Transcriber's note: Obvious printer's errors have been corrected, all other inconsistencies are as in the original. The author's spelling has been maintained.

THE HUGUENOTS IN FRANCE

By Dr. SAMUEL SMILES

Author of "Self Help"

LONDON
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS, LIMITED
BROADWAY HOUSE, LUDGATE HILL
MDCCCCIII

LONDON AND COUNTY PRINTING WORKS,
BAZAAR BUILDINGS, LONDON, W.C.

CONTENTS.

THE HUGUENOTS IN FRANCE AFTER THE REVOCATION OF THE EDICT OF NANTES.

• CHAPTER PAGE

• REVOCATION OF THE EDICT OF NANTES [1]
• EFFECTS OF THE REVOCATION—CHURCH IN THE DESERT [12]
• CLAUDE BROUSSON, THE HUGUENOT ADVOCATE [30]
• CLAUDE BROUSSON, PASTOR AND MARTYR [50]
• OUTBREAK IN LANGUEDOC [75]
• INSURRECTION OF THE CAMISARDS [99]
• EXPLOITS OF CAVALIER [130]
• END OF THE CAMISARD INSURRECTION [166]
• GALLEY-SLAVES FOR THE FAITH [190]
• ANTOINE COURT [205]
• REORGANIZATION OF THE CHURCH IN THE DESERT [218]
• THE CHURCH IN THE DESERT—PAUL RABAUT [235]
• END OF THE PERSECUTIONS—THE FRENCH REVOLUTION [253]

MEMOIRS OF DISTINGUISHED HUGUENOT REFUGEES.

• STORY OF SAMUEL DE PÉCHELS [285]
• CAPTAIN RAPIN, AUTHOR OF THE "HISTORY OF ENGLAND" [316]
• CAPTAIN RIOU, R.N. [368]

A VISIT TO THE COUNTRY OF THE VAUDOIS.

• INTRODUCTORY—EARLY PERSECUTIONS OF THE VAUDOIS [383]
• THE VALLEY OF THE ROMANCHE—BRIANÇON [401]
• VAL LOUISE—HISTORY OF FELIX NEFF [420]
• THE VAUDOIS MOUNTAIN-REFUGE OF DORMILHOUSE [437]
• GUILLESTRE AND THE VALLEY OF QUEYRAS [455]
• THE VALLEY OF THE PELICE—LA TOUR—ANGROGNA—THE PRA DE TOUR [472]
• THE GLORIOUS RETURN: AN EPISODE IN THE HISTORY OF THE ITALIAN VAUDOIS [493]

MAPS.

• The Country of the Cevennes [98]
• "The Country of Felix Neff" (Dauphiny) [382]
• The Valley of Luserne [472]

PREFACE.

In preparing this edition for the press, I have ventured to add three short memoirs of distinguished Huguenot Refugees and their descendants.

Though the greatest number of Huguenots banished from France at the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes were merchants and manufacturers, who transferred their skill and arts to England, which was not then a manufacturing country; a large number of nobles and gentry emigrated to this and other countries, leaving their possessions to be confiscated by the French king.

The greater number of the nobles entered the armies of the countries in which they took refuge. In Holland, they joined the army of the Prince of Orange, afterwards William III., King of England. After driving the armies of Louis XIV. out of Ireland, they met the French at Ramilies, Blenheim, and Malplacquet, and other battles in the Low Countries. A Huguenot engineer directed the operations at the siege of Namur, which ended in its capture. Another conducted the siege of Lille, which was also taken.

But perhaps the greatest number of Huguenot nobles entered the Prussian service. Their descendants revisited France on more than one occasion. They overran the northern and eastern parts of France in 1814 and 1815; and last of all they vanquished the descendants of their former persecutors at Sedan in 1870. Sedan was, prior to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the renowned seat of Protestant learning; while now it is known as the scene of the greatest military catastrophe which has occurred in modern history.

The Prime Minister of France, M. Jules Simon, not long ago recorded the fateful effects of Louis XIV.'s religious intolerance. In discussing the perpetual ecclesiastical questions which still disturb France, he recalled the fact that not less than eighty of the German staff in the late war were representatives of Protestant families, driven from France by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

The first of the appended memoirs is that of Samuel de Péchels, a noble of Languedoc, who, after enduring great privations, reached England through Jamaica, and served as a lieutenant in Ireland under William III. Many of his descendants have been distinguished soldiers in the service of England. The second is Captain Rapin, who served faithfully in Ireland, and was called away to be tutor to the young Duke of Portland. He afterwards spent his time at Wesel on the Rhine, where he wrote his "History of England." The third is Captain Riou, "the gallant and the good," who was killed at the battle of Copenhagen. These memoirs might be multiplied to any extent; but those given are enough to show the good work which the Huguenots and their descendants have done in the service of England.[Back to Contents]

INTRODUCTION.

Six years since, I published a book entitled The Huguenots: their Settlements, Churches, and Industries, in England and Ireland. Its object was to give an account of the causes which led to the large migrations of foreign Protestants from Flanders and France into England, and to describe their effects upon English industry as well as English history.

It was necessary to give a brief résumé of the history of the Reformation in France down to the dispersion of the Huguenots, and the suppression of the Protestant religion by Louis XIV. under the terms of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

Under that Act, the profession of Protestantism was proclaimed to be illegal, and subject to the severest penalties. Hence, many of the French Protestants who refused to be "converted," and had the means of emigrating, were under the necessity of leaving France and endeavouring to find personal freedom and religious liberty elsewhere.

The refugees found protection in various countries. The principal portion of the emigrants from Languedoc and the south-eastern provinces of France crossed the frontier into Switzerland, and settled there, or afterwards proceeded into the states of Prussia, Holland, and Denmark, as well as into England and Ireland. The chief number of emigrants from the northern and western seaboard provinces of France, emigrated directly into England, Ireland, America, and the Cape of Good Hope. In my previous work, I endeavoured to give as accurate a description as was possible of the emigrants who settled in England and Ireland, to which, the American editor of the work (the Hon. G. P. Disosway) has added an account of those who settled in the United States of America.

But besides the Huguenots who contrived to escape from Franco during the dragonnades which preceded and the persecutions which followed the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, there was still a very large number of Huguenots remaining in France who had not the means wherewith to fly from their country. These were the poorer people, the peasants, the small farmers, the small manufacturers, many of whom were spoiled of their goods for the very purpose of preventing them from emigrating. They were consequently under the necessity of remaining in their native country, whether they changed their religion by force or not. It is to give an account of these people, as a supplement to my former book, that the present work is written.

It is impossible to fix precisely the number of the Huguenots who left France to avoid the cruelties of Louis XIV., as well as of those who perforce remained to endure them. It shakes one's faith in history to observe the contradictory statements published with regard to French political or religious facts, even of recent date. A general impression has long prevailed that there was a Massacre of St. Bartholemew in Paris in the year 1572; but even that has recently been denied, or softened down into a mere political squabble. It is not, however, possible to deny the fact that there was a Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, though it has been vindicated as a noble act of legislation, worthy even of the reputation and character of Louis the Great.

No two writers agree as to the number of French citizens who were driven from their country by the Revocation. A learned Roman Catholic, Mr. Charles Butler, states that only 50,000 persons "retired" from France; whereas M. Capefigue, equally opposed to the Reformation, who consulted the population tables of the period (although the intendants made their returns as small as possible in order to avoid the reproach of negligence), calculates the emigration at 230,000 souls, namely, 1,580 ministers, 2,300 elders, 15,000 gentlemen, the remainder consisting almost entirely of traders and artisans.

These returns, quoted by M. Capefigue, were made only a few years after the Revocation, although the emigration continued without intermission for many years later. M. Charles Coquerel says that whatever horror may be felt for the Massacre of St. Bartholomew of 1572, the persecutions which preceded and followed the Act of Revocation in 1685, "kept France under a perpetual St. Bartholomew for about sixty years." During that time it is believed that more than 1,000,000 Frenchmen either left the kingdom, or were killed, imprisoned, or sent to the galleys in their efforts to escape.

The Intendant of Saintonge, a King's officer, not likely to exaggerate the number of emigrants, reported in 1698, long before the emigration had ceased, that his province had lost 100,000 Reformers. Languedoc suffered far more; whilst Boulainvilliers reports that besides the emigrants who succeeded in making their escape, the province lost not fewer than 100,000 persons by premature death, the sword, strangulation, and the wheel.

The number of French emigrants who resorted to England may be inferred from the fact that at the beginning of last century there were not fewer than thirty-five French Protestant churches in London alone, at a time when the population of the metropolis was not one-fourth of what it is now; while there were other large French settlements at Canterbury, Norwich, Southampton, Bristol, Exeter, &c., as well as at Dublin, Lisburn, Portarlington, and other towns in Ireland.

Then, with respect to the much larger number of Protestants who remained in France after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, there is the same difference of opinion. A deputation of Huguenot pastors and elders, who waited upon the Duc de Noailles in 1682 informed him that there were then 1,800,000 Protestant families in France. Thirty years after that date, Louis XIV. proclaimed that there were no Protestants whatever in France; that Protestantism had been entirely suppressed, and that any one found professing that faith must be considered as a "relapsed heretic," and sentenced to imprisonment, the galleys, or the other punishments to which Protestants were then subject.

After an interval of about seventy-five years, during which Protestantism (though suppressed by the law) contrived to lead a sort of underground life—the Protestants meeting by night, and sometimes by day, in caves, valleys, moors, woods, old quarries, hollow beds of rivers, or, as they themselves called it, "in the Desert"—they at length contrived to lift their heads into the light of day, and then Rabaut St. Etienne stood up in the Constituent Assembly at Paris, in 1787, and claimed the rights of his Protestant fellow-countrymen—the rights of "2,000,000 useful citizens." Louis XVI. granted them an Edict of Tolerance, about a hundred years after Louis XIV. had revoked the Edict of Nantes; but the measure proved too late for the King, and too late for France, which had already been sacrificed to the intolerance of Louis XIV. and his Jesuit advisers.

After all the sufferings of France—after the cruelties to which her people have been subjected by the tyranny of her monarchs and the intolerance of her priests,—it is doubtful whether she has yet learnt wisdom from her experience and trials. France was brought to ruin a century ago by the Jesuits who held the entire education of the country in their hands. They have again recovered their ground, and the Congreganistes are now what the Jesuits were before. The Sans-Culottes of 1793 were the pupils of the priests; so were the Communists of 1871.[1] M. Edgar Quinet has recently said to his countrymen: "The Jesuitical and clerical spirit which has sneaked in among you and all your affairs has ruined you. It has corrupted the spring of life; it has delivered you over to the enemy.... Is this to last for ever? For heaven's sake spare us at least the sight of a Jesuits' Republic as the coronation of our century."

In the midst of these prophecies of ruin, we have M. Veuillot frankly avowing his Ultramontane policy in the Univers. He is quite willing to go back to the old burnings, hangings, and quarterings, to prevent any freedom of opinion about religious matters. "For my part," he says, "I frankly avow my regret not only that John Huss was not burnt sooner, but that Luther was not burnt too. And I regret further that there has not been some prince sufficiently pious and politic to have made a crusade against the Protestants."

M. Veuillot is perhaps entitled to some respect for boldly speaking out what he means and thinks. There are many amongst ourselves who mean the same thing, without having the courage to say so—who hate the Reformation quite as much as M. Veuillot does, and would like to see the principles of free examination and individual liberty torn up root and branch.

With respect to the proposed crusade against Protestantism, it will be seen from the following work what the "pious and politic" Louis XIV. attempted, and how very inefficient his measures eventually proved in putting down Protestantism, or in extending Catholicism. Louis XIV. found it easier to make martyrs than apostates; and discovered that hanging, banishment, the galleys, and the sword were not amongst the most successful of "converters."

The history of the Huguenots during the time of their submergence as an "underground church" is scarcely treated in the general histories of France. Courtly writers blot them out of history as Louis XIV. desired to blot them out of France. Most histories of France published in England contain little notice of them. Those who desire to pursue the subject further, will obtain abundant information, more particularly from the following works:—

Elie Bénoît: Histoire de l'Édit de Nantes. Charles Coquerel: Histoire des Églises du Désert. Napoleon Peyrat: Histoire des Pasteurs du Désert. Antoine Court: Histoire des Troubles de Cevennes. Edmund Hughes: Histoire de la Restauration du Protestantisme en France au xviii. Siècle. A. Bonnemère: Histoire des Camisardes. Adolphe Michel: Louvois et Les Protestantes. Athanase Coquerel Fils; Les Forçats pour La Foi, &c., &c.

It remains to be added that part of this work—viz., the "Wars of the Camisards," and the "Journey in the Country of the Vaudois"—originally appeared in Good Words.

S.S.

London, October, 1873.[Back to Contents]

THE HUGUENOTS IN FRANCE.

CHAPTER I.

REVOCATION OF THE EDICT OF NANTES.

The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes was signed by Louis XIV. of France, on the 18th of October, 1685, and published four days afterwards.

Although the Revocation was the personal act of the King, it was nevertheless a popular measure, approved by the Catholic Church of France, and by the great body of the French people.

The King had solemnly sworn, at the beginning of his reign, to maintain, the tolerating Edict of Henry IV.—the Huguenots being amongst the most industrious, enterprising, and loyal of his subjects. But the advocacy of the King's then Catholic mistress, Madame de Maintenon, and of his Jesuit Confessor, Père la Chaise, overcame his scruples, and the deed of Revocation of the Edict was at length signed and published.

The aged Chancellor, Le Tellier, was so overjoyed at the measure, that on affixing the great seal of France to the deed, he exclaimed, in the words of Simeon, "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen the salvation."

Three months later, the great Bossuet, the eagle of Meaux, preached the funeral sermon of Le Tellier; in the course of which he testified to the immense joy of the Church at the Revocation of the Edict. "Let us," said he, "expand our hearts in praises of the piety of Louis. Let our acclamations ascend to heaven, and let us say to this new Constantine, this new Theodosius, this new Marcian, this new Charlemagne, what the thirty-six fathers formerly said in the Council of Chalcedon: 'You have affirmed the faith, you have exterminated the heretics; it is a work worthy of your reign, whose proper character it is. Thanks to you, heresy is no more. God alone can have worked this marvel. King of heaven, preserve the King of earth: it is the prayer of the Church, it is the prayer of the Bishops.'"[2]

Madame de Maintenon also received the praises of the Church. "All good people," said the Abbé de Choisy, "the Pope, the bishops, and all the clergy, rejoice at the victory of Madame de Maintenon." Madame enjoyed the surname of Director of the Affairs of the Clergy; and it was said by the ladies of St. Cyr (an institution founded by her), that "the cardinals and the bishops knew no other way of approaching the King save through her."

It is generally believed that her price for obtaining the King's consent to the Act of Revocation, was the withdrawal by the clergy of their opposition to her marriage with the King; and that the two were privately united by the Archbishop of Paris at Versailles, a few days after, in the presence of Père la Chaise and two more witnesses. But Louis XIV. never publicly recognised De Maintenon as his wife—never rescued her from the ignominious position in which she originally stood related to him.

People at court all spoke with immense praises of the King's intentions with respect to destroying the Huguenots. "Killing them off" was a matter of badinage with the courtiers. Madame de Maintenon wrote to the Duc de Noailles, "The soldiers are killing numbers of the fanatics—they hope soon to free Languedoc of them."

That picquante letter-writer, Madame de Sévigné, often referred to the Huguenots. She seems to have classed them with criminals or wild beasts. When residing in Low Brittany during a revolt against the Gabelle, a friend wrote to her, "How dull you must be!" "No," replied Madame de Sévigné, "we are not so dull—hanging is quite a refreshment to me! They have just taken twenty-four or thirty of these men, and are going to throw them off."

A few days after the Edict had been revoked, she wrote to her cousin Bussy, at Paris: "You have doubtless seen the Edict by which the King revokes that of Nantes. There is nothing so fine as that which it contains, and never has any King done, or ever will do, a more memorable act." Bussy replied to her: "I immensely admire the conduct of the King in destroying the Huguenots. The wars which have been waged against them, and the St. Bartholomew, have given some reputation to the sect. His Majesty has gradually undermined it; and the edict he has just published, maintained by the dragoons and by Bourdaloue,[3] will soon give them the coup de grâce."

In a future letter to Count Bussy, Madame de Sévigné informed him of "a dreadfully fatiguing journey which her son-in-law M. de Grignan had made in the mountains of Dauphiny, to pursue and punish the miserable Huguenots, who issued from their holes, and vanished like ghosts to avoid extermination."

De Baville, however, the Lieutenant of Languedoc, kept her in good heart. In one of his letters, he said, "I have this morning condemned seventy-six of these wretches (Huguenots), and sent them to the galleys." All this was very pleasant to Madame de Sévigné.

Madame de Scuderi, also, more moderately rejoiced in the Act of Revocation. "The King," she wrote to Bussy, "has worked great marvels against the Huguenots; and the authority which he has employed to unite them to the Church will be most salutary to themselves and to their children, who will be educated in the purity of the faith; all this will bring upon him the benedictions of Heaven."

Even the French Academy, though originally founded by a Huguenot, publicly approved the deed of Revocation. In a discourse uttered before it, the Abbé Tallemand exclaimed, when speaking of the Huguenot temple at Charenton, which had just been destroyed by the mob, "Happy ruins, the finest trophy France ever beheld!" La Fontaine described heresy as now "reduced to the last gasp." Thomas Corneille also eulogized the zeal of the King in "throttling the Reformation." Barbier D'Aucourt heedlessly, but truly, compared the emigration of the Protestants "to the departure of the Israelites from Egypt." The Academy afterwards proposed, as the subject of a poem, the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and Fontenelle had the fortune, good or bad, of winning the prize.

The philosophic La Bruyère contributed a maxim in praise of the Revocation. Quinault wrote a poem on the subject; and Madame Deshoulières felt inspired to sing "The Destruction of Heresy." The Abbé de Rancé spoke of the whole affair as a prodigy: "The Temple of Charenton destroyed, and no exercise of Protestantism, within the kingdom; it is a kind of miracle, such as we had never hoped to have seen in our day."

The Revocation was popular with the lower class, who went about sacking and pulling down the Protestant churches. They also tracked the Huguenots and their pastors, where they found them evading or breaking the Edict of Revocation; thus earning the praises of the Church and the fines offered by the King for their apprehension. The provosts and sheriffs of Paris represented the popular feeling, by erecting a brazen statue of the King who had rooted out heresy; and they struck and distributed medals in honour of the great event.

The Revocation was also popular with the dragoons. In order to "convert" the Protestants, the dragoons were unduly billeted upon them. As both officers and soldiers were then very badly paid, they were thereby enabled to live at free quarters. They treated everything in the houses they occupied as if it were their own, and an assignment of billets was little loss than the consignment of the premises to the military, to use for their own purposes, during the time they occupied them.[4]

The Revocation was also approved by those who wished to buy land cheap. As the Huguenots were prevented holding their estates unless they conformed to the Catholic religion, and as many estates were accordingly confiscated and sold, land speculators, as well as grand seigneurs who wished to increase their estates, were constantly on the look-out for good bargains. Even before the Revocation, when the Huguenots were selling their land in order to leave the country, Madame de Maintenon wrote to her nephew, for whom she had obtained from the King a grant of 800,000 francs, "I beg of you carefully to use the money you are about to receive. Estates in Poitou may be got for nothing; the desolation of the Huguenots will drive them to sell more. You may easily acquire extensive possessions in Poitou."

The Revocation was especially gratifying to the French Catholic Church. The Pope, of course, approved of it. Te Deums were sung at Rome in thanksgiving for the forced conversion of the Huguenots. Pope Innocent XI. sent a brief to Louis XIV., in which he promised him the unanimous praises of the Church, "Amongst all the proofs," said he, "which your Majesty has given of natural piety, not the least brilliant is the zeal, truly worthy of the most Christian King, which has induced you to revoke all the ordinances issued in favour of the heretics of your kingdom."[5]

The Jesuits were especially elated by the Revocation. It had been brought about by the intrigues of their party, acting on the King's mind through Madame de Maintenon and Père la Chaise. It enabled them to fill their schools and nunneries with the children of Protestants, who were compelled by law to pay for their education by Jesuit priests. To furnish the required accommodation, nearly the whole of the Protestant temples that had not been pulled down were made over to the Jesuits, to be converted into monastic schools and nunneries. Even Bossuet, the "last father of the Church," shared in the spoils of the Huguenots. A few days after the Edict had been revoked, Bossuet applied for the materials of the temples of Nauteuil and Morcerf, situated in his diocese; and his Majesty ordered that they should be granted to him.[6]

Now that Protestantism had been put down, and the officers of Louis announced from all parts of the kingdom that the Huguenots were becoming converted by thousands, there was nothing but a clear course before the Jesuits in France. For their religion was now the favoured religion of the State.

It is true there were the Jansenists—declared to be heretical by the Popes, and distinguished for their opposition to the doctrines and moral teaching of the Jesuits—who were suffering from a persecution which then drove some of the members of Port Royal into exile, and eventually destroyed them. But even the Jansenists approved the persecution of the Protestants. The great Arnault, their most illustrious interpreter, though in exile in the Low Countries, declared that though the means which Louis XIV. had employed had been "rather violent, they had in nowise been unjust."

But Protestantism being declared destroyed, and Jansenism being in disgrace, there was virtually no legal religion in France but one—that of the Roman Catholic Church. Atheism, it is true, was tolerated, but then Atheism was not a religion. The Atheists did not, like the Protestants, set up rival churches, or appoint rival ministers, and seek to draw people to their assemblies. The Atheists, though they tacitly approved the religion of the King, had no opposition to offer to it—only neglect, and perhaps concealed contempt.

Hence it followed that the Court and the clergy had far more toleration for Atheism than for either Protestantism or Jansenism. It is authentically related that Louis XIV. on one occasion objected to the appointment of a representative on a foreign mission on account of the person being supposed to be a Jansenist; but on its being discovered that the nominee was only an Atheist, the objection was at once withdrawn.[7]

At the time of the Revocation, when the King and the Catholic Church were resolved to tolerate no religion other than itself, the Church had never seemed so powerful in France. It had a strong hold upon the minds of the people. It was powerful in its leaders and its great preachers; in fact, France has never, either before or since, exhibited such an array of preaching genius as Bossuet, Bourdaloue, Fléchier, and Massillon.

Yet the uncontrolled and enormously increased power conferred upon the French Church at that time, most probably proved its greatest calamity. Less than a hundred years after the Revocation, the Church had lost its influence over the people, and was despised. The Deists and Atheists, sprung from the Church's bosom, were in the ascendant; and Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, and Mirabeau, were regarded as greater men than either Bossuet, Bourdaloue, Fléchier, or Massillon.

Not one of the clergy we have named, powerful orators though they were, ever ventured to call in question the cruelties with which the King sought to compel the Protestants to embrace the dogmas of their Church. There were no doubt many Catholics who deplored the force practised on the Huguenots; but they were greatly in the minority, and had no power to make their opposition felt. Some of them considered it an impious sacrilege to compel the Protestants to take the Catholic sacrament—to force them to accept the host, which Catholics believed to be the veritable body of Christ, but which the Huguenots could only accept as bread, over which some function had been performed by the priests, in whose miraculous power of conversion they did not believe.

Fénélon took this view of the forcible course employed by the Jesuits; but he was in disgrace as a Jansenist, and what he wrote on the subject remained for a long time unknown, and was only first published in 1825. The Duc de Saint-Simon, also a Jansenist, took the same view, which he embodied in his "Memoirs;" but these were kept secret by his family, and were not published for nearly a century after his death.

Thus the Catholic Church remained triumphant. The Revocation was apparently approved by all, excepting the Huguenots. The King was flattered by the perpetual conversions reported to be going on throughout the country—five thousand persons in one place, ten thousand in another, who had abjured and taken the communion—at once, and sometimes "instantly."

"The King," says Saint-Simon, "congratulated himself on his power and his piety. He believed himself to have renewed the days of the preaching of the Apostles, and attributed to himself all the honour. The Bishops wrote panegyrics of him; the Jesuits made the pulpits resound with his praises.... He swallowed their poison in deep draughts."[8]

Louis XIV. lived for thirty years after the Edict of Nantes had been revoked. He had therefore the fullest opportunity of observing the results of the policy he had pursued. He died in the hands of the Jesuits, his body covered with relics of the true cross. Madame de Maintenon, the "famous and fatal witch," as Saint-Simon called her, abandoned him at last; and the King died, lamented by no one.

He had banished, or destroyed, during-his reign, about a million of his subjects, and those who remained did not respect him. Many regarded him as a self-conceited tyrant, who sought to save his own soul by inflicting penance on the backs of others. He loaded his kingdom with debt, and overwhelmed his people with taxes. He destroyed the industry of France, which had been mainly supported by the Huguenots. Towards the end of his life he became generally hated; and while his heart was conveyed to the Grand Jesuits, his body, which was buried at St. Denis, was hurried to the grave accompanied by the execrations of the people.

Yet the Church remained faithful to him to the last. The great Massillon preached his funeral sermon; though the message was draped in the livery of the Court. "How far," said he, "did Louis XIV. carry his zeal for the Church, that virtue of sovereigns who have received power and the sword only that they may be props of the altar and defenders of its doctrine! Specious reasons of State! In vain did you oppose to Louis the timid views of human wisdom, the body of the monarchy enfeebled by the flight of so many citizens, the course of trade slackened, either by the deprivation of their industry, or by the furtive removal of their wealth! Dangers fortify his zeal. The work of God fears not man. He believes even that he strengthens his throne by overthrowing that of error. The profane temples are destroyed, the pulpits of seduction are cast down. The prophets of falsehood are torn from their flocks. At the first blow dealt to it by Louis, heresy falls, disappears, and is reduced either to hide itself in the obscurity whence it issued, or to cross the seas, and to bear with it into foreign lands its false gods, its bitterness, and its rage."[9]

Whatever may have been the temper which the Huguenots displayed when they were driven from France by persecution, they certainly carried with them something far more valuable than rage. They carried with them their virtue, piety, industry, and valour, which proved the source of wealth, spirit, freedom, and character, in all those countries—Holland, Prussia, England, and America—in which these noble exiles took refuge.

We shall next see whether the Huguenots had any occasion for entertaining the "rage" which the great Massillon attributed to them.[Back to Contents]

CHAPTER II.

EFFECTS OF THE REVOCATION.

The Revocation struck with civil death the entire Protestant population of France. All the liberty of conscience which they had enjoyed under the Edict of Nantes, was swept away by the act of the King. They were deprived of every right and privilege; their social life was destroyed; their callings were proscribed; their property was liable to be confiscated at any moment; and they were subjected to mean, detestable, and outrageous cruelties.

From the day of the Revocation, the relation of Louis XIV. to his Huguenot subjects was that of the Tyrant and his Victims. The only resource which remained to the latter was that of flying from their native country; and an immense number of persons took the opportunity of escaping from France.

The Edict of Revocation proclaimed that the Huguenot subjects of France must thenceforward be of "the King's religion;" and the order was promulgated throughout the kingdom. The Prime Minister, Louvois, wrote to the provincial governors, "His Majesty desires that the severest rigour shall be shown to those who will not conform to His Religion, and those who seek the foolish glory of wishing to be the last, must be pushed to the utmost extremity."

The Huguenots were forbidden, under the penalty of death, to worship publicly after their own religious forms. They were also forbidden, under the penalty of being sent to the galleys for life, to worship privately in their own homes. If they were overheard singing their favourite psalms, they were liable to fine, imprisonment, or the galleys. They were compelled to hang out flags from their houses on the days of Catholic processions; but they were forbidden, under a heavy penalty, to look out of their windows when the Corpus Domini was borne along the streets.

The Huguenots were rigidly forbidden to instruct their children in their own faith. They were commanded to send them to the priest to be baptized and brought up in the Roman Catholic faith, under the penalty of five hundred livres fine in each case. The boys were educated in Jesuit schools, the girls in nunneries, the parents being compelled to pay the required expenses; and where the parents were too poor to pay, the children were at once transferred to the general hospitals. A decree of the King, published in December, 1685, ordered that every child of five years and upwards was to be taken possession of by the authorities, and removed from its Protestant parents. This decree often proved a sentence of death, not only to the child, but to its parents.

The whole of the Protestant temples throughout France were subject to demolition. The expelled pastors were compelled to evacuate the country within fifteen days. If, in the meantime, they were found performing their functions, they were liable to be sent to the galleys for life. If they undertook to marry Protestants, the marriages were declared illegal, and the children bastards. If, after the expiry of the fifteen days, they were found lingering in France, the pastors were then liable to the penalty of death.

Protestants could neither be born, nor live, nor die, without state and priestly interference. Protestant sages-femmes were not permitted to exercise their functions; Protestant doctors were prohibited from practising; Protestant surgeons and apothecaries were suppressed; Protestant advocates, notaries, and lawyers were interdicted; Protestants could not teach, and all their schools, public and private, were put down. Protestants were no longer employed by the Government in affairs of finance, as collectors of taxes, or even as labourers on the public roads, or in any other office. Even Protestant grocers were forbidden to exercise their calling.

There must be no Protestant librarians, booksellers, or printers. There was, indeed, a general raid upon Protestant literature all over France. All Bibles, Testaments, and books of religious instruction, were collected and publicly burnt. There were bonfires in almost every town. At Metz, it occupied a whole day to burn the Protestant books which had been seized, handed over to the clergy, and condemned to be destroyed.

Protestants were even forbidden to hire out horses, and Protestant grooms were forbidden to give riding lessons. Protestant domestics were forbidden to hire themselves as servants, and Protestant mistresses were forbidden to hire them under heavy penalties. If they engaged Protestant servants, they were liable to be sent to the galleys for life. They were even prevented employing "new converts."

Artisans were forbidden to work without certificates that their religion was Catholic. Protestant apprenticeships were suppressed. Protestant washerwomen were excluded from their washing-places on the river. In fact, there was scarcely a degradation that could be invented, or an insult that could be perpetrated, that was not practised upon those poor Huguenots who refused to be of "the King's religion."

Even when Protestants were about to take refuge in death, their troubles were not over. The priests had the power of forcing their way into the dying man's house, where they presented themselves at his bedside, and offered him conversion and the viaticum. If the dying man refused these, he was liable to be seized after death, dragged from the house, pulled along the streets naked, and buried in a ditch, or thrown upon a dunghill.[10]

For several years before the Revocation, while the persecutions of the Huguenots had been increasing, many had realised their means, and fled abroad into Switzerland, Germany, Holland, and England. But after the Revocation, emigration from France was strictly forbidden, under penalty of confiscation of the whole goods and property of the emigrant. Any person found attempting to leave the country, was liable to the seizure of all that belonged to him, and to perpetual imprisonment at the galleys; one half the amount realised by the sale of the property being paid to the informers, who thus became the most active agents of the Government. The Act also ordered that all landed proprietors who had left France before the Revocation, should return within four months, under penalty of confiscation of all their property.

Amongst those of the King's subjects who were the most ready to obey his orders were some of the old Huguenot noble families, such as the members of the houses of Bouillon, Coligny, Rohan, Tremouille, Sully, and La Force. These great vassals, whom a turbulent feudalism had probably in the first instance induced to embrace Protestantism, were now found ready to change their profession of religion in servile obedience to the monarch.

The lesser nobility were more faithful and consistent. Many of them abandoned their estates and fled across the frontier, rather than live a daily lie to God by forswearing the religion of their conscience. Others of this class, on whom religion sat more lightly, as the only means of saving their property from confiscation, pretended to be converted to Roman Catholicism; though, we shall find, that these "new converts," as they were called, were treated with as much suspicion on the one side as they were regarded with contempt on the other.

There were also the Huguenot manufacturers, merchants, and employers of labour, of whom a large number closed their workshops and factories, sold off their goods, converted everything into cash, at whatever sacrifice, and fled across the frontier into Switzerland—either settling there, or passing through it on their way to Germany, Holland, or England.

It was necessary to stop this emigration, which was rapidly diminishing the population, and steadily impoverishing the country. It was indeed a terrible thing for Frenchmen, to tear themselves away from their country—Frenchmen, who have always clung so close to their soil that they have rarely been able to form colonies of emigration elsewhere—it was breaking so many living fibres to leave France, to quit the homes of their fathers, their firesides, their kin, and their race. Yet, in a multitude of cases, they were compelled to tear themselves by the roots out of the France they so loved.

Yet it was so very easy for them to remain. The King merely required them to be "converted." He held that loyalty required them to be of "his religion." On the 19th of October, 1685, the day after he had signed the Act of Revocation, La Reynée, lieutenant of the police of Paris, issued a notice to the Huguenot tradespeople and working-classes, requiring them to be converted instantly. Many of them were terrified, and conformed accordingly. Next day, another notice was issued to the Huguenot bourgeois, requiring them to assemble on the following day for the purpose of publicly making a declaration of their conversion.

The result of those measures was to make hypocrites rather than believers, and they took effect upon the weakest and least-principled persons. The strongest, most independent, and high-minded of the Huguenots, who would not be hypocrites, resolved passively to resist them, and if they could not be allowed to exercise freedom of conscience in their own country, they determined to seek it elsewhere. Hence the large increase in the emigration from all parts of France immediately after the Act of Revocation had been proclaimed.[11] All the roads leading to the frontier or the sea-coast streamed with fugitives. They went in various forms and guises—sometimes in bodies of armed men, at other times in solitary parties, travelling at night and sleeping in the woods by day. They went as beggars, travelling merchants, sellers of beads and chaplets, gipsies, soldiers, shepherds, women with their faces dyed and sometimes dressed in men's clothes, and in all manner of disguises.

To prevent this extensive emigration, more violent measures were adopted. Every road out of France was posted with guards. The towns, highways, bridges, and ferries, were all watched; and heavy rewards were promised to those who would stop and bring back the fugitives. Many were taken, loaded with irons, and dispatched by the most public roads through France—as a sight to be seen by other Protestants—to the galleys at Marseilles, Brest, and other ports. As they went along they were subject to every sort of indignity in the towns and villages through which they passed. They were hooted, stoned, spit upon, and loaded with insult.

Many others went by sea, in French as well as in foreign ships. Though the sailors of France were prohibited the exercise of the reformed religion, under the penalty of fines, corporal punishment, and seizure of the vessels where the worship was allowed, yet many of the emigrants contrived to get away by the help of French ship captains, masters of sloops, fishing-boats, and coast pilots—who most probably sympathized with the views of those who wished to fly their country rather than become hypocrites and forswear their religion. A large number of emigrants, who went hurriedly off to sea in little boats, must have been drowned, as they were never afterwards heard of.

There were also many English ships that appeared off the coast to take the flying Huguenots away by night. They also escaped in foreign ships taking in their cargoes in the western harbours. They got cooped up in casks or wine barraques, with holes for breathing places; others contrived to get surreptitiously into the hold, and stowed themselves away among the goods. When it became known to the Government that many Protestants were escaping in this way, provision was made to meet the case; and a Royal Order was issued that, before any ship was allowed to set sail for a foreign port, the hold should be fumigated with deadly gas, so that any hidden Huguenot who could not otherwise be detected, might thus be suffocated![12]

In the meantime, however, numerous efforts were being made to convert the Huguenots. The King, his ministers, the dragoons, the bishops, and clergy used all due diligence. "Everybody is now missionary," said the fascinating Madame de Sévigné; "each has his mission—above all the magistrates and governors of provinces, helped by the dragoons. It is the grandest and finest thing that has ever been imagined and executed."[13]

The conversions effected by the dragoons were much more sudden than those effected by the priests. Sometimes a hundred or more persons were converted by a single troop within an hour. In this way Murillac converted thousands of persons in a week. The regiment of Ashfeld converted the whole province of Poitou in a month.

De Noailles was very successful in his conversions. He converted Nismes in twenty-four hours; the day after he converted Montpellier; and he promised in a few weeks to deliver all Lower Languedoc from the leprosy of heresy. In one of his dispatches soon after the Revocation, he boasted that he had converted 350 nobility and gentry, 54 ministers, and 25,000 individuals of various classes.

The quickness of the conversions effected by the dragoons is easily to be accounted for. The principal cause was the free quartering of soldiers in the houses of the Protestants. The soldiers knew what was the object for which they were thus quartered. They lived freely in all ways. They drank, swore, shouted, beat the heretics, insulted their women, and subjected them to every imaginable outrage and insult.

One of their methods of making converts was borrowed from the persecutions of the Vaudois. It consisted in forcing the feet of the intended converts into boots full of boiling grease, or they would hang them up by the feet, sometimes forgetting to cut them down until they were dead. They would also force them to drink water perpetually, or make them sit under a slow dripping upon their heads until they died of madness. Sometimes they placed burning coals in their hands, or used an instrument of torture resembling that known in Scotland as the thumbscrews.[14] Many of their attempts at conversion were accompanied by details too hideous to be recorded.

Of those who would not be converted, the prisons were kept full. They were kept there without the usual allowance of straw, and almost without food. In winter they had no fire, and at night no lamp. Though ill, they had no doctors. Besides the gaoler, their only visitors were priests and monks, entreating them to make abjuration. Of course many died in prison—feeble women, and aged and infirm men. In the society of obscene criminals, with whom many were imprisoned, they prayed for speedy deliverance by death, and death often came to their help.

More agreeable, but still more insulting, methods of conversion were also attempted. Louis tried to bribe the pastors by offering them an increase of annual pay beyond their former stipends. If there were a Protestant judge or advocate, Louvois at once endeavoured to bribe him over. For instance, there was a heretical syndic of Strasbourg, to whom Louvois wrote, "Will you be converted? I will give you 6,000 livres of pension.—Will you not? I will dismiss you."

Of course many of the efforts made to convert the Huguenots proved successful. The orders of the Prime Minister, the free quarters afforded to the dragoons, the preachings and threatenings of the clergy, all contributed to terrify the Protestants. The fear of being sent to the galleys for life—the threat of losing the whole of one's goods and property—the alarm of seeing one's household broken up, the children seized by the priests and sent to the nearest monkery or nunnery for maintenance and education—all these considerations doubtless had their effect in increasing the number of conversions.

Persecution is not easy to bear. To have all the powers and authorities employed against one's life, interests, and faith, is what few can persistently oppose. And torture, whether it be slow or sudden, is what many persons, by reason of their physical capacity, have not the power to resist. Even the slow torment of dragoons quartered in the houses of the heretics—their noise and shoutings, their drinking and roistering, the insults and outrages they were allowed to practise—was sufficient to compel many at once to declare themselves to be converted.

Indeed, pain is, of all things, one of the most terrible of converters. One of the prisoners condemned to the galleys, when he saw the tortures which the victims about him had to endure by night and by day, said that sufferings such as these were "enough to make one conform to Buddhism or Mahommedanism as well as to Popery"; and doubtless it was force and suffering which converted the Huguenots, far more than love of the King or love of the Pope.

By all these means—forcible, threatening, insulting, and bribing—employed for the conversion of the Huguenots, the Catholics boasted that in the space of three months they had received an accession of five hundred thousand new converts to the Church of Rome.

But the "new converts" did not gain much by their change. They were forced to attend mass, but remained suspected. Even the dragoons who converted them, called them dastards and deniers of their faith. They tried, if they could, to avoid confession, but confess they must. There was the fine, confiscation of goods, and imprisonment at the priest's back.

Places were set apart for them in the churches, where they were penned up like lepers. A person was stationed at the door with a roll of their names, to which they were obliged to answer. During the service, the most prominent among them were made to carry the lights, the holy water, the incense, and such things, which to Huguenots were an abomination. They were also required to partake of the Host, which Protestants regarded as an awful mockery of the glorious Godhead.

The Duc de Saint-Simon, in his memoirs, after referring to the unmanly cruelties practised by Louis XIV. on the Huguenots, "without the slightest pretext or necessity," characterizes this forced participation in the Eucharist as sacrilegious and blasphemous folly, notwithstanding that nearly all the bishops lent themselves to the practice. "From simulated abjuration," he says, "they [the Huguenots] are dragged to endorse what they do not believe in, and to receive the divine body of the Saint of saints whilst remaining persuaded that they are only eating bread which they ought to abhor. Such is the general abomination born of flattery and cruelty. From torture to abjuration, and from that to the communion, there were only twenty-four hours' distance; and the executioners were the conductors of the converts, and their witnesses. Those who in the end appeared to have become reconciled, when more at leisure did not fail, by their flight or their behaviour, to contradict their pretended conversion."[15]

Indeed, many of the new converts, finding life in France to be all but intolerable, determined to follow the example of the Huguenots who had already fled, and took the first opportunity of disposing of their goods and leaving the country. One of the first things they did on reaching a foreign soil, was to attend a congregation of their brethren, and make "reconnaisances," or acknowledgment of their repentance for having attended mass and pretended to be converted to the Roman Catholic Church.[16] At one of the sittings of the Threadneedle Street Huguenot Church in London, held in May, 1687—two years after the Revocation—not fewer than 497 members were again received into the Church which, by force, they had pretended to abandon.

Not many pastors abjured. A few who yielded in the first instance through terror and stupor, almost invariably returned to their ancient faith. They were offered considerable pensions if they would conform and become Catholics. The King promised to augment their income by one-third, and if they became advocates or doctors in law, to dispense with their three years' study, and with the right of diploma.

At length, most of the pastors had left the country. About seven hundred had gone into Switzerland, Holland, Prussia, England, and elsewhere. A few remained going about to meetings of the peasantry, at the daily risk of death; for every pastor taken was hung. A reward of 5,500 livres was promised to whoever should take a pastor, or cause him to be taken. The punishment of death was also pronounced against all persons who should be discovered attending such meetings.

Nevertheless, meetings of the Protestants continued to be held, with pastors or without. They were, for the most part, held at night, amidst the ruins of their pulled-down temples. But this exposed them to great danger, for spies were on the alert to inform upon them and have them apprehended.

At length they selected more sheltered places in remote quarters, where they met for prayer and praise, often resorting thither from great distances. They were, however, often surprised, cut to pieces by the dragoons, who hung part of the prisoners on the neighbouring trees, and took the others to prison, from whence they were sent to the galleys, or hung on the nearest public gibbet.

Fulcran Rey was one of the most celebrated of the early victims. He was a native of Nismes, twenty-four years old. He had just completed his theological studies; but there were neither synods to receive him to pastoral ordination, nor temples for him to preach in. The only reward he could earn by proceeding on his mission was death, yet he determined to preach. The first assemblies he joined were in the neighbourhood of Nismes, where his addresses were interrupted by assaults of the dragoons. The dangers to his co-religionaries were too great in the neighbourhood of this populous town; and he next went to Castres and the Vaunage; after which he accepted an invitation to proceed into the less populous districts of the Cevennes.

He felt the presentiment of death upon him in accepting the invitation; but he went, leaving behind him a letter to his father, saying that he was willing, if necessary, to give his life for the cause of truth. "Oh! what happiness it would give me," he said, "if I might be found amongst the number of those whom the Lord has reserved to announce his praise and to die for his cause!"

His apostolate was short but glorious. He went from village to village in the Cevennes, collected the old worshippers together, prayed and preached to them, encouraging all to suffer in the name of Christ. He remained at this work for about six weeks, when a spy who accompanied him—one whom he had regarded as sincere a Huguenot as himself—informed against him for the royal reward, and delivered him over to the dragoons.

Rey was at first thrown into prison at Anduze, when, after a brief examination by the local judge, he was entrusted to thirty soldiers, to be conveyed to Alais. There he was subjected to further examination, avowing that he had preached wherever he had found faithful people ready to hear him. At Nismes, he was told that he had broken the law, in preaching contrary to the King's will. "I obey the law of the King of kings," he replied; "it is right that I should obey God rather than man. Do with me what you will; I am ready to die."

The priests, the judges, and other persons of influence endeavoured to induce him to change his opinions. Promises of great favours were offered him if he would abjure; and when the intendant Baville informed him of the frightful death before him if he refused, he replied, "My life is not of value to me, provided I gain Christ." He remained firm. He was ordered to be put to the torture. He was still unshaken. Then he was delivered over to the executioner. "I am treated," he said, "more mildly than my Saviour."

On his way to the place of execution, two monks walked by his side to induce him to relent, and to help him to die. "Let me alone," he said, "you annoy me with your consolations." On coming in sight of the gallows at Beaucaire, he cried, "Courage, courage! the end of my journey is at hand. I see before me the ladder which leads to heaven."

The monks wished to mount the ladder with him. "Return," said he, "I have no need of your help. I have assistance enough from God to take the last step of my journey." When he reached the upper platform, he was about, before dying, to make public his confession of faith. But the authorities had arranged beforehand that this should be prevented. When he opened his mouth, a roll of military drums muffled his voice. His radiant look and gestures spoke for him. A few minutes more, and he was dead; and when the paleness of death spread over his face, it still bore the reflex of joy and peace in which he had expired. "There is a veritable martyr," said many even of the Catholics who were witnesses of his death.

It was thought that the public hanging of a pastor would put a stop to all further ministrations among the Huguenots. But the sight of the bodies of their brethren hung on the nearest trees, and the heads of their pastors rolling on the scaffold, did not deter them from continuing to hold religious meetings in solitary places, more especially in Languedoc, Viverais, and the provinces in the south-east of France.

Between the year 1686, when Fulcran Rey was hanged at Beaucaire, and the year 1698, when Claude Brousson was hanged at Montpellier, not fewer than seventeen pastors were publicly executed; namely, three at Nismes, two at St. Hippolyte and Marsillargues in the Cevennes, and twelve on the Peyrou at Montpellier—the public place on which Protestant Christians in the South of France were then principally executed.

There has been some discussion lately as to the massacre of the Huguenots about a century before this period. It has been held that the St. Bartholomew Massacre was only a political squabble, begun by the Huguenots, in which they got the worst of it. The number of persons killed on the occasion has been reduced to a very small number. It has been doubted whether the Pope had anything to do with the medal struck at Rome, bearing the motto Ugonottorum Strages ("Massacre of the Huguenots"), with the Pope's head on one side, and an angel on the other pursuing and slaying a band of flying heretics.

Whatever may be said of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, there can be no mistake about the persecutions which preceded and followed the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. They were continued for more than half a century, and had the effect of driving from France about a million of the best, most vigorous, and industrious of Frenchmen. In the single province of Languedoc, not less than a hundred thousand persons (according to Boulainvilliers) were destroyed by premature death, one-tenth of whom perished by fire, strangulation, or the wheel.

It could not be said that Louis XIV. and the priests were destroying France and tearing its flesh, and that Frenchmen did not know it. The proclamations, edicts and laws published against the Huguenots were known to all Frenchmen. Bénoît[17] gives a list of three hundred and thirty-three issued by Louis XIV. during the ten years subsequent to the Revocation, and they were continued, as we shall find, during the succeeding reign.

"We have," says M. Charles Coquerel, "a horror of St. Bartholomew! Will foreigners believe it, that France observed a code of laws framed in the same infernal spirit, which maintained a perpetual St. Bartholomew's day in this country for about sixty years! If they cannot call us the most barbarous of people, their judgment will be well founded in pronouncing us the most inconsistent."[18]

M. De Félice, however, will not believe that the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes was popular in France. He takes a much more patriotic view of the French people. He cannot believe them to have been wilfully guilty of the barbarities which the French Government committed upon the Huguenots. It was the King, the priests, and the courtiers only! But he forgets that these upper barbarians were supported by the soldiers and the people everywhere. He adds, however, that if the Revocation were popular, "it would be the most overwhelming accusation against the Church of Rome, that it had thus educated and fashioned France."[19] There is, however, no doubt whatever that the Jesuits, during the long period that they had the exclusive education of the country in their hands, did thus fashion France; for, in 1793, the people educated by them treated King, Jesuits, priests, and aristocracy, in precisely the same manner that they had treated the Huguenots about a century before.[Back to Contents]

CHAPTER III.

CLAUDE BROUSSON, THE HUGUENOT ADVOCATE.

To give an account in detail of the varieties of cruelty inflicted on the Huguenots, and of the agonies to which they were subjected for many years before and after the passing of the Act of Revocation, would occupy too much space, besides being tedious through the mere repetition of like horrors. But in order to condense such an account, we think it will be more interesting if we endeavour to give a brief history of the state of France at that time, in connection with the biography of one of the most celebrated Huguenots of his period, both in his life, his piety, his trials, and his endurance—that of Claude Brousson, the advocate, the pastor, and the martyr of Languedoc.

Claude Brousson was born at Nismes in 1647. He was designed by his parents for the profession of the law, and prosecuted his studies at the college of his native town, where he graduated as Doctor of Laws.

He commenced his professional career about the time when Louis XIV. began to issue his oppressive edicts against the Huguenots. Protestant advocates were not yet forbidden to practise, but they already laboured under many disabilities. He continued, however, for some time to exercise his profession, with much ability, at Castres, Castelnaudry, and Toulouse. He was frequently employed in defending Protestant pastors, and in contesting the measures for suppressing their congregations and levelling their churches under existing edicts, some time before the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes had been finally resolved upon.

Thus, in 1682, he was engaged in disputing the process instituted against the ministers and elders of the church at Nismes, with the view of obtaining an order for the demolition of the remaining Protestant temple of that city.[20] The pretext for suppressing this church was, that a servant girl from the country, being a Catholic, had attended worship and received the sacrament from the hands of M. Peyrol, one of the ministers.

Brousson defended the case, observing, at the conclusion of his speech, that the number of Protestants was very great at Nismes; that the ministers could not be personally acquainted with all the people, and especially with occasional visitors and strangers; that the ministers were quite unacquainted with the girl, or that she professed the Roman Catholic religion: "facts which rendered it probable that she was sent to the temple for the purpose of furnishing an occasion for the prosecution." Sentence was for the present suspended.

Another process was instituted during the same year for the suppression of the Protestant church at Uzes, and another for the demolition of the large Protestant temple at Montpellier. The pretext for destroying the latter was of a singular character.

A Protestant pastor, M. Paulet, had been bribed into embracing the Roman Catholic religion, in reward for which he was appointed counsellor to the Presidial Court of Montpellier. But his wife and one of his daughters refused to apostatize with him. The daughter, though only between ten and eleven years old, was sent to a convent at Teirargues, where, after enduring considerable persecution, she persisted in her steadfastness, and was released after a twelvemonth's confinement. Five years later she was again seized and sent to another convent; but, continuing immovable against the entreaties and threats of the abbess and confessor, she was again set at liberty.

An apostate priest, however, who had many years before renounced the Protestant faith, and become director and confessor of the nuns at Teirargues, forged two documents; the one to show that while at the convent, Mdlle. Paulet had consented to embrace the Catholic religion, and the other containing her formal abjuration. It was alleged that her abjuration had been signified to Isaac Dubourdieu, of Montpellier, one of the most distinguished pastors of the French Church; but that, nevertheless, he had admitted her to the sacrament. This, if true, was contrary to law; upon which the Catholic clergy laid information against the pastor and the young lady before the Parliament of Toulouse, when they obtained sentence of imprisonment against the former, and the penance of amende honorable against the latter.

The demolition of temples was the usual consequence of convictions like these. The Duc de Noailles, lieutenant-general of the province, entered the city on the 16th of October, 1682, accompanied by a strong military force; and at a sitting of the Assembly of the States which shortly followed, the question of demolishing the Protestant temple at Montpellier was brought under consideration. Four of the Protestant pastors and several of the elders had before waited upon De Noailles to claim a respite until they should have submitted their cause to the King in Council.

The request having been refused, one of the deputation protested against the illegality of the proceedings, and had the temerity to ask his excellency whether he was aware that there were eighteen hundred thousand Protestant families in France? Upon which the Duke, turning to the officer of his guard, said, "Whilst we wait to see what will become of these eighteen hundred thousand Protestant families, will you please conduct these gentlemen to the citadel?"[21]

The great temple of Montpellier was destroyed immediately on receipt of the King's royal mandate. It required the destruction of the place within twenty-four hours; "but you will give me pleasure," added the King, in a letter to De Noailles, "if you accomplish it in two."

It was, perhaps, scarcely necessary, after the temple had been destroyed, to make any effort to justify these high-handed proceedings. But Mdlle. Paulet, on whose pretended conversion to Catholicism the proceedings had been instituted, was now requested to admit the authenticity of the documents. She was still imprisoned in Toulouse; and although entreated and threatened by turns to admit their truth, she steadfastly denied their genuineness, and asking for a pen, she wrote under each of them, "I affirm that the above signature was not written by my hand.—Isabeau de Paulet."

Of course the documents were forged; but they had answered their purpose. The Protestant temple of Montpellier lay in ruins, and Isabeau de Paulet was recommitted to prison. On hearing of this incident, Brousson remarked, "This is what is called instituting a process against persons after they have been condemned"—a sort of "Jedwood justice."

The repetition of these cases of persecution—the demolition of their churches, and the suppression of their worship—led the Protestants of the Cevennes, Viverais, and Dauphiny to combine for the purpose of endeavouring to stem the torrent of injustice. With this object, a meeting of twenty-eight deputies took place in the house of Brousson, at Toulouse, in the month of May, 1683. As the Assembly of the States were about to take steps to demolish the Protestant temple at Montauban and other towns in the south, and as Brousson was the well-known advocate of the persecuted, the deputies were able to meet at his house to conduct their deliberations, without exciting the jealousy of the priests and the vigilance of the police.

What the meeting of Protestant deputies recommended to their brethren was embodied in a measure, which was afterwards known as "The Project." The chief objects of the project were to exhort the Protestant people to sincere conversion, and the exhibition of the good life which such conversion implies; constant prayer to the Holy Spirit to enable them to remain steadfast in their profession and in the reading and meditation of the Scriptures; encouragements to them to hold together as congregations for the purpose of united worship; "submitting themselves unto the common instructions and to the yoke of Christ, in all places wheresoever He shall have established the true discipline, although the edicts of earthly magistrates be contrary thereto."

At the same time, Brousson drew up a petition to the Sovereign, humbly requesting him to grant permission to the Huguenots to worship God in peace after their consciences, copies of which were sent to Louvois and the other ministers of State. On this and other petitions, Brousson observes, "Surely all the world and posterity will be surprised, that so many respectful petitions, so many complaints of injuries, and so many solid reasons urged for their removal, produced no good result whatever in favour of the Protestants."

The members of the churches which had been interdicted, and whose temples had been demolished, were accordingly invited to assemble in private, in the neighbouring fields or woods—not in public places, nor around the ruins of their ancient temples—for the purpose of worshipping God, exciting each other to piety by prayer and singing, receiving instruction, and celebrating the Lord's Supper.

Various meetings were accordingly held, in the following month of July, in the Cevennes and Viverais. At St. Hypolite, where the temple of the Protestants had been destroyed, about four thousand persons met in a field near the town, when the minister preached to them from the text—"Render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's, and unto God the things which are God's." The meeting was conducted with the utmost solemnity; and a Catholic priest who was present, on giving information to the Bishop of Nismes of the transaction, admitted that the preacher had advanced nothing but what the bishop himself might have spoken.

The dragoons were at once sent to St. Hypolite to put an end to these meetings, and to "convert" the Protestants. The town was almost wholly Protestant. The troops were quartered in numbers in every house; and the people soon became "new converts."

The losses sustained by the inhabitants of the Cevennes from this forced quartering of the troops upon them—and Anduze, Sauvé, St. Germain, Vigan, and Ganges were as full of them as St. Hypolite—may be inferred from the items charged upon the inhabitants of St. Hypolite alone[22]:—

Meetings of the persecuted were also held, under the terms of "The Project," in Viverais and Dauphiny. These meetings having been repeated for several weeks, the priests of the respective districts called upon their bishops for help to put down this heretical display. The Bishop of Valence (Daniel de Cosmac) accordingly informed them that he had taken the necessary steps, and that he had been apprised that twenty thousand soldiers were now on their march to the South to put down the Protestant movement.

On their arrival, the troops were scattered over the country, to watch and suppress any meetings that might be held. The first took place on the 8th of August, at Chateaudouble, a manufacturing village in Drome. The assembly was surprised by a troop of dragoons; but most of the congregation contrived to escape. Those who were taken were hung upon the nearest trees.

Another meeting was held about a fortnight later at Bezaudun, which was attended by many persons from Bourdeaux, a village about half a league distant. While the meeting was at prayer, intelligence was brought that the dragoons had entered Bourdeaux, and that it was a scene of general pillage. The Bourdeaux villagers at once set out for the protection of their families. The troopers met them, and suddenly fell upon them. A few of the villagers were armed, but the principal part defended themselves with stones. Of course they were overpowered; many were killed by the sword, and those taken prisoners were immediately hanged.

A few, who took to flight, sheltered themselves in a barn, where the soldiers found them, set fire to the place, and murdered them as they endeavoured to escape from the flames. One young man was taken prisoner, David Chamier,[23] son of an advocate, and related to some of the most eminent Protestants in France. He was taken to the neighbouring town of Montelimar, and, after a summary trial, he was condemned to be broken to death upon the wheel. The sentence was executed before his father's door; but the young man bore his frightful tortures with astonishing courage.

The contumacious attitude of the Protestants after so many reports had reached Louis XIV. of their entire "conversion," induced him to take more active measures for their suppression. He appointed Marshal Saint-Ruth commander of the district—a man who was a stranger to mercy, who breathed only carnage, and who, because of his ferocity, was known as "The Scourge of the Heretics."

Daniel de Cosmac, Bishop of Valence, had now the help of Saint-Ruth and his twenty thousand troops. The instructions Saint-Ruth received from Louvois were these: "Amnesty has no longer any place for the Viverais, who continue in rebellion after having been informed of the King's gracious designs. In one word, you are to cause such a desolation in that country that its example may restrain all other Huguenots, and may teach them how dangerous it is to rebel against the King."

This was a work quite congenial to Saint-Ruth[24]—rushing about the country, scourging, slaughtering, laying waste, and suppressing the assemblies—his soldiers rushing upon their victims with cries of "Death or the Mass!"

Tracking the Protestants in this way was like "a hunt in a great enclosure." When the soldiers found a meeting of the people going on, they shot them down at once, though unarmed. If they were unable to fly, they met death upon their knees. Antoine Court recounts meetings in which as many as between three and four hundred persons, old men, women, and children, were shot dead on the spot.

De Cosmac, the bishop, was very active in the midst of these massacres. When he went out to convert the people, he first began by sending out Saint-Ruth with the dragoons. Afterwards he himself followed to give instructions for their "conversion," partly through favours, partly by money. "My efforts," he himself admitted, "were not always without success; yet I must avow that the fear of the dragoons, and of their being quartered in the houses of the heretics, contributed much more to their conversion than anything that I did."

The same course was followed throughout the Cevennes. It would be a simple record of cruelty to describe in detail the military proceedings there: the dispersion of meetings; the hanging of persons found attending them; the breaking upon the wheel of the pastors captured, amidst horrible tortures; the destruction of dwellings and of the household goods which they contained. But let us take the single instance of Homel, formerly pastor of the church at Soyon.

Homel was taken prisoner, and found guilty of preaching to his flock after his temple had been destroyed. For this offence he was sentenced to be broken to death upon the wheel. To receive this punishment he was conducted to Tournon, in Viverais, where the Jesuits had a college. He first received forty blows of the iron bar, after which he was left to languish with his bones broken, for forty hours, until he died. During his torments, he said: "I count myself happy that I can die in my Master's service. What! did my glorious Redeemer descend from heaven and suffer an ignominious death for my salvation, and shall I, to prolong a miserable life, deny my blessed Saviour and abandon his people?" While his bones were being broken on the wheel, he said to his wife: "Farewell, once more, my beloved spouse! Though you witness my bones broken to shivers, yet is my soul filled with inexpressible joy." After life was finally extinct, his heart was taken to Chalençon to be publicly exhibited, and his body was exposed in like manner at Beauchatel.

De Noailles, the governor, when referring in one of his dispatches to the heroism displayed by the tortured prisoners, said: "These wretches go to the wheel with the firm assurance of dying martyrs, and ask no other favour than that of dying quickly. They request pardon of the soldiers, but there is not one of them that will ask pardon of the King."

To return to Claude Brousson. After his eloquent defence of the Huguenots of Montauban—the result of which, of course, was that the church was ordered to be demolished—and the institution of processes for the demolition of fourteen more Protestant temples, Brousson at last became aware that the fury of the Catholics and the King was not to be satisfied until they had utterly crushed the religion which he served.

Brousson was repeatedly offered the office of counsellor of Parliament, equivalent to the office of judge, if he would prove an apostate; but the conscience of Brousson was not one that could be bought. He also found that his office of defender of the doomed Huguenots could not be maintained without personal danger, whilst (as events proved) his defence was of no avail to them; and he resolved, with much regret, to give up his profession for a time, and retire for safety and rest to his native town of Nismes.

He resided there, however, only about four months. Saint-Ruth and De Noailles were now overawing Upper Languedoc with their troops. The Protestants of Nismes had taken no part in "The Project;" their remaining temple was still open. But they got up a respectful petition to the King, imploring his consideration of their case. Roman Catholics and Protestants, they said, had so many interests in common, that the ruin of the one must have the effect of ruining the other,—the flourishing manufactures of the province, which were mostly followed by the Protestants, being now rapidly proceeding to ruin. They, therefore, implored his Majesty to grant them permission to prosecute their employments unmolested on account of their religious profession; and lastly, they conjured the King, by his piety, by his paternal clemency, and by every law of equity, to grant them freedom of religious worship.

It was of no use. The hearts of the King, his clergy, and his ministers, were all hardened against them. A copy of the above petition was presented by two ministers of Nismes and several influential gentlemen of Lower Languedoc to the Duke de Noailles, the governor of the province. He treated the deputation with contempt, and their petition with scorn. Writing to Louvois, the King's prime minister, De Noailles said: "Astonished at the effrontery of these wretched persons, I did not hesitate to send them all prisoners to the Citadel of St. Esprit (in the Cevennes), telling them that if there had been petites maisons[25] enough in Languedoc I should not have sent them there."

Nismes was now placed under the same ban as Vivarais, and denounced as "insurrectionary." To quell the pretended revolt, as well as to capture certain persons who were supposed to have been accessory to the framing of the petition, a detachment of four hundred dragoons was ordered into the place. One of those to be apprehended was Claude Brousson. Hundreds of persons knew of his abode in the city, but notwithstanding the public proclamation (which he himself heard from the window of the house where he was staying), and the reward offered for his apprehension, no one attempted to betray him.

After remaining in the city for three days, he adopted a disguised dress, passed out of the Crown Gate, and in the course of a few days found a safe retreat in Switzerland.

Peyrol and Icard, two of the Protestant ministers whom the dragoons were ordered to apprehend, also escaped into Switzerland, Peyrol settling at Lausanne, and Icard becoming the minister of a Huguenot church in Holland. But although the ministers had escaped, all the property they had left behind them was confiscated to the Crown. Hideous effigies of them were prepared and hung on gibbets in the market-place of Nismes by the public executioner, the magistrates and dragoons attending the sham proceeding with the usual ceremony.

At Lausanne, where Claude Brousson settled for a time, he first attempted to occupy himself as a lawyer; but this he shortly gave up to devote himself to the help of the persecuted Huguenots. Like Jurieu and others in Holland, who flooded Europe with accounts of the hideous cruelties of Louis XIV. and his myrmidons the clergy and dragoons, he composed and published a work, addressed to the Roman Catholic party as well as to the Protestants of all countries, entitled, "The State of the Reformed Church of France." He afterwards composed a series of letters specially addressed to the Roman Catholic clergy of France.

But expostulation was of no use. With each succeeding year the persecution became more bitter, until at length, in 1685, the Edict was revoked. In September of that year Brousson learnt that the Protestant church of his native city had been suppressed, and their temple given over to a society of female converters; that the wives and daughters of the Protestants who refused to abjure their faith had been seized and imprisoned in nunneries and religious seminaries; and that three hundred of their husbands and fathers were chained together and sent off in one day for confinement in the galleys at Marseilles.

The number of Huguenots resorting to Switzerland being so great,[26] and they often came so destitute, that a committee was formed at Lausanne to assist the emigrants, and facilitate their settlement in the canton, or enable them to proceed elsewhere. Brousson was from the first an energetic member of this committee. Part of their work was to visit the Protestant states of the north, and find out places to which the emigrants might be forwarded, as well as to collect subscriptions for their conveyance.

In November 1685, a month after the Revocation, Brousson and La Porte set out for Berlin with this object. La Porte was one of the ministers of the Cevennes, who had fled before a sentence of death pronounced against him for having been concerned in "The Project." At Berlin they were received very cordially by the Elector of Brandenburg, who had already given great assistance to the Huguenot emigrants, and expressed himself as willing to do all that he could for their protection. Brousson and La Porte here met the Rev. David Ancillon, who had been for thirty-three years pastor at Metz,[27] and was now pastor of the Elector at Berlin; Gaultier, banished from Montpellier; and Abbadie, banished from Saumur—all ministers of the Huguenot Church there; with a large number of banished ministers and emigrant Protestants from all the provinces of France.

The Elector suggested to Brousson that while at Berlin he should compose a summary account of the condition of the French Protestants, such as should excite the interest and evoke the help of the Protestant rulers and people of the northern States. This was done by Brousson, and the volume was published, entitled "Letters of the Protestants of France who have abandoned all for the cause of the Gospel, to other Protestants; with a particular Letter addressed to Protestant Kings, Electors, Rulers, and Magistrates." The Elector circulated this volume, accompanying it with a letter written in his name, to all the princes of the Continent professing the Augsburg Confession; and it was thus mainly owing to the Elector's intercession that the Huguenots obtained the privilege of establishing congregations in several of the states of Germany, as well as in Sweden and Denmark.

Brousson remained nearly five months at Berlin, after which he departed for Holland to note the progress of the emigration in that country, and there he met a large number of his countrymen. Nearly two hundred and fifty Huguenot ministers had taken refuge in Holland; there were many merchants and manufacturers who had set up their branches of industry in the country; and there were many soldiers who had entered the service of William of Orange. While in Holland, Brousson resided principally with his brother, a banished Huguenot, who had settled at Amsterdam as a merchant.

Having accomplished all that he could for his Huguenot brethren in exile, Brousson returned to Lausanne, where he continued his former labours. He bethought him very much of the Protestants still remaining in France, wandering like sheep without shepherds, deprived of guidance, books, and worship—the prey of ravenous wolves,—and it occurred to him whether the Protestant pastors had done right in leaving their flocks, even though by so doing they had secured the safety of their own lives. Accordingly, in 1686, he wrote and published a "Letter to the Pastors of France at present in Protestant States, concerning the Desolation of their own Churches, and their own Exile."

In this letter he says:—"If, instead of retiring before your persecutors, you had remained in the country; if you had taken refuge in forests and caverns; if you had gone from place to place, risking your lives to instruct and rally the people, until the first shock of the enemy was past; and had you even courageously exposed yourselves to martyrdom—as in fact those have done who have endeavoured to perform your duties in your absence—perhaps the examples of constancy, or zeal, or of piety you had discovered, might have animated your flocks, revived their courage, and arrested the fury of your enemies." He accordingly exhorted the Protestant ministers who had left France to return to their flocks at all hazards.

This advice, if acted on, was virtually condemning the pastors to death. Brousson was not a pastor. Would he like to return to France at the daily risk of the rack and the gibbet? The Protestant ministers in exile defended themselves. Bénoît, then residing in Germany, replied in a "History and Apology for the Retreat of the Pastors." Another, who did not give his name, treated Brousson's censure as that of a fanatic, who meddled with matters beyond his vocation. "You who condemn the pastors for not returning to France at the risk of their lives," said he, "why do you not first return to France yourself?"

Brousson was as brave as his words. He was not a pastor, but he might return to the deserted flocks, and encourage and comfort them. He could no longer be happy in his exile at Lausanne. He heard by night the groans of the prisoners in the Tower of Constance, and the noise of the chains borne by the galley slaves at Toulon and Marseilles. He reproached himself as if it were a crime with the repose which he enjoyed. Life became insupportable to him and he fell ill. His health was even despaired of; but one day he suddenly rose up and said to his wife, "I must set out; I will go to console, to relieve, to strengthen my brethren, groaning under their oppressions."

His wife threw herself at his feet. "Thou wouldst go to certain death," she said; "think of me and thy little children." She implored him again and again to remain. He loved his wife and children, but he thought a higher duty called him away from them. When his friends told him that he would be taken prisoner and hung, he said, "When God permits his servants to die for the Gospel, they preach louder from the grave than they did during life." He remained unshaken. He would go to the help of the oppressed with the love of a brother, the faith of an apostle, and the courage of a martyr.

Brousson knew the danger of the office he was about to undertake. There had, as we have seen, been numerous attempts made to gather the Protestant people together, and to administer consolation to them by public prayers and preaching. The persons who conducted these services were not regular pastors, but only private members of their former churches. Some of them were very young men, and they were nearly all uneducated as regards clerical instruction. One of the most successful was Isaac Vidal, a lame young man, a mechanic of Colognac, near St. Hypolite, in the Cevennes. His self-imposed ministrations were attended by large numbers of people. He preached for only six months and then died—a natural death, for nearly all who followed him were first tortured and then hung.

We have already referred to Fulcran Rey, who preached for about nine months, and was then executed. In the same year were executed Meyrueis, by trade a wool-carder, and Rocher, who had been a reader in one of the Protestant churches. Emanuel Dalgues, a respectable inhabitant of Salle, in the Cevennes, also received the crown of martyrdom. Ever since the Revocation of the Edict, he had proclaimed the Gospel o'er hill and dale, in woods and caverns, to assemblies of the people wherever he could collect them. He was executed in 1687. Three other persons—Gransille, Mercier, and Esclopier—who devoted themselves to preaching, were transported as slaves to America; and David Mazel, a boy twelve years of age, who had a wonderful memory, and preached sermons which he had learned by heart, was transported, with his father and other frequenters of the assemblies, to the Carribee Islands.

At length Brousson collected about him a number of Huguenots willing to return with him into France, in order to collect the Protestant people together again, to pray with them, and even to preach to them if the opportunity occurred. Brousson's companions were these: Francis Vivens, formerly a schoolmaster in the Cevennes; Anthony Bertezene, a carpenter, brother of a preacher who had recently been condemned to death; and seven other persons named Papus, La Pierre, Serein, Dombres, Poutant, Boisson, and M. de Bruc, an aged minister, who had been formerly pastor of one of the churches in the Cevennes. They prepared to enter France in four distinct companies, in the month of July, 1689.[Back to Contents]

CHAPTER IV.

CLAUDE BROUSSON, PASTOR AND MARTYR.

Brousson left Lausanne on the 22nd of July, accompanied by his dear friend, the Rev. M. de Bruc. The other members of the party had preceded them, crossing the frontier at different places. They all arrived in safety at their destination, which was in the mountain district of the Cevennes. They resorted to the neighbourhood of the Aigoual, the centre of a very inaccessible region—wild, cold, but full of recesses for hiding and worship. It was also a district surrounded by villages, the inhabitants of which were for the most part Protestant.

The party soon became diminished in number. The old pastor, De Bruc, found himself unequal to the fatigue and privations attending the work. He was ill and unable to travel, and was accordingly advised by his companions to quit the service and withdraw from the country.

Persecution also destroyed some of them. When it became known that assemblies for religious observances were again on foot, an increased force of soldiers was sent into the district, and a high price was set on the heads of all the preachers that could be apprehended. The soldiers scoured the country, and, helped by the paid spies, they shortly succeeded in apprehending Boisson and Dombres, at St. Paul's, north of Anduze, in the Cevennes. They were both executed at Nismes, being first subjected to torture on the rack, by which their limbs were entirely dislocated. They were then conveyed to the place of execution, praying and singing psalms on the way, and finished their course with courage and joy.

When Brousson first went into the Cevennes, he did not undertake to preach to the people. He was too modest to assume the position of a pastor; he merely undertook, as occasion required, to read the Scriptures in Protestant families and in small companies, making his remarks and exhortations thereupon. He also transcribed portions of his own meditations on the Scriptures, and gave them away for distribution from hand to hand amongst the people.

When it was found that his instructions were much appreciated, and that numbers of people assembled to hear him read and exhort, he was strongly urged to undertake the office of public instructor amongst them, especially as their ministers were being constantly diminished by execution.

He had been about five months in the Cevennes, and was detained by a fall of snow on one of the mountains, where his abode was a sheepcote, when the proposal that he should become a preacher was first made to him. Vivens was one of those who most strongly supported the appeal made to Brousson. He spent many hours in private prayer, seeking the approval of God for the course he was about to undertake. Vivens also prayed in the several assemblies that Brousson might be confirmed, and that God would be pleased to pour upon him his Holy Spirit, and strengthen him so that he might become a faithful and successful labourer in this great calling.

Brousson at length consented, believing that duty and conscience alike called upon him to give the best of his help to the oppressed and persecuted Protestants of the mountains. "Brethren," he said to them, when they called upon him to administer to them the Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist—"Brethren, I look above you, and hear the most High God calling me through your mouths to this most responsible and sacred office; and I dare not be disobedient to his heavenly call. By the grace of God I will comply with your pious desires; dedicate and devote myself to the work of the ministry, and spend the remainder of my life in unwearied pains and endeavours for promoting God's glory, and the consolation of precious souls."

Brousson received his call to the ministry in the Cevennes amidst the sound of musketry and grapeshot which spread death among the ranks of his brethren. He was continuously tracked by the spies of the Jesuits, who sought his apprehension and death; and he was hunted from place to place by the troops of the King, who followed him in his wanderings into the most wild and inaccessible places.

The perilous character of his new profession was exhibited only a few days after his ordination, by the apprehension of Olivier Souverain at St. Jean de Gardonenque, for preaching the Gospel to the assemblies. He was at once conducted to Montpellier and executed on the 15th of January, 1690.

During the same year, Dumas, another preacher in the Cevennes, was apprehended and fastened by the troopers across a horse in order to be carried to Montpellier. His bowels were so injured and his body so crushed by this horrible method of conveyance, that Dumas died before he was half way to the customary place of martyrdom.

Then followed the execution of David Quoite, a wandering and hunted pastor in the Cevennes for several years. He was broken on the wheel at Montpellier, and then hanged. "The punishment," said Louvreleuil, his tormentor, "which broke his bones, did not break his hardened heart: he died in his heresy." After Quoite, M. Bonnemère, a native of the same city, was also tortured and executed in like manner on the Peyrou.

All these persons were taken, executed, destroyed, or imprisoned, during the first year that Brousson commenced his perilous ministry in the Cevennes.

About the same time three women, who had gone about instructing the families of the destitute Protestants, reading the Scriptures and praying with them, were apprehended by Baville, the King's intendant, and punished. Isabeau Redothière, eighteen years of age, and Marie Lintarde, about a year younger, both the daughters of peasants, were taken before Baville at Nismes.

"What! are you one of the preachers, forsooth?" said he to Redothière. "Sir," she replied, "I have exhorted my brethren to be mindful of their duty towards God, and when occasion offered, I have sought God in prayer for them; and, if your lordship calls that preaching, I have been a preacher." "But," said the Intendant, "you know that the King has forbidden this." "Yes, my lord," she replied, "I know it very well, but the King of kings, the God of heaven and earth, He hath commanded it." "You deserve death," replied Baville.

But the Intendant awarded her a severer fate. She was condemned to be imprisoned for life in the Tower of Constance, a place echoing with the groans of women, most of whom were in chains, perpetually imprisoned there for worshipping God according to conscience.

Lintarde was in like manner condemned to imprisonment for life in the castle of Sommières, and it is believed she died there. Nothing, however, is known of the time when she died. When a woman was taken and imprisoned in one of the King's torture-houses, she was given up by her friends as lost.

A third woman, taken at the same time, was more mercifully dealt with. Anne Montjoye was found assisting at one of the secret assemblies. She was solicited in vain to abjure her faith, and being condemned to death, was publicly executed.

Shortly after his ordination, Brousson descended from the Upper Cevennes, where the hunt for Protestants was becoming very hot, into the adjacent valleys and plains. There it was necessary for him to be exceedingly cautious. The number of dragoons in Languedoc had been increased so as to enable them regularly to patrol the entire province, and a price had been set upon Brousson's head, which was calculated to quicken their search for the flying pastor.

Brousson was usually kept informed by his Huguenot friends of the direction taken by the dragoons in their patrols, and hasty assemblies were summoned in their absence. The meetings were held in some secret place—some cavern or recess in the rocks. Often they were held at night, when a few lanterns were hung on the adjacent trees to give light. Sentinels were set in the neighbourhood, and all the adjoining roads were watched. After the meeting was over the assemblage dispersed in different directions, and Brousson immediately left for another district, travelling mostly by night, so as to avoid detection. In this manner he usually presided at three or four assemblies each week, besides two on the Sabbath day—one early in the morning and another at night.

At one of his meetings, held at Boucoiran on the Gardon, about half way between Nismes and Anduze, a Protestant nobleman—a nouveau convertis, who had abjured his religion to retain his estates—was present, and stood near the preacher during the service. One of the Government spies was present, and gave information. The name of the Protestant nobleman was not known. But the Intendant, to strike terror into others, seized six of the principal landed proprietors in the neighbourhood—though some of them had never attended any of the assemblies since the Revocation—and sent two of them to the galleys, and the four others to imprisonment for life at Lyons, besides confiscating the estates of the whole to the Crown.

Brousson now felt that he was bringing his friends into very great trouble, and, out of consideration for them, he began to think of again leaving France. The dragoons were practising much cruelty on the Protestant population, being quartered in their houses, and at liberty to plunder and extort money to any extent. They were also incessantly on the look out for the assemblies, being often led by mounted priests and spies to places where they had been informed that meetings were about to be held. Their principal object, besides hanging the persons found attending, was to seize the preachers, more especially Brousson and Vivens, believing that the country would be more effectually "converted," provided they could be seized and got out of the way.

Brousson, knowing that he might be seized and taken prisoner at any moment, had long considered whether he ought to resist the attempts made to capture him. He had at first carried a sword, but at length ceased to wear it, being resolved entirely to cast himself on Providence; and he also instructed all who resorted to his meetings to come to them unarmed.

In this respect Brousson differed from Vivens, who thought it right to resist force by force; and in the event of any attempt being made to capture him, he considered it expedient to be constantly provided with arms. Yet he had only once occasion to use them, and it was the first and last time. The reward of ten thousand livres being now offered for the apprehension of Brousson and Vivens, or five thousand for either, an active search was made throughout the province. At length the Government found themselves on the track of Vivens. One of his known followers, Valderon, having been apprehended and put upon the rack, was driven by torture to reveal his place of concealment. A party of soldiers went in pursuit, and found Vivens with three other persons, concealed in a cave in the neighbourhood of Alais.

Vivens was engaged in prayer when the soldiers came upon him. His hand was on his gun in a moment. When asked to surrender he replied with a shot, not knowing the number of his opponents. He followed up with two other shots, killing a man each time, and then exposing himself, he was struck by a volley, and fell dead. The three other persons in the cave being in a position to hold the soldiers at defiance for some time, were promised their lives if they would surrender. They did so, and with the utter want of truth, loyalty, and manliness that characterized the persecutors, the promise was belied, and the three prisoners were hanged, a few days after, at Alais. Vivens' body was taken to the same place. The Intendant sat in judgment upon it, and condemned it to be drawn through the streets upon a hurdle and then burnt to ashes.

Brousson was becoming exhausted by the fatigues and privations he had encountered during his two years' wanderings and preachings in the Cevennes; and he not only desired to give the people a relaxation from their persecution, but to give himself some absolutely necessary rest. He accordingly proceeded to Nismes, his birthplace, where many people knew him; and where, if they betrayed him, they might easily have earned five thousand livres. But so much faith was kept by the Protestants amongst one another, that Brousson felt that his life was quite as safe amongst his townspeople as it had been during the last two years amongst the mountaineers of the Cevennes.

It soon became known to the priests, and then to the Intendant, that Brousson was resident in concealment at Nismes; and great efforts were accordingly made for his apprehension. During the search, a letter of Brousson's was found in the possession of M. Guion, an aged minister, who had returned from Switzerland to resume his ministry, according as he might find it practicable. The result of this discovery was, that Guion was apprehended, taken before the Intendant, condemned to be executed, and sent to Montpellier, where he gave up his life at seventy years old—the drums beating, as usual, that nobody might hear his last words. The house in which Guion had been taken at Nismes was ordered to be razed to the ground, in punishment of the owner who had given him shelter.

After spending about a month at Nismes, Brousson was urged by his friends to quit the city. He accordingly succeeded in passing through the gates, and went to resume his former work. His first assembly was held in a commodious place on the Gardon, between Valence, Brignon, and St. Maurice, about ten miles distant from Nismes. Although he had requested that only the Protestants in the immediate neighbourhood should attend the meeting, so as not to excite the apprehensions of the authorities, yet a multitude of persons came from Uzes and Nismes, augmented by accessions from upwards of thirty villages. The service was commenced about ten o'clock, and was not completed until midnight.

The concourse of persons from all quarters had been so great that the soldiers could not fail to be informed of it. Accordingly they rode towards the place of assemblage late at night, but they did not arrive until the meeting had been dissolved. One troop of soldiers took ambush in a wood through which the worshippers would return on their way back to Uzes. The command had been given to "draw blood from the conventicles." On the approach of the people the soldiers fired, and killed and wounded several. About forty others wore taken prisoners. The men were sent to the galleys for life, and the women were thrown into gaol at Carcassone—the Tower of Constance being then too full of prisoners.

After this event, the Government became more anxious in their desire to capture Brousson. They published far and wide their renewed offer of reward for his apprehension. They sent six fresh companies of soldiers specially to track him, and examine the woods and search the caves between Uzes and Alais. But Brousson's friends took care to advise him of the approach of danger, and he sped away to take shelter in another quarter. The soldiers were, however, close upon his heels; and one morning, in attempting to enter a village for the purpose of drying himself—having been exposed to the winter's rain and cold all night—he suddenly came upon a detachment of soldiers! He avoided them by taking shelter in a thicket, and while there, he observed another detachment pass in file, close to where he was concealed. The soldiers were divided into four parties, and sent out to search in different directions, one of them proceeding to search every house in the village into which Brousson had just been about to enter.

The next assembly was held at Sommières, about eight miles west of Nismes. The soldiers were too late to disperse the meeting, but they watched some of the people on their return. One of these, an old woman, who had been observed to leave the place, was shot on entering her cottage; and the soldier, observing that she was attempting to rise, raised the butt end of his gun and brained her on the spot.

The hunted pastors of the Cevennes were falling off one by one. Bernard Saint Paul, a young man, who had for some time exercised the office of preacher, was executed in 1692. One of the brothers Du Plans was executed in the same year, having been offered his life if he would conform to the Catholic religion. In the following year Paul Colognac was executed, after being broken to death on the wheel at Masselargais, near to which he had held his last assembly. His arms, thighs, legs, and feet were severally broken with the iron bar some hours before the coup de grace, or deathblow, was inflicted. Colognac endured his sufferings with heroic fortitude. He was only twenty-four. He had commenced to preach at twenty, and laboured at the work for only four years.

Brousson's health was fast giving way. Every place that he frequented was closely watched, so that he had often to spend the night under the hollow of a rock, or under the shelter of a wood, exposed to rain and snow,—and sometimes he had even to contend with a wolf for the shelter of a cave. Often he was almost perishing for want of food; and often he found himself nearly ready to die for want of rest. And yet, even in the midst of his greatest perils, his constant thought was of the people committed to him, and for whose eternal happiness he continued to work.

As he could not visit all who wished to hear him, he wrote out sermons that might be read to them. His friend Henry Poutant, one of those who originally accompanied him from Switzerland and had not yet been taken prisoner by the soldiers, went about holding meetings for prayer, and reading to the people the sermons prepared for them by Brousson.

For the purpose of writing out his sermons, Brousson carried about with him a small board, which he called his "Wilderness Table." With this placed upon his knees, he wrote the sermons, for the most part in woods and caves. He copied out seventeen of these sermons, which he sent to Louis XIV., to show him that what "he preached in the deserts contained nothing but the pure word of God, and that he only exhorted the people to obey God and to give glory to Him."

The sermons were afterwards published at Amsterdam, in 1695, under the title of "The Mystic Manna of the Desert." One would have expected that, under the bitter persecutions which Brousson had suffered during so many years, they would have been full of denunciation; on the contrary, they were only full of love. His words were only burning when he censured his hearers for not remaining faithful to their Church and to their God.

At length, the fury of Brousson's enemies so increased, and his health was so much impaired, that he again thought of leaving France. His lungs were so much injured by constant exposure to cold, and his voice had become so much impaired, that he could not preach. He also heard that his family, whom he had left at Lausanne, required his assistance. His only son was growing up, and needed education. Perhaps Brousson had too long neglected those of his own household; though he had every confidence in the prudence and thoughtfulness of his wife.

Accordingly, about the end of 1693, Brousson made arrangements for leaving the Cevennes. He set out in the beginning of December, and arrived at Lausanne about a fortnight later, having been engaged on his extraordinary mission of duty and peril for four years and five months. He was received like one rescued from the dead. His health was so injured, that his wife could scarcely recognise her husband in that wan, wasted, and weatherbeaten creature who stood before her. In fact, he was a perfect wreck.

He remained about fifteen months in Switzerland, during which he preached in the Huguenots' church; wrote out many of his pastoral letters and sermons; and, when his health had become restored, he again proceeded on his travels into foreign countries. He first went into Holland. He had scarcely arrived there, when intelligence reached him from Montpellier of the execution, after barbarous torments, of his friend Papus,—one of those who had accompanied him into the Cevennes to preach the Gospel some six years before. There were now very few of the original company left.

On hearing of the martyrdom of Papus, Brousson, in a pastoral letter which he addressed to his followers, said: "He must have died some day; and as he could not have prolonged his life beyond the term appointed, how could his end have been more happy and more glorious? His constancy, his sweetness of temper, his patience, his humility, his faith, his hope, and his piety, affected even his judges and the false pastors who endeavoured to seduce him, as also the soldiers and all that witnessed his execution. He could not have preached better than he did by his martyrdom; and I doubt not that his death, will produce abundance of fruit."

While in Holland, Brousson took the opportunity of having his sermons and many of his pastoral letters printed at Amsterdam; after which he proceeded to make a visit to his banished Huguenot friends in England. He also wished to ascertain from personal inquiry the advisability of forwarding an increased number of French emigrants—then resident in Switzerland—for settlement in this country. In London, he met many of his friends from the South of France—for there were settled there as ministers, Graverol of Nismes, Satur of Montauban, four ministers from Montpellier for whom he had pleaded in the courts at Toulouse—the two Dubourdieus and the two Berthaus—fathers and sons. There were also La Coux from Castres, De Joux from Lyons, Roussillon from Montredon, Mestayer from St. Quentin, all settled in London as ministers of Huguenot churches.

After staying in England for only about a month, Brousson was suddenly recalled to Holland to assume the office to which he was appointed without solicitation, of preacher to the Walloon church at the Hague. Though his office was easy—for he had several colleagues to assist him in the duties—and the salary was abundant for his purposes, while he was living in the society of his wife and family—Brousson nevertheless very soon began to be ill at ease. He still thought of the abandoned Huguenots "in the Desert"; without teachers, without pastors, without spiritual help of any kind. When he had undertaken the work of the ministry, he had vowed that he would devote his time and talents to the support and help of the afflicted Church; and now he was living at ease in a foreign country, far removed from those to whom he considered his services belonged. These thoughts were constantly recurring and pressing upon his mind; and at length he ceased to have any rest or satisfaction in his new position.

Accordingly, after only about four months' connection with the Church at the Hague, Brousson decided to relinquish the charge, and to devote himself to the service of the oppressed and afflicted members of his native Church in France. The Dutch Government, however, having been informed of his perilous and self-sacrificing intention, agreed to continue his salary as a pastor of the Walloon Church, and to pay it to his wife, who henceforth abode at the Hague.

Brousson determined to enter France from the north, and to visit districts that were entirely new to him. For this purpose he put himself in charge of a guide. At that time, while the Protestants were flying from France, as they continued to do for many years, there were numerous persons who acted as guides for those not only flying from, but entering the country. Those who guided Protestant pastors on their concealed visits to France, were men of great zeal and courage—known to be faithful and self-denying—and thoroughly acquainted with the country. They knew all the woods, and fords, and caves, and places of natural shelter along the route. They made the itinerary of the mountains and precipices, of the byways and deserts, their study. They also knew of the dwellings of the faithful in the towns and villages where Huguenots might find relief and shelter for the night. They studied the disguises to be assumed, and were prepared with a stock of phrases and answers adapted for every class of inquiries.

The guide employed by Brousson was one James Bruman—an old Huguenot merchant, banished at the Revocation, and now employed in escorting Huguenot preachers back to France, and escorting flying Huguenot men, women, and children from it.[28] The pastor and his guide started about the end of August, 1695. They proceeded by way of Liége; and travelling south, they crossed the forest of Ardennes, and entered France near Sedan.

Sedan, recently the scene of one of the greatest calamities that has ever befallen France, was, about two centuries ago, a very prosperous place. It was the seat of a great amount of Protestant learning and Protestant industry. One of the four principal Huguenot academies of France was situated in that town. It was suppressed in 1681, shortly before the Revocation, and its professors, Bayle, Abbadie, Basnage, Brazy, and Jurieu, expelled the country. The academy buildings themselves had been given over to the Jesuits—the sworn enemies of the Huguenots.

At the same time, Sedan had been the seat of great woollen manufactures, originally founded by Flemish Protestant families, and for the manufacture of arms, implements of husbandry, and all kinds of steel and iron articles.[29] At the Revocation, the Protestants packed up their tools and property, suddenly escaped across the frontier, near which they were, and went and established themselves in the Low Countries, where they might pursue their industries in safety. Sedan was ruined, and remained so until our own day, when it has begun to experience a little prosperity from the tourists desirous of seeing the place where the great French Army surrendered.

When Brousson visited the place, the remaining Protestants resided chiefly in the suburban villages of Givonne and Daigny. He visited them in their families, and also held several private meetings, after which he was induced to preach in a secluded place near Sedan at night.

This assembly, however, was reported to the authorities, who immediately proceeded to make search for the heretic preacher. A party of soldiers, informed by the spies, next morning invested the house in which Brousson slept. They first apprehended Bruman, the guide, and thought that in him they had secured the pastor. They next rummaged the house, in order to find the preacher's books. But Brousson, hearing them coming in, hid himself behind the door, which, being small, hardly concealed his person.

After setting a guard all round the house, ransacking every room in it, and turning everything upside down, they left it; but two of the children, seeing Brousson's feet under the door, one of them ran after the officer of the party, and exclaimed to him, pointing back, "Here, sir, here!" But the officer, not understanding what the child meant, went away with his soldiers, and Brousson's life was, for the time, saved.

The same evening, Brousson changed his disguise to that of a wool-comber, and carrying a parcel on his shoulder, he set out on the same evening with another guide. He visited many places in which Protestants were to be found—in Champagne, Picardy, Normandy, Nevernois, and Burgundy. He also visited several of his friends in the neighbourhood of Paris.

We have not many details of his perils and experiences during his journey. But the following passage is extracted from a letter addressed by him to a friend in Holland: "I assure you that in every place through which I passed, I witnessed the poor people truly repenting their fault (i.e. of having gone to Mass), weeping day and night, and imploring the grace and consolations of the Gospel in their distress. Their persecutors daily oppress them, and burden them with taxes and imposts; but the more discerning of the Roman Catholics acknowledge that the cruelties and injustice done towards so many innocent persons, draw down misery and distress upon the kingdom. And truly it is to be apprehended that God will abandon its inhabitants to their wickedness, that he may afterwards pour down his most terrible judgments upon that ungrateful and vaunting country, which has rejected his truth and despised the day of visitation."

During the twelve months that Brousson was occupied with his perilous journey through France, two more of his friends in the Cevennes suffered martyrdom—La Porte on the 7th of February, 1696, and Henri Guerin on the 22nd of June following. Both were broken alive on the wheel before receiving the coup de grace.

Towards the close of the year, Brousson arrived at Basle, from whence he proceeded to visit his friends throughout the cantons of Switzerland, and then he returned to Holland by way of the Rhine, to rejoin his family at the Hague.

At that time, the representatives of the Allies were meeting at Ryswick the representatives of Louis XIV., who was desirous of peace. Brousson and the French refugee ministers resident in Holland endeavoured to bring the persecutions of the French Protestants under the notice of the Conference. But Louis XIV. would not brook this interference. He proposed going on dealing with the heretics in his own way. "I do not pretend," he said, "to prescribe to William III. rules about his subjects, and I expect the same liberty as to my own."

Finding it impossible to obtain redress for his fellow-countrymen under the treaty of Ryswick, which was shortly after concluded, Brousson at length prepared to make his third journey into France in the month of August 1697. He set out greatly to the regret of his wife, who feared it might be his last journey, as indeed it proved to be. In a letter which he wrote to console her, from some remote place where he was snowed up about the middle of the following December, he said: "I cannot at present enter into the details of the work the Lord has given me grace to labour in; but it is the source of much consolation to a large number of his poor people. It will be expedient that you do not mention where I am, lest I should be traced. It may be that I cannot for some time write to you; but I walk under the conduct of my God, and I repeat that I would not for millions of money that the Lord should refuse me the grace which renders it imperative for me to labour as I now do in His work."[30]

When the snow had melted sufficiently to enable Brousson to escape from the district of Dauphiny, near the High Alps, where he had been concealed, he made his way across the country to the Viverais, where he laboured for some time. Here he heard of the martyrdom of the third of the brothers Du Plans, broken on the wheel and executed like the others on the Peyrou at Montpellier.

During the next nine months, Brousson laboured in the north-eastern provinces of Languedoc (more particularly in the Cevennes and Viverais), Orange, and Dauphiny. He excited so much interest amongst the Protestants, who resorted from a great distance to attend his assemblies, that the spies (who were usually pretended Protestants) soon knew of his presence in the neighbourhood, and information was at once forwarded to the Intendant or his officers.

Persecution was growing very bitter about this time. By orders of the bishops the Protestants were led by force to Mass before the dragoons with drawn swords, and the shops of merchants who refused to go to Mass regularly were ordered to be closed. Their houses were also filled with soldiers. "The soldiers or militia," said Brousson to a friend in Holland, "frequently commit horrible ravages, breaking open the cabinets, removing every article that is saleable, which are often purchased by the priests at insignificant prices; the rest they burn and break up, after which the soldiers are removed; and when the sufferers think themselves restored to peace, fresh billets are ordered upon them. Many are consequently induced to go to Mass with weeping and lamentation, but a great number remain inflexible, and others fly the kingdom."

When it became known that Brousson, in the course of his journeyings, had arrived, about the end of August, 1698, in the neighbourhood of Nismes, Baville was greatly mortified; and he at once offered a reward of six hundred louis d'or for his head. Brousson nevertheless entered Nismes, and found refuge amongst his friends. He had, however, the imprudence to post there a petition to the King, signed by his own hand, which had the effect of at once setting the spies upon his track. Leaving the city itself, he took refuge in a house not far from it, whither the spies contrived to trace him, and gave the requisite information to the Intendant. The house was soon after surrounded by soldiers, and was itself entered and completely searched.

Brousson's host had only had time to make him descend into a well, which had a niche in the bottom in which he could conceal himself. The soldiers looked down the well a dozen times, but could see nothing. Brousson was not in the house; he was not in the chimneys; he was not in the outhouses. He must be in the well! A soldier went down the well to make a personal examination. He was let down close to the surface of the water, and felt all about. There was nothing! Feeling awfully cold, and wishing to be taken out, he called to his friends, "There is nothing here, pull me up." He was pulled up accordingly, and Brousson was again saved.

The country about Nismes being beset with spies to track the Protestants and prevent their meetings, Brousson determined to go westward and visit the scattered people in Rouerge, Pays de Foix, and Bigorre, proceeding as far as Bearn, where a remnant of Huguenots still lingered, notwithstanding the repeated dragooning to which the district had been subjected. It was at Oberon that he fell into the hands of a spy, who bore the same name as a Protestant friend to whom his letter was addressed. Information was given to the authorities, and Brousson was arrested. He made no resistance, and answered at once to his name.

When the Judas who had betrayed him went to M. Pénon, the intendant of the province, to demand the reward set upon Brousson's head, the Intendant replied with indignation, "Wretch! don't you blush to look upon the man in whose blood you traffic? Begone! I cannot bear your presence!"

Brousson was sent to Pau, where he was imprisoned in the castle of Foix, at one time the centre of the Reformation movement in the South of France—where Calvin had preached, where Jeanne d'Albret had lived, and where Henry IV. had been born.

From Pau, Brousson was sent to Montpellier, escorted by dragoons. At Toulouse the party took passage by the canal of Languedoc, which had then been shortly open. At Somail, during the night, Brousson saw that all the soldiers were asleep. He had but to step on shore to regain his liberty; but he had promised to the Intendant of Bearn, who had allowed him to go unfettered, that he would not attempt to escape. At Agade there was a detachment of a hundred soldiers, ready to convey the prisoner to Baville, Intendant of Languedoc. He was imprisoned in the citadel of Montpellier, on the 30th October, 1698.

Baville, who knew much of the character of Brousson—his peacefulness, his piety, his self-sacrifice, and his noble magnanimity—is said to have observed on one occasion, "I would not for a world have to judge that man." And yet the time had now arrived when Brousson was to be judged and condemned by Baville and the Presidial Court. The trial was a farce, because it had been predetermined that Brousson should die. He was charged with preaching in France contrary to the King's prohibition. This he admitted; but when asked to whom he had administered the Sacrament, he positively refused to disclose, because he was neither a traitor nor informer to accuse his brethren. He was also charged with having conspired to introduce a foreign army into France under the command of Marshal Schomberg. This he declared to be absolutely false, for he had throughout his career been a man of peace, and sought to bring back Christ's followers by peaceful means only.

His defence was of no avail. He was condemned to be racked, then to be broken on the wheel, and afterwards to be executed. He received the sentence without a shudder. He was tied on the rack, but when he refused to accuse his brethren he was released from it. Attempts were made by several priests and friars to add him to the number of "new converts," but these were altogether fruitless. All that remained was to execute him finally on the public place of execution—the Peyrou.

The Peyrou is the pride of modern Montpellier. It is the favourite promenade of the place, and is one of the finest in Europe. It consists of a broad platform elevated high above the rest of the town, and commanding extensive views of the surrounding country. In clear weather, Mont Ventoux, one of the Alpine summits, may be seen across the broad valley of the Rhône on the east, and the peak of Mont Canizou in the Pyrenees on the west. Northward stretches the mountain range of the Cevennes, the bold Pic de Saint-Loup the advanced sentinel of the group; while in the south the prospect is bounded by the blue line of the Mediterranean.

The Peyrou is now pleasantly laid out in terraced walks and shady groves, with gay parterres of flowers—the upper platform being surrounded with a handsome stone balustrade. An equestrian statue of Louis XIV. occupies the centre of the area; and a triumphal arch stands at the entrance to the promenade, erected to commemorate the "glories" of the same monarch, more particularly the Revocation by him of the Edict of Nantes—one of the entablatures of the arch displaying a hideous figure, intended to represent a Huguenot, lying trampled under foot of the "Most Christian King."

The Peyrou was thus laid out and ornamented in the reign of his successor, Louis XV., "the Well-beloved," during which the same policy for which Louis XIV. was here glorified by an equestrian statue and a triumphal arch continued to be persevered in—of imprisoning, banishing, hanging, or sending to the galleys such of the citizens of France as were not of "the King's religion."

But during the reign of Louis XIV. himself, the Peyrou was anything but a pleasure-ground. It was the infamous place of the city—the place de Grève—a desert, barren, blasted table-land, where sometimes half-a-dozen decaying corpses might be seen swinging from the gibbets on which they had been hung. It was specially reserved, because of its infamy, for the execution of heretics against Rome; and here, accordingly, hundreds of Huguenot martyrs—whom power, honour, and wealth failed to bribe or to convert—were called upon to seal their faith with their blood.

Brousson was executed at this place on the 4th of November, 1698. It was towards evening, while the sun was slowly sinking behind the western mountains, that an immense multitude assembled on the Peyrou to witness the martyrdom of the devoted pastor. Not fewer than twenty thousand persons were there, including the principal nobility of the city and province, besides many inhabitants of the adjoining mountain district of the Cevennes, some of whom had come from a great distance to be present. In the centre of the plateau, near where the equestrian statue of the great King now stands, was a scaffold, strongly surrounded by troops to keep off the crowd. Two battalions, drawn up in two lines facing each other, formed an avenue of bayonets between the citadel, near at hand, and the place of execution.

A commotion stirred the throng; and the object of the breathless interest excited shortly appeared in the person of a middle-sized, middle-aged man, spare, grave, and dignified in appearance, dressed in the ordinary garb of a pastor, who walked slowly towards the scaffold, engaged in earnest prayer, his eyes and hands lifted towards heaven. On mounting the platform, he stood forward to say a few last words to the people, and give to many of his friends, whom he knew to be in the crowd, his parting benediction. But his voice was instantly stifled by the roll of twenty drums, which continued to beat a quick march until the hideous ceremony was over, and the martyr, Claude Brousson, had ceased to live.[31]

Strange are the vicissitudes of human affairs! Not a hundred years passed after this event, before the great grandson of the monarch, at whose instance Brousson had laid down his life, appeared upon a scaffold in the Place Louis XIV. in Paris, and implored permission to say his few last words to the people. In vain! His voice was drowned by the drums of Santerre![Back to Contents]

CHAPTER V.

OUTBREAK IN LANGUEDOC.

Although the arbitrary measures of the King were felt all over France, they nowhere excited more dismay and consternation than in the province of Languedoc. This province had always been inhabited by a spirited and energetic people, born lovers of liberty. They were among the earliest to call in question the despotic authority over mind and conscience claimed by the see of Rome. The country is sown with the ashes of martyrs. Long before the execution of Brousson, the Peyrou at Montpellier had been the Calvary of the South of France.

As early as the twelfth century, the Albigenses, who inhabited the district, excited the wrath of the Popes. Simple, sincere believers in the Divine providence, they rejected Rome, and took their stand upon the individual responsibility of man to God. Count de Foix said to the legate of Innocent III.: "As to my religion, the Pope has nothing to do with it. Every man's conscience must be free. My father has always recommended to me this liberty, and I am content to die for it."

A crusade was waged against the Albigenses, which lasted for a period of about sixty years. Armies were concentrated upon Languedoc, and after great slaughter the heretics were supposed to be exterminated.

But enough of the people survived to perpetuate the love of liberty in their descendants, who continued to exercise a degree of independence in matters of religion and politics almost unknown in other parts of France. Languedoc was the principal stronghold of the Huguenots in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; and when, in 1685, Louis XIV. revoked the Edict of Nantes, which interdicted freedom of worship under penalty of confiscation, banishment, and death, it is not surprising that such a policy should have occasioned widespread consternation, if not hostility and open resistance.

At the period of the Revocation there were, according to the Intendant of the province, not fewer than 250,000 Protestants in Languedoc, and these formed the most skilled, industrious, enterprising, and wealthy portion of the community. They were the best farmers, vine-dressers, manufacturers, and traders. The valley of Vaunage, lying to the westward of Nismes, was one of the richest and most highly cultivated parts of France. It contained more than sixty temples, its population being almost exclusively Protestant; and it was known as "The Little Canaan," abounding as it did in corn, and wine, and oil.

The greater part of the commerce of the South of France was conducted by the Protestant merchants of Nismes, of whom the Intendant wrote to the King in 1699, "If they are still bad Catholics, at any rate they have not ceased to be very good traders."

The Marquis d'Aguesseau bore similar testimony to the intelligent industry of the Huguenot population. "By an unfortunate fatality," said he, "in nearly every kind of art the most skilful workmen, as well as the richest merchants, belong to the pretended reformed religion."

The Marquis, who governed Languedoc for many years, was further of opinion that the intelligence of the Protestants was in a great measure due to the instructions of their pastors. "It is certain," said he, "that one of the things which holds the Huguenots to their religion is the amount of information which they receive from their instructors, and which it is not thought necessary to give in ours. The Huguenots will be instructed, and it is a general complaint amongst the new converts not to find in our religion the same mental and moral discipline they find in their own."

Baville, the intendant, made an observation to a similar effect in a confidential communication which he made to the authorities at Paris in 1697, in which he boasted that the Protestants had now all been converted, and that there were 198,483 new converts in Languedoc. "Generally speaking," he said, "the new converts are much better off, being more laborious and industrious than the old Catholics of the province. The new converts must not be regarded as Catholics; they almost all preserve in their heart their attachment to their former religion. They may confess and communicate as much as you will, because they are menaced and forced to do so by the secular power. But this only leads to sacrilege. To gain them, their hearts must be won. It is there that religion resides, and it can only be solely established by effecting that conquest."

From the number, as well as the wealth and education, of the Protestants of Languedoc, it is reasonable to suppose that the emigration from this quarter of France should have been very considerable during the persecutions which followed the Revocation. Of course nearly all the pastors fled, death being their punishment if they remained in France. Hence many of the most celebrated French preachers in Holland, Germany, and England were pastors banished from Languedoc. Claude and Saurin both belonged to the province; and among the London preachers were the Dubourdieus, the Bertheaus, Graverol, and Pégorier.

It is also interesting to find how many of the distinguished Huguenots who settled in England came from Languedoc. The Romillys and Layards came from Montpellier; the Saurins from Nismes; the Gaussens from Lunel; and the Bosanquets from Caila;[32] besides the Auriols, Arnauds, Péchels, De Beauvoirs, Durands, Portals, Boileaus, D'Albiacs, D'Oliers, Rious, and Vignoles, all of whom belonged to the Huguenot landed gentry of Languedoc, who fled and sacrificed everything rather than conform to the religion of Louis XIV.

When Brousson was executed at Montpellier, it was believed that Protestantism was finally dead. At all events, it was supposed that those of the Protestants who remained, without becoming converted, were at length reduced to utter powerlessness. It was not believed that the smouldering ashes contained any sparks that might yet be fanned into flames. The Huguenot landed proprietors, the principal manufacturers, the best of the artisans, had left for other countries. Protestantism was now entirely without leaders. The very existence of Protestantism in any form was denied by the law; and it might perhaps reasonably have been expected that, being thus crushed out of sight, it would die.

But there still remained another important and vital element—the common people—the peasants, the small farmers, the artisans, and labouring classes—persons of slender means, for the most part too poor to emigrate, and who remained, as it were, rooted to the soil on which they had been born. This was especially the case in the Cevennes, where, in many of the communes, almost the entire inhabitants were Protestants; in others, they formed a large proportion of the population; while in all the larger towns and villages they were very numerous, as well as widely spread over the whole province.

The mountainous district of the Cevennes is the most rugged, broken, and elevated region in the South of France. It fills the department of Lozère, as well as the greater part of Gard and Herault. The principal mountain-chain, about a hundred leagues in length, runs from north-east to south-west, and may almost be said to unite the Alps with the Pyrenees. From the centre of France the surface rises with a gradual slope, forming an inclined plane, which reaches its greatest height in the Cevennic chain, several of the summits of which are about five thousand five hundred feet above the sea level. Its connection with the Alpine range is, however, broken abruptly by the deep valley of the Rhône, running nearly due north and south.

The whole of this mountain district maybe regarded as a triangular plateau rising gradually from the northwest, and tilted up at its south-eastern angle. It is composed for the most part of granite, overlapped by strata belonging to the Jurassic-system; and in many places, especially in Auvergne, the granitic rocks have been burst through by volcanoes, long since extinct, which rise like enormous protuberances from the higher parts of the platform. Towards the southern border of the district, the limestone strata overlapping the granite assume a remarkable development, exhibiting a series of flat-topped hills bounded by perpendicular cliffs some six or eight hundred feet high.

"These plateaux," says Mr. Scrope, in his interesting account of the geology of Central France, "are called 'causses' in the provincial dialect, and they have a singularly dreary and desert aspect from the monotony of their form and their barren and rocky character. The valleys which separate them are rarely of considerable width. Winding, narrow, and all but impassable cliff-like glens predominate, giving to the Cevennes that peculiarly intricate character which enabled its Protestant inhabitants, in the beginning of the last century, to offer so stubborn and gallant a resistance to the atrocious persecutions of Louis XIV."

Such being the character of this mountain district—rocky, elevated, and sterile—the people inhabiting it, though exceedingly industrious, are for the most very poor. Sheep-farming is the principal occupation of the people of the hill country; and in the summer season, when the lower districts are parched with drought, tens of thousands of sheep may be seen covering the roads leading to the Upper Cevennes, whither they are driven for pasture. There is a comparatively small breadth of arable land in the district. The mountains in many places contain only soil enough to grow juniper-bushes. There is very little verdure to relieve the eye—few turf-clad slopes or earth-covered ledges to repay the tillage of the farmer. Even the mountains of lower elevation are for the most part stony deserts. Chestnut-trees, it is true, grow luxuriantly in the sheltered places, and occasionally scanty crops of rye on the lower mountain-sides. Mulberry-trees also thrive in the valleys, their leaves being used for the feeding of silkworms, the rearing of which forms one of the principal industries of the district.

Even in the immediate neighbourhood of Nismes—a rich and beautiful town, abounding in Roman remains, which exhibit ample evidences of its ancient grandeur—the country is arid, stony, and barren-looking, though here the vine, the olive, and the fig-tree, wherever there is soil enough, grow luxuriantly in the open air. Indeed, the country very much resembles in its character the land of Judea, being rocky, parched, and in many places waste, though in others abounding in corn and wine and oil. In the interior parts of the district the scenery is wild and grand, especially in the valleys lying under the lofty mountain of Lozère. But the rocks and stones are everywhere in the ascendant.

A few years ago we visited the district; and while proceeding in the old-fashioned diligence which runs between Alais and Florac—for the district is altogether beyond the reach of railways—a French contractor, accompanying a band of Italian miners, whom he was taking into the mountains to search for minerals, pointing to the sterile rocks, exclaimed to us, "Messieurs, behold the very poorest district in France! It contains nothing but juniper-bushes! As for its agriculture, it produces nothing; manufactures, nothing; commerce, nothing! Rien, rien, rien!"

The observation of this French entrepreneur reminds us of an anecdote that Telford, the Scotch engineer, used to relate of a countryman with reference to his appreciation of Scotch mountain beauty. An English artist, enraptured by the scenery of Ben MacDhui, was expatiating on its magnificence, and appealed to the native guide for confirmation of his news. "I dinna ken aboot the scenery," replied the man, "but there's plenty o' big rocks and stanes; an' the kintra's awfu' puir." The same observation might doubtless apply to the Cevennes. Yet, though the people may be poor, they are not miserable or destitute, for they are all well-clad and respectable-looking peasants, and there is not a beggar to be seen in the district.

But the one country, as the other, grows strong and brave men. These barren mountain districts of the Cevennes have bred a race of heroes; and the men are as simple and kind as they are brave. Hospitality is a characteristic of the people, which never fails to strike the visitor accustomed to the exactions which are so common along the hackneyed tourist routes.

As in other parts of France, the peasantry here are laborious almost to excess. Robust and hardy, they are distinguished for their perseverance against the obstacles which nature constantly opposes to them. Out-door industry being suspended in winter, during which they are shut up in their cabins for nearly six months by the ice and snow, they occupy themselves in preparing their wool for manufacture into cloth. The women card, the children spin, the men weave; and each cottage is a little manufactory of drugget and serge, which is taken to market in spring, and sold in the low-country towns. Such was the industry of the Cevennes nearly two hundred years since, and such it remains to the present day.

The people are of a contented nature, and bear their poverty with cheerfulness and even dignity. While they partake of the ardour and strong temper which characterize the inhabitants of the South of France, they are probably, on the whole, more grave and staid than Frenchmen generally, and are thought to be more urbane and intelligent; and though they are unmanageable by force, they are remarkably accessible to kindness and moral suasion.

Such, in a few words, are the more prominent characteristics of the country and people of the Cevennes.

When the popular worship of the mountain district of Languedoc—in which the Protestants constituted the majority of the population—was suppressed, great dismay fell upon the people; but they made no signs of resistance to the royal authority. For a time they remained comparatively passive, and it was at first thought they were indifferent. Their astonished enemies derisively spoke of them as displaying "the patience of a Huguenot,"—the words having passed into a proverb.