^- u llWim|M>IHIlllll)ll il[l iniWlt'«»IWBaJllg«BaH»)eBBtta!HB^a!'^>?ft'y^ i>0^f r^- HE Reformation IN France Richard Heath. mi^sssMmmfilsmfeSssm^iS'X-'^'- LIBRARY OF THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY PRINCETON, N. J. BR 370 .H4 1886 Heath, Richard The reforn,ation in France (From an old print in the British Museum. C^^ Cburclj Prstotn Scries II /#S«*^»^ Jill 2 1 1^2?' THE REFORMATION "%owi^ai>'^ IN FRANCE from ibo Jlatmi of Jlcform io i\n Ecbocation o O' of tbc (Kbict iDf STantes <^* EICHAKD HEATH iliitJtoi' of ' Ilistoric Landmarlis,^ etc. iL0nt<0U THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY 56, Paternoster Row; G5, St. Paul's Churchyard AND 164, Piccadilly 1886 Butler & Tanner. Tlie SeUvooi Printinjj Works, Frome, and London, CONTENTS. BOOK I, The Movement for Refoem until the Edict of Nantes. CHAPTER I. Prelude IT. Day-break III. Calvin and Geneva IV. Light and Joy flood France . V. Tlie Five Scholars of Lausanne . VI. The Martyrs and the Psalter VII. New Shepherds and a New Fold . VIII. The Calvinistic Constitution at Work IX. Eeform and ' the Gentlemen of France ' X. Science and Art among the early Huguenots XI. Catherine de Medici XII. The Conference at Poissy XIII. Terrible Position of the Huguenots XIV. Killing or being Killed . XV. Demoralization XVI. Charles IX. and Cohgny XVII. The Murder of Coligny XVIII. The Massacre of St. Bartholomew XIX. After St. Bartholomew XX. New Dangers XXI. The Edict of Nantes . PAGE 9 14 21 25 33 37 38 42 47 54 57 60 67 72 78 82 85 86 92 96 97 BOOK II. From the Edict of Nantes to its Revocation. I. Prosperous but Declining . . . * . II. Facilis descensus Averni III. The Counter-Reformation in France IV. In their Misery the People Worship the Devil 5 103 106 107 111 CONTENTS. ciiArTF.n V. A Last Effort at Reconciliation . VI. Persecution Ivccomracuces .... VII. Goin^' down to E and in his later life he was one of the most honoured Fathers of the Reformed Church. During the last ten years of his life he bestowed the whole of his salary on the poor without distinction of religion. His literary industry must have been great, as he published nearly forty works. It is not surprising that such a man should have been esteemed by patrons of learning like Richelieu and Mazarin. One of Amyraut's colleagues at Saumur was Josue de la Place (1596-1655), also a learned theologian. He held views of his own on original sin, arguing that while men bore the burden of Adam^s sin, they were not as responsible as if they had personally committed the transgression. Samuel Bochart (1599-1667), whose researches on the early peoples, places, and animals mentioned in Scripture are quoted to this day in commentaries, was a learned philologist, and much esteemed as pastor of the Church at Caen, in which town he suddenly died while speaking at the local Academy of Antiquaries. Etienne Gaussin, a third professor at Saumur, and Michel le Faucheur, left works on pulpit eloquence, showing how much that art was then cultivated. The temple at Charenton, near Paris, was as it were the Protestant cathedral, and in its pulpit from time to time appeared nearly all the more distinguished Huguenot preachers in France. K 146 THE REFORMATION IiV FRANCE. This edifice, builfc by tlie Protestant architect Debrosse, in 1606, was a grand quadrilateral, like an ancient basilica, with three galleries one above another. It was well lighted, for it had no less than eighty-one windows. It could hold 14^000 persons, and must have required a man of powerful voice to fill it. Its exterior was very plain, no doubt the necessity of surrounding it with a high wall caused the architect to reserve himself for its interior, for Debrosse, though austere in style, as befitted a Huguenot, was a man of abilit}', as may be seen from the Palace of the Luxembourg, of which he was the architect (1615- ]620). He also built the aqueduct of Arcueil, which brought the water to Paris from the village of Rungis ; a worthy worker, true to his interior life, comprehend- ing instinctively that there could be no serious art in a building of which the architecture was not in harmony with its purpose. Because some of the greatest works of art have been produced in Roman Catholic countries, people take it for granted that mediaeval Christianity was more favourable to the birth of art than the Reformed Faith. The great Dutch school of painting, contemporary with the time now before us, shows that this is an unwar- rantable assumption. The truth is, the existence of art is not dependent on any form of faith ; whatever is sincerely and intensely believed will attain some artistic expression, its nature and degree being greatly affected by climate, culture, and other circumstances. But the finest climate and the utmost culture can- not get art out of doubt, scepticism, or Jesuitised religions. In the joy of its new-found faith. Protestantism gave to the most spiritual of all arts, music, a new life and a marvellous development, comparable to that which happened to painting in Catholic countries. HUGUENOT ART. 147 tlirough tlie great movement connected with the names of Francis and Dominic. But Protestantismj as this great Dutch school proves^ not only became more than the foster-mother of the art of music,, but the source of a school which^ for interest, has no rival except among the early Italians. The struggle for indepen- dence, and the sufferings of the Anabaptists, were its inspiration. If Protestant France cannot be compared to Protestant Germany for music, or to Protestant Holland for painting, it must be remembered that it never succeeded in becoming more than a weak and struggling minority, and that its early guides took care not to allow the Anabaptist faith to make any "way in its Churches. Nevertheless, its intense earnest- ness could not fail, at the first favourable opportunity, to develop artists. And the greatest among them appeared when the springs of faith were most simply evangelic. French Protestantism never excelled its Palissy, its Goujon, and its Goudimel ; yet the line goes on, and in the middle of this seventeenth century there were quite a number of Huguenot artists. The career of Sebastien Bourdon (1616-1G71) shows the difficulties with which a Huguenot artist has to contend. Born at Montpellier, he entered at seven years of age the atelier of a painter in Paris named Barthelemy. At fourteen he painted a ceiling in fresco at a chateau near Bordeaux. He went to Toulouse, but not being able to earn a living, enlisted; the officer, however, seeing his talent, set him at liberty, and he made his way to Rome. Here he existed by making copies of the great masters for a furniture- broker ; threatened, however, by another painter with denunciation as a heretic, he fled from Rome and returned to Paris, where he began to paint battle- pieces, hunts, and landscapes. In 1605 he obtained a commission from the Goldsmiths' Company to paint 148 THE REFORMATION IN FRANCE. a Crucifixion of Sfc. Peter. In 1648 he helped to found the Academy of Painting, and was appointed a professor. During the wars of the Fronde he went to Sweden, and was employed by Queen Christina. He returned to Paris, where he painted many large pictures from Scripture. Associated with Bourdon in founding the Academy of Painting were four other Protestants, Louis Elle, called Ferdinand, Samuel Bernard, the miniature painter, Louis Testelin, and Louis Dugreur. Fourteen other Huguenot painters became members of the Academy between 1648 and 1675; but in October, 1681, eight were excluded for the crime of heresy, the remainder apparently declaring themselves con- verted, or ready to be converted, as after the Revo- cation of the Edict of Nantes only Catholics were admitted. XVL The Peotestant Churches of Feakce no Longer Allowed a National Character. 1659. Notwithstanding the learning and virtue of their divines, notwithstanding the influence of the many eminent persons in art, in science, in the army and navy, and among the nobility who still avowed them- selves Protestant, the Reformed Churches of France submitted to a gradual enslavement. Bound by principle and tradition to the State, the alliance became, after the fall of La Rochelle, a new illustration of the fable of the wolf and the lamb. Their organ of action and expression was the synod, provincial or national. The court worked to render THE NATIONAL SYNODS. 149 the occurrence of the latter more and more rare. Be- tween 1631 and 1645 three national synods were held. A royal commissioner was appointed to be present at the first, which took place at Charenton. Pastors and laymen were alike sad and humiliated ; they felt at the mercy of their adversaries. The king named the deputies who would be most agreeable to him, and the synod obeyed. Later on the king willed that there should be only one deputy, and this oflSce was finally made hereditary in the family of the Marquis de Ruvigny. The Reformed Churches entreated that they might add a deputy of the third estate, but this the king refused. Six years passed before another national synod was held. It took place in 1637, in the city of Alen^on, and on this occasion M. de Saint-Marc, the royal com- missioner, said: ^I am come to your synod in order to make known to you the will of his majesty. All authority is of God, and consequently on this immov- able foundation you are bound to obey. Moreover, the goodness of the king, and the care he takes of you, oblige you to it ; his clemency and his power are the firmest support you can possibly have. I don^t doubt that you have often reflected on the admirable provi- dence of God in causing the royal authority of his majesty to be the means of their preservation.^ The moderator, Basnage, replied that the Churches had not the least idea of departing from that submission to which the Word of God obliged them. Already forbidden by royal authority to receive the teaching of the Synod of Dort, they were now for- bidden to correspond with foreign Churches. Letters coming from Geneva and Holland were first opened by the royal commissioner, who, after he had ac- quainted himself with their contents, caused them to be read to the synod. Still more — one synod might I50 THE REFORMATION IN FRANCE. not correspond witli anotlier, tlie object clearly being to separate tlie dying aslies as mucli as possible. The poor synod solaced itself by considering tlie slavery of the negroes. It concluded that the Word of God did not forbid the buying and keeping of slavesj but recommended the faithful not to abuse the privilege by selling their slaves to barbarians or to cruel people^ but to those who would care for their immortal souls and bring them up in the Christian religion. At the next synod^ which took place at Charenton seven years later on (1644). they were pushed down a step lower still, the royal commissioner taking care to be first in complaining of the encroachments and usurpations of the Eeformed Churches. He then de- clared that it was the will of the king that they should exclude from the evangelic ministry all who had studied at Geneva, or in Holland, or in England. The battle of Marston Moor (July 2nd, 1644) had taken place during the previous summer, and Henrietta Maria was in France. Some deputies of the maritime provinces having reported that certain English Independents had estab- lished themselves in France, and were teaching that each flock had a right to govern itself, without regard- ing the authority of synods, the assembly enjoined the maritime provinces to take care that an opinion as prejudicial to the Church of God as it was to the State should not root itself in the kingdom. However, the success of the English Puritans, and the troubles of the Fronde, had a beneficial effect on their condition. Mazarin felt it necessary to keep on good terms with the Huguenots, and for a short time they breathed freely. The exercise of their religion was again permitted in places where it had been illegally suppressed. The Edict of Nantes was again MAZARIN. 151 confirmed m 1652, and its provisions carried out with some reality. But this relaxation in the process of garrotting French Protestantism, aroused the ire of the Catholic clergy, who bitterly complained of the oppression of the Catholic Church. They wished for the re-estab- lishment of the legitimate explanations given to the Edict by the late king. They mourned to see how the heretics had destroyed all the wise precautions that great prince had taken to put a barrier to their rest- less spirit. Some temples having been built on property belonging to certain ecclesiastical lords, the assembly of the clergy demanded their demolition, as ^syna- gogues of Satan, raised on the patrimony of the Son of God.' They hinted that the reports which the Huguenots presented of their injuries amounted to the establishment of the political assemblies forbidden by various edicts, and that their collections in favour of the Yaudois of Piedmont, who in 1655 were atrociously massacred by their ruler, Charles Em- manuel II., Duke of Savoy,^ indicated a dangerous plot. They also declared that in some places the Huguenots had again raised the fortifications, and that the deserters of the faith of their fathers aspired to the highest dignities of the State ; and in conclusion they made a pathetic appeal for the pro- tection of the king. Mazarin, a very inferior man to Richelieu, was alarmed, and the council published a declaration which put things back into the state in which they were in the days of Louis XIII. Not only was the exercise of 1 The occasion on which Milton wrote his noble sonnet : ' Avenge, Lord, Thy slaughtered saints.' A poem which shows how Puritanism, like Huguenotism, had drunk in the spirit of the Hebrew Psalms. 152 THE REFORMATION IN FRANCE. the Protestant religion forbidden in places where it had been lately established, but ministers were for- bidden to call themselves pastors, or their flocks, CJiurcJies. The Edict of Nantes had mentioned by name every commune in which the Protestants were to have the right to preach ; but in their now depressed condition their numbers had so dwindled that there were not enough to support a pastor, the result being that several such communes united under one pastor. The terms of the Edict being precise as to places, the only objection the authorities could take was to question the right of any pastor to preach out of the place in which he was domiciled. The Parliaments lent themselves to the most rigorous interpretation of the law, and thus this pretext was used during forty years to suppress more and more Protestant preaching. The Huguenots having no longer any political assemblies, and the national synod being almost extinct, the provincial synods sent four deputies in 1658 to lay their troubles before the king. However, they got nothing but a promise that he would look at their report and do them justice. Finally he promised to observe the Edict of Nantes, if they rendered themselves worthy of this grace by their good conduct, fidelity, and affection for his service. In 1659, Louis XIV., by the treaty of the Pyrenees, added to his realm Roussillon, Artois, and Alsace. Conscious of his immense strength, he turned the last screw of the garrote, and the existence of Protestant France as a national Church ceased, except in so far as it was represented by a solitary courtier, the Marquis de Euvigny. Fifteen years had elapsed since a national synod had been held; one was now per- mitted at Loudun. On the king's side all was menace. THE SYNOD OF 1659. 153 recrimination, accusation ; on the side of the Pro- testants all was humility, abasement, expressions of gratitude. The commissioner called upon them to admire the benignity of the king, and forbade them to make any complaint, declaring that it was the king who had the most reason to complain of them, that their infractions of the Edict had even reached a supreme degree of insolence, for they had recommenced preaching in Languedoc and elsewhere after it was forbidden, a charge which had been made fifteen years before at Chareuton, showing that they could not find a single new pretext for reproach. The moderator, Jean Daille, replied in a submissive voice : ' We receive with all respect and all possible humility all that which has been said to us on the part of his majesty.' In return, the commissioner pressed the synod to close its sittings quickly, and plainly told them this would be the last synod per- mitted. ^ The expense is too great,' said the repre- sentative of a king who could waste millions on an ugly and useless palace ; ^ besides, you have provincial synods, which meet annually, and can do what is necessary.' Daille replied that they hoped the king would not deprive them of his liberalities, but as the synod was an absolute necessity, they would gladly support all its expenses themselves. They finally resolved, subject to the good pleasure of his majesty, that they would hold another synod at Mmes in 1662. But Louis XIV. refused absolutely to allow it. The national synod of 1659 was last held by permission of authority. Sixty-six years passed before another was held, and then it was in secret, in the Desert, under the heaviest penalties. 154 THE REFORMATION IN FRANCE. XVII. Further Inroads on Huguenot Liberty. After Henry lY. tlie Huguenots never had better masters than tlie cardinals Riclielieu and Mazarin. When the latter died, in 16G1, the ministers asked Louis XIV. to whom they should go. ^ To ??ie/ replied the king. Persecution at once increased. Commissioners were named to inquire strictly in each province into the violations of the Edict of Nantes. To a great Catholic official, powerful at court, was joined some unknown Calvinist, who was occasionally a traitor. Of course the Protestant cause was generally found a delinquent. Among other things, the commissioners were to verify the right of public worship. Many churches had never had legal documents, or had lost them ; the con- sequence was that services were interdicted, temples pulled down, schools suppressed, and charities confis- cated to Catholic uses. In 1663, the clergy, on the application of its assem- bly-general, obtained a law pronouncing the penalty of banishment on all who returned to the Reformed communion after having once abjured it. They could not, it was said, claim the benefit of the Edict of Nantes, as they had renounced it, and returning to heresy, they were guilty of profaning the holy mys- teries of the Catholic religion. The law was suspended during the next year; it was probably found that banishment was losing its terrors, even for Frenchmen. In 1665, an ordinance of the council authorized cures, accompanied by a magistrate, to go to houses where there were any sick people, and to ask them if they wished to die heretics, or to be converted to the true religion. INROADS ON HUGUENOT LIBERTY. 155 By a decree of tlie 24tli of October^ 1665, cliildren were declared capable of embracing Catholicisra, boys at fourteen years of age, girls at twelve; and the parents were to pay for tbeir support away from home. The bishops, not satisfied with this, complained that the age was far too high, children must be allowed to enter the Catholic Church as soon as they expressed the wish. To this the Government practically said, 'Do as you will.^ There were soon many juvenile abjura- tions; and when the parents sought justice in the courts, claiming that the children were not legally entitled to abjure, the lawyers proved that there was a great differ- ence between inducing a child to change its religion, and the Church opening her arms to receive it when it presented itself by a sort of inspiration from heaven. The desire to serve one's country as a public official is a legitimate, and may be a noble ambition; the Hugue- nots keenly felt their exclusion from this career. Colbert, however, finding it indispensable to have honest men in the Treasury, opened its doors to the Huguenots. There was some precedent for it in the fact that under Mazarin, a German Protestant, Bar- thelemy Her ward, had been appointed superintendent of the finances and maintained there, notwithstanding clerical opposition. But of course the chief reason that enabled Colbert to act as he did, was that he was himself absolutely indispensable to Louis XIV., as the man who supplied all the money for his ambitious wars. Thus the Huguenots came into the Treasury, and, by their power of organization, econom}^, and probity, ' became the most reliable farmers and com- missioners of the taxes it was possible for Colbert to find. One immediate effect was the rise in public esteem of the whole service; and though it was the age of Moliere, La Fontaine, and Boileau, the Treasury officials were never satirised. 156 THE REFORMATION IN FRANCE. Shut out from all other public offices, refused ad- mission into the municipal magistracy, the Protestants gave themselves up to trade and manufactures, to agriculture and the arts. Their lives were passed under an irritating and pettifogging tyranny. If a procession passed their temples when they were sing- ings they were compelled to leave off. They must bury their dead at break of day or at dusk, and only ten persons might follow, except in certain cities, where thirty were permitted. They could only marry at times fixed by the canons of the Roman Catholic Church, and the nuptial procession might not, in pass- ing through the streets, relatives included, number more than twelve persons. Rich Churches might not support the ministers of poorer ones, besides other injurious restrictions. This sure and steady process of slow starvation did not, however, satisfy eager spirits like that of the Bishop of Uzes, who in the General Assembly of the clergy, in 1665, declared to the king that it was needful to work with more ardour, in order to cause this terrible monster of heresy to yield up its last breath. He asked that henceforth no one should be allowed to go out of the Roman Church, adding that twenty-two dioceses in Languedoc had demanded this law of the provincial states, and that all the dioceses of the kingdom were ready to seal it with their blood. This proposal was not carried out ; but next year an enormous concession was made to the clergy, for all the judgments which had been given in individual cases were embodied into a general law, thus rendering perpetual the various successful efforts made to restrain the liberties granted by the Edict of Nantes. This was the commencement of the emigration, and of the great sympathy which more and more manifested itself THE HUGUENOTS AND THE KING. 157 in foreign countries. The Elector of Brandenburg made representatious on behalf of the oppressed Huguenots. England and Sweden also manifested their interest. The result was that niue of the articles in this new law were suppressed and twenty-one softened. XVIII. The Huguenots and the King. Unbelief and despotism^ faith and liberty — these two sets of parents make opposing worlds. Protestantism was born of the latter, and was, therefore, always inimical to, and hated by, the former. In France the world formed by unbelief and despotism grew stronger through every decade of this seventeenth century. In the last quarter of this period it reached maturity, and exhibited fruits which render its history one of the saddest, but, at the same time, one of the most instruc- tive pages in history. Let us not think that we can afford to be ignorant of its warnings. The Apostle Paul, than whom none knew better that the world had outlived the Mosaic economy, said, referring to some of the facts of its history : ' These thiugs were written for our instruction, on whom the ends of the world are come.^ This terrible despotism was able to impose itself on France, and to reach such a point because it was in harmony with public opinion. Everybody, from the beggar to the prince, believed in it. Even the bulk of the Protestants conceived it their highest earthly duty, as well as their greatest earthly advantage, to be employed in maintaining this despotism. What was the object of Louis Fourteenth's wars but to establish this despotism over Europe ? And every victory he 158 THE REFORM ATI ON IN FRANCE. gained enabled liim to tread more heavily on the nccl: of France^ and crush without fear the last breath frori the Huguenot Churches, prostrate and dying. Ard yet the Reformed Churches of France duly returned thanks for those victories in their temples. It was as if the children of Ahaz had returned thanks to Jehovah for the triumphs of the idol at whose shrine they were about to be sacrificed. There was it would seem hardly anything the Huguenots felt more than to be shut out of the public offices, nothing which their historians record with more pleasure than the way Colbert filled the finance department with Protestants, and maintained them there as long as he lived. It never seems to have occurred to the Huguenots, or even to their modern historians, that they were devoting all their virtue and all their pains to strengthening the system which was steadily crushing out the only cause worth living for — the cause of the kingdom of heaven. The reflection, obvious enough now, that all their savings only helped Louis to slaughter, to waste more money in his lusts and follies, does not appear to have crossed their minds. Colbert saw it at last, could not escape from it, and it killed him. But the Huguenot officials went on like a hive of busy bees making* honey for the wasps, until the latter, unable to restrain themselves any longer, drove out all the bees and ate up all the honey. This universal blindness is Louis Fourteenth's best excuse. ^ He was deified,^ says St. Simon, ' in the midst of Christianity.'' A statue was erected to him in the Place des Yictoires, with the inscription, Yiro Immortali. Says the great Jurieu in his noble work, TJiG 8iglis of Enslaved France : ^ The King of France believes himself tied to no laws. He is persuaded that his will is the law of right and wrong, and that he is answerable to God alone. He is absolute master BOSSUET AND LOUIS XIV. 159 of tlie life^ liberty, persons,, goods, religion, aucl con- science of his subjects/ Bossuet and Louis XIV. were entirely in accord on the absolute authority which kings have over their subjects; but there was one point where Bossuet stopped — he did not admit the right of the king over private property. Louis made no such reserve, ' All/ he said, ^ which is found in the whole extent o£ our states, of whatever nature it may be, belongs to us by the same title. The moneys in our privy purse, those which remain in the hands of our trea- surers, and iliose that lue leave in the commerce of our people, ought to be equally looked after by us. Kings are absolute lords, and have naturally the full and free disposition of all the goods which are possessed as well by Churchmen as by the laity, for use at any time according to the general want.' XIX. Public Opinion and the Huguenots. To comprehend the story before us, it is necessary to understand the nature of the public opinion which could glory in such a monarch, while it pursued with unrelenting animosity the small section of the popula- tion who would not prostrate themselves at full length before the colossal idol the followers of Macchiavelli and of Loyola had combined to set up. Bossuet's opinions may be taken as those of the French clergy. With him they embraced the whole sphere of things, with them they centred on the one subject that engaged their thoughts — the absolute, un- questioned supremacy of the Church. ' The one source of all our misfortunes,' said the Bishop of Valence to i6o THE REFORMATION IN FRANCE. an assembly of clergy ia 1685, 'is, as you know, my lords, lieresy. The destruction of heresy is our one business. Until now it has been very difficult, but now nothing escapes the zeal, penetration, and under- standing of the king. However, as the malice of heretics is unbounded, there are many things the heart of a kiug so good and so generous has not been able to discover. There are many enterprises yet to repress. But this ought to console us ; we are assured of success.^ Madame de Sevigne is one of the best representa- tives of ' Society ' in the age of Louis XIV. To genius and good-humour she added such virtue as to appear quite a paragon among her contemporaries. Nevertheless she thinks it an honour to be a partner with the sharpest hand at the king^s gambling-table and to chat with the king's mistress ; while of the Huguenots she speaks as ' those demons,^ ' those wretched Huguenots, who come out of their holes to pray to God, and who disappear like ghosts directly you seek them and want to exterminate them.' She expresses herself with her usual vivacity on the Dragonnades, which evidently met with her approval. ' The dragoons have been very good missionaries until now; the preachers' (Bourdaloue, etc.) Hhat are going to be immediately sent will render the work perfect.' What she and her correspondent, the Comte de Bussy Rabutin, thought of the king and the Huguenots comes out in the following extract from a letter addressed to her by the comte soon after the Revo- cation of the Edict of Nantes : ' I admire the way the king has managed the ruin of the Huguenots. He had undermined this sect by degrees, and the edict he has just given, sustained by dragoons and Bourdaloues, will be their coxij) de grace.'' If it is sad to find persons like Bossuet and HUGUENOT PROSPERITY. i6i Madame de Sevigne sharing in and doing their very best to form the horrible public opinion of the day, it is still sadder when we come to find the people themselves animated by it^ and making themselves its instruments. It is true there have been times and occasions when the masses of the people have raged against the preachers of the Gospel, and joined in their persecu- tion, but it has only been for a time ; it has almost always ended in the people returning to the attitude in which they received it from the Lord Himself. But here we find the persecution persistent, and unprovoked by anything in the way of preaching ; for a Huguenot pastor could not preacli outside a temple. No doubt fanaticism had much to do with it, and example still more ; but this would hardly explain the antipathy the people displayed in not only enduring unmoved the ever-increasing cruelty and injustice with which the Huguenots were treated, but in giving that cruelty and injustice their help and support. Abraham Bosse's engravings show us how pro- sperous the Huguenots were, how they dwelt in a Land of Goshen. But we hardly need proof of the fact : a religious, industrious people, holding together, must become rich ; it is the universal law. In this case it was rendered more certain by the fact that the Calvinist Churclies were chiefly recruited from the trading classes in the towns. The sight of this pro- sperity, in the midst of so much misery, could not fail to arouse envy, suspicion, hatred. The disabilities under whicli the Huguenots laboured, and a great lacuna in the creed upon which their character was formed, led tliem into positions which gave ground for dislike, and intensified the popular disfavour. Excluded from all the learned professions and all the public offices, they were necessarily drivon into L 162 THE REFORMATION IN FRANCE. buying and selling the ordinary commodities of life^ or_, if capitalists, of dealing in money. The Reformers, early accused of Antinomianism^ had made much of the moral law ; but it was that of the Old Testament rather than the New. The Sermon on the Mount, which was the true antidote to the snares and temp- tations of such a position, had far from an adequate place in Calvinistic theology. It is easy to see how a people thus situated must necessarily play the part of Pharaoh's fat kine, a law only to be avoided by their obedience to the laws of the kingdom of heaven. The unpopularity brought about by this condition of things must have been further aggravated by the way in which Huguenots assisted Colbert in wringing the taxes out of the people. This eminent statesman, by the force of his violent will and his tremendous energy, galvanised France, and made it for a few years a Titan in war and commerce. Holland and England were becoming plethoric with wealth gained by their world-embracing marine. France should have the same, should share with these powers the commerce of the globe. Colbert did what he deter- mined. In four years he had built seventy men-of- war, in six years he had a fleet of 194 ships. To man it, all sailors were declared to belong to the king, so that they could at any time be impressed, and made to serve on board the royal navy. But the creation of this fleet was not the end ; it was a means to seize and maintain a commerce which had to be created. Colbert invited new industries into France, and to give them a chance of rooting, he passed prohibitory duties on English and Dutch linens and cloths. In three or four years wool alone kept 44,000 looms going. An enormous development of trade suddenly took place in Lyons, and great fortunes were made. Still further, to give life and impetus to this impro- COLBERT. 163 vised commerce, colonies were bouglit, commercial companies started, something like chambers of com-= merce instituted, and roads constructed. For all these things immense sums of money were wanted, and how to force it out of a people starving and impoverished was the great question. Perhaps it might have been comparatively easy if Colbert had been king, and his work only one of peace and the development of trade ; but there were Louis XIV. and Louvois, with their great wars and enormous armies ; there was a vast body of idle nobility wasting their lives and their goods at court ; there were myriads of priests and nuns who had to live, and added nothing to the general wealth. To sustain all this expense and all this waste, Colbert became a tyrant. The laws gave him thirty or forty means of raising money. In the expressive language of Jurieu, ^ A thousand channels were open by which he could draw the blood of the people.^ ' France,^ said the same writer, ' pays 200,000,0001 taxes. All the rest of the rulers in Europe, Spain, England, Sweden, Denmark, the em- peror and all the German and Italian princes, the republics of Holland and Venice, do not altogether get as much out of their subjects.^ For nowhere else was such a rack-rent system attempted. It was worked by farmers-general, who were responsible for the taxes of a district. In the villages the taxes were collected by the notables, who were made answerable in their own persons and property, and who, when they attempted the collection, were obliged to go about in a body, or they would have been stoned. In the end the people were robbed of everything, furniture, cattle, money, corn, wine ; the prisons were full. ^ Jurieu no doubt means livres. The livre tournois was the unit of the French monetary system, and was worth a trifle more than a frauc. l64 THE REFORMATION IN FRANCE. Colbert died cursed by the people. It troubled him as he lay on his death-bed. ^ Had 1/ he said, ^ done for God what I have done for this man ' (Louis XIV.), ^I should be sure of being saved, but now I know not where I am goiug.' The Huguenots were, as we have stated, his best assistants. * They entered,' says Elie Benoit, ' into the farms and the commissions, and ren- dered themselves so necessary in affairs of this kind that Fouquet, even as well as Colbert, could not do without them. No doubt, whatever there was of justice, humanity, disinterestedness was found among the Huguenot officials ; but the people could not distinguish one from another. The system was so terribly oppressive that a single clerk of the taxes appeared many times more a worse foe than a sea of 40,000 leagues with its pirates and its storms. XX. The Conversion and Jubilee op the King Inaugurate A New Series of Persecutions. This glance at public opinion in France during the later half of the seventeenth century will enable us better to understand the persistent persecution with which the Protestants were pursued, a persecution tending more and more to extermination. The very existence of a people claiming the right to think differently from the king on the most important of all questions was a menace to absolute authority, and thus for political reasons there had been this persis- tent persecution from the accession of Louis XIII. in IGIO, to the jubilee of Louis XIV. in 1676. But when in that year, owing to the so-called conversion of the king, religious motives were added to political ones, 1 A NEW SERIES OF PERSECUTIONS. 165 the persecution took a more exterminatory form, and did not cease until it seemed to have extirpated Calvinism to its very roots. The conversion of the king to exterior morality and religion is attributed to his last mistress and second wife, Madame de Maintenon, a grand-daughter of the great Agrippa d'Aubigne, who through the miserable character of her father was brought up in a convent and made a Catholic. Her influence over the king exceeded that exercised by any other person in the whole of his career, for she was a very serious person, and knew how to affect his conscience. She must therefore bear with his other intimate advisers — his confessor, Pere la Chaise ; his chancellor, Le Tellier ; and his minister, Louvois, — the blame of all the fright- ful iniquity which now ensued. Perhaps it was the ability the Huguenots had dis- played in the management of the royal finances that induced the king and his council to believe that they were specially devoted to money-making, and might easily be bought if each man was duly paid his price. To this good work Louis determined to consecrate a third of his savings, as well as the proceeds of all the benefices that fell iu, the temporals of which he took until the see was filled up. A bank was opened, and Pellison, a new convert to the king's religion, was appointed its director. It had its agents all over the provinces, and a regular system of business. No more than a hundred francs a head was to be given, and less in the general way. More might, however, be granted in special cases, if explained to his majesty, and he should judge it advisable. PeUison soon pre- sented a list of eight hundred converts; the miracle was trumpeted forth in the gazettes. But ere long it had to be whispered to the king that he was being duped, that the people bought were rogues. Where- 1 66 THE REFORMATION IN FRANCE. upon Louis enacted that the rogues should not escape the chance of being reformed by Catholic discipline, for any relapse back again into Protestantism was to be punished with perpetual banishment and confis- cation of goods. Bribery having failed, Louis reverted to force. It was soon understood throughout the official world that there was no better way to please the king than to assist him in his great work of extirpating heresy from France ; and very soon every one in authority began to enter into this congenial line of converting the Hugue- nots by force. One civil right after another was taken away ; they were attacked in their tenderest points — family life and religious worship. The chambers of the Edict in Paris and Rouen were suppressed in 1669, and the mixed chambers in the Parliaments of Toulouse, Grenoble, and Bordeaux in 1679. The provincial par- liaments had long distinguished themselves by the severity with which they carried out all the cruel laws against heresy. In 1664, Elie Saurin, the Protestant theologian, passed the ^ holy sacrament ^ without raising his hat. He was condemned by the Grenoble Parliament to be conducted in his shirt, barefooted, a lighted candle weighing two pounds in his hand, and a halter round his neck, to the principal door of the chief church in Embrun, and there to declare that he had foolishly and audaciously passed before the holy sacrament of the altar without raising his hat, that he repented of it, and asked pardon of God, the king, and the court, after which he was to be banished in perpetuity. During the next year a man of high Catholic family, Louis Rambard, spoke against the holy sacrament, but consenting to remain Catholic, he was not then pro- ceeded against. Ten years elapsed, and he became a Protestant, whereupon this same Parliament of Grenoble sentenced him to all the indignities they proposed for A NEW SERIES OF PERSECUTIONS. 167 Saurin, and in addition to have his tongue cut out, then to be hanged and strangled until natural (6*ic) death ensued, when his body was to be burnt and his ashes scattered to the winds. He was to pay 1,000 livres to buy a silver lamp for the Church of Die, and 500 more to buy a piece of ground to maintain it ; in addition he was to give 1,000 livres to repair the said church, and fifty livres fine to the king to pay the cost of his trial. Rambard was able to escape to Geneva, and so to evade his cruel persecutors; but the extreme barbarity of the sentence shows how much the Protestants lost by the suppression of the mixed cham- bers in which they were represented. Children were carried off as early as 1676. By an edict of June 17th, 1684, it was ordained that any child over seven years of age could abjure the pre- tended Reformed religion, and embrace that of the Church of Rome, its parents not being allowed to prevent it on any pretext whatsoever, but were required all the same to provide for its maintenance. The slightest act was sufficient as sign of adhesion. Children were torn from their parents, especially from the rich, who could pay a good sum for board, and were then shut up in a convent or a monastery. Parents, it appears, tried to save their little ones by sending them out of the country ; a law was enacted forbidding this to be done before a child was sixteen years of age. AH illegitimate children, of whatever sex or condition, were to be brought up as Catholics ; and this law being retrospective, persons of sixty or eighty years of age who had had the misfortune to come into the world under these conditions were now summoned to enter the Church of Rome. In pursuance of this war on Huguenot domestic life, Protestants were forbidden to marry Catholics, or to become guardians or trustees even to their nearest relatives. They were not allowed 1 68 THE REFORMATION IN FRANCE. to have Catholics for valets^ and then by a contradic- tory law they were to have none but Catholics. In order to entice into abjuration those who were deeply in debt, a law was made granting a delay of payment for three years to the newly converted, the main inconvenience falling, it is natural to suppose, on their Huguenot friends. Another bribe held out was remission of the taxes for two years to the newly con- verted; those remaining recalcitrant paying double the usual rate, in order that the treasury might not lose by its generosity. Medical men, surgeons, and others attending the sick, were ordered, under a heavy penalty, to give notice to the magistrates of a district, who were bound to pay domiciliary visits, in order to ask sick persons if they wished to abjure. 8uch was the activity of the legists in these days that between the year 1660 and October, 1685, there were fulminated in France 309 orders, declarations, and edicts against the Huguenots. The pastors were more and more hampered, until the moment came for putting an end to their work ; meanwhile they were not allowed to complain of the sadness of the times. They were obliged to live six leagues from any place where worship was interdicted, and at least three from any place where it was contested. No gatherings were to take place in the temples under pretext of prayers and singing psalms, except at the accustomed hours. No convert to Catholicism was to be received into a temple under pain of banishment and conliscation of goods for the pastor, and interdic- tion of all religious worship for the flock. Under this law it was very easy to demolish a temple and destroy religious worship, as, for example, at Montpellier, where a young girl named Isabeau Paulet, who had escaped from a convent, where they had not succeeded in con- DEMOLITION OF TEMPLES. 169 verting her, entered the temple unknown to the pastor, in consequence of which the Parb'ament of Toulouse interdicted him from ever again exercising his ministry, abolished the evangelic worship in Montpellier, and ordered the demolition of the temple in a fortnight (1682). The demolition of temples went on every- where. In 1664, one of the temples of Nimes was thus pulled down, as well as those of Grenoble, Montauban, Montagnac, Alencon, and one hundred and fifty-two churches of Lower Languedoc, of the Upper Ce venues, and Provence. In the diocese of Valence, twenty-four were destroyed in two years. In 1684, in the Dauphine alone, twenty-four churches were suppressed by an order in council. Between 1660 and 1684 no less than 570 Protestant temples were closed or demolished in France, just upon two-thirds of the whole number the Reformed Churches possessed. The destruction of some of these places was accompanied by popular violence, as at Blois and AlenQon, where the mob rushed into the temples, tore up the books, the seats, and the pulpit, and then burnt them. Nor was it only their temples of which they were deprived : colleges, academies, hospitals, shared the same fate. The academy at Nimes was suppressed in 1664, and that of Sedan in 1681. The ruin of that of Montauban had been effected soon after 1661. Those of Die, Saumur, and Puylaurens, were all condemned in 1684, the property of the first named being made over to the Hospital de la Croix. In a similar way the furniture of the Protestant hospital at Nimes was in 1667 handed over to the Catholic hospital, and the building turned into an orphan asylum for Catholics or those who desired to become such. Louis XIV., in fact, boldly illustrated his theory of the right of the crown to dispose of everything in France according to his view of the general want. I70 THE REFORMATION IN FRANCE. All the funds for the support of the Protestant poor were seized, and the recipients sent to the Catholic hospitals. Legacies to consistories were also annulled. In fact, these bodies could no longer meet, except in the presence of a royal commissioner, the business they had to transact being about the most doleful possible, since it consisted in the receipt of orders, proclamations, edicts, each registering another step in ruin. Sometimes they had to receive the intendant of the province, accompanied by a retinue of officers and priests, and humbly listen to his orders. Sometimes they had to appease tumults rising among their long- suffering people ; and all through they were themselves split into fractions, whose alienation grew every day in intensity. Sometimes they sought spiritual strength and con- solation by a day of fasting and prayer. Thus the Synod of Lower Languedoc assembled at Uzes in May, 1669, composed of seventy pastors and fifty-three elders, and after having meditated on the evils of the time, they celebrated, ^ in order to appease the anger of God, which,^ they conceived, ^ weighed burning and terrible on the Churches,^ an extraordinary fast, during which they listened to four successive sermons. At the conclusion of this austere service, the members of the assembly gave each other the kiss of peace and the right hand of fellowship, commending each other to God and the Word of His grace. XXI. The Booted Mission. Louvois, annoyed to find that with the cessation of war and the rise of Madame de Maintenon his in- fluence with the king had ceased, determined to throw THE BOOTED MISSION. 171 liimself into the movement o£ the day^ the conversion of Huguenots^ and thereupon organized what is now known as la mission hottee — the booted mission. In his capacity of war minister he had the control of the troops, and accordingly he sent a regiment of cavalry into Poitou, with orders to Marillac, the inten- dantj to quarter the greater number on the Protestants. ' Where/ he said, ^ by a fair division the religionaries should have ten, you can give them twenty .■* Marillac entered into the spirit of his orders, for he marched as if he were in a hostile country, causing his troops to collect all the arrears of the taxes, exempting converts and throwing the whole burden on those who obsti- nately adhered to their religion. About four to ten dragoons were lodged in each Protestant home, with orders not to kill their victims, but to do everything they possibly could to wrest from them an abjuration. Their amusements were from their own point of view as blasphemous as they were cruel, for to make them kiss the cross they tied it to their mouths, or dug them Avith it under the ribs ; they struck the children with their canes or the flat of their swords or the butt end of their muskets, and that in so violent a manner as sometimes to lame the victim. They flogged the women with whips, or struck them in their faces with their canes ; they dragged them through the mud by the hair of their head ; they tore the labourers from their ploughs, and drove them to church with their own ox-goads. Many felt these things beyond endurance, and determined to quit France. Thousands of Huguenot families emigrated ; what, however, most alarmed the government was the flight of a great number of the sailors, who went off en masse. The intendants were ordered to desist, and the laws against emigration were put into vigorous execution : penal servitude for 172 THE REFORMATION IN FRANCE. life on the galleys to heads of families flyings a fine of 3,000 livres to all who helped them to do so, while all contracts entered into by emigrants for a twelvemonth previous to their departure were annulled. During the years that elapsed between the first Dragonnades and the Revocation, every man had to choose between life and all he held dear and his con- science; there was no escape. Pilate, when he saw Jesus Christ at his bar, when he beheld that face on which the most virulent could discern no trace of evil, Pilate when he heard the cry, ' Crucify Him ! crucify Him ! ^ could not help exclaiming, ^ Why, what evil hath He done ? ' so all Europe in astonishment and pity must have exclaimed as they heard of this atro- cious persecution. ^ Are we,' cried Jurieu, in 1683, ^ Turks? Are we infidels ? We believe in Jesus Christ ; we believe in the eternal Son of God, the Redeemer of the world ; the maxims of our morality are of a purity so great that none would dare to deny them ; we respect kings; we are good subjects, good citizens; we are French as much as we are reformed Christians.' The Protestants continued to send up the story of their sufferings to the court, the privy council, to the king himself. Ruvigny, their deputy-general, represented to Louis the great misery of two millions of his subjects. The king, it is said, answered, that to recall all his subjects to Catholic unity, he would give one of his arms, or with one hand cut off the other. Was this fanaticism ? Was it not rather the Ahab- spirit on the grandest scale ? As long as that little Huguenot garden of herbs existed outside the Ludo- vican Church and State, Europe itself would not have made Louis happy. To the camarilla about him the ruin of the French Naboth brought literally results FURTHER PERSECUTIONS. 173 similar in kind to those attending the fate of the Hebrew prototype. ' I beg you/ writes Madame de Maintenon (Septem- ber 2nd, 1681) to her brother, who was about to receive a gratuity of 800,000 livres, ^ to employ advanta- geously the money ^ow. are going to have. The estates in Poitou are going for nothing, the desolation of the Huguenots will make them go on selling. You will be able with ease to establish yourself grandly in Poitou.^ XXII. Some Huguenots Attempt to Appeal to the Conscience of Feance. We have already noted the contradictory law about valets; in 1683 similarly opposing enactments were published concerning the attendance of Catholics in Protestant temples ; by an ordinance of the 8tli of March, ministers who received a Catholic into the pretended Keformed religion, or suffered them to attend the temples and listen to sermons, were con- demned to perpetual banishment from France, with confiscation of all their property. On the 20th of May following appeared a declaration, ordering that there should be an allotted place in the temples where Catholics could sit, who out of zeal for the increase of religion desired to attend the sermons. In both instances the cause of the contradictory law was plaiuj the government wished to organise a system of espionage. Here was the commencement of another series of persecutions, more desolating, more unendur- able than any that had yet occurred. Have we not noted again and again in history, how, in the darkest moment of peril to a downtrodden and 174 THE REFORMATION IN FRANCE. oppressed people, the appearance of a man of great heart and boundless faith puts into them new courage, and they go forth resolute to endure and perhaps to conquer ? God sends a man before them, and by his aid they are, at least for a time, sustained, and every such gasp is an assurance that they will weather the storm, and finally overcome the adversary. So at this time appears on the stage a man who, with Jurieu, carries on the great traditions of the Calvinist Churches of France. Claude Brousson was born at Nimes in 1647. The son of a tradesman, he was trained for the bar, and became an avocat in the mixed chamber of Castres, which he followed to Toulouse. For twenty years he had shown himself the disinterested protector of the poor, and the zealous defender of the oppressed Churches. And now that they were absolutely over- whelmed and in danger of total extinction, this man of faith risks all, that he may place himself at the post of danger, by becoming their advocate before the king, court, and country. He was a man of faith, of prayer, and a believer in the human conscience. He felt that in Louis XIV., in the governors, in the magistrates, in the Catholic people of France, there was a power to which he could appeal that would be on the side of the oppressed, and he was determined to risk all to compel them to listen to that still small voice. On the 3rd of May, 1683, sixteen representatives of the Churches in Languedoc, the Cevennes, the Yivarais and Dauphine, met in Claude Brousson's house in Toulouse, to consider what they should do. It was resolved to show Louis and all France that they and their cause were not dead, by the simultaneous gathering of the interdicted Churches in their accustomed places of worship, and where the temples had been destroyed. MASSACRES ORDERED BY LOU VOLS. 175 in some place sufficiently out of the way to give no occa- sion of offence, and yet not so hidden but that all might know that a religious assembly had taken place. Unhappily the great trials through which the Churches had passed had developed two characters : the zealots, who were ready for any enterprise, and the timid and politic, who yielded point after point until at last they yielded themselves. This party con- sidered the Toulouse resolution rash, and would have nothing to do with it. On the day appointed, several meetings took place over the country, but Louvois prepared beforehand, sent his soldiers, and the peasants fled into the woods, where they were killed by hundreds. It was a butchery, not a fight, says Rulhieres. The temples in which the victims had worshipped were destroyed and their houses razed. Those who had yielded on the offer of pardon, on condition of abjuring, were hanged. In the Vivarais the people thus attacked themselves took arms. Louvois promised an amnesty if they would lay them down, but he excepted all the ministers, besides fifty other prisoners, as well as all those he sent to the galleys. One aged pastor, Isaac Homel, an old man of seventy-two, he broke alive on the wheel (Oct. 16th, 1683). Meanwhile some thirty pastors and lay deputies arrived from Lower Languedoc at Nimes, desiring to hold a colloquy ; but the Nimois consistory, led by the pastors Cheiron and Paulhan, and the deacon Saint Comes, refused to agree to such a course, whereupon the others determined to ask permission of the tem- porary commandant of the province, who, however, absolutely refused to allow them to assemble as synod or colloquy under pain of being criminally pursued as guilty of lese-majesty and as disturbers of the public peace. 176 THE REFORMATION IN FRANCE, The deputies^ however^ had come to Nimes to hold an assembly, and were not to be moved from their purpose ; so they held it secretly at the house of a dealer in muslins, named Vincent, on the night of the 2nd and ord of October. Burning with indignation at the wrongs they were suffering, and the impossibility of making their voice heard, they determined on nothing less tlian a revolt. Their project was to seize the city with the aid of the Cevennols, who they knew only waited the signal to rise. But, as is so often the case in these projects born of over-powering passion, they were betrayed. The authorities at once arranged for the arrest of the con- spirators, but before they attempted to do so, they sent to the commandant for some troops. These troops two important personages in Nimes went to meet, but encountering a horseman on their route, they took him for a scout of the approaching dra- goons, and asked him how far his companions were off. The horseman, who was a Nimois Huguenot belong- ing to the party of resistance, recognised his my- sterious interrogators, and putting spurs to his horse arrived in time to warn his friends of their peril. It was evening, and raining in torrents, so that the in- culpated parties were able to leave their respective homes and find hiding-places without being observed. When the Duke of Noailles arrived with his regi- ment, and found himself unable to capture any of the leaders, he caused the city gates to be closed, and forbade any inhabitant under pain of death and the demolition of his house to give shelter to any of the proscribed. Those who were open to the threatened penalty were in terror, and some thought to denounce their guests. Among the latter were those in whose house Claude Brousson had taken refuge ; however, they ended by begging him to leave. He wandered THE SECOND DRAGONNADES. 177 about for two days and two nights^ biding bimself in obscure boles and corners^ almost paralysed by tbe cold, and dying of bunger, tracked by tbe watcb, ar- rested, interrogated, and miraculously allowed to go. At last be noticed tbe orifice of tbe main sewer, wbicb was in tbe principal street of tbe town, just opposite tbe Jesuits' College. He lost no time in descending, and creeping as well as be could tbrougb tbe black and foetid mud, be reacbed, after many difficulties, tbe ditcb outside tbe city walls, from wbence be got into tbe open country, and in tbe end arrived safely in Switzerland. XXIII. The Second Deagonnades. We bave seen bow tbe flame of piety, burning low, it may be, in tbe time of tbeir prosperity, bad daring tbese days of affliction risen bigber and bigber. Tbe destruction of tbe temples, tbe interdiction of public worsbip, only served to increase tbe ardour witb wbicb tbey ^ longed for tbe courts of tbe Lord,' so tbat in some provinces people walked fifty or sixty leagues to attend public worsbip. Tbe temples, now so scarce, became centres of mass-meetings, tbe first comers occupyiug tbe building, wbile vast numbers remained witbout holding a common worsbip ; for tbe pastors, not being able to take a part, it was confined to sing- ing psalms and reading prayers. At nigbt, bowever, tbeir ministers stole among tbem, exborting tbem witb tears to remain firm in tbe faitb. Sometimes it happened tbat tbe worshippers found themselves con- fronted witb a new edict from the authorities, as at Marennes, in Saintonge, where, in extremely rough weather, some ten thousand people bad arrived one M 178 THE REFORMATION IN FRANCE. Sunday, in 168 A, to celebrate Divine worship in their temple. The building, capable of holding 14,000 people, was found closed, an order having arrived the previous night interdicting all worship, some relapsed, or some children of the newly converted having entered during a previous service. Weeping and sighing the people threw themselves into each other's arms, or with clasped hands lifted their eyes to heaven. They dared not stop in the neighbourhood, and in re- turning some, probably infants, for they had among tbem twenty-four, died. These children had been brought to receive the initiatory rite of communion with the Church, for the persecutors, who spared no pains to suppress the preaching of the Word and pubhc worship, who feared not to tread down the most sacred rights of humanity, shrank from interfering with the Huguenot cere- monials of baptism and marriage, the pastors perform- iug them under the eyes of the authorities. In 1 685, Bossuet was fifty- eight years of age ; Bour- daloue, fifty-three; Fenelon, thirty-four; in the very prime, therefore, of life, and from their positions as well able as any men to know what was going on in France. Bourdaloue, a Jesuit and a court preacher, representing Eeligion at Versailles, as Turenne had represented War, and Racine the Drama, Bourdaloue could not fail to have known all that was known at Versailles. Fenelon was director of an institution in Paris specially founded for the reception of Huguenot girls who had been made converts to the Roman Catholic religion. The detail might very well have been unknown to them, but they could not fail to have been aware of the general character of the persecution and the frightful turn it took in this same year, 1685. Yet it was in May of that year, at an assembly of the clergy, that Louis was not only complimented on THE SECOND DRAGONNADES. 179 tlie success of his efforts to extirpate heresy^ but tlie Bishop of Valence poetically remarked that the king had led wanderers^ who perhaps might never other- wise have returned to the bosom of the Churchy hij a road strewn until flowers. As this bishop, coming from the Dauphine, could not have been ignorant of the fiicts, and as there is no reason to suppose he was mocking his hearers, we must charitably conclude that he really thought so ; but in that case what a light on. the sufferings of the Dauphino for generations, on the nature of the pontifical absolutism under which they groaned, on the notions of Christianity entertained by the prelates of the Galilean Church. About the very time that Monseigneur de Valence was uttering this pretty nonsense, the Dragonnades recommenced with greater cruelty than ever. Certain troops having been cantoned in Beam to watch the Spanish army, and a truce having been proclaimed, Louvois thought he would turn them to account as missioners. Accordingly in July, 1685, the very mouth that English Nonconformity received such a blow at the battle of Sedgemoor, the commander of the troops, Boufflers, and Foucault, the intendant of the province, received orders to take in hand the con- version of the Huguenots. The subjects of their efforts were immediately in- formed that they must return to the Catholic unity, and some hundreds were at once forced into a church, where the Bishop of Lescar officiated, beaten until they fell on their knees, when they were absolved of their heresy, and told they would be punished if they relapsed. The Huguenots everywhere fled into the forests, deserts, caverns of the Pyrenees, but being pursued, were driven back to their houses, where they were subjected to cruelties surpassing those practised in Poitou. i8o THE REFORMATION IN FRANCE. The soldiers rushed about their houses with drawn swords, crying, ' Tug, iue, on Gatlioliqnes.' They sacked the place, broke up the furniture, sold the things to the peasants; they repeated their usual violence against the persons of their victims. But in addition, at the express command of the intendant, Foucault, they commenced a maddening torture. They were to keep awake those whom they could not convert by other torments. By beating drums, by blasphemous cries, by pitching the furniture about, they kept these unhappy beings in continual agitation; and when these means failed, they tied them up by their heels until they were almost dead, or they brought burning coals near their heads, or applied them to various parts of their body. They pinched them, pricked them, dragged them about, blew tobacco smoke up their noses ; there was no cruelty, however mean, or small, or barbarous, which came into their heads, that tbey did not practise. As to the women, the insults they had to endure canuot be described. They had no pity on their victims until they saw them fainting away, then they recovered them, but only to begin afresh their tortures. This method of conversion was so effectual that out of 25,000 members of the Reformed Church in Beam only 1,000 remained firm. The triumph was cele- brated by a grand mass, and by processions in which the converts were paraded. From Beam the conquering troops marched to Montauban, where the same process was repeated with the same results ; out of the twelve or fifteen thousand persons of which this important Church was composed, only twenty or thirty families saved themselves by flight into the woods or adjacent country. The ruin of the Church of Montauban was followed by all the others in its neighbourhood. Realmont^ Bruniquel, MASSACRE AT BERGERAC. ISI Negrepelisse_, etc., severally passed througli a similar experience. The fate of the Churches of Lower Guienne and Perigord was equally sad, and to show that the final apostasy was one which we should not, even if we had the heart, dare to blame, we will relate the case of Bergerac on the Dordogne. This town, to-day only numbering some 12,000 inhabitants, contained at this time, it is said, a popula- tion of 50,000, and was from its commercial activity a serious rival to Bordeaux. For three years it had been harassed by the soldiers who, in the expressive language of an eye-witness of the Mission hottoe, ^ had eaten it up to the bones.^ Two companies of cavalry were first sent, merely to observe the inhabitants, thirty-two other companies soon followed. Then came the commander Boufflers and the intendant Foucault, accompanied by the bishops of Agen and Perigueux. Two hundred of the citizens were summoned to tlie Hotel de Ville, and told that the king willed that they should go to mass, and that if they did not do it willingly they would be forced to constrain them. The citizens unanimously declared that their lives and property were in the hands of his majesty, but God alone was the Master of their conscience, and that they resolved to suff'er all rather than disobey its monitions ; upon which they were told to prepare to receive a punishment worthy such obstinacy. Thirty-two more companies of cavalry and infantry were then sent for, which, with the thirty -four already in the town, made sixty-six, which were quartered on the Protestants, with the injunction to exercise upon their hosts every sort of violence until they had extorted from them a promise to do all that was ordered. This injunction having been faithfully carried out, the miserable victims were again taken to tlie Hotel de Ville, where being 1 82 THE REFORMATION IN FRANCE. again pressed to change their religion they declared with tears in their eyes that they could not. Upon which thirty-four more companies were sent for, so that now the Protestants of Bergerac were delivered over to one hundred companies of soldiers,, who acted as wolves among a flock of sheep. A whole com- pany would be lodged in one house, costing a man who was not worth 10,000 livres, 150 livres a day, merely for their maintenance. When they had thus ruined their hosts thej sold off their furniture at a nominal price. But this was not all : they tied up by the neck the various members of the family, father, mother, children, keeping watch that no one should come to assist them, and kept them in this state for two, three, four, five, and six days without food or any- thing to drink, and without permitting them to go to sleep. ^Ah ! my father, ah ! my mother, I can bear it no longer ! ' cries from one side a child in a dying voice. 'Alas ! my heart begins to fail me!' cries the wife; and the brutal soldiery, far from being touched, torment them only the more, terrifying them with menaces uttered with horrid oaths. 'You dog, B . . . won't you be converted ? won't you listen to us? You shall be converted. You dog, B . . . this is what we've come for.' At which the priests who stood by only laughed. Of course, for it could have but one end, nature could hold out for a certain time, but at last all gave in, crushed by tortures fiends only could conceive. There was no safety but in flight, and when the troops arrived at Bordeaux, the greater part of the mer- chants fled, abandoning their houses and their property. The terror inspired was so great that there was no more need of violence. It was enough to speak of the dragoons to bring every one to his knees. A reign of terror had succeeded ; it was a lesson the French people did not forget. DESTRUCTION OF TEMPLES. 183 The klng^s council was itself astonislied at the success of this last effort. Louvois wrote to his father^ the chancellor, Le Tellier : ^16,000 conversions have been made in the whole of Bordeaux, and 20,000 in that of Montauban. The rapidity with which the affair proceeds is such that before the end of the month there will not remain 10,000 religionaries in all Bordeaux, where there were 100,000 the 15th of last month.' This letter was written early in September, 1685; on the 22nd of the same month the Marquis de Montanegre arrived at Ninies with two companies of dragoons to carry out an edict of the previous July, interdicting for ever the exercise of the pretended Reformed religion in the episcopal cities, an edict de- manded by the assembly of the clergy held at Ver- sailles, in which the flowery Bishop of Valence had complimented Louis on the extreme grace with which he had managed his missions. The Marquis de Montanegre was kind enough to allow the Nimois Reformed Church to assemble in their temple for the last time. Cheiron, the leading- pastor among the moderates, ascended the pulpit and preached a pathetic discourse, in which he appealed to the congregation to persevere at every cost and every sacrifice, even to death, in order to obtain the crown of the martyrs glorified on high. 'We swear it!' cried a multitude of voices amidst a burst of sighs and tears, sobs and lamentations. The next morning the authorities, followed by a crowd of people, arrived to close the temple officially. Cheiron and another pastor, Paulhan, were on the door- steps, and as they approached, Paulhan exclaimed in despair, ' No more temple, no more life V 'It is not the time to groan or lament/ said the royal official, ' but to conform docilely and without resistance to the 1 84 THE REFORMATION IN FRANCE. will of til e monarch/ Seals were then placed on the door, and a temple in which the hymn of praise and the preaching of the Word had gone on for a hundred and nineteen years was finally closed. In a few days, Elie Cheiron and Pierre Paulhan themselves illustrated the truth of Paulhan^s exclamation, for they both abjured the Reformed faith and received the kiss of peace from the Bishop of Nimes. The total number of conversions brought about by the Mission hottee was reported as 250,000. The work of demolishing the Huguenot temples went on with equal speed. The following is a list of the temples condemned during the first fortnight in Sep- tember, 1685, twenty-nine in all : 1st. Vans, Fraissinet, and Saint- Julien d^Arpaon. 3rd. Sauve, Aulas, Saint Martin, Lansuscle, and Barre to disappear. 4th. Valleraugue and Yebron. 5tli. Bourdeaux to be razed to the foundation. Saint Christol near Alais, Tournac near Anduze, and Branoux. 6th. Salavas and Pompidou. 7th. Anduze, Cardet, Ribaute, Lagorce, and Saint Martin de Boubeaux to be demolished. 9th. Puylaurens, the material to be used in re- building the Catholic church of that town ; Pons, to become a house for the education of female children of the new converts. 13th. Mondardie, Meyrueis, Vallerauve, Great Gallargues, Aulas, and Tournac, all pulled down this day. The demolition of the synagogues of Satan extended to private houses. It was enough that a preaching had taken place in a house, even by a layman, for the FLIGHT OF THE HUGUENOTS. 185 house to be razed to the ground. On the 14th of September, Louvois warns the intendant Baville that the minister Havart has preached in four houses in a place called La Salle in the Cevennes, and he is to order the Duke of Noailles to raze these houses even with the ground^ his majesty being well persuaded that such an example will remove any desire on the part of the religionaries to lend their houses for preaching, to the prejudice of the laws. The same exterminatory zeal committed to the flames religious books published by the Huguenots. Thus, at Bergerac, the newly converted were required to deliver them up, when they were all burnt in the street (Sept. 27th). By October the people were flying in all directions, seeking sea-ports like Nantes, or if towards the east, striving to get into Switzerland. The faithful among the nobility and gentry — and we may be sure that to have remained faithful in such an hour they must have been men and women of the purest metal — these great souls shone brightly. Their cJidteauXj still surrounded in the eyes of courtiers with a certain sacredness, were points of refuge for fugitives, and to this very period had maintained the right of public worship. They now received warnings, interdictions ; nevertheless several of these noble ladies had the courage to go from house to house sustaining the weak and animat- ino- their couragfe. On the 8bh of October, Louvois issues an order to confine all such ladies to their own houses, and put a guard at their expense. A letter of the eminent Jean Claude (1619), the last of the pastors of Charenton, written to his son on the 12th of October, depicts the sorrowful state of the ruined Churches. ^All Lower Languedoc has yielded; Anjou nearly the same. What will be the success of the storm God only knows ; but already I 1 86 THE REFORMATION IN FRANCE. Lave no hopes of three quarters and a half. Many are called, but few are chosen. As to myself, I shall stand firm, please God, until the end, and do not dream of going away until the last extremity. God will give me the grace to glorify Him until the end. I look to His pity for this."* Five days after this letter was written, on the 1 7th of October, Louis XIV. signed the Edict of Revocation. The next day it was taken to the chancellor, Le Tellier, who sealed it with the great seal of France. When he had done this, the old man expressed his joy in the words of Simeon : ^ Now let Thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes ha,ve seen Thy salvation.^ So at least it is said, and we have Bossuet's authority for saying that such were indeed his sentiments on the occasion. Six days after he died. XXIV. Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The revocatory edict suppressed the legal exercise of the Reformed worship in France. All pastors were •to quit the kingdom in a fortnight, under penalty of being sent to the galleys. If they abjured, they were to have a salary one- third larger than they ah-eady enjoyed, with a half revertible to their widows ; the expense of academic studies was to be defrayed if they wished to enter at the bar. Parents were forbidden to instruct their children in the pretended Reformed religion, but were eujoined to have them baptized and send them to Catholic churches, under a penalty of 500 francs. All refugees were to return to France within four months, under penalty of the confiscation of their property. No religionists were to attempt to emigrate, under penalty of being REVOCATION OF THE EDICT. 187 sent to the galleys if meD_, and seclusion for life if women. Such were the terms of this infamous edict. If ever the throne of wickedness framed mischief by statute it was on this occasion.^ Sydney Smith is reported to have advised men to take short views of life. In history the reverse is the only wise plan. Examine^ reader^ the history of another century, and then you will be able to judge if Le Tellier or his master had any reason to con- gratulate themselves on the fatal work of this 18th of October, 1685. 1 Ps. xciv. 20. APPENDIX. {Sec page 125.) Psaume LXVIII, Melodie dc xxxvi., do Matthieu Gkeiter antcricure a 1530. :^ CA_CA :^=^:^=^z^: 2^: :^=^z^^2=^z :^^=^:P^ :^=^ Que Dieusemons-tre seu-le-ment, Et on ver- ra sou-dai-ne-ment ::^z^z:^i:^: 22 -7^—^ rj rzTT^ 1=I=T=|: z^z^=-dz^ A - bau-don . ner la pla - ce; Lecampdes en-ne-mis es-pars, -A-A- ::^i^z^: ^z^z^z-^-_^: 2— z^z^^-^zi :^ :^-^-^=: Efc sesliain-euxde tou-tes parts, Fu - ir de-vant sa fa - ce. rFzgEgEg^-^EgEgEZ-^ZgEgz^ ^FF^^ ^ -I — h Dicu les fe - ra tous s'en-f a - ii", Ain-si qu'on voit s'ev-an-ou - ir ^^ --^-P: ;^z:^: er ±zzz[z: z^~^zz:z :^z^zf±zf^z^z?2Z^zz: Un a - mas de fa - me - e ; Com - me la cire au-pres de feu, gg=g^gzggggrg=g=^^zg= ;g^^, :^=; Ain - si deav.Uo-cbausde-vaut Dieu La force est con - su - me • e. 189 190 ^^■■ .^=: 7BE REFORMATION IN FRANCE. HARMONIE. -^=^ it: -&- .-3?:t: -1- -^z :^= ^^" :s: Que Diou se mons - tre sen - le - meiit, ' ' I 1 J 1 :g ^ - :^=^= :t=:t=zd — fs?- :f^==t i^: iJ :^: Et -^ — ^_^=5: on ver -i^-- :q: ^: -,s'- ra -iS*- :^: is:^-: __|_ :^-: ~^2: :^: sou - clai - ne - merit —e>' :^ :^: -^ h-=!— -1— iS* — I :^=t:: 1^2: 'T^~ :=1= 1^2: "^ __^_ A - ban - don - ner la pla - _«2_ s>- (^■- ^:i=T=^-=^zn 1^21 ce, gES==^==' t^EE^EJ Z22 en ne I -^ — I mis P^F :=^=:^ -—»^- -^ ■-■^- ^21151 es - pars, I s APPENDIX. 191 e 2:2: :^: --B- =^: -<^- is^zd :^: Et -—&- :^: .t; :^: ' ' I I ' ses liai - neax cle ton - tes parts A, .J. _J. I , I :?2zz=f^=:=^z=:t=:=: ^^^.._- 1 I 1 1 1 J CL> ^__ C^ J ^ ^ - _^_ ass |«,^^_C7 — -^ — \i\) jS? (_-. ^^~~^ Dicu Ics t'e - 1 1 1 tous s'cn J- -J- 1 ^ £u - ir, 5 J - -^- \. -^ 1 -^--^ rJ rD ^^'-t ^=^^ 1— (S? - — ' 1 ^ .jaa ^.ri:_t? — \~, — h2— ^ ^ 1 — --; — ■ 1 1 r -^ — 1— tj "^" -o- -^ — I r- A in si qu'on voit s'ev an -Gf- on ir /«»3^- -@ 1— (S* -&>' -^ — 1 -|5: -g: :J: f-^ :^2=:z! 192 THE REFORMATION IN FRANCE. ^-^=--^^ tJ ■-9- -- '^~ -.^l :^: Un -^- -(^ (S- -m '^- mas do fu me -@ iS> — =^l=.g= Z222: 122: e, IS ^m p & -.s>- 'Si?- 22 :g: r ^. -A— :^=: :^: -^- ^ pj pj 2=?- m Com - me la cire au - pros cle feu, I I 22zn:g^=zi:^ :^ :^: :^: :t: 3^: 1^=:^^: -^u^-. ^-=^-- J 122: -,^- ~-^~- .^. -1^- - ^ ^- ?2: -fS*- -I--. -,£? (S- I^IZIZ z:22~t Ain - si des me - chans de - vant Dieu -s?- -(^- s>- --m-- ^ :^i t: tt =1 =1- :^=^: :^: -s:^: 7^ ^: I I I I La force est con - sii E=-2izb me -: — ^- '-s^d- s> — ts>- -^- -.z:t. e. -^(S"-^ — m Date Ehie 1 V J» - ''■J (. ,y. • " ■*'- '■- !f- JAis-5| 1 m^ '5.4 ^P 23 '«:/ wyj "^^mmm,^ h f) ?rre?ormS in France from the da«n Princeton Theological Semnary-Speer bbrary ^ 1012 00037 3326