle, whose father had figured prominently on the side of the Scottish Presbyterians against Charles I.

Owing to national jealousy, the English and Scotch in Holland could not act in unison, but all were determined to strike against James. Two expeditions were planned—one under Argyle, who expected to find forces awaiting him in Scotland; the other under Monmouth, whose adherents were to join him in the west of England.

Argyle's attempt miscarried through disagreement among the leaders, and the Earl was taken and beheaded, June 30, 1685. What befell the enterprise of Monmouth is told by Bishop Burnet, a contemporary historian. Monmouth was executed July 15, 1685, and in the trials known as the "Bloody Assizes," presided over by the brutal George Jeffreys, some three hundred of the Duke's followers were condemned to death, and more than a thousand otherwise punished.

As soon as Lord Argyle sailed for Scotland, Monmouth set about his design with as much haste as possible. Arms were brought and a ship was freighted for Bilbao in Spain. He pawned all his jewels, but these could not raise much, and no money was sent to him out of England. So he was hurried into an ill-designed invasion. The whole company consisted but of eighty-two persons. They were all faithful to one another. But some spies whom Shelton, the new envoy, set on work, sent him the notice of a suspected ship sailing out of Amsterdam with arms.

Shelton neither understood the laws of Holland nor advised with those who did; otherwise he would have carried with him an order from the admiralty of Holland, that sat at The Hague, to be made use of as the occasion should require. When he came to Amsterdam, and applied himself to the magistrates there, desiring them to stop and search the ship that he named, they found the ship was already sailed out of their port and their jurisdiction went no further. So he was forced to send to the admiralty at The Hague. But those on board, hearing what he was come for, made all possible haste. And, the wind favoring them, they got out of the Texel before the order desired could be brought from The Hague. After a prosperous course, the Duke landed at Lyme in Dorsetshire (June 11, 1685); and he with his small company came ashore with some order, but with too much daylight, which discovered how few they were.

The alarm was brought hot to London, where, upon the general report and belief of the thing, an act of attainder passed both Houses in one day; some small opposition being made by the Earl of Anglesey, because the evidence did not seem clear enough for so severe a sentence, which was grounded on the notoriety of the thing. The sum of five thousand pounds was set on his head. And with that the session of Parliament ended; which was no small happiness to the nation, such a body of men being dismissed with doing so little hurt. The Duke of Monmouth's manifesto was long and ill-penned—full of much black and dull malice.

It charged the King with the burning of London, the popish plot, Godfrey's murder, and the Earl of Essex's death; and to crown all, it was pretended that the late King was poisoned by his orders: it was set forth that the King's religion made him incapable of the crown; that three subsequent houses of commons had voted his exclusion: the taking away of the old charters, and all the hard things done in the last reign, were laid to his charge: the elections of the present parliament were also set forth very odiously, with great indecency of style; the nation was also appealed to, when met in a free parliament, to judge of the Duke's own pretensions;[1] and all sort of liberty, both in temporals and spirituals, was promised to persons of all persuasions.

[Footnote 1: He asserted that his mother had been the lawful wife of his father.—ED.]

Upon the Duke of Monmouth's landing, many of the country people came in to join him, but very few of the gentry. He had quickly men enough about him to use all his arms. The Duke of Albemarle, as lord lieutenant of Devonshire, was sent down to raise the militia, and with them to make head against him. But their ill-affection appeared very evident; many deserted, and all were cold in the service. The Duke of Monmouth had the whole country open to him for almost a fortnight, during which time he was very diligent in training and animating his men. His own behavior was so gentle and obliging that he was master of all their hearts as much as was possible. But he quickly found what it was to be at the head of undisciplined men, that knew nothing of war, and that were not to be used with rigor. Soon after their landing, Lord Grey was sent out with a small party. He saw a few of the militia, and he ran for it; but his men stood, and the militia ran from them. Lord Grey brought a false alarm, that was soon found to be so, for the men whom their leader had abandoned came back in good order. The Duke of Monmouth was struck with this when he found that the person on whom he depended most, and for whom he designed the command of the horse, had already made himself infamous by his cowardice. He intended to join Fletcher with him in that command. But an unhappy accident made it not convenient to keep him longer about him. He sent him out on another party, and he, not being yet furnished with a horse, took the horse of one who had brought in a great body of men from Taunton. He was not in the way, so Fletcher not seeing him to ask his leave, thought that all things were to be in common among them that could advance the service.

After Fletcher had ridden about as he was ordered, as he returned, the owner of the horse he rode on—who was a rough and ill-bred man—reproached him in very injurious terms for taking out his horse without his leave. Fletcher bore this longer than could have been expected from one of his impetuous temper. But the other persisted in giving him foul language, and offered a switch or a cudgel, upon which he discharged his pistol at him and shot him dead. He went and gave the Duke of Monmouth an account of this, who saw it was impossible to keep him longer about him without disgusting and losing the country people who were coming in a body to demand justice. So he advised him to go aboard the ship and to sail on to Spain whither she was bound. By this means he was preserved for that time.

Ferguson ran among the people with all the fury of an enraged man that affected to pass for an enthusiast, though all his performances that way were forced and dry. The Duke of Monmouth's great error was that he did not in the first heat venture on some hardy action and then march either to Exeter or Bristol; where as he would have found much wealth, so he would have gained some reputation by it. But he lingered in exercising his men and stayed too long in the neighborhood of Lyme.

By this means the King had time both to bring troops out of Scotland, after Argyle was taken, and to send to Holland for the English and Scotch regiments that were in the service of the states; which the Prince sent over very readily and offered his own person, and a greater force, if it were necessary. The King received this with great expressions of acknowledgment and kindness. It was very visible that he was much distracted in his thoughts, and that, what appearance of courage soever he might put on, he was inwardly full of apprehensions and fears. He dare not accept of the offer of assistance that the French made him; for by that he would have lost the hearts of the English nation, and he had no mind to be so much obliged to the Prince of Orange or to let him into his counsels or affairs. Prince George committed a great error in not asking the command of the army; for the command, how much soever he might have been bound to the counsels of others, would have given him some lustre; whereas his staying at home in such times of danger brought him under much neglect.

The King could not choose worse than he did when he gave the command to the Earl of Feversham, who was a Frenchman by birth—and nephew to M. de Turenne. Both his brothers changing religion—though he continued still a Protestant—made that his religion was not much trusted to. He was an honest, brave, and good-natured man, but weak to a degree not easy to be conceived. And he conducted matters so ill that every step he made was like to prove fatal to the King's service. He had no parties abroad. He got no intelligence, and was almost surprised and like to be defeated, when he seemed to be under no apprehension, but was abed without any care or order. So that if the Duke of Monmouth had got but a very small number of good soldiers about him, the King's affairs would have fallen into great disorder.

The Duke of Monmouth had almost surprised Lord Feversham and all about him while they were abed. He got in between two bodies, into which the army lay divided. He now saw his error in lingering so long. He began to want bread, and to be so straitened that there was a necessity of pushing for a speedy decision. He was so misled in his march that he lost an hour's time, and when he came near the army there was an inconsiderable ditch, in the passing which he lost so much more time that the officers had leisure to rise and be dressed, now they had the alarm. And they put themselves in order. Yet the Duke of Monmouth's foot stood longer and fought better than could have been expected; especially, when the small body of horse they had, ran upon the first charge, the blame of which was cast on Lord Grey.

The foot being thus forsaken and galled by the cannon, did run at last. About a thousand of them were killed on the spot, and fifteen hundred were taken prisoners. Their numbers, when fullest, were between five and six thousand.

The Duke of Monmouth left the field[1] too soon for a man of courage who had such high pretensions; for a few days before he had suffered himself to be called king, which did him no service, even among those that followed him. He rode toward Dorsetshire; and when his horse could carry him no further he changed clothes with a shepherd and went as far as his legs could carry him, being accompanied only by a German whom he had brought over with him. At last, when he could go no farther, they lay down in a field where there was hay and straw, with which they covered themselves, so that they hoped to lie there unseen till night. Parties went out on all hands to take prisoners. The shepherd was found by Lord Lumley in the Duke of Monmouth's clothes. So this put them on his track, and having some dogs with them, they followed the scent, and came to the place where the German was first discovered. And he immediately pointed to the place where the Duke of Monmouth lay. So he was taken in a very indecent dress and posture.

[Footnote 1: This engagement took place at Ledgemoor, Somerset, July 6, 1685.—ED.]

His body was quite sunk with fatigue, and his mind was now so low that he begged his life in a manner that agreed ill with the courage of the former parts of it. He called for pen, ink, and paper, and wrote to the Earl of Feversham, and both to the Queen and the Queen dowager, to intercede with the King for his life. The King's temper, as well as his interest, made it so impossible to hope for that, that it showed a great meanness in him to ask it in such terms as he used in his letters. He was carried up to Whitehall, where the King examined him in person, which was thought very indecent, since he was resolved not to pardon him.[1] He made new and unbecoming submissions, and insinuated a readiness to change his religion; for, he said, the King knew what his first education was in religion. There were no discoveries to be got from him; for the attempt was too rash to be well concerted, or to be so deep laid that many were involved in the guilt of it. He was examined on Monday, and orders were given for his execution on Wednesday.

[Footnote 1: The Duke of Monmouth pressed extremely that the King would see him, whence the King concluded he had something to say to him that he would tell to nobody else; but when he found it ended in nothing but lower submission than he either expected or desired, he told him plainly he had put it out of his power to pardon him by having proclaimed himself king. Thus may the most innocent actions of a man's life be sometimes turned to his disadvantage.—ED.]

Turner and Ken, the Bishops of Ely and of Bath and Wells, were ordered to wait on him. But he called for Dr. Tennison. The bishops studied to convince him of the sin of rebellion. He answered, he was sorry for the blood that was shed in it, but he did not seem to repent of the design. Yet he confessed that his father had often told him that there was no truth in the reports of his having married his mother. This he set under his hand, probably for his children's sake, who were then prisoners in the Tower, that so they might not be ill-used on his account. He showed a great neglect of his duchess. And her resentments for his course of life with Lady Wentworth wrought so much on her that she seemed not to have any of that tenderness left that became her sex and his present circumstances, for when he desired to speak privately with her she would have witnesses to hear all that passed, to justify herself, and to preserve her family. They parted very coldly. He only recommended to her the rearing of their children in the Protestant religion.

The bishops continued still to press on him a deep sense of the sin of rebellion; at which he grew so uneasy that he desired them to speak to him of other matters. They next charged him with the sin of living with Lady Wentworth, as he had done. In that he justified himself; he had married his duchess too young to give a true consent; he said that lady was a pious worthy woman, and that he had never lived so well, in all respects, as since his engagements with her. All the pains they took to convince him of the unlawfulness of that course of life had no effect. They did certainly very well in discharging their consciences and speaking so plainly to him. But they did very ill to talk so much of this matter and to make it so public, as they did, for divines ought not to repeat what they say to dying penitents no more than what the penitents say to them. By this means the Duke of Monmouth had little satisfaction in them and they had as little in him.

He was much better pleased with Dr. Tennison, who did very plainly speak to him with relation to his public actings and to his course of life; but he did it in a softer and less peremptory manner. And having said all that he thought proper, he left those points, in which he saw he could not convince him, to his own conscience, and turned to other things fit to be laid before a dying man. The Duke begged one day more of life with such repeated earnestness that as the King was much blamed for denying so small a favor, so it gave occasion to others to believe that he had some hope from astrologers that if he outlived that day he might have a better fate. As long as he fancied there was any hope, he was too much unsettled in his mind to be capable of anything.

But when he saw all was to no purpose and that he must die he complained a little that his death was hurried on so fast. But all on a sudden he came into a composure of mind that surprised those that saw it. There was no affectation in it. His whole behavior was easy and calm, not without a decent cheerfulness. He prayed God to forgive all his sins, unknown as well as known. He seemed confident of the mercies of God, and that he was going to be happy with him. And he went to the place of execution on Tower Hill with an air of undisturbed courage that was grave and composed. He said little there, only that he was sorry for the blood that was shed, but he had ever meant well to the nation. When he saw the axe he touched it and said it was not sharp enough. He gave the hangman but half the reward he intended, and said if he cut off his head cleverly, and not so butcherly as he did the Lord Russel's, his man would give him the rest.

The executioner was in great disorder, trembling all over; so he gave him two or three strokes without being able to finish the matter and then flung the axe out of his hand. But the sheriff forced him to take it up; and at three or four more strokes he severed his head from his body and both were presently buried in the chapel of the Tower. Thus lived and died this unfortunate young man. He had several good qualities in him, and some that were as bad. He was soft and gentle even to excess and too easy to those who had credit with him. He was both sincere and good-natured, and understood war well. But he was too much given to pleasure and to favorites.

%REVOCATION OF THE EDICT OF NANTES%

A.D. 1685

BON LOUIS HENRI MARTIN

It was one of the glories of Henry of Navarre to end the religious wars of France by publishing the Edict of Nantes (1598), which placed Catholics and Protestants on a practically equal footing as subjects. By the revocation of that edict, in 1685, Louis XIV opened the way for fresh persecution of the Huguenots. Of the hundreds of thousands whom the King and his agents then caused to flee the country and seek civil and religious liberty in other lands, many crossed the sea and settled in the colonies of North America, especially in South Carolina.

By revoking the Edict of Nantes Louis XIV arrayed against himself all the Protestant countries of Europe. By seizures of territory he also offended Catholic states. In 1686 the League of Augsburg combined the greater part of Europe for resisting his encroachments.

This period of the "Huguenots of the Dispersion" was marked by complicated strifes in politics, religion, and philosophy. It was one of the most reactionary epochs in French history. No writer has better depicted the time, with the severities, atrocities, and effects of the revocation of the great edict, than Martin, the celebrated historian of his country.

For many years the government of Louis XIV had been acting toward the Reformation as toward a victim entangled in a noose which is drawn tighter and tighter till it strangles its prey. In 1683 the oppressed had finally lost patience, and their partial attempts at resistance, disavowed by the most distinguished of their brethren, had been stifled in blood. After the truce of Ratisbon, declarations and decrees hostile to Protestantism succeeded each other with frightful rapidity; nothing else was seen in the official gazette. Protestant ministers were prohibited from officiating longer than three years in the same church (August, 1684); Protestant individuals were forbidden to give asylum to their sick coreligionists; the sick who were not treated at home were required to go to the hospitals, where they were put in the hands of churchmen. A beautiful and touching request, written by Pastor Claude, was in vain presented to the King in January, 1685. Each day beheld some Protestant church closed for contraventions either imaginary or fraudulently fabricated by persecutors. It was enough that the child of a "convert" or a bastard (all bastards were reputed Catholic) should enter a Protestant church for the exercise of worship, to be interdicted there.

If this state of things had continued long, not a single Protestant church would have been left. The Protestant academy or university of Saumur, which had formed so many eminent theologians and orators, was closed; the ministers were subjected to the villein tax for their real estate (January, 1685). The quinquennial assembly of the clergy, held in May, presented to the King a multitude of new demands against the heretics; among others, for the establishment of penalties against the "converts" who did not fulfil their duties as Catholics. The penalty of death, which had been decreed against emigrants, was commuted into perpetual confinement in the galleys, by the request of the clergy. The first penalty had been little more than a threat; the second, which confounded with the vilest miscreants, unfortunates guilty of having desired to flee from persecution, was to be applied in the sternest reality! It was extended to Protestants living in France who should authorize their children to marry foreigners. It was interdicted to Reformers to follow the occupation of printer or bookseller. It was forbidden to confer on them degrees in arts, law, or medicine. Protestant orphans could have only Catholic guardians. Half of the goods of emigrants was promised to informers. It was forbidden to Reformers to preach or write against Catholicism (July, August, 1685).

A multitude of Protestant churches had been demolished, and the inhabitants of places where worship had been suppressed were prohibited from going to churches in places where it was still permitted. Grave difficulties resulted with respect to the principal acts of civil life, which, among Protestants as among Catholics, owed their authenticity only to the intervention of ministers of religion. A decree in council of September 15, 1685, enacted that, in places deprived of the exercise of worship, a pastor chosen by the intendant of the generality should celebrate, in the presence of relatives only, the marriages of Reformers; that their bans should be published to the congregations, and the registries of their marriages entered on the rolls of the local court. Similar decrees had been issued concerning baptisms and burials. Hitherto Protestantism had been struck right and left with all kinds of weapons, without any very definite method: these decrees seemed to indicate a definite plan; that is, the suppression of external worship, with a certain tolerance, at least provisionally, for conscience, and a kind of civil state separately constituted for obstinate Protestants.

This plan had, in fact, been debated in council. "The King," wrote Madame de Maintenon, August 13, 1684, "has it in mind to work for the entire conversion of heretics; he has frequent conferences for this purpose with M. le Tellier and M. de Chateauneuf (the secretary of state charged with the affairs of the so-called Reformed religion), in which they wish to persuade me to take part. M. de Chateauneuf has proposed means that are unsuitable. Things must not be hastened. It is necessary to convert, not to persecute. M. de Louvois prefers mild measures which do not accord with his nature and his eagerness to see things ended."

The means proposed by Chateauneuf was apparently the immediate revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which was judged premature. As to the "mildness" of Louvois, it was soon seen in operation. Louvois pretended to be moderate, lest the King, through scruples of humanity, should hesitate to confer on him the management of the affair. He had his plan ready: it was to recur to the "salutary constraint" already tried in 1681 by the instrumentality of soldiers to the Dragonade. Colbert was no longer at hand to interpose obstacles to this.

Louvois had persuaded the King that in the moral situation of Protestant communities it would be enough "to show them the troops," to compel them to abjure. The troops had been "shown," therefore, to the Reformers of Bearn; the intendant of that province, Foucault, had come to Paris to concert with the minister the management of the enterprise; Louvois could not have found a fitter instrument than this pitiless and indefatigable man, who had the soul of an inquisitor under the garb of a pliant courtier. On his return from Paris, Foucault, seconded by the Parliament of Pau and the clergy, began by the demolition, on account of "contraventions," of fifteen out of twenty Protestant churches that remained in Bearn, and the "conversion" of eleven hundred persons in two months (February-April, 1685). He then called for the assistance of the army to complete the work, promising "to keep a tight rein over the soldiers, so that they should do no violence." This was for the purpose of allaying the scruples of the King. The troops were therefore concentrated in the cities and villages filled with Reformers; the five remaining Protestant churches shared the fate of the rest, and the pastors were banished, some to a distance of six leagues from their demolished churches, others beyond the jurisdiction of the Parliament of Pau.

Terror flew before the soldiers; as soon as the scarlet uniforms and the high caps of the dragoons were descried, corporations, whole cities, sent their submission to the intendant. An almost universal panic chilled all hearts. The mass of Reformers signed or verbally accepted a confession of the Catholic faith, suffered themselves to be led to the church, bowed their heads to the benediction of the bishop or the missionary, and cannon and bonfires celebrated the "happy reconciliation." Protestants who had hoped to find a refuge in liberty of conscience without external worship saw this hope vanish. Foucault paid no attention to the decrees in council that regulated the baptisms, marriages, and burials of Protestants, because, he said in a despatch to the minister, "in the present disposition to general and speedy conversion, this would expose those who waver, and harden the obstinate." The council issued a new order confirmatory of the preceding ones, and specially for Bearn. Foucault, according to his own words, "did not judge proper to execute it." This insolence went unpunished. Success justified everything. Before the end of August the twenty-two thousand Protestants of Bearn were "converted," save a few hundred. Foucault, in his Memoirs, in which he exhibits his triumphs with cynicism, does not, however, avow all the means. Although he confesses that "the distribution of money drew many souls to the Church," he does not say how he kept his promise of preventing the "soldiers from doing any violence." He does not recount the brutalities, the devastations, the tortures resorted to against the refractory, the outrages to women, nor how these soldiers took turns from hour to hour to hinder their hosts from sleeping during entire weeks till these unfortunates, stupefied, delirious, signed an abjuration.

The King saw only the result. The resolution was taken to send everywhere these "booted missionaries" who had succeeded so well in Bearn. Louvois sent, on the part of the King, July 31st, a command to the Marquis de Boufflers, their general, to lead them into Guienne, and "to quarter them all on the Reformers"; "observing to endeavor to diminish the number of Reformers in such a manner that in each community the Catholics shall be twice or three times more numerous than they; so that when, in due time, his majesty shall wish no longer to permit the exercise of this religion in his kingdom, he may no longer have to apprehend that the small number that shall remain can undertake anything." The troops were to be withdrawn as fast as this object should be obtained in each place, without undertaking to convert all at once. The ministers should be driven out of the country, and by no means should they be retained by force; the pastors absent, the flocks could more easily be brought to reason. The soldiers were to commit "no other disorders than to levy (daily) twenty sous for each horseman or dragoon, and ten sous for each foot-soldier." Excesses were to be severely punished. Louvois, in another letter, warned the general not to yield to all the suggestions of the ecclesiastics, nor even of the intendants. They did not calculate on being able to proceed so rapidly as in Bearn.

These instructions show precisely, not what was done, but what the King wished should be done. The subalterns, sure of immunity in case of success, acted more in accordance with the spirit of Louvois than according to the words dictated by Louis. The King, when by chance he heard that his orders had been transcended, rarely chastised the transgressor, lest it might be "said to the Reformers that his majesty disapproves of whatsoever has been done to convert them." Louis XIV, therefore, cannot repudiate, before history, his share of this terrible responsibility.

The result exceeded the hopes of the King and of Louvois. Guienne yielded as easily as Bearn. The Church of Montauban, the head-quarters of the Reformation in this region, was "reunited" in great majority, after several days of military vexations; Bergerac held out a little longer; then all collective resistance ceased. The cities and villages, for ten or twelve leagues around, sent to the military leaders their promises of abjuration. In three weeks there were sixty thousand conversions in the district of Bordeaux or Lower Guienne, twenty thousand in that of Montauban or Upper Guienne. According to the reports of Boufflers, Louvois, September 7th, reckoned that before the end of the month there would not remain in Lower Guienne ten thousand Reformers out of the one hundred fifty thousand found there August 15th. "There is not a courier," wrote Madame de Maintenon, September 26th, "that does not bring the King great causes of joy; to wit, news of conversions by thousands." The only resistance that they deigned to notice here and there was that of certain provincial gentlemen, of simple and rigid habits, less disposed than the court nobility to sacrifice their faith to interest and vanity.

Guienne subjected, the army of Bearn was marched, a part into Limousin, Saintonge, and Poitou, a part into Languedoc. Poitou, already "dragooned" in 1681 by the intendant Marillac, had just been so well labored with by Marillac's successor, Lamoignon de Basville, aided by some troops, that Foucault, sent from Bearn into Poitou, found nothing more to glean. The King even caused Louvois to recommend that they should not undertake to convert all the Reformers at once, lest the rich and powerful families, who had in their hands the commerce of those regions, should avail themselves of the proximity of the sea to take flight (September 8th). Basville, a great administrator, but harshly inflexible, was sent from Poitou into Lower Languedoc, in the first part of September, in order to cooperate there with the Duke de Noailles, governor of the province. The intendant of Lower Languedoc, D'Aguesseau, although he had zealously cooperated in all the restrictive measures of the Reformed worship, had asked for his recall as soon as he had seen that the King was determined on the employment of military force; convinced that this determination would not be less fatal to religion than to the country, he retired, broken-hearted, his spirit troubled for the future.

The conversion of Languedoc seemed a great undertaking. The mass of Protestants, nearly all concentrated in Lower Languedoc, and in the mountainous regions adjoining, was estimated at more than two hundred forty thousand souls; these people, more ardent, more constant than the mobile and sceptical Gascons, did not seem capable of so easily abandoning their belief. The result, however, was the same as elsewhere. Nimes and Montpellier followed the example of Montauban. The quartering of a hundred soldiers in their houses quickly reduced the notables of Nimes; in this diocese alone, the principal centre of Protestantism, sixty thousand souls abjured in three days. Several of the leading ministers did the same. From Nimes the Duc de Noailles led the troops into the mountains. Cevennes and Gevaudan submitted to invasion like the rest, as the armed mission advanced from valley to valley. These cantons were still under the terror of the sanguinary repressions of 1683, and had been disarmed, as far as it was possible, as well as all Lower Languedoc. Noailles, in the earlier part of October, wrote to Louvois that he would answer "upon his head" that, before the end of November, the province would contain no more Huguenots. If we are to believe his letters, prepared for the eyes of the King, everything must have taken place "with all possible wisdom and discipline"; but the Chancellor d'Aguesseau, in the "life" of his father, the intendant, teaches us what we are to think of it. "The manner in which this miracle was wrought," he says, "the singular facts that were recounted to us day by day, would have sufficed to pierce a heart less religious than that of my father!" Noailles himself, in a confidential letter, announced to Louvois that he would ere long send "some capable men to answer about any matters which he desired to know, and about which he could not write." There was a half tacit understanding established between the minister, the military chiefs, and the intendants. The King, in their opinion, desired the end without sufficiently desiring the means.

Dauphiny, Limousin, La Rochelle, that holy Zion of the Huguenots, all yielded at the same time. Louis was intoxicated. It had sufficed for him to say a word, to lay his hand upon the hilt of his sword, to make those fierce Huguenots, who had formerly worn out so many armies, and had forced so many kings to capitulate before their rebellions, fall at his feet and the feet of the Church. Who would henceforth dare to doubt his divine mission and his infallible genius!

Not that Louis, nor especially those that surrounded him, precisely believed that terror produced the effects of grace, or that these innumerable conversions were sincere; but they saw in this the extinction of all strong conviction among the heretics, the moral exhaustion of an expiring sect. "The children at least will be Catholics, if the fathers are hypocrites," wrote Madame de Maintenon. At present it was necessary to complete the work and to prevent dangerous relapses in these subjugated multitudes. It was necessary to put to flight as quickly as possible the "false pastors" who might again lead their old flocks astray, and to make the law conform to the fact, by solemnly revoking the concessions formerly wrung by powerful and armed heresy from the feebleness of the ruling power. Louis had long preserved some scruples about the violation of engagements entered into by his grandfather Henry IV; but his last doubts had been set at rest, several months since, by a "special council of conscience," composed of two theologians and two jurisconsults, who had decided that he might and should revoke the Edict of Nantes. The names of the men who took upon themselves the consequences of such a decision have remained unknown: doubtless the confessor La Chaise was one of the theologians; who was the other? The Archbishop of Paris, Harlai, was not, perhaps, in sufficient esteem, on account of his habits. The great name of the Bishop of Meaux naturally presents itself to the mind; but neither the correspondence of Bossuet nor the documents relating to his life throw any light on this subject, and we know not whether a direct and material responsibility must be added to the moral responsibility with which the maxims of Bossuet and the spirit of his works burden his memory.

After the "council of conscience," the council of the King was convened for a definitive deliberation in the earlier part of October. Some of the ministers, apparently the two Colberts, Seignelai, and Croissi, insinuated that it would be better not to be precipitate. The Dauphin, a young prince of twenty-four, who resembled, in his undefined character, his grandfather more than his father, and who was destined to remain always as it were lost in the splendid halo of Louis the Great, attempted an intervention that deserves to rescue his name from oblivion. "He represented, from an anonymous memorial that had been addressed to him the evening before, that it was, perhaps, to be apprehended that the Huguenots might take up arms;" "that in case they did not dare to do this, a great number would leave the kingdom, which would injure commerce and agriculture, and thereby even weaken the state." The King replied that he had foreseen all and provided for all, that nothing in the world would be more painful to him than to shed a drop of the blood of his subjects, but that he had armies and good generals whom he would employ, in case of necessity, against rebels who desired their own destruction. As to the argument of interest, he judged it little worthy of consideration, compared with the advantages of an undertaking that would restore to religion its splendor, to the state its tranquillity, and to authority all its rights. The suppression of the Edict of Nantes was resolved upon without further opposition.

Father la Chaise and Louvois, according to their ecclesiastical and military correspondence, had promised that it should not even cost the drop of blood of which the King spoke. The aged Chancellor le Tellier, already a prey to the malady that was to bring him to his grave, drew up with trembling hand the fatal declaration, which the King signed October 17th.

Louis professed in this preamble to do nothing but continue the pious designs of his grandfather and his father for the reunion of their subjects to the Church. He spoke of the "perpetual and irrevocable" edict of Henry IV as a temporary regulation. "Our cares," he said, "since the truce that we facilitated for this purpose, have had the effect that we proposed to ourselves, since the better and the greater part of our subjects of the so-called Reformed religion have embraced the Catholic; and inasmuch as by reason of this the execution of the Edict of Nantes" "remains useless, we have judged that we could not do better, in order wholly to efface the memory of evils that this false religion had caused in our kingdom, than entirely to revoke the said Edict of Nantes and all that has been done since in favor of the said religion."

The order followed to demolish unceasingly all the churches of the said religion situated in the kingdom. It was forbidden to assemble for the exercise of the said religion, in any place, private house or tenement, under penalty of confiscation of body and goods. All ministers of the said religion who would not be converted were enjoined to leave the kingdom in a fortnight, and divers favors were granted to those who should be converted. Private schools for instruction of children in the said religion were interdicted. Children who should be born to those of the said religion should for the future be baptized by the parish curates, under penalty of a fine of five hundred livres, and still more, if there were occasion, to be paid by the parents, and the children should then be brought up in the Catholic religion. A delay of four months was granted to fugitive Reformers to leave the kingdom and recover possession of their property; this delay passed, the property should remain confiscated. It was forbidden anew to Reformers to leave the kingdom, under penalty of the galleys for men, and confiscation of body and goods for women. The declarations against backsliders were confirmed.

A last article, probably obtained by the representations of the Colberts, declared that the Reformers, "till it should please God to enlighten them like others, should be permitted to dwell in the kingdom, in strict loyalty to the King, to continue there their commerce and enjoy their goods, without being molested or hindered under pretext of the said religion."

The Edict of Revocation was sent in haste to the governors and intendants, without waiting for it to be registered, which took place in the Parliament of Paris, October 22d. The intendants were instructed not to allow the ministers who should abandon the country to dispose of their real estate, or to take with them their children above seven years of age: a monstrous dismemberment of the family wrought by an arbitrary will that recognized neither natural nor civil rights! The King recommended a milder course toward noblemen, merchants, and manufacturers; he did not desire that obstinacy should be shown "in compelling them to be converted immediately without exception" "by any considerable violence."

The tone of the ministerial instructions changed quickly on the reception of despatches announcing the effect of the edict in the provinces. This effect teaches us more in regard to the situation of the dragooned people than could the most sinister narratives. The edict which proscribed the Reformed worship, which interdicted the perpetuation of the Protestant religion by tearing from it infants at their birth, was received as a boon by Protestants who remained faithful to their belief. They saw, in the last article of the edict, the end of persecution, and, proud of having weathered the storm, they claimed the tolerance that the King promised them, and the removal of their executioners. The new converts, who, persuaded that the King desired to force all his subjects to profess his religion, had yielded through surprise, fear, want of constancy in suffering, or through a worthier motive, the desire of saving their families from the license of the soldiers, manifested their regret and their remorse, and were no longer willing to go to mass.

All the leaders of the dragonades, the Noailles, the Foucaults, the Basvilles, the Marillacs, complained bitterly of a measure that was useless to them as to the demolition of Protestant churches and the prohibition of worship, and very injurious as to the progress of conversions. They had counted on rooting out the worship by converting all the believers. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes sinned, therefore, in their eyes by excess of moderation! Louvois hastened to reassure them in this respect, and authorized them to act as if the last article of the edict did not exist. "His majesty," he said, "desires that the extremest rigors of the law should be felt by those who will not make themselves of his religion, and those who shall have the foolish glory of wishing to remain the last must be pushed to the last extremity." "Let the soldiers," he said elsewhere, "be allowed to live very licentiously!" (November, 1685).

The King, however, did not mean it thus, and claimed that persecution should be conducted with method and gravity. But men do not stop at pleasure in evil: one abyss draws on another. The way had been opened to brutal and cynical passions, to the spirit of denunciation, to low and mean fanaticism; the infamies with which the subaltern agents polluted themselves recoiled upon the chiefs who did not repress them, and on this proud government that did not blush to add to the odium of persecution the shame of faithlessness! The chiefs of the dragonades judged it necessary to restrain the bad converts by making example of the obstinate; hence arose an inundation of horrors in which we see, as Saint Simon says, "the orthodox imitating against heretics the acts of pagan tyrants against confessors and martyrs." Everything, in fact, was allowed the soldiers but rape and murder; and even this restriction was not always respected; besides, many of the unfortunate died or were maimed for life in consequence of the treatment to which they had been subjected; and the obscene tortures inflicted on women differed little from the last outrage, but in a perversity more refined.

All the diabolic inventions of the highwaymen of the Middle Ages to extort gold from their captives were renewed here and there to secure conversions: the feet of the victims were scorched, they were strappadoed, suspended by the feet; young mothers were tied to the bedposts, while their infants at the breast were writhing with hunger before their eyes. "From torture to abjuration, and from this to communion, there was often not twenty-four hours' distance, and their executioners were their guides and witnesses. Nearly all the bishops lent themselves to this sudden and impious practice." Among the Reformed whom nothing could shake, those who encouraged others to resistance by the influence of their character or social position were sent to the Bastille or other state prisons; some were entombed in subterranean dungeons—in those dark pits, stifling or deadly cold, invented by feudal barbarism. The remains of animals in a state of putrefaction were sometimes thrown in after them, to redouble the horror! The hospital of Valence and the tower of Constance at Aigues-Mortes have preserved, in Protestant martyrology, a frightful renown. The women usually showing themselves more steadfast than the men, the most obstinate were shut up in convents; infamous acts took place there; yet they were rare. It must be said to the honor of the sex, often too facile to the suggestions of fanaticism, that the nuns showed much more humanity and true religion than the priests and monks. Astonished to see Huguenot women so different from the idea they had formed of them, they almost became the protectors of victims that had been given them to torment.

The abduction of children put the final seal to the persecution. The Edict of Revocation had only declared that children subsequently born should be brought up in the Catholic religion. An edict of January, 1686, prescribed that children from five to sixteen years of age should be taken from their heretical relatives and put in the hands of Catholic relatives, or, if they had none, of Catholics designated by the judges! The crimes that we have just indicated might, in strictness, be attributed to the passions of subaltern agents; but this mighty outrage against the family and nature must be charged to the Government alone.

With the revocation, the dragonade was extended, two places partially excepted, over all France. When the great harvest had been sufficiently gathered in the South and West, the reapers were sent elsewhere. The battalions of converters marched from province to province till they reached the northern frontier, carrying everywhere the same terror. Metz, where the Protestants were numerous, was particularly the theatre of abominable excesses. Paris and Alsace were alone, to a certain extent, preserved. Louvois did not dare to show such spectacles to the society of Versailles and Paris; the King would not have endured it. The people of Paris demolished the Protestant church of Charenton, an object of their ancient animosity; the ruling power weighed heavily upon the eight or nine thousand Huguenots who remained in the capital, and constrained two-thirds of them, by intimidation, to a feigned conversion; but there were no striking acts of violence, except perhaps the banishment of thirty elders of the consistory to different parts of the kingdom, and the soldiers did not make their appearance. The lieutenant of police, La Reinie, took care to reassure the leading merchants, and the last article of the Edict of Revocation was very nearly observed in Paris and its environs. As to Lutheran Alsace, it had nothing in common with the system of the Edict of Nantes and the French Calvinists: the Treaty of Westphalia, the capitulation of Strasburg, all the acts that bound it to France, guaranteed to it a separate religious state. An attempt was indeed made to encroach upon Lutheranism by every means of influence and by a system of petty annoyances; but direct attacks were limited to a suppression of public worship in places where the population was two-thirds Catholic. The political events that soon disturbed Europe compelled the French Government to be circumspect toward the people of this recently conquered frontier.

The converters indemnified themselves at the expense of another frontier population, that was not dependent on France. The Vaudois, the first offspring of the Reformation, had always kept possession of the high Alpine valleys, on the confines of Piedmont and Dauphiny, in spite of the persecutions that they had repeatedly endured from the governments of France and Piedmont. The Piedmontese Vaudois had their Edict of Nantes; that is, liberty of worship in the three valleys of St. Martin, La Luzerne, and La Perouse. When the dragonade invaded Dauphiny, the Vaudois about Briancon and Pignerol took refuge in crowds with their brethren in the valleys subject to Piedmont. The French Government was unwilling to suffer them to remain in this asylum. The Duke Victor Amadeus II enjoined the refugees to quit his territory (November 4th). The order was imperfectly executed, and Louis XIV demanded more. The Duke, by an edict of February 1, 1686, prohibited the exercise of heretical worship, and ordered the schools to be closed under penalty of death. The barbes (ministers), schoolmasters, and French refugees were to leave the states of the Duke in a fortnight, under the same penalty. The Vaudois responded by taking up arms, without reflecting on the immense force of their oppressors. The three valleys were assailed at the same time by French and Piedmontese troops. The French were commanded by the governor of Casale, Catinat, a man of noble heart, an elevated and philosophic mind, who deplored his fatal mission, and attempted to negotiate with the insurgents, but Catinat could neither persuade to submission these men resolved to perish rather than renounce their faith, nor restrain the fury of his soldiers exasperated by the vigor of the resistance. The valleys of St. Martin and La Perouse were captured, and the victors committed frightful barbarities. Meanwhile the Piedmontese, after having induced the mountaineers, who guarded the entrance of the valley of La Luzerne, to lay down their arms, by false promises, slaughtered three thousand women, children, and old men at the Pre de la Tour! The remotest recesses of the Alps were searched; a multitude of unfortunates were exterminated singly: more than ten thousand were dragged as prisoners to the fortresses of Piedmont, where most of them died of want. A handful of the bravest succeeding in maintaining themselves among the rocks, where they could not be captured, and, protected by the intervention of Protestant powers, and especially of the Swiss, finally obtained liberty to emigrate, both for themselves and their coreligionists.

There has often been seen in history much greater bloodshed than that caused by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, scenes of destruction planned more directly and on a vaster scale by governments, and sometimes the same contrast between an advanced state of civilization and acts of barbarity; but no spectacle wounds moral sense and humanity to the same degree as this persecution carried on coldly and according to abstract ideas, without the excuse of struggle and danger, without the ardent fever of battle and revolution. The very virtues of the persecutors are here but an additional monstrosity: doubtless, there is also seen, at a later period, among the authors of another reign of terror, this same contrast that astounds and troubles the conscience of posterity; but they, at least, staked each day their own lives against the lives of their adversaries, and, with their lives, the very existence of the country involved in their cause!

A million and a half of Frenchmen were in terror and despair; yet songs of victory resounded around Louis the Great. The aged Le Tellier lifted to heaven the hand that had just signed the Revocation, and parodied, on the occasion of an edict that recalls the times of Decius and Diocletian, the canticle by which Simeon hailed the birth of the Redeemer. He died a fanatic, after having lived a cold and astute politician (October 31, 1685); he died, and the most eloquent voices of the Gallican Church broke forth in triumphal hymns, as over the tomb of a victorious hero! "Let us publish this miracle of our days," exclaimed Bossuet, in that funeral oration of Le Tellier, wherein he nevertheless exhibited apprehensions of new combats and of a sombre future for the Church; "let us pour forth our hearts in praise of the piety of Louis; let us lift our acclamations to heaven, and let us say to this new Constantine, to this new Theodosius, to this new Marcianus, to this new Charlemagne: 'You have strengthened the faith, you have exterminated the heretics; this is the meritorious work of your reign, its peculiar characteristic. Through you heresy is no more: God alone could have wrought this wonder.'" The gentle Flechier himself echoed Bossuet, with the whole corps of the clergy with the great mass of the people. Paris and Versailles, that did not witness the horror of the details, that saw only the general prestige and the victory of unity, were deaf to the doleful reports that came from the provinces, and applauded the "new Constantine."

"This is the grandest and finest thing that ever was conceived and accomplished," wrote Madame de Sevigne. All the corporations, courts of justice, academies, universities, municipal bodies, vied with each other in every species of laudatory allusion; medals represented the King crowned by Religion "for having brought back to the Church two millions of Calvinists"; the number of victims was swollen in order to swell the glory of the persecutor. Statues were erected to the "destroyer of heresy." This concert of felicitations was prolonged for years; the influence of example, the habit of admiring, wrung eulogies even from minds that, it would seem, ought to have remained strangers to this fascination; every writer thought he must pay his tribute; even La Bruyere, that sagacious observer and excellent writer, whose acute and profound studies of manners appeared in 1687; and La Fontaine himself, the poet of free-thought and of universal freedom of action.

The Government redoubled its rigor. The penalty of death was decreed against ministers reentering the kingdom without permission, and the galleys against whomsoever should give them asylum; penalty of death against whomsoever should take part in a meeting (July 1, 1686). And this penalty was not simply a dead letter! Whenever the soldiers succeeded in surprising Protestants assembled for prayer in any solitary place, they first announced their presence by a volley; those who escaped the bullet and the sword were sent to the gallows or the galleys. Measures almost as severe were employed to arrest emigration. Seamen were forbidden to aid the Reformers to escape under penalty of a fine for the first offence, and of corporal punishment for a second offence (November 5, 1685). They went further: ere long, whoever aided the flight of emigrants became liable to the galleys for life, like emigrants themselves (May 7, 1686). Armed barks cruised along all the coasts; all the passes of the frontier were guarded; the peasants everywhere had orders to rush upon the fugitives. Some of the emigrants perished in attempting to force an exit; a host of others was brought back manacled; they dared not place them all under the galley-master's lash; they feared the effects of their despair and of their numbers, if they should mass them in the royal galleys; they crowded the prisons with those who were unwilling to purchase pardon by abjuration. The misfortunes of the first emigrants served to render their coreligionists, not more timid, but more adroit; a multitude of pilgrims, of mendicants dragging their children after them, of nomadic artisans of both sexes and of all trades, incessantly took their way toward all the frontiers; innumerable disguises thus protected the "flight of Israel out of Egypt." Reformers selected the darkest winter nights to embark, in frail open boats, on the Atlantic or stormy Channel; the waves were seen to cast upon the shores of England families long tossed by tempests and dying with cold and hunger.

By degrees, the guards stationed along the shores and the frontiers were touched or seduced, and became saviors and guides to fugitives whom they were set to arrest. Then perpetual confinement in the galleys was no longer sufficient against the accomplices of the desertes; for the galleys an edict substituted death; death, which fell not upon those guilty of the pretended crime of desertion, was promised to their abettors (October 12, 1687). Some were given up to capital punishment; many, nevertheless, continued their perilous assistance to emigrants, and few betrayed them. Those Reformers whom the authority wished most to retain in the kingdom, the noblemen, the rich citizens, manufacturers, and merchants, were those who escaped easiest, being best able to pay for the interested compassion of the guards. It is said that the fugitives carried out of France sixty millions in five years. However this may be, the loss of men was much more to be regretted than the loss of money. The vital energy of France did not cease for many years to ooze away through this ever-open ulcer of emigration.