This was the "Marseillaise" of the Camisards, their war-song in many battles, sung by them as a pas de charge to the music of Goudimal. Poul, seeing them approach from under cover of the wood, charged them at once, shouting to his men, "Charge, kill, kill the Barbets!"[40] But "the Barbets," though they were only as one to three of their assailants, bravely held their ground. Those who had muskets kept up a fusillade, whilst a body of scythemen in the centre repulsed Poul, who attacked them with the bayonet. Several of these terrible scythemen were, however, slain, and three were taken prisoners.

Laporte, finding that he could not drive Poul back, retreated slowly into the wood, keeping up a running fire, and reascended the hill, whither Poul durst not follow him. The Royalist leader was satisfied with remaining master of the hard-fought field, on which many of his soldiers lay dead, together with a captain of militia.

The Camisard chiefs then separated, Laporte and his band taking a westerly direction. The Royalists, having received considerable reinforcements, hastened from different directions to intercept him, but he slipped through their fingers, and descended to Pont-de-Montvert, from whence he threw himself upon the villages situated near the sources of the western Gardon. At the same time, to distract the attention of the Royalists, the other Camisard leaders descended, the one towards the south, and the other towards the east, disarming the Roman Catholics, carrying off their arms, and spreading consternation wherever they went.

Meanwhile, Count Broglie, Captain Poul, Colonel Miral, and the commanders of the soldiers and militia all over the Cevennes, were hunting the Protestants and their families wherever found, pillaging their houses, driving away their cattle, and burning their huts; and it was evident that the war on both sides was fast drifting into one of reprisal and revenge. Brigands, belonging to neither side, organized themselves in bodies, and robbed Protestants and Catholics with equal impartiality.

One effect of this state of things was rapidly to increase the numbers of the disaffected. The dwellings of many of the Protestants having been destroyed, such of the homeless fugitives as could bear arms fled into the mountains to join the Camisards, whose numbers were thus augmented, notwithstanding the measures taken for their extermination.

Laporte was at last tracked by his indefatigable enemy, Captain Poul, who burned to wipe out the disgrace which he conceived himself to have suffered at Champ-Domergue. Information was conveyed to him that Laporte and his band were in the neighbourhood of Molezon on the western Gardon, and that they intended to hold a field-meeting there on Sunday, the 22nd of October.

Poul made his dispositions accordingly. Dividing his force into two bodies, he fell upon the insurgents impetuously from two sides, taking them completely by surprise. They hastily put themselves in order of battle, but their muskets, wet with rain, would not fire, and Laporte hastened with his men to seek the shelter of a cliff near at hand. While in the act of springing from one rock to another, he was seen to stagger and fall. He had been shot dead by a musket bullet, and his career was thus brought to a sudden close. His followers at once fled in all directions.

Poul cut off Laporte's head, as well as the heads of the other Camisards who had been killed, and sent them in two baskets to Count Broglie. Next day the heads were exposed on the bridge of Anduze; the day after on the castle wall of St. Hypolite; after which these ghastly trophies of Poul's victory were sent to Montpellier to be permanently exposed on the Peyrou.

Such was the end of Laporte, the second leader of the Camisards. Seguier, the first, had been chief for only six days; Laporte, the second, for only about two months. Again Baville supposed the pacification of the Cevennes to be complete. He imagined that Poul, in cutting off Laporte's head, had decapitated the insurrection. But the Camisard ranks had never been so full as now, swelled as they were by the persecutions of the Royalists, who, by demolishing the homes of the peasantry, had in a measure forced them into the arms of the insurgents. Nor were they ever better supplied with leaders, even though Laporte had fallen. No sooner did his death become known, than the "Children of God" held a solemn assembly in the mountains, at which Roland, Castanet, Salomon, Abraham, and young Cavalier were present; and after lamenting the death of their chief, they with one accord elected Laporte's nephew, Roland, as his successor.

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A few words as to the associates of Roland, whose family and origin have already been described. AndrÉ Castanet of Massavaque, in the Upper Cevennes, had been a goatherd in his youth, after which he worked at his father's trade of a wool-carder. An avowed Huguenot, he was, shortly after the peace of Ryswick, hunted out of the country because of his attending the meetings in the Desert; but in 1700 he returned to preach and to prophesy, acting also as a forest-ranger in the Aigoal Mountains. Of all the chiefs he was the greatest controversialist, and in his capacity of preacher he distinguished himself from his companions by wearing a wig. There must have been something comical in his appearance, for Brueys describes him as a little, squat, bandy-legged man, presenting "the figure of a little bear." But it was an enemy who drew the picture.

Next there was Salomon Conderc, also a wool-carder, a native of the hamlet of Mazelrode, south of the mountain of BougÈs. For twenty years the Condercs, father and son, had been zealous worshippers in the Desert—Salomon having acted by turns as Bible-reader, precentor, preacher, and prophet. We have already referred to the gift of prophesying. All the leaders of the Camisards were prophets. Elie Marion, in his "ThÉÂtre SacrÉ de Cevennes," thus describes the influence of the prophets on the Camisard War:—

"We were without strength and without counsel," says he; "but our inspirations were our succour and our support. They elected our leaders, and conducted them; they were our military discipline. It was they who raised us, even weakness itself, to put a strong bridle upon an army of more than twenty thousand picked soldiers. It was they who banished sorrow from our hearts in the midst of the greatest peril, as well as in the deserts and the mountain fastnesses, when cold and famine oppressed us. Our heaviest crosses were but lightsome burdens, for this intimate communion that God allowed us to have with Him bore up and consoled us; it was our safety and our happiness."

Many of the Condercs had suffered for their faith. The archpriest Chayla had persecuted them grievously. One of their sisters was seized by the soldiery and carried off to be immured in a convent at Mende, but was rescued on the way by Salomon and his brother Jacques. Of the two, Salomon, though deformed, had the greatest gift in prophesying, and hence the choice of him as a leader.

Abraham Mazel belonged to the same hamlet as Conderc. They were both of the same age—about twenty-five—of the same trade, and they were as inseparable as brothers. They had both been engaged with Seguier's band in the midnight attack on Pont-de-Montvert, and were alike committed to the desperate enterprise they had taken in hand. The tribe of Mazel abounds in the Cevennes, and they had already given many martyrs to the cause. Some emigrated to America, some were sent to the galleys; Oliver Mazel, the preacher, was hanged at Montpellier in 1690, Jacques Mazel was a refugee in London in 1701, and in all the combats of the Cevennes there were Mazels leading as well as following.

Nicholas Joany, of Genouillac, was an old soldier, who had seen much service, having been for some time quartermaster of the regiment of Orleans. Among other veterans who served with the Camisards, were EspÉrandieu and Rastelet, two old sub-officers, and Catinat and Ravenel, two thorough soldiers. Of these Catinat achieved the greatest notoriety. His proper name was Mauriel—Abdias Mauriel; but having served as a dragoon under Marshal Catinat in Italy, he conceived such an admiration for that general, and was so constantly eulogizing him, that his comrades gave him the nickname of Catinat, which he continued to bear all through the Camisard war.

But the most distinguished of all the Camisard chiefs, next to Roland, was the youthful John Cavalier, peasant boy, baker's apprentice, and eventually insurgent leader, who, after baffling and repeatedly defeating the armies of Louis XIV., ended his remarkable career as governor of Jersey and major-general in the British service.

Cavalier was a native of Ribaute, a village on the Gardon, a little below Anduze. His parents were persons in humble circumstances, as may be inferred from the fact that when John was of sufficient age he was sent into the mountains to herd cattle, and when a little older he was placed apprentice to a baker at Anduze.

His father, though a Protestant at heart, to avoid persecution, pretended to be converted to Romanism, and attended Mass. But his mother, a fervent Calvinist, refused to conform, and diligently trained her sons in her own views. She was a regular attender of meetings in the Desert, to which she also took her children.

Cavalier relates that on one occasion, when a very little fellow, he went with her to an assembly which was conducted by Claude Brousson; and when he afterwards heard that many of the people had been apprehended for attending it, of whom some were hanged and others sent to the galleys, the account so shocked him that he felt he would then have avenged them if he had possessed the power.

As the boy grew up, and witnessed the increasing cruelty with which conformity was enforced, he determined to quit the country; and, accompanied by twelve other young men, he succeeded in reaching Geneva after a toilsome journey of eight days. He had not been at Geneva more than two months, when—heart-sore, solitary, his eyes constantly turned towards his dear Cevennes—he accidentally heard that his father and mother had been thrown into prison because of his flight—his father at Carcassone, and his mother in the dreadful tower of Constance, near Aiguesmortes, one of the most notorious prisons of the Huguenots.

He at once determined to return, in the hope of being able to get them set at liberty. On his reaching Ribaute, to his surprise he found them already released, on condition of attending Mass. As his presence in his father's house might only serve to bring fresh trouble upon them—he himself having no intention of conforming—he went up for refuge into the mountains of the Cevennes.

The young Cavalier was present at the midnight meeting on the BougÈs, at which it was determined to slay the archpriest Chayla. He implored leave to accompany the band; but he was declared to be too young for such an enterprise, being a boy of only sixteen, so he was left behind with his friends.

Being virtually an outlaw, Cavalier afterwards joined the band of Laporte, under whom he served as lieutenant during his short career. At his death the insurrection assumed larger proportions, and recruits flocked apace to the standard of Roland, Laporte's successor. Harvest-work over, the youths of the Lower Cevennes hastened to join him, armed only with bills and hatchets. The people of the Vaunage more than fulfilled their promise to Roland, and sent him five hundred men. Cavalier also brought with him from Ribaute a further number of recruits, and by the end of autumn the Camisards under arms, such as they were, amounted to over a thousand men.

Roland, unable to provide quarters or commissariat for so large a number, divided them into five bodies, and sent them into their respective cantonments (so to speak) for the winter. Roland himself occupied the district known as the Lower Cevennes, comprising the Gardonnenque and the mountain district situated between the rivers Vidourle and the western Gardon. That part of the Upper Cevennes, which extends between the Anduze branch of the Gardon and the river Tarn, was in like manner occupied by a force commanded by Abraham Hazel and Solomon Conderc, while Andrew Castanet led the people of the western Cevennes, comprising the mountain region of the Aigoal and the Esperou, near the sources of the Gardon d'Anduze and the Tarnon. The rugged mountain district of the LozÈre, in which the Tarn, the Ceze, and the Alais branch of the Gardon have their origin, was placed under the command of Joany. And, finally, the more open country towards the south, extending from Anduze to the sea-coast, including the districts around Alais, Uzes, Nismes, as well as the populous valley of the Vaunage, was placed under the direction of young Cavalier, though he had scarcely yet completed his seventeenth year.

These chiefs were all elected by their followers, who chose them, not because of any military ability they might possess, but entirely because of their "gifts" as preachers and "prophets." Though Roland and Joany had been soldiers, they were also preachers, as were Castanet, Abraham, and Salomon; and young Cavalier had already given remarkable indications of the prophetic gift. Hence, when it became the duty of the band to which he belonged to select a chief, they passed over the old soldiers, EspÉrandieu, Raslet, Catinat, and Ravenel, and pitched upon the young baker lad of Ribaute, not because he could fight, but because he could preach; and the old soldiers cheerfully submitted themselves to his leadership. The portrait of this remarkable Camisard chief represents him as a little handsome youth, fair and ruddy complexioned, with lively and prominent blue eyes, and a large head, from whence his long fair hair hung floating over his shoulders. His companions recognised in him a supposed striking resemblance to the scriptural portrait of David, the famous shepherd of Israel.

The Camisard legions, spread as they now were over the entire Cevennes, and embracing Lower Languedoc as far as the sea, were for the most part occupied during the winter of 1702-3 in organizing themselves, obtaining arms, and increasing their forces. The respective districts which they occupied were so many recruiting-grounds, and by the end of the season they had enrolled nearly three thousand men. They were still, however, very badly armed. Their weapons included fowling-pieces, old matchlocks, muskets taken from the militia, pistols, sabres, scythes, hatchets, billhooks, and even ploughshares. They were very short of powder, and what they had was mostly bought surreptitiously from the King's soldiers, or by messengers sent for the purpose to Nismes and Avignon. But Roland, finding that such sources of supply could not be depended upon, resolved to manufacture his own powder.

A commissariat was also established, and the most spacious caves in the most sequestered places were sought out and converted into magazines, hospitals, granaries, cellars, arsenals, and powder factories. Thus Mialet, with its extensive caves, was the head-quarters of Roland; Bouquet and the caves at Euzet, of Cavalier; Cassagnacs and the caves at Magistavols, of Salomon; and so on with the others. Each chief had his respective canton, his granary, his magazine, and his arsenal. To each retreat was attached a special body of tradesmen—millers, bakers, shoemakers, tailors, armourers, and other mechanics; and each had its special guards and sentinels.

We have already referred to the peculiar geological features of the Cevennes, and to the limestone strata which embraces the whole granitic platform of the southern border almost like a frame. As is almost invariably the case in such formations, large caves, occasioned by the constant dripping of water, are of frequent occurrence; and those of the Cevennes, which are in many places of great extent, constituted a peculiar feature in the Camisard insurrection. There is one of such caves in the neighbourhood of the Protestant town of Ganges, on the river Herault, which often served as a refuge for the Huguenots, though it is now scarcely penetrable because of the heavy falls of stone from the roof. This cavern has two entrances, one from the river Herault, the other from the Mendesse, and it extends under the entire mountain, which separates the two rivers. It is still known as the "Camisards' Grotto." There are numerous others of a like character all over the district; but as those of Mialet were of special importance—Mialet, "the Metropolis of the Insurrection," being the head-quarters of Roland—it will be sufficient if we briefly describe a visit paid to them in the month of June, 1870.

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The town of Anduze is the little capital of the Gardonnenque, a district which has always been exclusively Protestant. Even at the present day, of the 5,200 inhabitants of Anduze, 4,600 belong to that faith; and these include the principal proprietors, cultivators, and manufacturers of the town and neighbourhood. During the wars of religion, Anduze was one of the Huguenot strongholds. After the death of Henry IV. the district continued to be held by the Duc de Rohan, the ruins of whose castle are still to be seen on the summit of a pyramidal hill on the north of the town. Anduze is jammed in between the precipitous mountain of St. Julien, which rises behind it, and the river Gardon, along which a modern quay-wall extends, forming a pleasant promenade as well as a barrier against the furious torrents which rush down from the mountains in winter.

A little above the town, the river passes through a rocky gorge formed by the rugged grey cliffs of Peyremale on the one bank and St. Julien on the other. The bare precipitous rocks rise up on either side like two cyclopean towers, flanking the gateway of the Cevennes. The gorge is so narrow at bottom that there is room only for the river running in its rocky bed below, and a roadway along either bank—that on the eastern side having been partly formed by blasting out the cliff which overhangs it.

After crossing the five-arched bridge which spans the Gardon, the road proceeds along the eastern bank, up the valley towards Mialet. It being market-day at Anduze, well-clad peasants were flocking into the town, some in their little pony-carts, others with their baskets or bundles of produce, and each had his "Bon jour, messieurs!" for us as we passed. So long as the road held along the bottom of the valley, passing through the scattered hamlets and villages north of the town, our little springless cart got along cleverly enough. But after we had entered the narrower valley higher up, and the cultivated ground became confined to a little strip along either bank, then the mountain barriers seemed to rise in front of us and on all sides, and the road became winding, steep, and difficult.

A few miles up the valley, the little hamlet of Massoubeyran, consisting of a group of peasant cottages—one of which was the birthplace of Roland, the Camisard chief—was seen on a hill-side to the right; and about two miles further on, at a bend of the road, we came in sight of the village of Mialet, with its whitewashed, flat-roofed cottages—forming a little group of peasants' houses lying in the hollow of the hills. The principal building in it is the Protestant temple, which continues to be frequented by the inhabitants; the Annuaire Protestant for 1868-70, stating the Protestant population of the district to be 1,325. Strange to say, the present pastor, M. Seguier, bears the name of the first leader of the Camisard insurrection; and one of the leading members of the consistory, M. Laporte, is a lineal descendant of the second and third leaders.

From its secluded and secure position among the hills, as well as because of its proximity to the great Temelac road constructed by Baville, which passed from Anduze by St. Jean-de-Gard into the Upper Cevennes, Mialet was well situated as the head-quarters of the Camisard chief. But it was principally because of the numerous limestone caves abounding in the locality, which afforded a ready hiding-place for the inhabitants in the event of the enemies' approach, as well as because they were capable of being adapted for the purpose of magazines, stores, and hospitals, that Mialet became of so much importance as the citadel of the insurgents. One of such caverns or grottoes is still to be seen about a mile below Mialet, of extraordinary magnitude. It extends under the hill which rises up on the right-hand side of the road, and is entered from behind, nearly at the summit. The entrance is narrow and difficult, but the interior is large and spacious, widening out in some places into dome-shaped chambers, with stalactites hanging from the roof. The whole extent of this cavern cannot be much less than a quarter of a mile, judging from the time it took to explore it and to return from the furthest point in the interior to the entrance. The existence of this place had been forgotten until a few years ago, when it was rediscovered by a man of Anduze, who succeeded in entering it, but, being unable to find his way out, he remained there for three days without food, until the alarm was given and his friends came to his rescue and delivered him.

Immediately behind the village of Mialet, under the side of the hill, is another large cavern, with other grottoes branching out of it, capable, on an emergency, of accommodating the whole population. This was used by Roland as his principal magazine. But perhaps the most interesting of these caves is the one used as a hospital for the sick and wounded. It is situated about a mile above Mialet, in a limestone cliff almost overhanging the river. The approach to it is steep and difficult, up a footpath cut in the face of the rock. At length a little platform is reached, about a hundred feet above the level of the river, behind which is a low wall extending across the entrance to the cavern. This wall is pierced with two openings, intended for two culverins, one of which commanded the road leading down the pass, and the other the road up the valley from the direction of the village. The outer vault is large and roomy, and extends back into a lofty dome-shaped cavern about forty feet high, behind which a long tortuous vault extends for several hundred feet. The place is quite dry, and sufficiently spacious to accommodate a large number of persons; and there can be no doubt as to the uses to which it was applied during the wars of the Cevennes.

The person who guided us to the cave was an ordinary working man of the village—apparently a blacksmith—a well-informed, intelligent person—who left his smithy, opposite the Protestant temple at which our pony-cart drew up, to show us over the place; and he took pride in relating the traditions which continue to be handed down from father to son relating to the great Camisard war of the Cevennes.[Back to Contents]

CHAPTER VII.

EXPLOITS OF CAVALIER.

The country round Nismes, which was the scene of so many contests between the Royalists and the Camisard insurgents at the beginning of last century, presents nearly the same aspect as it did then, excepting that it is traversed by railways in several directions. The railway to Montpellier on the west, crosses the fertile valley of the Vaunage, "the little Canaan," still rich in vineyards as of old. That to Alais on the north, proceeds for the most part along the valley of the Gardon, the names of the successive stations reminding the passing traveller of the embittered contests of which they were the scenes in former times: NoziÈres, Boucoiran, Ners, Vezenobres, and Alais itself, now a considerable manufacturing town, and the centre of an important coal-mining district.

The country in the neighbourhood of Nismes is by no means picturesque. Though undulating, it is barren, arid, and stony. The view from the Tour Magne, which is very extensive, is over an apparently skeleton landscape, the bare rocks rising on all sides without any covering of verdure. In summer the grass is parched and brown. There are few trees visible; and these mostly mulberry, which, when, cropped, have a blasted look. Yet, wherever soil exists, in the bottoms, the land is very productive, yielding olives, grapes, and chestnuts in great abundance.

As we ascend the valley of the Gardon, the country becomes more undulating and better wooded. The villages and farmhouses have all an old-fashioned look; not a modern villa is to be seen. We alight from the train at the Ners station—Ners, where Cavalier drove Montrevel's army across the river, and near which, at the village of Martinargues, he completely defeated the Royalists under LajonquiÈre. We went to see the scene of the battle, some three miles to the south-east, passing through a well-tilled country, with the peasants busily at work in the fields. From the high ground behind Ners a fine view is obtained of the valley of the Gardon, overlooking the junction of its two branches descending by Alais and Anduze, the mountains of the Cevennes rising up in the distance. To the left is the fertile valley of Beaurivage, celebrated in the Pastorals of Florian, who was a native of the district.

Descending the hill towards Ners, we were overtaken by an aged peasant of the village, with a scythe over his shoulder, returning from his morning's work. There was the usual polite greeting and exchange of salutations—for the French peasant is by nature polite—and a ready opening was afforded for conversation. It turned out that the old man had been a soldier of the first empire, and fought under Soult in the desperate battle of Toulouse in 1814. He was now nearly eighty, but was still able to do a fair day's work in the fields. Inviting us to enter his dwelling and partake of his hospitality, he went down to his cellar and fetched therefrom a jug of light sparkling wine, of which we partook. In answer to an inquiry whether there were any Protestants in the neighbourhood, the old man replied that Ners was "all Protestant." His grandson, however, who was present, qualified this sweeping statement by the remark, sotto voce, that many of them were "nothing."

The conversation then turned upon the subject of Cavalier and his exploits, when our entertainer launched out into a description of the battle of Martinargues, in which the Royalists had been "toutes abattus." Like most of the Protestant peasantry of the Cevennes, he displayed a very familiar acquaintance with the events of the civil war, and spoke with enthusiasm and honest pride of the achievements of the Camisards.

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We have in previous chapters described the outbreak of the insurrection and its spread throughout the Upper Cevennes; and we have now rapidly to note its growth and progress to its culmination and fall.

While the Camisards were secretly organizing their forces under cover of the woods and caves of the mountain districts, the governor of Languedoc was indulging in the hope that the insurrection had expired with the death of Laporte and the dispersion of his band. But, to his immense surprise, the whole country was suddenly covered with insurgents, who seemed as if to spring from the earth in all quarters simultaneously. Messengers brought him intelligence at the same time of risings in the mountains of the LozÈre and the Aigoal, in the neighbourhoods of Anduze and Alais, and even in the open country about Nismes and Calvisson, down almost to the sea-coast.

Wherever the churches had been used as garrisons and depositories of arms, they were attacked, stormed, and burnt. Cavalier says he never meddled with any church which had not been thus converted into a "den of thieves;" but the other leaders were less scrupulous. Salomon and Abraham destroyed all the establishments and insignia of their enemies on which they could lay hands—crosses, churches, and presbyteries. The curÉ of Saint-Germain said of Castanet in the Aigoal that he was "like a raging torrent." Roland and Joany ran from village to village ransacking dwellings, chÂteaux, churches, and collecting arms. Knowing every foot of the country, they rapidly passed by mountain tracks from one village to another; suddenly appearing in the least-expected quarters, while the troops in pursuit of them had passed in other directions.

Cavalier had even the hardihood to descend upon the low country, and to ransack the Catholic villages in the neighbourhood of Nismes. By turns he fought, preached, and sacked churches. About the middle of November, 1702, he preached at Aiguevives, a village not far from Calvisson, in the Vaunage. Count Broglie, commander of the royal troops, hastened from Nismes to intercept him. But pursuing Cavalier was like pursuing a shadow; he had already made his escape into the mountains. Broglie assembled the inhabitants of the village in the church, and demanded to be informed who had been present with the Camisard preacher. "All!" was the reply: "we are all guilty." He seized the principal persons of the place and sent them to Baville. Four were hanged, twelve were sent to the galleys, many more were flogged, and a heavy fine was levied on the entire village.

Meanwhile, Cavalier had joined Roland near Mialet, and again descended upon the low country, marching through the villages along the valley of the Vidourle, carrying off arms and devastating churches. Broglie sent two strong bodies of troops to intercept them; but the light-footed insurgents had already crossed the Gardon.

A few days later (December 5th), they were lying concealed in the forest of VaquiÈres, in the neighbourhood of Cavalier's head-quarters at Euzet. Their retreat having been discovered, a strong force of soldiers and militia was directed upon them, under the command of the Chevalier Montarnaud (who, being a new convert, wished to show his zeal), and Captain Bimard of the Nismes militia.

They took with them a herdsman of the neighbourhood for their guide, not knowing that he was a confederate of the Camisards. Leading the Royalists into the wood, he guided them along a narrow ravine, and hearing no sound of the insurgents, it was supposed that they were lying asleep in their camp.

Suddenly three sentinels on the outlook fired off their pieces. At this signal Ravenel posted himself at the outlet of the defile, and Cavalier and Catinat along its two sides. Raising their war-song, the sixty-eighth psalm the Camisards furiously charged the enemy. Captain Bimard fell at the first fire. Montarnaud turned and fled with such of the soldiers and militia as could follow him; and not many of them succeeded in making their escape from the wood.

"After which complete victory," says Cavalier, "we returned to the field of battle to give our hearty thanks to Almighty God for his extraordinary assistance, and afterwards stripped the corpses of the enemy, and secured their arms. We found a purse of one hundred pistoles in Captain Bimard's pocket, which was very acceptable, for we stood in great need thereof, and expended part of it in buying hats, shoes, and stockings for those who wanted them, and with the remainder bought six great mule loads of brandy, for our winter's supply, from a merchant who was sending it to be sold at Anduze market."[41]

On the Sunday following, Cavalier held an assembly for public worship near Monteze on the Gardon, at which about five hundred persons were present. The governor of Alais, being informed of the meeting, resolved to put it down with a strong hand; and he set out for the purpose at the head of a force of about six hundred horse and foot. A mule accompanied him, laden with ropes with which to bind or hang the rebels. Cavalier had timely information, from scouts posted on the adjoining hills, of the approach of the governor's force, and though the number of fighting men in the Camisard assembly was comparatively small, they resolved to defend themselves.

Sending away the women and others not bearing arms, Cavalier posted his little band behind an old entrenchment on the road along which the governor was approaching, and awaited his attack. The horsemen came on at the charge; but the Camisards, firing over the top of the entrenchment, emptied more than a dozen saddles, and then leaping forward, saluted them with a general discharge. At this, the horsemen turned and fled, galloping through the foot coming up behind them, and throwing them into complete disorder. The Camisards pulled off their coats, in order the better to pursue the fugitives.

The Royalists were in full flight, when they were met by a reinforcement of two hundred men of Marsilly's regiment of foot. But these, too, were suddenly seized by the panic, and turned and fled with the rest, the Camisards pursuing them for nearly an hour, in the course of which they slew more than a hundred of the enemy. Besides the soldiers' clothes, of which they stripped the dead, the Camisards made prize of two loads of ammunition and a large quantity of arms, which they were very much in need of, and also of the ropes with which the governor had intended to hang them.

Emboldened by these successes, Cavalier determined on making an attack on the strong castle of Servas, occupying a steep height on the east of the forest of Bouquet. Cavalier detested the governor and garrison of this place because they too closely watched his movements, and overlooked his head-quarters, which were in the adjoining forest; and they had, besides, distinguished themselves by the ferocity with which they attacked and dispersed recent assemblies in the Desert.

Cavalier was, however, without the means of directly assaulting the place, and he waited for an opportunity of entering it, if possible, by stratagem. While passing along the road between Alais and Lussan one day, he met a detachment of about forty men of the royal army, whom he at once attacked, killing a number of them, and putting the rest to flight. Among the slain was the commanding officer of the party, in whose pockets was found an order signed by Count Broglie directing all town-majors and consuls to lodge him and his men along their line of march. Cavalier at once determined on making use of this order as a key to open the gates of the castle of Servas.

He had twelve of his men dressed up in the clothes of the soldiers who had fallen, and six others in their ordinary Camisard dress bound with ropes as prisoners of war. Cavalier himself donned the uniform of the fallen officer; and thus disguised and well armed, the party moved up the steep ascent to the castle. On reaching the outer gate Cavalier presented the order of Count Broglie, and requested admittance for the purpose of keeping his pretended Camisard prisoners in safe custody for the night. He was at once admitted with his party. The governor showed him round the ramparts, pointing out the strength of the place, and boasting of the punishments he had inflicted on the rebels.

At supper Cavalier's soldiers took care to drop into the room, one by one, apparently for orders, and suddenly, on a signal being given, the governor and his attendants were seized and bound. At the same time the guard outside was attacked and overpowered. The outer gates were opened, the Camisards rushed in, the castle was taken, and the garrison put to the sword.

Cavalier and his band carried off with them to their magazine at Bouquet all the arms, ammunition, and provisions they could find, and before leaving they set fire to the castle. There must have been a large store of gunpowder in the vaults of the place besides what the Camisards carried away, for they had scarcely proceeded a mile on their return journey when a tremendous explosion took place, shaking the ground like an earthquake, and turning back, they saw the battlements of the detested ChÂteau Servas hurled into the air.

Shortly after, Roland repeated at SauvÉ, a little fortified town hung along the side of a rocky hill a few miles to the south of Anduze, the stratagem which Cavalier had employed at Servas, and with like success. He disarmed the inhabitants, and carried off the arms and provisions in the place: and though he released the commandant and the soldiers whom he had taken prisoners, he shot a persecuting priest and a Capuchin monk, and destroyed all the insignia of Popery in SauvÉ.

These terrible measures caused a new stampede of the clergy all over the Cevennes. The nobles and gentry also left their chÂteaux, the merchants their shops and warehouses, and took refuge in the fortified towns. Even the bishops of Mende, Uzes, and Alais barricaded and fortified their episcopal palaces, and organized a system of defence as if the hordes of Attila had been at their gates.

With each fresh success the Camisards increased in daring, and every day the insurrection became more threatening and formidable. It already embraced the whole mountain district of the Cevennes, as well as a considerable extent of the low country between Nismes and Montpellier. The Camisard troops, headed by their chiefs, marched through the villages with drums beating in open day, and were quartered by billet on the inhabitants in like manner as the royal regiments. Roland levied imposts and even tithes throughout his district, and compelled the farmers, at the peril of their lives, to bring their stores of victual to the "Camp of the Eternal." In the midst of all, they held their meetings in the Desert, at which the chiefs preached, baptized, and administered the sacrament to their flocks.

The constituted authorities seemed paralyzed by the extent of the insurrection, and the suddenness with which it spread. The governor of the province had so repeatedly reported to his royal master the pacification of Languedoc, that when this last and worst outbreak occurred he was ashamed to announce it. The peace at Ryswick had set at liberty a large force of soldiers, who had now no other occupation than to "convert" the Protestants and force them to attend Mass. About five hundred thousand men were now under arms for this purpose—occupied as a sort of police force, very much to their own degradation as soldiers.

A large body of this otherwise unoccupied army had been placed under the direction of Baville for the purpose of suppressing the rebellion—an army of veteran horse and foot, whose valour had been tried in many hard-fought battles. Surely it was not to be said that this immense force could be baffled and defied by a few thousand peasants, cowherds, and wool-carders, fighting for what they ridiculously called their "rights of conscience!" Baville could not believe it; and he accordingly determined again to apply himself more vigorously than ever to the suppression of the insurrection, by means of the ample forces placed at his disposal.

Again the troops were launched against the insurgents, and again and again they were baffled in their attempts to overtake and crush them. The soldiers became worn out by forced marches, in running from one place to another to disperse assemblies in the Desert. They were distracted by the number of places in which the rebels made their appearance. Cavalier ran from town to town, making his attacks sometimes late at night, sometimes in the early morning; but before the troops could come up he had done all the mischief he intended, and was perhaps fifty miles distant on another expedition. If the Royalists divided themselves into small bodies, they were in danger of being overpowered; and if they kept together in large bodies, they moved about with difficulty, and could not overtake the insurgents, "by reason," said Cavalier, "we could go further in three hours than they could in a whole day; regular troops not being used to march through woods and mountains as we did."

At length the truth could not be concealed any longer. The States of Languedoc were summoned to meet at Montpellier, and there the desperate state of affairs was fully revealed. The bishops of the principal dioceses could with difficulty attend the meeting, and were only enabled to do so by the assistance of strong detachments of soldiers—the Camisards being masters of the principal roads. They filled the assembly with their lamentations, and declared that they had been betrayed by the men in power. At their urgent solicitation, thirty-two more companies of Catholic fusiliers and another regiment of dragoons were ordered to be immediately embodied in the district. The governor also called to his aid an additional regiment of dragoons from Rouergue; a battalion of marines from the ships-of-war lying at Marseilles and Toulon; a body of Miguelets from Roussillon, accustomed to mountain warfare; together with a large body of Irish officers and soldiers, part of the Irish Brigade.

---

And how did it happen that the self-exiled Irish patriots were now in the Cevennes, helping the army of Louis XIV. to massacre the Camisards by way of teaching them a better religion? It happened thus: The banishment of the Huguenots from France, and their appearance under William III. in Ireland to fight at the Boyne and Augrhim, contributed to send the Irish Brigade over to France—though it must be confessed that the Irish Brigade fought much better for Louis XIV. than they had ever done for Ireland.

After the surrender of Limerick in 1691, the principal number of the Irish followers of James II. declared their intention of abandoning Ireland and serving their sovereign's ally the King of France. The Irish historians allege that the number of the brigade at first amounted to nearly thirty thousand men.[42] Though, they fought bravely for France, and conducted themselves valiantly in many of her great battles, they were unfortunately put forward to do a great deal of dirty work for Louis XIV. One of the first campaigns they were engaged in was in Savoy, under Catinat, in repressing the Vaudois or Barbets.

The Vaudois peasantry were for the most part unarmed, and their only crime was their religion. The regiments of Viscount Clare and Viscount Dillon, principally distinguished themselves against the Vaudois. The war was one of extermination, in which many of the Barbets were killed. Mr. O'Connor states that between the number of the Alpine mountaineers cut off, and the extent of devastation and pillage committed amongst them by the Irish, Catinat's commission was executed with terrible fidelity; the memory of which "has rendered their name and nation odious to the Vaudois. Six generations," he remarks, "have since passed, away, but neither time nor subsequent calamities have obliterated the impression made by the waste and desolation of this military incursion."[43] Because of the outrages and destruction committed upon the women and children in the valleys in the absence of their natural defenders, the Vaudois still speak of the Irish as "the foreign assassins."

The Brigade having thus faithfully served Louis XIV. in Piedmont, were now occupied in the same work in the Cevennes. The historian of the Brigade does not particularise the battles in which they were engaged with the Camisards, but merely announces that "on several occasions, the Irish appear to have distinguished themselves, especially their officers."

---

When Cavalier heard of the vast additional forces about to be thrown into the Cevennes, he sought to effect a diversion by shifting the theatre of war. Marching down towards the low country with about two hundred men, he went from village to village in the Vaunage, holding assemblies of the people. His whereabouts soon became known to the Royalists, and Captain Bonnafoux, of the Calvisson militia, hearing that Cavalier was preaching one day at the village of St. Comes, hastened to capture him.

Bonnafoux had already distinguished himself in the preceding year, by sabring two assemblies surprised by him at Vauvert and Caudiac, and his intention now was to serve Cavalier and his followers in like manner. Galloping up to the place of meeting, the Captain was challenged by the Camisard sentinel; and his answer was to shoot the man dead with his pistol. The report alarmed the meeting, then occupied in prayer; but rising from their knees, they at once formed in line and advanced to meet the foe, who turned and fled at their first discharge.

Cavalier next went southward to Caudiac, where he waited for an opportunity of surprising Aimargues, and putting to the sword the militia, who had long been the scourge of the Protestants in that quarter. He entered the latter town on a fair day, and walked about amongst the people; but, finding that his intention was known, and that his enterprise was not likely to succeed, he turned aside and resolved upon another course. But first it was necessary that his troops should be supplied with powder and ammunition, of which they had run short. So, disguising himself as a merchant, and mounted on a horse with capacious saddlebags, he rode off to Nismes, close at hand, to buy gunpowder. He left his men in charge of his two lieutenants, Ravanel and Catinat, who prophesied to him that during his absence they would fight a battle and win a victory.

Count Broglie had been promptly informed by the defeated Captain Bonnafoux that the Camisards were in the neighbourhood; and he set out in pursuit of them with a strong body of horse and foot. After several days' search amongst the vineyards near Nismes and the heathery hills about Milhaud, Broglie learnt that the Camisards were to be found at Caudiac. But when he reached that place he found the insurgents had already left, and taken a northerly direction. Broglie followed their track, and on the following day came up with them at a place called Mas de Gaffarel, in the Val de Bane, about three miles west of Nismes, The Royalists consisted of two hundred militia, commanded by the Count and his son, and two troops of dragoons, under Captain la Dourville and the redoubtable Captain Poul.

The Camisards had only time to utter a short prayer, and to rise from their knees and advance singing their battle psalm, when Poul and his dragoons were upon them. Their charge was so furious that Ravanel and his men were at first thrown into disorder; but rallying, and bravely fighting, they held their ground. Captain Poul was brought to the ground by a stone hurled from a sling by a young Vauvert miller named Samuelet; Count Broglie himself was wounded by a musket-ball, and many of his dragoons lay stretched on the field. Catinat observing the fall of Poul, rushed forward, cut off his head with a sweep of his sabre, and mounting Poul's horse, almost alone chased the Royalists, now flying in all directions. Broglie did not draw breath until he had reached the secure shelter of the castle of Bernis.

While these events were in progress, Cavalier was occupied on his mission of buying gunpowder in Nismes. He was passing along the Esplanade—then, as now, a beautiful promenade—when he observed from the excitement of the people, running about hither and thither, that something alarming had occurred. On making inquiry he was told that "the Barbets" were in the immediate neighbourhood, and it was even feared they would enter and sack the city. Shortly after, a trooper was observed galloping towards them at full speed along the Montpellier Road, without arms or helmet. He was almost out of breath when he came up, and could only exclaim that "All is lost! Count Broglie and Captain Poul are killed, and the Barbets are pursuing the remainder of the royal troops into the city!"

The gates were at once ordered to be shut and barricaded; the gÉnÉrale was beaten; the troops and militia were mustered; the priests ran about in the streets crying, "We are undone!" Some of the Roman Catholics even took shelter in the houses of the Protestants, calling upon them to save their lives. But the night passed, and with it their alarm, for the Camisards did not make their appearance. Next morning a message arrived from Count Broglie, shut up in the castle of Bernis, ordering the garrison to come to his relief.

In the meantime, Cavalier, with the assistance of his friends in Nismes, had obtained the articles of which he was in need, and prepared to set out on his return journey. The governor and his detachment were issuing from the western gate as he left, and he accompanied them part of the way, still disguised as a merchant, and mounted on his horse, with a large portmanteau behind him, and saddlebags on either side full of gunpowder and ammunition. The Camisard chief mixed with the men, talking with them freely about the Barbets and their doings. When he came to the St. Hypolite road he turned aside; but they warned him that if he went that way he would certainly fall into the hands of the Barbets, and lose not only his horse and his merchandise, but his life. Cavalier thanked them for their advice, but said he was not afraid of the Barbets, and proceeded on his way, shortly rejoining his troop at the appointed rendez-vous.

The Camisards crossed the Gardon by the bridge of St. Nicholas, and were proceeding towards their head-quarters at Bouquet, up the left bank of the river, when an attempt was made by the Chevalier de St. Chaptes, at the head of the militia of the district, to cut off their retreat. But Ravanel charged them with such fury as to drive the greater part into the Gardon, then swollen by a flood, and those who did not escape by swimming were either killed or drowned.

Thus the insurrection seemed to grow, notwithstanding all the measures taken to repress it. The number of soldiers stationed in the province was from time to time increased; they were scattered in detachments all over the country, and the Camisards took care to give them but few opportunities of exhibiting their force, and then only when at a comparative disadvantage. The Royalists, at their wits' end, considered what was next to be done in order to the pacification of the country. The simple remedy, they knew, was to allow these poor simple people to worship in their own way without molestation. Grant them this privilege, and they were at any moment ready to lay down their arms, and resume their ordinary peaceful pursuits.

But this was precisely what the King would not allow. To do so would be an admission of royal fallibility which neither he nor his advisers were prepared to make. To enforce conformity on his subjects, Louis XIV. had already driven some half-a-million of the best of them into exile, besides the thousands who had perished on gibbets, in dungeons, or at the galleys. And was he now to confess, by granting liberty of worship to these neatherds, carders, and peasants, that the rigorous policy of "the Most Christian King" had been an entire mistake?

It was resolved, therefore, that no such liberty should be granted, and that these peasants, like the rest of the King's subjects, were to be forced, at the sword's point if necessary, to worship God in his way, and not in theirs. Viewed in this light, the whole proceeding would appear to be a ludicrous absurdity, but for its revolting impiety and the abominable cruelties with which it was accompanied. Yet the Royalists even blamed themselves for the mercy which they had hitherto shown to the Protestant peasantry; and the more virulent amongst them urged that the whole of the remaining population that would not at once conform to the Church of Rome, should forthwith be put to the sword! Brigadier Julien, an apostate Protestant, who had served under William of Orange in Ireland, and afterwards under the Duke of Savoy in Piedmont, disappointed with the slowness of his promotion, had taken service under Louis XIV., and was now employed as a partizan chief in the suppression of his former co-religionists in Languedoc. Like all renegades, he was a bitter and furious persecutor; and in the councils of Baville his voice was always raised for the extremest measures. He would utterly exterminate the insurgents, and, if necessary, reduce the country to a desert. "It is not enough," said he, "merely to kill those bearing arms; the villages which supply the combatants, and which give them shelter and sustenance, ought to be burnt down: thus only can the insurrection be suppressed."

In a military point of view Julien was probably right; but the savage advice startled even Baville. "Nothing can be easier," said he, "than to destroy the towns and villages; but this would be to make a desert of one of the finest and most productive districts of Languedoc." Yet Baville himself eventually adopted the very policy which he now condemned.

In the first place, however, it was determined to pursue and destroy Cavalier and his band. Eight hundred men, under the Count de Touman, were posted at Uzes; two battalions of the regiment of Hainault, under Julien, at Anduze; while Broglie, with a strong body of dragoons and militia, commanded the passes at St. Ambrose. These troops occupied, as it were, the three sides of a triangle, in the centre of which Cavalier was known to be in hiding in the woods of Bouquet. Converging upon him simultaneously, they hoped to surround and destroy him. But the Camisard chief was well advised of their movements. To draw them away from his magazines, Cavalier marched boldly to the north, and slipping through between the advancing forces, he got into Broglie's rear, and set fire to two villages inhabited by Catholics. The three bodies at once directed themselves upon the burning villages; but when they reached them Cavalier had made his escape, and was nowhere to be heard of. For four days they hunted the country between the Garden and the Ceze, beating the woods and exploring the caves; and then they returned, harassed and vexed, to their respective quarters.

While the Royalists were thus occupied, Cavalier fell upon a convoy of provisions which Colonel Marsilly was leading to the castle of Mendajols, scattered and killed the escort, and carried off the mules and their loads to the magazines at Bouquet. During the whole of the month of January, the Camisards, notwithstanding the inclemency of the weather, were constantly on the move, making their appearance in the most unexpected quarters; Roland descending from Mialet on Anduze, and rousing Broglie from his slumbers by a midnight fusillade; Castanet attacking St. AndrÉ, and making a bonfire of the contents of the church; Joany disarming Genouillac; and Lafleur terrifying the villages of the LozÈre almost to the gates of Mende.

Although the winters in the South of France, along the shores of the Mediterranean, are comparatively mild and genial, it is very different in the mountain districts of the interior, where the snow lies thick upon the ground, and the rivers are bound up by frost. Cavalier, in his Memoirs, describes the straits to which his followers were reduced in that inclement season, being "destitute of houses or beds, victuals, bread, or money, and left to struggle with hunger, cold, snow, misery, and poverty."

"General Broglie," he continues, "believed and hoped that though he had not been able to destroy us with the sword, yet the insufferable miseries of the winter would do him that good office. Yet God Almighty prevented it through his power, and by unexpected means his Providence ordered the thing so well that at the end of the winter we found ourselves in being, and in a better condition than we expected.... As for our retiring places, we were used in the night-time to go into hamlets or sheepfolds built in or near the woods, and thought ourselves happy when we lighted upon a stone or piece of timber to make our pillows withal, and a little straw or dry leaves to lie upon in our clothes. We did in this condition sleep as gently and soundly as if we had lain upon a down bed. The weather being extremely cold, we had a great occasion for fire; but residing mostly in woods, we used to get great quantity of faggots and kindle them, and so sit round about them and warm ourselves. In this manner we spent a quarter of a year, running up and down, sometimes one way and sometimes another, through great forests and upon high mountains, in deep snow and upon ice. And notwithstanding the sharpness of the weather, the small stock of our provisions, and the marches and counter-marches we were continually obliged to make, and which gave us but seldom the opportunity of washing the only shirt we had upon our back, not one amongst us fell sick. One might have perceived in our visage a complexion as fresh as if we had fed upon the most delicious meats, and at the end of the season we found ourselves in a good disposition heartily to commence the following campaign."[44]

The campaign of 1703, the third year of the insurrection, began unfavourably for the Camisards. The ill-success of Count Broglie as commander of the royal forces in the Cevennes, determined Louis XIV.—from whom the true state of affairs could no longer be concealed—to supersede him by Marshal Montrevel, one of the ablest of his generals. The army of Languedoc was again reinforced by ten thousand of the best soldiers of France, drawn from the armies of Germany and Italy. It now consisted of three regiments of dragoons and twenty-four battalions of foot—of the Irish Brigade, the Miguelets, and the Languedoc fusiliers—which, with the local militia, constituted an effective force of not less than sixty thousand men!

Such was the irresistible army, commanded by a marshal of France, three lieutenant-generals, three major-generals, and three brigadier-generals, now stationed in Languedoc, to crush the peasant insurrection. No wonder that the Camisard chiefs were alarmed when the intelligence reached them of this formidable force having been set in motion for their destruction.

The first thing they determined upon was to effect a powerful diversion, and to extend, if possible, the area of the insurrection. For this purpose, Cavalier, at the head of eight hundred men, accompanied by thirty baggage mules, set out in the beginning of February, with the object of raising the Viverais, the north-eastern quarter of Languedoc, where the Camisards had numerous partizans. The snow was lying thick upon the ground when they set out; but the little army pushed northward, through Rochegude and Barjac. At the town of Vagnas they found their way barred by a body of six hundred militia, under the Count de Roure. These they attacked with great fury and speedily put to flight.

But behind the Camisarde was a second and much stronger royalist force, eighteen hundred men, under Brigadier Julien, who had hastened up from Lussan upon Cavalier's track, and now hung upon his rear in the forest of Vagnas. Next morning the Camisards accepted battle, fought with their usual bravery, but having been trapped into an ambuscade, they were overpowered by numbers, and at length broke and fled in disorder, leaving behind them their mules, baggage, seven drums, and a quantity of arms, with some two hundred dead and wounded. Cavalier himself escaped with difficulty, and, after having been given up for lost, reached the rendez-vous at Bouquet in a state of complete exhaustion, Ravanel and Catinat having preceded him thither with, the remains of his broken army.

Roland and Cavalier now altered their tactics. They resolved to avoid pitched battles such as that at Vagnas, where they were liable to be crushed at a blow, and to divide their forces into small detachments constantly on the move, harassing the enemy, interrupting their communications, and falling upon detached bodies whenever an opportunity for an attack presented itself.

To the surprise of Montrevel, who supposed the Camisards finally crushed at Vagnas, the intelligence suddenly reached him of a multitude of attacks on fortified posts, burning of chÂteaux and churches, captures of convoys, and defeats of detached bodies of Royalists.

Joany attacked Genouillac, cut to pieces the militia who defended it, and carried off their arms and ammunition, with other spoils, to the camp at Faux-des-Armes. Shortly after, in one of his incursions, he captured a convoy of forty mules laden with cloth, wine, and provisions for Lent; and, though hotly pursued by a much superior force, he succeeded in making his escape into the mountains.

Castanet was not less active in the west—sacking and burning Catholic villages, and putting their inhabitants to the sword by way of reprisal for similar atrocities committed by the Royalists. At the same time, Montrevel pillaged and burned Euzet and St. Jean de Ceirarges, villages inhabited by Protestants; and there was not a hamlet but was liable at any moment to be sacked and destroyed by one or other of the contending parties.

Nor was Roland idle. Being greatly in want of arms and ammunition, as well as of shoes and clothes for his men, he collected a considerable force, and made a descent, for the purpose of obtaining them, on the rich and populous towns of the south; more particularly on the manufacturing town of Ganges, where the Camisards had many friends. Although Roland, to divert the attention of Montrevel from Ganges, sent a detachment of his men into the neighbourhood of Nismes to raise the alarm there, it was not long before a large royalist force was directed against him.

Hearing that Montrevel was marching upon Ganges, Roland hastily left for the north, but was overtaken near Pompignan by the marshal at the head of an army of regular horse and foot, including several regiments of local militia, Miguelets, marines, and Irish. The Royalists were posted in such a manner as to surround the Camisards, who, though they fought with their usual impetuosity, and succeeded in breaking through the ranks of their enemies, suffered a heavy loss in dead and wounded. Roland himself escaped with difficulty, and with his broken forces fled through Durfort to his stronghold at Mialet.

After the battle, Marshal Montrevel returned to Ganges, where he levied a fine of ten thousand livres on the Protestant population, giving up their houses to pillage, and hanging a dozen of those who had been the most prominent in abetting the Camisards during their recent visit. At the game time, he reported to head-quarters at Paris that he had entirely destroyed the rebels, and that Languedoc was now "pacified."

Much to his surprise, however, not many weeks elapsed before Cavalier, who had been laid up by the small-pox during Roland's expedition to Ganges, again appeared in the field, attacking convoys, entering the villages and carrying off arms, and spreading terror anew to the very gates of Nismes. He returned northwards by the valley of the RhÔne, driving before him flocks and herds for the provisioning of his men, and reached his retreat at Bouquet in safety. Shortly after, he issued from it again, and descended upon Ners, where he destroyed a detachment of troops under Colonel de Jarnaud; next day he crossed the Gardon, and cut up a reinforcement intended for the garrison of SommiÈres; and the day after he was heard of in another place, attacking a convoy, and carrying off arms, ammunition, and provisions.

Montrevel was profoundly annoyed at the failure of his efforts thus far to suppress the insurrection. It even seemed to increase and extend with every new measure taken to crush it. A marshal of France, at the head of sixty thousand men, he feared lest he should lose credit with his friends at court unless he were able at once to root out these miserable cowherds and wool-carders who continued to bid defiance to the royal authority which he represented; and he determined to exert himself with renewed vigour to exterminate them root and branch.

In this state of irritation the intelligence was one day brought to the marshal while sitting over his wine after dinner at Nismes, that an assembly of Huguenots was engaged in worship in a mill situated on the canal outside the Port-des-Carmes. He at once ordered out a battalion of foot, marched on the mill, and surrounded it. The soldiers burst open the door, and found from two to three hundred women, children, and old men engaged in prayer; and proceeded to put them to the sword. But the marshal, impatient at the slowness of the butchery, ordered the men to desist and to fire the place. This order was obeyed, and the building, being for the most part of wood, was soon wrapped in flames, from amidst which rose the screams of women and children. All who tried to escape were bayoneted, or driven back into the burning mill. Every soul perished—all excepting a girl, who was rescued by one of Montrevel's servants. But the pitiless marshal ordered both the girl and her deliverer to be put to death. The former was hanged forthwith, but the lackey's life was spared at the intercession of some sisters of mercy accidentally passing the place.

In the same savage and relentless spirit, Montrevel proceeded to extirpate the Huguenots wherever found. He caused all suspected persons in twenty-two parishes in the diocese of Nismes to be seized and carried off. The men were transported to North America, and the women and children imprisoned in the fortresses of Roussillon.

But the most ruthless measures were those which were adopted in the Upper Cevennes: there nothing short of devastation would satisfy the marshal. Thirty-two parishes were completely laid waste; the cattle, grain, and produce which they contained were seized and carried into the towns of refuge garrisoned by the Royalists—Alais, Anduze, Florac, St. Hypolite, and Nismes—so that nothing should be left calculated to give sustenance to the rebels. Four hundred and sixty-six villages and hamlets were reduced to mere heaps of ashes and blackened ruins, and such of their inhabitants as were not slain by the soldiery fled with their families into the wilderness. All the principal villages inhabited by the Protestants were thus completely destroyed, together with their mills and barns, and every building likely to give them shelter. Mialet was sacked and burnt—Roland, still suffering from his wounds, being unable to strike a blow in defence of his stronghold. St. Julien was also plundered and levelled, and its inhabitants carried captive to Montpellier, where the women and children were imprisoned, and the men sent to the galleys.

When Cavalier heard of the determination of Montrevel to make a desert of the country, he sent word to him that for every Huguenot village destroyed he would destroy two inhabited by the Romanists. Thus the sacking and burning on the one side was immediately followed by increased sacking and burning on the other. The war became one of mutual destruction and extermination, and the unfortunate inhabitants on both sides were delivered over to all the horrors of civil war.

So far, however, from the Camisards being suppressed, the destruction of the dwellings of the Huguenots only served to swell their numbers, and they descended from their mountains upon the Catholics of the plains in increasing force and redoubled fury. Montlezan was utterly destroyed—all but the church, which was strongly barricaded, and resisted Cavalier's attempts to enter it. Aurillac, also, was in like manner sacked and gutted, and the destroying torrent swept over all the towns and villages of the Cevennes.

Cavalier was so ubiquitous, so daring, and often so successful in his attacks, that of all the Camisard leaders he was held to be the most dangerous, and a high price was accordingly set upon his head by the governor. Hence many attempts were made to betray him. He was haunted by spies, some of whom even succeeded in obtaining admission to his ranks. More than once the spies were detected—it was pretended through prophetic influence—and immediately shot. But on one occasion Cavalier and his whole force narrowly escaped destruction through the betrayal of a pretended follower.

While the Royalists were carrying destruction through the villages of the Upper Cevennes, Cavalier, Salomon, and Abraham, in order to divert them from their purpose, resolved upon another descent into the low country, now comparatively ungarrisoned. With this object they gathered together some fifteen hundred men, and descended from the mountains by Collet, intending to cross the Gardon at Beaurivage. On Sunday, the 29th of April, they halted in the wood of MalaboissiÈre, a little north of Mialet, for a day's preaching and worship; and after holding three services, which were largely attended, they directed their steps to the Tower of Belliot, a deserted farmhouse on the south of the present high road between Alais and Anduze.

The house had been built on the ruins of a feudal castle, and took its name from one of the old towers still standing. It was surrounded by a dry stone wall, forming a court, the entrance to which was closed by hurdles. On their arrival at this place late at night, the Camisards partook of the supper which had been prepared for them by their purveyor on the occasion—a miller of the neighbourhood, named Guignon—whose fidelity was assured not only by his apparent piety, but by the circumstance that two of his sons belonged to Cavalier's band.

No sooner, however, had the Camisards lain down to sleep than the miller, possessed by the demon of gold, set out directly for Alais, about three miles distant, and, reaching the quarters of Montrevel, sold the secret of Cavalier's sleeping-place to the marshal for fifty pieces of gold, and together with it the lives of his own sons and their fifteen hundred companions.

The marshal forthwith mustered all the available troops in Alais, consisting of eight regiments of foot (of which one was Irish) and two of dragoons, and set out at once for the Tower of Belliot, taking the precaution to set a strict guard upon all the gates, to prevent the possibility of any messenger leaving the place to warn Cavalier of his approach. The Royalists crept towards the tower in three bodies, so as to cut off their retreat in every direction. Meanwhile, the Camisards, unapprehensive of danger, lay wrapped in slumber, filling the tower, the barns, the stables, and outhouses.

The night was dark, and favoured the Royalists' approach. Suddenly, one of their divisions came upon the advanced Camisard sentinels. They fired, but were at once cut down. Those behind fled back to the sleeping camp, and raised the cry of alarm. Cavalier started up, calling his men "to arms," and, followed by about four hundred, he precipitated himself on the heads of the advancing columns. Driven back, they rallied again, more troops coming up to their support, and again they advanced to the attack.

To his dismay, Cavalier found the enemy in overwhelming force, enveloping his whole position. By great efforts he held them back until some four or five hundred more of his men had joined him, and then he gave way and retired behind a ravine or hollow, probably forming part of the fosse of the ancient chÂteau. Having there rallied his followers, he recrossed the ravine to make another desperate effort to relieve the remainder of his troop shut up in the tower.

A desperate encounter followed, in the midst of which two of the royalist columns, mistaking each other for enemies in the darkness, fired into each other and increased the confusion and the carnage. The moon rose on this dreadful scene, and revealed to the Royalists the smallness of the force opposed to them. The struggle was renewed again and again; Cavalier still seeking to relieve those shut up in the tower, and the Royalists, now concentrated and in force, to surround and destroy him.

At length, after the struggle had lasted for about five hours, Cavalier, in order to save the rest of his men, resolved on retiring before daybreak; and he succeeded in effecting his retreat without being pursued by the enemy.

The three hundred Camisards who continued shut up in the tower refused to surrender. They transformed the ruin into a fortress, barricading every entrance, and firing from every loophole. When their ammunition was expended, they hurled stones, joists, and tiles down upon their assailants from the summit of the tower. For four more hours they continued to hold out. Cannon were sent for from Alais, to blow in the doors; but before they arrived all was over. The place had been set on fire by hand grenades, and the imprisoned Camisards, singing psalms amidst the flames to their last breath, perished to a man.

This victory cost Montrevel dear. He lost some twelve hundred dead and wounded before the fatal Tower of Belliot; whilst Cavalier's loss was not less than four hundred dead, of whom a hundred and eighteen were found at daybreak along the brink of the ravine. One of these was mistaken for the body of Cavalier; on which Montrevel, with characteristic barbarity, ordered the head to be cut off and sent to Cavalier's mother for identification!

From the slight glimpses we obtain of the man Montrevel in the course of these deplorable transactions, there seems to have been something ineffably mean and spiteful in his nature. Thus, on another occasion, in a fit of rage at having been baffled by the young Camisard leader, he dispatched a squadron of dragoons to Ribaute for the express purpose of pulling down the house in which Cavalier had been born!

A befitting sequel to this sanguinary struggle at the Tower of Belliot was the fate of Guignon, the miller, who had betrayed the sleeping Camisards to Montrevel. His crime was discovered. The gold was found upon him. He was tried, and condemned to death. The Camisards, under arms, assembled to see the sentence carried out. They knelt round the doomed man, while the prophets by turn prayed for his soul, and implored the clemency of the Sovereign Judge. Guignon professed the utmost contrition, besought the pardon of his brethren, and sought leave to embrace for the last time his two sons—privates in the Camisard ranks. The two young men, however, refused the proffered embrace with a gesture of apparent disgust; and they looked on, the sad and stern spectators of the traitor's punishment.

Again Montrevel thought he had succeeded in crushing the insurrection, and that he had cut off its head with that of the Camisard chief. But his supposed discovery of the dead body proved an entire mistake; and not many days elapsed before Cavalier made his appearance before the gates of Alais, and sent in a challenge to the governor to come out and fight him. And it is to be observed that by this time a fiercely combative spirit, of fighting for fighting's sake, began to show itself among the Camisards. Thus, Castanet appeared one day before the gates of Meyreuis, where the regiment of Cordes was stationed, and challenged the colonel to come out and fight him in the open; but the challenge was declined. On another occasion, Cavalier in like manner challenged the commander of Vic to bring out thirty of his soldiers and fight thirty Camisards. The challenge was accepted, and the battle took place; they fought until ten men only remained alive on either side, but the Camisards were masters of the field.

Montrevel only redoubled his efforts to exterminate the Camisards. He had no other policy. In the summer of 1703 the Pope (Clement XI.) came to his assistance, issuing a bull against the rebels as being of "the execrable race of the ancient Albigenses," and promising "absolute and general remission of sins" to all such as should join the holy militia of Louis XIV. in "exterminating the cursed heretics and miscreants, enemies alike of God and of CÆsar."

A special force was embodied with this object—the Florentines, or "White Camisards"—distinguished by the white cross which they wore in front of their hats. They were for the most part composed of desperadoes and miscreants, and went about pillaging and burning, with so little discrimination between friend and foe, that the Catholics themselves implored the marshal to suppress them. These Florentines were the perpetrators of such barbarities that Roland determined to raise a body of cavalry to hunt them down; and with that object, Catinat, the old dragoon, went down to the Camargues—a sort of island-prairies lying between the mouths of the RhÔne—where the Arabs had left a hardy breed of horses; and there he purchased some two hundred steeds wherewith to mount the Camisard horse, to the command of which Catinat was himself appointed.

It is unnecessary to particularise the variety of combats, of marchings and countermarchings, which occurred during the progress of the insurrection. Between the contending parties, the country was reduced to a desert. Tillage ceased, for there was no certainty of the cultivator reaping the crop; more likely it would be carried off or burnt by the conflicting armies. Beggars and vagabonds wandered about robbing and plundering without regard to party or religion; and social security was entirely at an end.

Meanwhile, Montrevel still called for more troops. Of the twenty battalions already entrusted to him, more than one-third had perished; and still the insurrection was not suppressed. He hoped, however, that the work was now accomplished; and, looking to the wasted condition of the country, that the famine and cold of the winter of 1703-4 would complete the destruction of such of the rebels as still survived.

During the winter, however, the Camisard chiefs had not only been able to keep their forces together, but to lay up a considerable store of provisions and ammunition, principally by captures from the enemy; and in the following spring they were in a position to take the field in even greater force than ever. They, indeed, opened the campaign by gaining two important victories over the Royalists; but though they were their greatest, they were also nearly their last. The battle of Martinargues was the CannÆ of the Camisards. It was fought near the village of that name, not far from Ners, early in the spring of 1704. The campaign had been opened by the Florentines, who, now that they had made a desert of the Upper Cevennes, were burning and ravaging the Protestant villages of the plain. Cavalier had put himself on their track, and pursued and punished them so severely, that in their distress they called upon Montrevel to help them, informing him of the whereabouts of the Camisards.

A strong royalist force of horse and foot was immediately sent in pursuit, under the command of Brigadier LajonquiÈre. He first marched upon the Protestant village of Lascours, where Cavalier had passed the previous night. The brigadier severely punished the inhabitants for sheltering the Camisards, putting to death four persons, two of them girls, whom he suspected to be Cavalier's prophetesses. On the people refusing to indicate the direction in which the Camisards had gone, he gave the village up to plunder, and the soldiers passed several hours ransacking the place, in the course of which they broke open and pillaged the wine-cellars.

Meanwhile, Cavalier and his men had proceeded in a northerly direction, along the right bank of the little river Droude, one of the affluents of the Gardon. A messenger from Lascours overtook him, telling him of the outrages committed on the inhabitants of the village; and shortly after, the inhabitants of Lascours themselves came up—men, women, and children, who had been driven from their pillaged homes by the royalist soldiery. Cavalier was enraged at the recital of their woes; and though his force was not one-sixth the strength of the enemy, he determined to meet their advance and give them battle.

Placing the poor people of Lascours in safety, the Camisard leader took up his position on a rising ground at the head of a little valley close to the village of Martinargues. Cavalier himself occupied the centre, his front being covered by a brook running in the hollow of a ravine. Ravanel and Catinat, with a small body of men, were posted along the two sides of the valley, screened by brushwood. The approaching Royalists, seeing before them only the feeble force of Cavalier, looked upon his capture as certain.

"See!" cried LajonquiÈre, "at last we have hold of the Barbets we have been so long looking for!" With his dragoons in the centre, flanked by the grenadiers and foot, the Royalists advanced with confidence to the charge. At the first volley, the Camisards prostrated themselves, and the bullets went over their heads. Thinking they had fallen before his fusillade, the commander ordered his men to cross the ravine and fall upon the remnant with the bayonet. Instantly, however, Cavalier's men started to their feet, and smote the assailants with a deadly volley, bringing down men and horses. At the same moment, the two wings, until then concealed, fired down upon the Royalists and completed their confusion. The Camisards, then raising their battle-psalm, rushed forward and charged the enemy. The grenadiers resisted stoutly, but after a few minutes the entire body—dragoons, grenadiers, marines, and Irish—fled down the valley towards the Gardon, and the greater number of those who were not killed were drowned, LajonquiÈre himself escaping with difficulty. In this battle perished a colonel, a major, thirty-three captains and lieutenants, and four hundred and fifty men, while Cavalier's loss was only about twenty killed and wounded. A great booty was picked up on the field, of gold, silver, jewels, ornamented swords, magnificent uniforms, scarfs, and clothing, besides horses, as well as the plunder brought from Lascours.

The opening of the Lascours wine-cellars proved the ruin of the Royalists, for many of the men were so drunk that they were unable either to fight or fly. After returning thanks to God on the battle-field, Cavalier conducted the rejoicing people of Lascours back to their village, and proceeded to his head-quarters at Bouquet with his booty and his trophies.

Another encounter shortly followed at the Bridge of Salindres, about midway between Auduze and St. Jean du Gard, in which Roland inflicted an equally decisive defeat on a force commanded by Brigadier Lalande. Informed of the approach of the Royalists, Roland posted his little army in the narrow, precipitous, and rocky valley, along the bottom of which runs the river Gardon. Dividing his men into three bodies, he posted one on the bridge, another in ambuscade at the entrance to the defile, and a third on the summit of the precipice overhanging the road.

The Royalists had scarcely advanced to the attack of the bridge, when the concealed Camisards rushed out and assailed their rear, while those stationed above hurled down rocks and stones, which threw them into complete disorder. They at once broke and fled, rushing down to the river, into which they threw themselves; and but for Roland's neglect in guarding the steep footpath leading to the ford at the mill, the whole body would have been destroyed. As it was, they suffered heavy loss, the general himself escaping with difficulty, leaving his white-plumed hat behind him in the hands of the Camisards.[Back to Contents]

CHAPTER VIII.

END OF THE CAMISARD INSURRECTION.

The insurrection in the Cevennes had continued for more than two years, when at length it began to excite serious uneasiness at Versailles. It was felt to be a source of weakness as well as danger to France, then at war with Portugal, England, and Savoy. What increased the alarm of the French Government was the fact that the insurgents were anxiously looking abroad for help, and endeavouring to excite the Protestant governments of the North to strike a blow in their behalf.

England and Holland had been especially appealed to. Large numbers of Huguenot soldiers were then serving in the English army; and it was suggested that if they could effect a landing on the coast of Languedoc, and co-operate with the Camisards, it would at the same time help the cause of religious liberty, and operate as a powerful diversion in favour of the confederate armies, then engaged with the armies of France in the Low Countries and on the Rhine.

In order to ascertain the feasibility of the proposed landing, and the condition of the Camisard insurgents, the ministry of Queen Anne sent the Marquis de Miremont, a Huguenot refugee in England, on a mission to the Cevennes; and he succeeded in reaching the insurgent camp at St. Felix, where he met Roland and the other leaders, and arranged with them for the descent of a body of Huguenot soldiers on the coast.

In the month of September, 1703, the English fleet was descried in the Gulf of Lyons, off Aiguesmortes, making signals, which, however, were not answered. Marshal Montrevel had been warned of the intended invasion; and, summoning troops from all quarters, he so effectually guarded the coast, that a landing was found impracticable. Though Cavalier was near at hand, he was unable at any point to communicate with the English ships; and after lying off for a few days, they spread their sails, and the disheartened Camisards saw their intended liberators disappear in the distance.

The ministers of Louis XIV. were greatly alarmed by this event. The invasion had been frustrated for the time, but the English fleet might return, and eventually succeed in effecting a landing. The danger, therefore, had to be provided against, and at once. It became clear, even to Louis XIV. himself, that the system of terror and coercion which had heretofore been exclusively employed against the insurgents, had proved a total failure. It was accordingly determined to employ some other means, if possible, of bringing this dangerous insurrection to an end. In pursuance of this object, Montrevel, to his intense mortification, was recalled, and the celebrated Marshal Villars, the victor of Hochstadt and Friedlingen, was appointed in his stead, with full powers to undertake and carry out the pacification of Languedoc.

Villars reached Nismes towards the end of August, 1704; but before his arrival, Montrevel at last succeeded in settling accounts with Cavalier, and wiped out many old scores by inflicting upon him the severest defeat the Camisard arms had yet received. It was his first victory over Cavalier, and his last.

Cavalier's recent successes had made him careless. Having so often overcome the royal troops against great odds, he began to think himself invincible, and to despise his enemy. His success at Martinargues had the effect of greatly increasing his troops; and he made a descent upon the low country in the spring of 1704, at the head of about a thousand foot and two hundred horse.

Appearing before Bouciran, which he entered without resistance, he demolished the fortifications, and proceeded southwards to St. GÉniÈs, which he attacked and took, carrying away horses, mules, and arms. Next day he marched still southward to Caveirac, only about three miles east of Nismes.

Montrevel designedly published his intention of taking leave of his government on a certain day, and proceeding to Montpellier with only a very slender force—pretending to send the remainder to Beaucaire, in the opposite direction, for the purpose of escorting Villars, his successor, into the city. His object in doing this was to deceive the Camisard leader, and to draw him into a trap.

The intelligence became known to Cavalier, who now watched the Montpellier road, for the purpose of inflicting a parting blow upon his often-baffled enemy. Instead, however, of Montrevel setting out for Montpellier with a small force, he mustered almost the entire troops belonging to the garrison of Nismes—over six thousand horse and foot—and determined to overwhelm Cavalier, who lay in his way. Montrevel divided his force into several bodies, and so disposed them as completely to surround the comparatively small Camisard force, near Langlade. The first encounter was with the royalist regiment of Firmarcon, which Cavalier completely routed; but while pursuing them too keenly, the Camisards were assailed in flank by a strong body of foot posted in vineyards along the road, and driven back upon the main body. The Camisards now discovered that a still stronger battalion was stationed in their rear; and, indeed, wherever they turned, they saw the Royalists posted in force. There was no alternative but cutting their way through the enemy; and Cavalier, putting himself at the head of his men, led the way, sword in hand.

A terrible struggle ensued, and the Camisards at last reached the bridge at Rosni; but there, too, the Royalists were found blocking the road, and crowding the heights on either side. Cavalier, to avoid recognition, threw off his uniform, and assumed the guise of a simple Camisard. Again he sought to force his way through the masses of the enemy. His advance was a series of hand-to-hand fights, extending over some six miles, and the struggle lasted for nearly the entire day. More than a thousand dead strewed the roads, of whom one half were Camisards. The Royalists took five drums, sixty-two horses, and four mules laden with provisions, but not one prisoner.

When Villars reached Nismes and heard of this battle, he went to see the field, and expressed his admiration at the skill and valour of the Camisard chief. "Here is a man," said he, "of no education, without any experience in the art of war, who has conducted himself under the most difficult and delicate circumstances as if he had been a great general. Truly, to fight such a battle were worthy of CÆsar!" Indeed, the conduct of Cavalier in this struggle so impressed Marshal Villars, that he determined, if possible, to gain him over, together with his brave followers, to the ranks of the royal army. Villars was no bigot, but a humane and honourable man, and a thorough soldier. He deplored the continuance of this atrocious war, and proceeded to take immediate steps to bring it, if possible, to a satisfactory conclusion.

In the meantime, however, the defeat of the Camisards had been followed by other reverses. During the absence of Cavalier in the South, the royalist general Lalande, at the head of five thousand troops, fell upon the joint forces of Roland and Joany at Brenoux, and completely defeated them. The same general lay in wait for the return of Cavalier with his broken forces, to his retreat near Euzet; and on his coming up, the Royalists, in overpowering numbers, fell upon the dispirited Camisards, and inflicted upon them another heavy loss.

But a greater calamity, if possible, was the discovery and capture of Cavalier's magazines in the caverns near Euzet. The royalist soldiers, having observed an old woman frequently leaving the village for the adjoining wood with a full basket and returning with an empty one, suspected her of succouring the rebels, arrested her, and took her before the general. When questioned at first she would confess nothing; on which she was ordered forthwith to be hanged. When taken to the gibbet in the market-place, however, the old woman's resolution gave way, and she entreated to be taken back to the general, when she would confess everything. She then acknowledged that she had the care of an hospital in the adjoining wood, and that her daily errands had been thither. She was promised pardon if she led the soldiers at once to the place; and she did so, a battalion following at her heels.

Advancing into the wood, the old woman led the soldiers to the mouth of a cavern, into which she pointed, and the men entered. The first sight that met their eyes was a number of sick and wounded Camisards lying upon couches along ledges cut in the rock. They were immediately put to death. Entering further into the cavern, the soldiers were surprised to find in an inner vault an immense magazine of grain, flour, chestnuts, beans, barrels of wine and brandy; farther in, stores of drugs, ointment, dressings, and hospital furnishings; and finally, an arsenal containing a large store of sabres, muskets, pistols, and gunpowder, together with the materials for making it; all of which the Royalists seized and carried off.

Lalande, before leaving Euzet, inflicted upon it a terrible punishment. He gave it up to pillage, then burnt it to the ground, and put the inhabitants to the sword—all but the old woman, who was left alone amidst the corpses and ashes of the ruined village. Lalande returned in triumph to Alais, some of his soldiers displaying on the points of their bayonets the ears of the slain Camisards.

Other reverses followed in quick succession. Salomon was attacked near Pont-de-Montvert, the birthplace of the insurrection, and lost some eight hundred of his men. His magazines at Magistavols were also discovered and ransacked, containing, amongst other stores, twenty oxen and a hundred sheep.

Thus, in four combats, the Camisards lost nearly half their forces, together with a large part of their arms, ammunition, and provisions. The country occupied by them had been ravaged and reduced to a state of desert, and there seemed but little prospect of their again being able to make head against their enemies.

The loss of life during the last year of the insurrection had been frightful. Some twenty thousand men had perished—eight thousand soldiers, four thousand of the Roman Catholic population, and from seven to eight thousand Protestants.

Villars had no sooner entered upon the functions of his office than he set himself to remedy this dreadful state of things. He was encouraged in his wise intentions by the Baron D'Aigalliers, a Protestant nobleman of high standing and great influence, who had emigrated into England at the Revocation, but had since returned. This nobleman entertained the ardent desire of reconciling the King with his Protestant subjects; and he was encouraged by the French Court to endeavour to bring the rebels of the Cevennes to terms.

One of the first things Villars did, was to proceed on a journey through the devastated districts; and he could not fail to be horrified at the sight of the villages in ruins, the wasted vineyards, the untilled fields, and the deserted homesteads which met his eyes on every side. Wherever he went, he gave it out that he was ready to pardon all persons—rebels as well as their chiefs—who should lay down their arms and submit to the royal clemency; but that, if they continued obstinate and refused to submit, he would proceed against them to the last extremity. He even offered to put arms in the hands of such of the Protestant population as would co-operate with him in suppressing the insurrection.

In the meantime, the defeated Camisards under Roland were reorganizing their forces, and preparing again to take the field. They were unwilling to submit themselves to the professed clemency of Villars, without some sufficient guarantee that their religious rights—in defence of which they had taken up arms—would be respected. Roland was already establishing new magazines in place of those which had been destroyed; he was again recruiting his brigades from the Protestant communes, and many of those who had recovered from their wounds again rallied under his standard.

At this juncture, D'Aigalliers suggested to Villars that a negotiation should be opened directly with the Camisard chiefs to induce them to lay down their arms. Roland refused to listen to any overtures; but Cavalier was more accessible, and expressed himself willing to negotiate for peace provided his religion was respected and recognised.

And Cavalier was right. He saw clearly that longer resistance was futile, that it could only end in increased devastation and destruction; and he was wise in endeavouring to secure the best possible terms under the circumstances for his suffering co-religionists. Roland, who refused all such overtures, was the more uncompromising and tenacious of purpose; but Cavalier, notwithstanding his extreme youth, was by far the more practical and politic of the two.

There is no doubt also that Cavalier had begun to weary of the struggle. He became depressed and sad, and even after a victory he would kneel down amidst the dead and wounded, and pray to God that He would turn the heart of the King to mercy, and help to re-establish the ancient temples throughout the land.

An interview with Cavalier was eventually arranged by Lalande. The brigadier invited him to a conference, guaranteeing him safe conduct, and intimating that if he refused the meeting, he would be regarded as the enemy of peace, and held responsible before God and man for all future bloodshed. Cavalier replied to Lalande's invitation, accepting the interview, indicating the place and the time of meeting.

Catinat, the Camisard general of horse, was the bearer of Cavalier's letter, and he rode on to Alais to deliver it, arrayed in magnificent costume. Lalande was at table when Catinat was shown in to him. Observing the strange uniform and fierce look of the intruder, the brigadier asked who he was. "Catinat!" was the reply. "What," cried Lalande, "are you the Catinat who killed so many people in Beaucaire?" "Yes, it is I," said Catinat, "and I only endeavoured to do my duty." "You are hardy, indeed, to dare to show yourself before me." "I have come," said the Camisard, "in good faith, persuaded that you are an honest man, and on the assurance of my brother Cavalier that you would do me no harm. I come to deliver you his letter." And so saying, he handed it to the brigadier. Hastily perusing the letter, Lalande said, "Go back to Cavalier, and tell him that in two hours I shall be at the Bridge of AvÈne with only ten officers and thirty dragoons."

The interview took place at the time appointed, on the bridge over the AvÈne, a few miles south of Alais. Cavalier arrived, attended by three hundred foot and sixty Camisard dragoons. When the two chiefs recognised each other, they halted their escorts, dismounted, and, followed by some officers, proceeded on foot to meet each other.

Lalande had brought with him Cavalier's younger brother, who had been for some time a prisoner, and presented him, saying, "The King gives him to you in token of his merciful intentions." The brothers, who had not met since their mother's death, embraced and wept. Cavalier thanked the general; and then, leaving their officers, the two went on one side, and conferred together alone.

"The King," said Lalande, "wishes, in the exercise of his clemency, to terminate this war amongst his subjects; what are your terms and your demands?" "They consist of three things," replied Cavalier: "liberty of worship; the deliverance of our brethren who are in prison and at the galleys; and, if the first condition be refused, then free permission to leave France." "How many persons would wish to leave the kingdom?" asked Lalande. "Ten thousand of various ages and both sexes." "Ten thousand! It is impossible! Leave might possibly be granted for two, but certainly not for ten." "Then," said Cavalier, "if the King will not allow us to leave the kingdom, he will at least re-establish our ancient edicts and privileges?"

Lalande promised to report the result of the conference to the marshal, though he expressed a doubt whether he could agree to the terms proposed. The brigadier took leave of Cavalier by expressing the desire to be of service to him at any time; but he made a gross and indelicate mistake in offering his purse to the Camisard chief. "No, no!" said Cavalier, rejecting it with a look of contempt, "I wish for none of your gold, but only for religious liberty, or, if that be refused, for a safe conduct out of the kingdom."

Lalande then asked to be taken up to the Camisard troop, who had been watching the proceedings of their leader with great interest. Coming up to them in the ranks, he said, "Here is a purse of a hundred louis with which to drink the King's health." Their reply was like their leader's, "We want no money, but liberty of conscience." "It is not in my power to grant you that," said the general, "but you will do well to submit to the King's will." "We are ready," said they, "to obey his orders, provided he grants our just demands; but if not, we are prepared to die arms in hand." And thus ended this memorable interview, which lasted for about two hours; Lalande and his followers returning to Alais, while Cavalier went with his troop in the direction of Vezenobres.

Cavalier's enemies say that in the course of his interview with Lalande he was offered honours, rewards, and promotion, if he would enter the King's service; and it is added that Cavalier was tempted by these offers, and thereby proved false to his cause and followers. But it is more probable that Cavalier was sincere in his desire to come to fair terms with the King, observing the impossibility, under the circumstances, of prolonging the struggle against the royal armies with any reasonable prospect of success. If Cavalier were really bribed by any such promises of promotion, at all events such promises were never fulfilled; nor did the French monarch reward him in any way for his endeavours to bring the Camisard insurrection to an end.

It was characteristic of Roland to hold aloof from these negotiations, and refuse to come to any terms whatever with "Baal." As if to separate himself entirely from Cavalier, he withdrew into the Upper Cevennes to resume the war. At the very time that Cavalier was holding the conference with the royalist general at the Bridge of the AvÈne, Roland and Joany, with a body of horse and foot, waylaid the Count de Tournou at the plateau of Font-morte—the place where Seguier, the first Camisard leader, had been defeated and captured—and suddenly fell upon the Royalists, putting them to flight.

A rich booty fell into the hands of the Camisards, part of which consisted of the quarter's rental of the confiscated estate of Salgas, in the possession of the King's collector, Viala, whom the royalist troops were escorting to St. Jean de Gard. The collector, who had made himself notorious for his cruelty, was put to death after frightful torment, and his son and nephew were also shot. So far, therefore, as Roland and his associates were concerned, there appeared to be no intention of surrender or compromise; and Villars was under the necessity of prosecuting the war against them to the last extremity.

In the meantime, Cavalier was hailed throughout the low country as the pacificator of Languedoc. The people on both sides had become heartily sick of the war, and were glad to be rid of it on any terms that promised peace and security for the future. At the invitation of Marshal Villars, Cavalier proceeded towards Nismes, and his march from town to town was one continuous ovation. He was eagerly welcomed by the population; and his men were hospitably entertained by the garrisons of the places through which they passed. Every liberty was allowed him; and not a day passed without a religious meeting being held, accompanied with public preaching, praying, and psalm-singing. At length Cavalier and his little army approached the neighbourhood of Nismes, where his arrival was anticipated with extraordinary interest.

The beautiful old city had witnessed many strange sights; but probably the entry of the young Camisard chief was one of the most remarkable of all. This herd-boy and baker's apprentice of the Cevennes, after holding at bay the armies of France for nearly three years, had come to negotiate a treaty of peace with its most famous general. Leaving the greater part of his cavalry and the whole of his infantry at St. CÉsaire, a few miles from Nismes, Cavalier rode towards the town attended by eighteen horsemen commanded by Catinat. On approaching the southern gate, he found an immense multitude waiting his arrival. "He could not have been more royally welcomed," said the priest of St. Germain, "had he been a king."

Cavalier rode at the head of his troop gaily attired; for fine dress was one of the weaknesses of the Camisard chiefs. He wore a tight-fitting doeskin coat ornamented with gold lace, scarlet breeches, a muslin cravat, and a large beaver with a white plume; his long fair hair hanging over his shoulders. Catinat rode by his side on a high-mettled charger, attracting all eyes by his fine figure, his martial air, and his magnificent costume. Cavalier's faithful friend, Daniel Billard, rode on his left; and behind followed his little brother in military uniform, between the Baron d'Aigalliers and Lacombe, the agents for peace.

The cavalcade advanced through the dense crowd, which could with difficulty be kept back, past the Roman Amphitheatre, and along the Rue St. Antoine, to the Garden of the RÉcollets, a Franciscan convent, nearly opposite the elegant Roman temple known as the Maison CarrÉe.[45] Alighting from his horse at the gate, and stationing his guard there under the charge of Catinat, Cavalier entered the garden, and was conducted to Marshal Villars, with whom was Baville, intendant of the province; Baron Sandricourt, governor of Nismes; General Lalande, and other dignitaries. Cavalier looked such a mere boy, that Villars at first could scarcely believe that it was the celebrated Camisard chief who stood before him. The marshal, however, advanced several steps, and addressed some complimentary words to Cavalier, to which he respectfully replied.

The conference then began and proceeded, though not without frequent interruptions from Baville, who had so long regarded Cavalier as a despicable rebel, that he could scarcely brook the idea of the King's marshal treating with him on anything like equal terms. But the marshal checked the intendant by reminding him that he had no authority to interfere in a matter which the King had solely entrusted to himself. Then turning to Cavalier, he asked him to state his conditions for a treaty of peace.

Cavalier has set forth in his memoirs the details of the conditions proposed by him, and which he alleges were afterwards duly agreed to and signed by Villars and Baville, on the 17th of May, 1704, on the part of the King. The first condition was liberty of conscience, with the privilege of holding religious assemblies in country places. This was agreed to, subject to the Protestant temples not being rebuilt. The second—that all Protestants in prison or at the galleys should be set at liberty within six weeks from the date of the treaty—was also agreed to. The third—that all who had left the kingdom on account of their religion should have liberty to return, and be restored to their estates and privileges—was agreed to, subject to their taking the oath of allegiance. The fourth—as to the re-establishment of the parliament of Languedoc on its ancient footing—was promised consideration. The fifth and sixth—that the province should be free from capitation tax for ten years, and that the Protestants should hold Montpellier, Cette, Perpignan, and Aiguesmortes, as cautionary towns—were refused. The seventh—that those inhabitants of the Cevennes whose houses had been burnt during the civil war should pay no imposts for seven years—was granted. And the eighth—that Cavalier should raise a regiment of dragoons to serve the King in Portugal—was also granted.

These conditions are said to have been agreed to on the distinct understanding that the insurrection should forthwith cease, and that all persons in arms against the King should lay them down and submit themselves to his majesty's clemency.

The terms having been generally agreed to, Cavalier respectfully took his leave of the marshal, and returned to his comrades at the gate. But Catinat and the Camisard guard had disappeared. The conference had lasted two hours, during which Cavalier's general of horse had become tired of waiting, and gone with his companions to refresh himself at the sign of the Golden Cup. On his way thither, he witched the world of Nismes with his noble horsemanship, making his charger bound and prance and curvet, greatly to the delight of the immense crowd that followed him.

On the return of the Camisard guard to the RÉcollets, Cavalier mounted his horse, and, escorted by them, proceeded to the HÔtel de la Poste, where he rested. In the evening, he came out on the Esplanade, and walked freely amidst the crowd, amongst whom were many ladies, eager to see the Camisard hero, and happy if they could but hear him speak, or touch his dress. He then went to visit the mother of Daniel, his favourite prophet, a native of Nismes, whose father and brother were both prisoners because of their religion. Returning to the hotel, Cavalier mustered his guard, and set out for Calvisson, followed by hundreds of people, singing together as they passed through the town gate the 133rd Psalm—"Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!"

Cavalier remained with his companions at Calvisson for eight days, during which he enjoyed the most perfect freedom of action. He held public religious services daily, at first amidst the ruins of the demolished Protestant temple, and afterwards, when the space was insufficient, in the open plain outside the town walls. People came from all quarters to attend them—from the Vaunage, from SommiÈres, from Lunel, from Nismes, and even from Montpellier. As many as forty thousand persons are said to have resorted to the services during Cavalier's sojourn at Calvisson. The plains resounded with preaching and psalmody from morning until evening, sometimes until late at night, by torchlight.

These meetings were a great cause of offence to the more bigoted of the Roman Catholics, who saw in them the triumph of their enemies. They muttered audibly against the policy of Villars, who was tolerating if not encouraging heretics—worthy, in their estimation, only of perdition. FlÉchier, Bishop of Nismes, was full of lamentations on the subject, and did not scruple to proclaim that war, with all its horrors, was even more tolerable than such a peace as this.

Unhappily, the peace proved only of short duration, and Cavalier's anticipations of unity and brotherly love were not destined to be fulfilled. Whether Roland was jealous of the popularity achieved by Cavalier, or suspected treachery on the part of the Royalists, or whether he still believed in the ability of his followers to conquer religious liberty and compel the re-establishment of the ancient edicts by the sword, does not clearly appear. At all events, he refused to be committed in any way by what Cavalier had done; and when the treaty entered into with Villars was submitted to Roland for approval, he refused to sign it. A quarrel had almost occurred between the chiefs, and hot words passed between them. But Cavalier controlled himself, and still hoped to persuade Roland to adopt a practicable course, and bring the unhappy war to a conclusion.

It was at length agreed between them that a further effort should be made to induce Villars to grant more liberal terms, particularly with respect to the rebuilding of the Protestant temples; and Cavalier consented that Salomon should accompany him to an interview with the marshal, and endeavour to obtain such a modification of the treaty as should meet Roland's views. Accordingly, another meeting shortly after took place in the Garden of the RÉcollets at Nismes, Cavalier leaving it to Salomon to be the spokesman on the occasion.

But Salomon proved as uncompromising as his chief. He stated his ultimatum bluntly and firmly—re-establishment of the Edict of Nantes, and complete liberty of conscience. On no other terms, he said, would the Camisards lay down their arms. Villars was courtly and polite as usual, but he was as firm as Salomon. He would adhere to the terms that had been agreed to, but could not comply with the conditions proposed. The discussion lasted for two hours, and at length became stormy and threatening on the part of Salomon, on which the marshal turned on his heel and left the apartment.

Cavalier's followers had not yet been informed of the conditions of the treaty into which he had entered with Villars, but they had been led to believe that the Edict was to be re-established and liberty of worship restored. Their suspicions had already been roused by the hints thrown out by Ravanel, who was as obdurate as Roland in his refusal to lay down his arms until the Edict had been re-established.

While Cavalier was still at Nismes, on his second mission to Villars, accompanied by Salomon, Ravanel, who had been left in charge of the troop at Calvisson, assembled the men, and told them he feared they were being betrayed—that they were to be refused this free exercise of their religion in temples of their own, but were to be required to embark as King's soldiers on shipboard, perhaps to perish at sea. "Brethren," said he, "let us cling by our own native land, and live and die for the Eternal." The men enthusiastically applauded the stern resolve of Ravanel, and awaited with increasing impatience the return of the negotiating chief.

On Cavalier's return to his men, he found, to his dismay, that instead of being welcomed back with the usual cordiality, they were drawn up in arms under Ravanel, and received him in silence, with angry and scowling looks. He upbraided Ravanel for such a reception, on which the storm immediately burst. "What is the treaty, then," cried Ravanel, "that thou hast made with this marshal?"

Cavalier, embarrassed, evaded the inquiry; but Ravanel, encouraged by his men, proceeded to press for the information. "Well," said Cavalier, "it is arranged that we shall go to serve in Portugal." There was at once a violent outburst from the ranks. "Traitor! coward! then thou hast sold us! But we shall have no peace—no peace without our temples."

At sound of the loud commotion and shouting, Vincel, the King's commissioner, who remained at Calvisson pending the negotiations, came running up, and the men in their rage would have torn him to pieces, but Cavalier threw himself in their way, exclaiming, "Back, men! Do him no harm, kill me instead." His voice, his gesture, arrested the Camisards, and Vincel turned and fled for his life.

Ravanel then ordered the gÉnÉrale to be beaten. The men drew up in their ranks, and putting himself at their head, Ravanel marched them out of Calvisson by the northern gate. Cavalier, humiliated and downcast, followed the troop—their leader no more. He could not part with them thus—the men he had so often led to victory, and who had followed him so devotedly—but hung upon their rear, hoping they would yet relent and return to him as their chief.

Catinat, his general of horse, observing Cavalier following the men, turned upon him. "Whither wouldst thou go, traitor?" cried Catinat. What! Catinat, of all others, to prove unfaithful? Yet it was so! Catinat even, presented his pistol at his former chief, but he did not fire.

Cavalier would not yet turn back. He hung upon the skirts of the column, entreating, supplicating, adjuring the men, by all their former love for him, to turn, and follow him. But they sternly marched on, scarcely even deigning to answer him. Ravanel endeavoured to drive him back by reproaches, which at length so irritated Cavalier, that he drew his sword, and they were about to rush at each other, when one of the prophets ran between them and prevented bloodshed.

Cavalier did not desist from following them for several miles, until at length, on reaching St. EstÈve, the men were appealed to as to whom they would follow, and they declared themselves for Ravanel. Cavalier made a last appeal to their allegiance, and called out, "Let those who love me, follow me!" About forty of his old adherents detached themselves from the ranks, and followed Cavalier in the direction of Nismes. But the principal body remained with Ravanel, who, waving his sabre in the air, and shouting, "Vive l'ÉpÉe de l'Éternel!" turned his men's faces northward and marched on to rejoin Roland in the Upper Cevennes.

Cavalier was completely prostrated by the desertion of his followers. He did not know where next to turn. He could not rejoin the Camisard camp nor enter the villages of the Cevennes, and he was ashamed to approach Villars, lest he should be charged with deceiving him. But he sent a letter to the marshal, informing him of the failure of his negotiations, the continued revolt of the Camisards, and their rejection of him as their chief. Villars, however, was gentle and generous; he was persuaded that Cavalier had acted loyally and in good faith throughout, and he sent a message by the Baron d'Aigalliers, urgently inviting him to return to Nismes and arrange as to the future. Cavalier accordingly set out forthwith, accompanied by his brother and the prophet Daniel, and escorted by the ten horsemen and thirty foot who still remained faithful to his person.

It is not necessary further to pursue the history of Cavalier. Suffice it to say that, at the request of Marshal Villars, he proceeded to Paris, where he had an unsatisfactory interview with Louis XIV.; that fearing an intention on the part of the Roman Catholic party to make him a prisoner, he fled across the frontier into Switzerland; that he eventually reached England, and entered the English army, with the rank of Colonel; that he raised a regiment of refugee Frenchmen, consisting principally of his Camisard followers, at the head of whom he fought most valiantly at the battle of Almanza; that he was afterwards appointed governor of Jersey, and died a major-general in the British service in the year 1740, greatly respected by all who knew him.

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Although Cavalier failed in carrying the treaty into effect, so far as he was concerned, his secession at this juncture proved a deathblow to the insurrection. The remaining Camisard leaders endeavoured in vain to incite that enthusiasm amongst their followers which had so often before led them to victory. The men felt that they were fighting without hope, and as it were with halters round their necks. Many of them began to think that Cavalier had been justified in seeking to secure the best terms practicable; and they dropped off, by tens and fifties, to join their former leader, whose head-quarters for some time continued to be at Vallabergue, an island in the RhÔne a little above Beaucaire.

The insurgents were also in a great measure disarmed by Marshal Villars, who continued to pursue a policy of clemency, and at the same time of severity. He offered a free pardon to all who surrendered themselves, but threatened death to all who continued to resist the royal troops. In sign of his clemency, he ordered the gibbets which had for some years stood en permanence in all the villages of the Cevennes, to be removed; and he went from town to town, urging all well-disposed people, of both religions, to co-operate with him in putting an end to the dreadful civil war that had so long desolated the province.

Moved by the marshal's eloquent appeals, the principal towns along the Gardon and the Vidourle appointed deputies to proceed in a body to the camp of Roland, and induce him if possible to accept the proffered amnesty. They waited upon him accordingly at his camp of St. Felix and told him their errand. But his answer was to order them at once to leave the place on pain of death.

Villars himself sent messengers to Roland—amongst others the Baron d'Aigalliers—offering to guarantee that no one should be molested on account of his religion, provided he and his men would lay down their arms; but Roland remained inflexible—nothing short of complete religious liberty would induce him to surrender.

Roland and Joany were still at the head of about a thousand men in the Upper Cevennes. Pont-de-Montvert was at the time occupied by a body of Miguelets, whom they determined if possible to destroy. Dividing their army into three bodies, they proceeded to assail simultaneously the three quarters of which the village is composed. But the commander of the Miguelets, informed of Roland's intention, was prepared to receive him. One of the Camisard wings was attacked at the same time in front and rear, thrown into confusion and defeated; and the other wings were driven back with heavy loss. This was Roland's last battle. About a month later—in August, 1704—while a body of Camisards occupied the ChÂteau of Castelnau, not far from Ners, the place was suddenly surrounded at night by a body of royalist dragoons. The alarm was raised, and Roland, half-dressed, threw himself on horseback and fled. He was pursued, overtaken, and brought to a stand in a wood, where, setting his back to a tree he defended himself bravely for a time against overpowering numbers, but was at last shot through the heart by a dragoon, and the Camisard chief lay dead upon the ground.

The insurrection did not long survive the death of Roland. The other chiefs wandered about from place to place with their followers, but they had lost heart and hope, and avoided further encounters with the royal forces. One after another of them surrendered. Castanet and Catinat both laid down their arms, and were allowed to leave France for Switzerland, accompanied by twenty-two of their men. Joany also surrendered with forty-six of his followers.

One by one the other chiefs laid down their arms—all excepting Abraham and Ravanel, who preferred liberty and misery at home to peace and exile abroad. They continued for some time to wander about in the Upper Cevennes, hiding in the woods by day and sleeping in caves by night—hunted, deserted, and miserable. And thus at last was Languedoc pacified; and at the beginning of January, 1705, Marshal Villars returned to Versailles to receive the congratulations and honours of the King.

Several futile attempts were afterwards made by the banished leaders to rekindle the insurrection from its embers, Catinat and Castanet, wearied of their inaction at Geneva, stole back across the frontier and rejoined Ravanel in the Cevennes; but their rashness cost them their lives. They were all captured and condemned to death. Castanet and Salomon were broken alive on the wheel on the Peyrou at Montpellier, and Catinat, Ravanel, with several others, were burnt alive on the Place de la Beaucaire at Nismes.

The last to perish were Abraham and Joany. The one was shot while holding the royal troops at bay, firing upon them from the roof of a cottage at Mas-de-Couteau; the other was captured in the mountains near the source of the Tarn. He was on his way to prison, tied behind a trooper, like Rob Roy in Scott's novel, when, suddenly freeing himself from his bonds while crossing the bridge of Pont-de-Montvert, he slid from the horse, and leapt over the parapet into the Tarn. The soldiers at once opened fire upon the fugitive, and he fell, pierced with many balls, and was carried away in the torrent. And thus Pont-de-Montvert, which had seen the beginning, also saw the end of the insurrection.[Back to Contents]

CHAPTER IX.

GALLEY-SLAVES FOR THE FAITH.

After the death of the last of the Camisard leaders, there was no further effort at revolt. The Huguenots seemed to be entirely put down, and Protestantism completely destroyed. There was no longer any resistance nor protest. If there were any Huguenots who had not become Catholics, they remained mute. Force had at last succeeded in stifling them.

A profound quiet reigned for a time throughout France. The country had become a circle, closely watched by armed men—by dragoons, infantry, archers, and coastguards—beyond which the Huguenots could not escape without running the risk of the prison, the galley, or the gibbet.

The intendants throughout the kingdom flattered Louis XIV., and Louis XIV. flattered himself, that the Huguenots had either been converted, extirpated, or expelled the kingdom. The King had medals struck, announcing the "extinction of heresy." A proclamation to this effect was also published by the King, dated the 8th of March, 1715, declaring the entire conversion of the French Huguenots, and sentencing those who, after that date, relapsed from Catholicism to Protestantism, to all the penalties of heresy. What, then, had become of the Huguenots? They were for the moment prostrate, but their life had not gone out of them. Many were no doubt "converted." They had not strength to resist the pains and penalties threatened by the State if they refused. They accordingly attended Mass, and assisted in ceremonies which at heart they detested. Though they blushed at their apostasy, they were too much broken down and weary of oppression and suffering to attempt to be free.

But though many Huguenots pretended to be "converted," the greater number silently refrained. They held their peace and bided their time. Meanwhile, however, they were subject to all the annoyances of persecution. Persecution had seized them from the day of their birth, and never relaxed its hold until the day of their death. Every new-born child must be taken to the priest to be baptized. When the children had grown into boys and girls, they must go to school and be educated, also by the priest. If their parents refused to send them, the children were forcibly seized, taken away, and brought up in the Jesuit schools and nunneries. And lastly, when grown up into young men and women, they must be married by the priest, or their offspring be declared illegitimate.

The Huguenots refused to conform to all this. Nevertheless, it was by no means easy to continue to refuse obeying the priest. The priest was well served with spies, though the principal spy in every parish was himself. There were also numerous other professional spies—besides idlers, mischief-makers, and "good-natured friends." In time of peace, also, soldiers were usually employed in performing the disgraceful duty of acting as spies upon the Huguenots.

The Huguenot was ordered to attend Mass under the penalty of fine and imprisonment. Supposing he refused, because he did not believe that the priest had the miraculous power of converting bread and wine into something the very opposite. The priest insisted that he did possess this power, and that he was supported by the State in demanding that the Huguenot must come and worship his transubstantiation of bread into flesh and wine into blood. "I do not believe it," said the Huguenot. "But I order you to come, for Louis XIV. has proclaimed you to be a converted Catholic, and if you refuse you will be at once subject to all the penalties of heresy." It was certainly very difficult to argue with a priest who had the hangman at his back, or with the King who had his hundred thousand dragoons. And so, perhaps, the threatened Huguenot went to Mass, and pretended to believe all that the priest had said about his miraculous powers.

But many resolutely continued to refuse, willing to incur the last and heaviest penalties. Then it came to be seen that Protestantism, although, declared defunct by the King's edict, had not in fact expired, but was merely reposing for a time in order to make a fresh start forward. The Huguenots who still remained in France, whether as "new converts" or as "obstinate heretics," at length began to emerge from their obscurity. They met together in caves and solitary places—in deep and rocky gorges—in valleys among the mountains—where they prayed together, sang together their songs of David, and took counsel one with another.

At length, from private meetings for prayer, religious assemblies began to be held in the Desert, and preachers made their appearance. The spies spread about the country informed the intendants. The meetings were often surprised by the military. Sometimes the soldiers would come upon them suddenly, and fire into the crowd of men, women, and children. On some occasions a hundred persons or more would be killed upon the spot. Of those taken prisoners, the preachers were hanged or broken on the wheel, the women were sent to prison, and the children, to nunneries, while the men were sent to be galley-slaves for life.[46]

The persecutions to which Huguenot women and children were exposed caused a sudden enlargement of all the prisons and nunneries in France. Many of the old castles were fitted up as gaols, and even their dungeons were used for the incorrigible heretics. One of the worst of these was the Tour de Constance in the town of Aiguesmortes, which is to this day remembered with horror as the principal dungeon of the Huguenot women.

The town of Aiguesmortes is situated in the department of Gard, close to the Mediterranean, whose waters wash into the salt marshes and lagunes by which it is surrounded. It was erected in the thirteenth century for Philip the Bold, and is still interesting as an example of the ancient feudal fortress. The fosse has since been filled up, on account of the malaria produced by the stagnant water which it contained. The place is approached by a long causeway raised above the marsh, and the entrance to the tower is spanned by an ancient gatehouse. In advance of the tower, to the north, in an angle of the wall, is a single, large round tower, which served as a citadel. It is sixty-six feet in diameter and ninety feet high, surmounted by a lighthouse turret of thirty-four feet. It consists of two large vaulted apartments, the staircase from the one to the other being built within the wall itself, which is about eighteen feet thick. The upper chamber is dimly lighted by narrow chinks through the walls. The lowest of the apartments is the dungeon, which is almost without light and air. In the centre of the floor is a hole connected with a reservoir of water below.

This Tour de Constance continued to be the principal prison for Huguenot women in France for a period of about a hundred years. It was always horribly unhealthy; and to be condemned to this dungeon was considered almost as certain though a slower death than to be condemned to the gallows. Sixteen Huguenot women confined there in 1686 died within five months. Most of them were the wives of merchants of Nismes, or of men of property in the district. When the prisoners died off, the dungeon was at once filled up again with more victims, and it was rarely, if ever, empty, down to a period within only a few years before the outbreak of the French Revolution.

The punishment of the men found attending religious meetings, and taken prisoners by the soldiers, was to be sentenced to the galleys, mostly for life. They were usually collected in large numbers, and sent to the seaports attached together by chains. They were sent openly, sometimes through the entire length of the kingdom, by way of a show. The object was to teach the horrible delinquency of professing Protestantism; for it could not be to show the greater beautifulness and mercifulness of Catholicism.

The punishment of the Chain varied in degree. Sometimes it was more cruel than at other times. This depended upon the drivers of the prisoners. Marteilhe describes the punishment during his conveyance from Havre to Marseilles in the winter of 1712.[47] The Chain to which he belonged did not reach Marseilles until the 17th January, 1713. The season was bitterly cold; but that made no difference in the treatment of Huguenot prisoners.

The Chain consisted of a file of prisoners, chained one to another in various ways. On this occasion, each pair was fastened by the neck with a thick chain three feet long, in the middle of which was a round ring. After being thus chained, the pairs were placed in file, couple behind couple, when another long thick chain was passed through the rings, thus running along the centre of the gang, and the whole were thus doubly-chained together. There were no less than four hundred prisoners in the chain described by Marteilhe. The number had, however, greatly fallen off through deaths by barbarous treatment before it reached Marseilles.

It must, however, be added, that the whole gang did not consist of Huguenots, but only a part of it—the Huguenots being distinguished by their red jackets. The rest consisted of murderers, thieves, deserters, and criminals of various sorts. The difficulty which the prisoners had in marching along the roads was very great; the weight of chain which each member had to carry being no less than one hundred and fifty pounds. The lodging they had at night was of the worst description. While at Paris, the galley-slaves were quartered in the ChÂteau de la Tournelle, which was under the spiritual direction of the Jesuits. The gaol consisted of a large cellar or dungeon, fitted with huge beams of oak fixed close to the floor. Thick iron collars were attached by iron chains to the beams. The collar being placed round the prisoner's neck, it was closed and riveted upon an anvil with heavy blows of a hammer.

Twenty men in pairs were thus chained to each beam. The dungeon was so large that five hundred men could thus be fastened up. They could not sleep lying at full length, nor could they sleep sitting or standing up straight; the beam to which they were chained being too high in the one case and too low in the other. The torture which they endured, therefore, is scarcely to be described. The prisoners were kept there until a sufficient number could be collected to set out in a great chain for Marseilles.

When they arrived at the first stage out of Paris, at Charenton, after a heavy day's fatigue, their lodging was no better than before. A stable was found in which they were chained up in such a way that they could with difficulty sit down, and then only on a dung-heap. After they had lain there for a few hours, the prisoners' chains were taken off, and they were turned out into the spacious courtyard of the inn, where they were ordered to strip off their clothes, put them down at their feet, and march over to the other side of the courtyard. The object of this proceeding was to search the pockets of the prisoners, examine their clothes, and find whether they contained any knives, files, or other tools which might be used for cutting the chains. All money and other valuables or necessaries that the clothes contained were at the same time taken away.

The night was cold and frosty, with a keen north wind blowing; and after the prisoners had been exposed to it for about half an hour, their bodies became so benumbed that they could scarcely move across the yard to where their clothes were lying. Next morning it was found that eighteen of the unfortunates were happily released by death.

It is not necessary to describe the tortures endured by the galley-slaves to the end of their journey. One little circumstance may, however, be mentioned. While marching towards the coast, the exhausted Huguenots, weary and worn out by the heaviness of their chains, were accustomed to stretch out their little wooden cups for a drop of water to the inhabitants of the villages through which they passed. The women, whom they mostly addressed, answered their entreaties with the bitterest spite. "Away, away!" they cried; "you are going where you will have water enough!"

When the gang or chain reached the port at which the prisoners were to be confined, they were drafted on board the different galleys. These were for the most part stationed at Toulon, but there were also other galleys in which Huguenots were imprisoned—at Marseilles, Dunkirk, Brest, St. Malo, and Bordeaux. Let us briefly describe the galley of those days.

The royal galley was about a hundred and fifty feet long and forty feet broad, and was capable of containing about five hundred men. It had fifty benches for rowers, twenty-five on each side. Between these two rows of benches was the raised middle gallery, commonly called the waist of the ship, four feet high and about three or four feet broad. The oars were fifty feet long, of which thirty-seven feet were outside the ship and thirteen within. Six men worked at each oar, all chained to the same bench. They had to row in unison, otherwise they would be heavily struck by the return rowers both before and behind them. They were under the constant command of the comite or galley-slave-driver, who struck all about him with his long whip in urging them to work. To enable his strokes to tell, the men sat naked while they rowed.[48] Their dress was always insufficient, summer and winter—the lower part of their bodies being covered with a short red jacket and a sort of apron, for their manacles prevented them wearing any other dress.

The chain which bound each rower to his bench was fastened to his leg, and was of such a length as to enable his feet to come and go whilst rowing. At night, the galley-slave slept where he sat—on the bench on which he had been rowing all day. There was no room for him to lie down. He never quitted his bench except for the hospital or the grave; yet some of the Huguenot rowers contrived to live upon their benches for thirty or forty years!

During all these years they toiled in their chains in a hell of foul and disgusting utterance, for they were mixed up with thieves and the worst of criminals. They ate the bread and drank the waters of bitterness. They seemed to be forsaken by the world. They had no one to love them, for most had left their families behind them at home, or perhaps in convents or prisons. They lived under the constant threats of their keepers, who lashed them to make them row harder, who lashed them to make them sit up, or lashed them to make them lie down. The Chevalier Langeron, captain of La Palme, of which Marteilhe was at first a rower, used to call the comite to him and say, "Go and refresh the backs of these Huguenots with a salad of strokes of the whip." For the captain, it seems, "held the most Jesuitical sentiments," and hated his Huguenot prisoners far worse than his thieves or his murderers.[49]

And yet, at any moment, a word spoken would have made these Huguenots free. The Catholic priests frequently visited the galleys and entreated them to become converted. If "converted," and the Huguenots would only declare that they believed in the miraculous powers of the clergy, their chains would fall away from their limbs at once; and they would have been restored to the world, to their families, and to liberty! And who would not have declared themselves "converted," rather than endure these horrible punishments? Yet by far the greater number of the Huguenots did not. They could not be hypocrites. They would not lie to God. Rather than do this, they had the heroism—some will call it the obstinacy—to remain galley-slaves for life!

Many of the galley-slaves did not survive their torture long. Men of all ages and conditions, accustomed to indoor life, could not bear the exposure to the sun, rain, and snow, which the punishment of the galley-slave involved. The old men and the young soon succumbed and died. Middle-aged men survived the longest. But there was always a change going on. When the numbers of a galley became thinned by death, there were other Huguenots ready to be sent on board—perhaps waiting in some inland prison until another "Great Chain" could be made up for the seaports, to go on board the galley-ships, to be manacled, tortured, and killed off as before.

Such was the treatment of the galley-slaves in time of peace. But the galleys were also war-ships. They carried large numbers of armed men on board. Sometimes they scoured the Mediterranean, and protected French merchant-ships against the Sallee rovers. At other times they were engaged in the English channel, attacking Dutch and English ships, sometimes picking up a prize, at other times in actual sea-fight.

When the service required, they were compelled to row incessantly night and day, without rest, save in the last extremity; and they were treated as if, on the first opportunity, in sight of the enemy, they would revolt and betray the ship; hence they were constantly watched by the soldiers on board, and if any commotion appeared amongst them, they were shot down without ceremony, and their bodies thrown into the sea. Loaded cannons were also placed at the end of the benches of rowers, so as to shoot them down in case of necessity.

Whenever an enemy's ship came up, the galley-slaves were covered over with a linen screen, so as to prevent them giving signals to the enemy. When an action occurred, they were particularly exposed to danger, for the rowers and their oars were the first to be shot at—just as the boiler or screw of a war-steamer would be shot at now—in order to disable the ship. The galley-slaves thus suffered much more from the enemy's shot than the other armed men of the ship. The rowers benches were often filled with dead, before the soldiers and mariners on board had been touched.

Marteilhe, while a galley-slave on board La Palme, was engaged in an adventure which had nearly cost him his life. Four French galleys, after cruising along the English coast from Dover to the Downs, got sight of a fleet of thirty-five merchant vessels on their way from the Texel to the Thames, under the protection of one small English frigate. The commanders of the galleys, taking counsel together, determined to attack the frigate (which they thought themselves easily able to master), and so capture the entire English fleet.

The captain of the frigate, when he saw the galleys approach him, ordered the merchantmen to crowd sail and make for the Thames, the mouth of which they had nearly reached. He then sailed down upon the galleys, determined to sacrifice his ship if necessary for the safety of his charge. The galleys fired into him, but he returned never a shot. The captain of the galley in which Marteilhe was, said, "Oh, he is coming to surrender!" The frigate was so near that the French musqueteers were already firing full upon her. All of a sudden the frigate tacked and veered round as if about to fly from the galleys. The Frenchmen called out that the English were cowards in thus trying to avoid the battle. If they did not surrender at once, they would sink the frigate!

The English captain took no notice. The frigate then turned her stern towards the galley, as if to give the Frenchmen an opportunity of boarding her. The French commander ordered the galley at once to run at the enemy's stern, and the crew to board the frigate. The rush was made; the galley-slaves, urged by blows of the whip, rowing with great force. The galley was suddenly nearing the stern of the frigate, when by a clever stroke of the helm the ship moved to one side, and the galley, missing it, rushed past. All the oars on that side were suddenly broken off, and the galley was placed immediately under the broadside of the enemy.

Then began the English part of the game. The French galley was seized with grappling irons and hooked on to the English broadside. The men on board the galley were as exposed as if they had been upon a raft or a bridge. The frigate's guns, which were charged with grapeshot, were discharged full upon them, and a frightful carnage ensued. The English also threw hand grenades, which went down amongst the rowers and killed many. They next boarded the galley, and cut to pieces all the armed men they could lay hold of, only sparing the convicts, who could make no attempt at defence.

The English captain then threw off the galley, which he had broadsided and disarmed, in order to look after the merchantmen, which some of the other galleys had gone to intercept on their way to the mouth of the Thames. Some of the ships had already been captured; but the commanders of the galleys, seeing their fellow-commodores flying signals of distress, let go their prey, and concentrated their attack upon the frigate. This they surrounded, and after a very hard struggle the frigate was captured, but not until the English captain had ascertained that all the fleet of which he had been in charge had entered the Thames and were safe. In the above encounter with the English frigate Marteilhe had nearly lost his life. The bench on which he was seated, with five other slaves, was opposite one of the loaded guns of the frigate. He saw that it must be discharged directly upon them. His fellows tried to lie down flat, while Marteilhe himself stood up. He saw the gunner with his lighted match approach the touchhole; then he lifted up his heart to God; the next moment he was lying stunned and prostrate in the centre of the galley, as far as the chain would allow him to reach. He was lying across the body of the lieutenant, who was killed. A long time passed, during which the fight was still going on, and then Marteilhe came to himself, towards dark. Most of his fellow-slaves were killed. He himself was bleeding from a large open wound on his shoulder, another on his knee, and a third in his stomach. Of the eighteen men around him he was the only one that escaped, with his three wounds.

The dead were all thrown into the sea. The men were about to throw Marteilhe after them, but while attempting to release him from his chain, they touched the wound upon his knee, and he groaned heavily. They let him remain where he lay. Shortly after, he was taken down to the bottom of the hold with the other men, where he long lay amongst the wounded and dying. At length he recovered from his wounds, and was again returned to his bench, to re-enter the horrible life of a galley-slave.

There was another mean and unmanly cruelty, connected with this galley-slave service, which was practised only upon the Huguenots. If an assassin or other criminal received a wound in the service of the state while engaged in battle, he was at once restored to his liberty; but if a Huguenot was wounded, he was never released. He was returned to his bench and chained as before; the wounds he had received being only so many additional tortures to be borne by him in the course of his punishment.

Marteilhe, as we have already stated, was disembarked when he had sufficiently recovered, and marched through the entire length of France, enchained with other malefactors. On his arrival at Marseilles, he was placed on board the galley Grand RÉale, where he remained until peace was declared between England and France by the Treaty of Utrecht.[50]

Queen Anne of England, at the instigation of the Marquis de Rochegade, then made an effort to obtain the liberation of Protestants serving at the galleys; and at length, out of seven hundred and forty-two Huguenots who were then enslaved, a hundred and thirty-six were liberated, of whom Marteilhe was one. He was thus enabled to get rid of his inhuman countrymen, and to spend the remainder of his life in Holland and England, where Protestants were free.[Back to Contents]

CHAPTER X.

ANTOINE COURT.

Almost at the very time that Louis XIV. was lying on his death-bed at Versailles, a young man conceived the idea of re-establishing Protestantism in France! Louis XIV. had tried to enter heaven by superstition and cruelty. On his death-bed he began to doubt whether he "had not carried his authority too far."[51] But the Jesuits tried to make death easy for him, covering his body with relics of the true cross.

Very different was the position of the young man who tried to undo all that Louis XIV., under the influence of his mistress De Maintenon, and his Jesuit confessor, PÈre la Chase,[52] had been trying all his life to accomplish. He was an intelligent youth, the son of Huguenot parents in Viverais, of comparatively poor and humble condition. He was, however, full of energy, activity, and a zealous disposition for work. Observing the tendency which Protestantism had, while bereft of its pastors, to run into gloomy forms of fanaticism, Antoine Court conceived the idea of reviving the pastorate, and restoring the proscribed Protestant Church of France. It was a bold idea, but the result proved that Antoine Court was justified in entertaining it.

Louis XIV. died in August, 1715. During that very month, Court summoned together a small number of Huguenots to consider his suggestions. The meeting was held at daybreak, in an empty quarry near Nismes, which has already been mentioned in the course of this history. But it may here be necessary to inform the reader of the early life of this enthusiastic young man.

Antoine Court was born at Villeneuve de Berg, in Viverais, in the year 1696. Religious persecution was then at its height; assemblies were vigorously put down; and all pastors taken prisoners were hanged on the Peyrou at Montpellier. Court was only four years old when his father died, and his mother resolved, if the boy lived, to train him up so that he might consecrate himself to the service of God. He was still very young while the Camisard war was in progress, but he heard a great deal about it, and vividly remembered all that he heard.

Antoine Court, like many Protestant children, was compelled to attend a Jesuit school in his neighbourhood. Though but a boy he abhorred the Mass. With Protestants the Mass was then the symbol of persecution; it was identified with the Revocation of the Edict—the dragonnades, the galleys, the prisons, the nunneries, the monkeries, and the Jesuits. The Mass was not a matter of knowledge, but of fear, of terror, and of hereditary hatred.

At school, the other boys were most bitter against Court, because he was the son of a Huguenot. Every sort of mischief was practised upon him, for little boys are generally among the greatest of persecutors. Court was stoned, worried, railed at, laughed at, spit at. When leaving school, the boys called after him "He, he! the eldest son of Calvin!" They sometimes pursued him with clamour and volleys of stones to the door of his house, collecting in their riotous procession all the other Catholic boys of the place. Sometimes they forced him into church whilst the Mass was being celebrated. In fact, the boy's hatred of the Mass and of Catholicism grew daily more and more vehement.

All these persecutions, together with reading some of the books which came under his notice at home, confirmed his aversion to the Jesuitical school to which he had been sent. At the same time he became desirous of attending the secret assemblies, which he knew were being held in the neighbourhood. One day, when his mother set out to attend one of them, the boy set out to follow her. She discovered him, and demanded whither he was going. "I follow you, mother," said he, "and I wish you to permit me to go where you go. I know that you go to pray to God, and will you refuse me the favour of going to do so with you?"

She shed tears at his words, told him of the danger of attending the assembly, and strongly exhorted him to secrecy; but she allowed him to accompany her. He was at that time too little and weak to walk the whole way to the meeting; but other worshippers coming up, they took the boy on their shoulders and carried him along with them.

At the age of seventeen, Court began to read the Bible at the assemblies. One day, in a moment of sudden excitement, common enough at secret meetings, he undertook to address the assembly. What he said was received with much approval, and he was encouraged to go on preaching. He soon became famous among the mountaineers, and was regarded as a young man capable of accomplishing great things.

As he grew older, he at length determined to devote his life to preaching and ministering to the forsaken and afflicted Protestants. It was a noble, self-denying work, the only earthly reward for which was labour, difficulty, and danger. His mother was in great trouble, for Antoine was her only remaining son. She did not, however, press him to change his resolution. Court quoted to her the text, "Whoever loves father and mother more than me, is not worthy of me." After this, she only saw in her son a victim consecrated, like another Abraham, to the Divine service.

After arriving at his decision, Court proceeded to visit the Huguenots in Low Languedoc, passing by Uzes to Nismes, and preaching wherever he could draw assemblies of the people together. His success during this rapid excursion induced him to visit Dauphiny. There he met Brunel, another preacher, with knapsack on his back, running from place to place in order to avoid spies, priests, and soldiers. The two were equally full of ardour, and they went together preaching in many places, and duly encouraging each other.

From Dauphiny, Court directed his steps to Marseilles, where the royal galleys stationed there contained about three hundred Huguenot galley-slaves. He penetrated these horrible floating prisons, without being detected, and even contrived to organize amongst them a regular system of secret worship. Then he returned to Nismes, and from thence went through the Cevennes and the Viverais, preaching to people who had never met for Protestant worship since the termination of the wars of the Camisards. To elude the spies, who began to make hot search for him, because of the enthusiasm which he excited, Court contrived to be always on the move, and to appear daily in some fresh locality.

The constant fatigue which he underwent undermined his health, and he was compelled to remain for a time inactive at the mineral waters of Euzet. This retirement proved useful. He began to think over what might be done to revivify the Protestant religion in France. Remember that he was at that time only nineteen years of age! It might be thought presumptuous in a youth, comparatively uninstructed, even to dream of such a subject. The instruments of earthly power—King, Pope, bishops, priests, soldiers, and spies—were all arrayed against him. He had nothing to oppose to them but truth, uprightness, conscience, and indefatigable zeal for labour.

When Court had last met the few Protestant preachers who survived in Languedoc, they were very undecided about taking up his scheme. They had met at Nismes to take the sacrament in the house of a friend. There were Bombonnoux (an old Camisard), Crotte, Corteiz, Brunel, and Court. Without coming to any decision, they separated, some going to Switzerland, and others to the South and West of France. It now rested with Court, during his sickness, to study and endeavour to arrange the method of reorganization of the Church.

The Huguenots who remained in France were then divided into three classes—the "new converts," who professed Catholicism while hating it; the lovers of the ancient Protestant faith, who still clung to it; and, lastly, the more ignorant, who still clung to prophesying and inspiration. These last had done the Protestant Church much injury, for the intelligent classes generally regarded them as but mere fanatics.

Court found it would be requisite to keep the latter within the leading-strings of spiritual instruction, and to encourage the "new converts" to return to the church of their fathers by the re-establishment of some efficient pastoral service. He therefore urged that religious assemblies must be continued, and that discipline must be established by the appointment of elders, presbyteries, and synods, and also by the training up of a body of young pastors to preach amongst the people, and discipline them according to the rules of the Protestant Church. Nearly thirty years had passed since it had been disorganized by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, so that synods, presbyteries, and the training of preachers had become almost forgotten.

The first synod was convened by Court, and held in the abandoned quarry near Nismes, above referred to, in the very same month in which Louis XIV. breathed his last. It was a very small beginning. Two or three laymen and a few preachers[53] were present, the whole meeting numbering only nine persons. The place in which the meeting was held had often before been used as a secret place of worship by the Huguenots. Religious meetings held there had often been dispersed by the dragoons, and there was scarcely a stone in it that had not been splashed by Huguenot blood. And now, after Protestantism had been "finally suppressed," Antoine Court assembled his first synod to re-establish the proscribed religion!

The first meeting took place on the 21st of August, 1715, at daybreak. After prayer, Court, as moderator, explained his method of reorganization, which was approved. The first elders were appointed from amongst those present. A series of rules and regulations was resolved upon and ordered to be spread over the entire province. The preachers were then charged to go forth, to stir up the people and endeavour to bring back the "new converts."

They lost no time in carrying out their mission. The first districts in which they were appointed to work were those of Mende, Alais, Viviers, Uzes, Nismes, and Montpellier, in Languedoc—districts which, fifteen years before, had been the scenes of the Camisard war. There, in unknown valleys, on hillsides, on the mountains, in the midst of hostile towns and villages, the missionaries sought out the huts, the farms, and the dwellings of the scattered, concealed, and half-frightened Huguenots. Amidst the open threats of the magistrates and others in office, and the fear of the still more hateful priests and spies, they went from house to house, and prayed, preached, advised, and endeavoured to awaken the zeal of their old allies of the "Religion."

The preachers were for the most part poor, and some of them were labouring men. They were mostly natives of Languedoc. Jean Vesson, a cooper by trade, had in his youth been "inspired," and prophesied in his ecstasy. Mazelet, now an elderly man, had formerly been celebrated among the Camisards, and preached with great success before the soldiers of Roland. At forty he was not able to read or write; but having been forced to fly into Switzerland, he picked up some education at Geneva, and had studied divinity under a fellow-exile.

Bombonnoux had been a brigadier in the troop of Cavalier. After his chief's defection he resolved to continue the war to the end, by preaching, if not by fighting. He had been taken prisoner and imprisoned at Montpellier, in 1705. Two of his Camisard friends were first put upon the rack, and then, while still living, thrown upon a pile and burnt to death before his eyes. But the horrible character of the punishment did not terrify him. He contrived to escape from prison at Montpellier, and then went about convoking assemblies and preaching to the people as before.

Besides these, there were Huc, Corteiz, Durand, Arnaud, Brunel, and Rouviere or Crotte, who all went about from place to place, convoking assemblies and preaching. There were also some local preachers, as they might be called—old men who could not move far from home—who worked at their looms or trades, sometimes tilling the ground by day, and preaching at night. Amongst these were Monteil, Guillot, and Bonnard, all more than sixty years of age. Court, because of his youth and energy, seems to have been among the most active of the preachers. One day, near St. Hypolite, a chief centre of the Huguenot population, he convoked an assembly on a mountain side, the largest that had taken place for many years. The priests of the parish gave information to the authorities; and the governor of Alais offered a reward of fifty pistoles to anyone who would apprehend and deliver up to him the young preacher. Troops were sent into the district; upon which Court descended from the mountains towards the towns of Low Languedoc, and shortly after he arrived at Nismes.

At Nismes, Court first met Jacques Roger, who afterwards proved of great assistance to him in his work. Roger had long been an exile in Wurtemburg. He was originally a native of Boissieres, in Languedoc, and when a young man was compelled to quit France with his parents, who were Huguenots. His heart, however, continued to draw him towards his native country, although it had treated himself and his family so cruelly.

As Roger grew older, he determined to return to France, with the object of helping his friends of the "Religion." A plan had occurred to him, like that which Antoine Court was now endeavouring to carry into effect. The joy with which Roger encountered Court at Nismes, and learnt his plans, may therefore be conceived. The result was, that Roger undertook to "awaken" the Protestants of Dauphiny, and to endeavour to accomplish there what Court was already gradually effecting in Languedoc. Roger held his first synod in Dauphiny in August, 1716, at which seven preachers and several elders or anciens assisted.

In the meantime Antoine Court again set out to visit the churches which had been reconstructed along the banks of the Gardon. He had been suffering from intermittent fever, and started on his journey before he was sufficiently recovered. Having no horse, he walked on foot, mostly by night, along the least known by-paths, stopping here and there upon his way. At length he became so enfeebled and ill as to be unable to walk further. He then induced two men to carry him. By crossing their hands over each other, they took him up between them, and carried him along on this improvised chair.

Court found a temporary lodging with a friend. But no sooner had he laid himself down to sleep, than the alarm was raised that he must get up and fly. A spy had been observed watching the house. Court rose, put on his clothes, and though suffering great pain, started afresh. The night was dark and rainy. By turns shivering with cold and in an access of fever, he wandered alone for hours across the country, towards the house of another friend, where he at last found shelter. Such were the common experiences of these wandering, devoted, proscribed, and heroic ministers of the Gospel.

Their labours were not carried on without encountering other and greater dangers. Now that the Protestants were becoming organized, it was not so necessary to incite them to public worship. They even required to be restrained, so that they might not too suddenly awaken the suspicion or excite the opposition of the authorities. Thus, at the beginning of 1717, the preacher Vesson held an open assembly near Anduze. It was surprised by the troops; and seventy-two persons made prisoners, of whom the men were sent to the galleys for life, and the women imprisoned in the Tour de Constance. Vesson was on this occasion reprimanded by the synod, for having exposed his brethren to unnecessary danger.

While there was the danger of loss of liberty to the people, there was the danger of loss of life to the pastors who were bold enough to minister to their religious necessities. Etienne Arnaud having preached to an assembly near Alais, was taken prisoner by the soldiers. They took him to Montpellier, where he was judged, condemned, and sent back to Alais to be hanged. This brave young man gave up his life with great courage and resignation. His death caused much sorrow amongst the Protestants, but it had no effect in dissuading the preachers and pastors from the work they had taken in hand. There were many to take the place of Arnaud. Young BÈtrine offered himself to the synod, and was accepted.

Scripture readers were also appointed, to read the Bible at meetings which preachers were not able to attend. There was, however, a great want of Bibles amongst the Protestants. One of the first things done by the young King Louis XV.—the "Well-beloved" of the Jesuits—on his ascending the throne, was to issue a proclamation ordering the seizure of Bibles, Testaments, Psalm-books, and other religious works used by the Protestants. And though so many books had already been seized and burnt in the reign of Louis XIV., immense piles were again collected and given to the flames by the executioners.

"Our need of books is very great," wrote Court to a friend abroad; and the same statement was repeated in many of his letters. His principal need was of Bibles and Testaments; for every Huguenot knew the greater part of the Psalms by heart. When a Testament was obtained, it was lent about, and for the most part learnt off. The labour was divided in this way. One person, sometimes a boy or girl, of good memory, would undertake to learn one or more chapters in the Gospels, another a certain number in the Epistles, until at last a large portion of the book was committed to memory, and could be recited at the meetings of the assemblies. And thus also it happened, that the conversation of the people, as well as the sermons of their preachers, gradually assumed a strongly biblical form.

Strong appeals were made to foreign Protestants to supply the people with books. The refugees who had settled in Switzerland, Holland, and England sent the Huguenots remaining in France considerable help in this way. They sent many Testaments and Psalm-books, together with catechisms for the young, and many devotional works written by French divines residing in Holland and England—by Drelincourt, Saurin, Claude and others. These were sent safely across the frontier in bales, put into the hands of colporteurs, and circulated amongst the Protestants all over the South of France. The printing press of Geneva was also put in requisition; and Court had many of his sermons printed there and distributed amongst the people.

Until this time, Court had merely acted as a preacher; and it was now determined to ordain and consecrate him as a pastor. The ceremony, though, comparatively unceremonious, was very touching. A large number of Protestants in the Vaunage assembled on the night of the 21st November, 1718, and, after prayer, Court rose and spoke for some time of the responsible duties of the ministry, and of the necessity and advantages of preaching. He thanked God for having raised up ministers to serve the Church when so many of her enemies were seeking for her ruin. He finally asked the whole assembly to pray for grace to enable him to fulfil with renewed zeal the duties to which, he was about to be called, together with all the virtues needed for success. At these touching words the assembled hearers shed tears. Then Corteiz, the old pastor, drew near to Court, now upon his knees, and placing a Bible upon his head, in the name of Jesus Christ, and with the authority of the synod, gave him power to exercise all the functions of the ministry. Cries of joy were heard on all sides. Then, after further prayer, the assembly broke up in the darkness of the night.

The plague which broke out in 1720 helped the progress of the new Church. The Protestants thought the plague had been sent as a punishment for their backsliding. Piety increased, and assemblies in the Desert were more largely attended than before. The intendants ceased to interfere with them, and the soldiers were kept strictly within their cantonments. More preachers were licensed, and more elders were elected. Many new churches were set up throughout Languedoc; and the department of the LozÈre, in the Cevennes, became again almost entirely Protestant. Roger and Villeveyre were almost equally successful in Dauphiny; and Saintonge, Normandy, and Poitou were also beginning to maintain a connection with the Protestant churches of Languedoc.[Back to Contents]

CHAPTER XI.

REORGANIZATION OF THE CHURCH IN THE DESERT.

The organization of the Church in the Desert is one of the most curious things in history. Secret meetings of the Huguenots had long been held in France. They were began several years before the Act of Revocation was proclaimed, when the dragonnades were on foot, and while the Protestant temples were being demolished by the Government. The Huguenots then arranged to meet and hold their worship in retired places.

As the meetings were at first held, for the most part, in Languedoc, and as much of that province, especially in the district of the Cevennes, is really waste and desert land, the meetings were at first called "Assemblies in the Desert," and for nearly a hundred years they retained that name.

When Court began to reorganize the Protestant Church in France, shortly after the Camisard war, meetings in the Desert had become almost unknown. There were occasional prayer-meetings, at which chapters of the Bible were read or recited by those who remembered them, and psalms were sung; but there were few or no meetings at which pastors presided. Court, however, resolved not only to revive the meetings of the Church in the Desert, but to reconstitute the congregations, and restore the system of governing them according to the methods of the Huguenot Church.

The first thing done in reconstituting a congregation, was to appoint certain well-known religious men, as anciens or elders. These were very important officers. They formed the church in the first instance; for where there were no elders, there was no church. They were members of the consistoire or presbytery. They looked after the flock, visited them in their families, made collections, named the pastors, and maintained peace, order, and discipline amongst the people. Though first nominated by the pastors, they were elected by the congregation; and the reason for their election was their known ability, zeal, and piety.

The elder was always present at the assemblies, though the minister was absent. He prevented the members from succumbing to temptation and falling away; he censured scandal; he kept up the flame of religious zeal, and encouraged the failing and helpless; he distributed amongst the poorest the collections made and intrusted to him by the Church.

We have said that part of the duty of the elders was to censure scandal amongst the members. If their conduct was not considered becoming the Christian life, they were not visited by the pastors and were not allowed to attend the assemblies, until they had declared their determination to lead a better life. What a punishment for infraction of discipline! to be debarred attending an assembly, for being present at which, the pastor, if detected, might be hanged, and the penitent member sent to the galleys for life![54]

The elders summoned the assemblies. They gave the word to a few friends, and these spread the notice about amongst the rest. The news soon became known, and in the course of a day or two, the members of the congregation, though living perhaps in distant villages, would be duly informed of the time and place of the intended meeting. It was usually held at night,—in some secret place—in a cave, a hollow in the woods, a ravine, or an abandoned farmstead.

Men, women, and even children were taken thither, after one, two, or sometimes three leagues' walking. The meetings were always full of danger, for spies were lurking about. Catholic priests were constant informers; and soldiers were never far distant. But besides the difficulties of spies and soldiers, the meetings were often dispersed by the rain in summer, or by the snow in winter.

After the Camisard war, and before the appearance of Court, these meetings rarely numbered more than a hundred persons. But Court and his fellow-pastors often held meetings at which more than two thousand people were present. On one occasion, not less than four thousand persons attended an assembly in Lower Languedoc.

When the meetings were held by day, they were carefully guarded and watched by sentinels on the look-out, especially in those places near which garrisons were stationed. The fleetest of the young men were chosen for this purpose. They watched the garrison exits, and when the soldiers made a sortie, the sentinels communicated by signal from hill to hill, thus giving warning to the meeting to disperse. But the assemblies were mostly held at night; and even then the sentinels were carefully posted about, but not at so great a distance. The chief of the whole organization was the pastor. First, there were the members entitled to church, privileges; next the anciens; and lastly the pastors. As in Presbyterianism, so in Huguenot Calvinism, its form of government was republican. The organization was based upon the people who elected their elders; then upon the elders who selected and recommended the pastors; and lastly upon the whole congregation of members, elders, and pastors (represented in synods), who maintained the entire organization of the Church.

There were three grades of service in the rank of pastor—first students, next preachers, and lastly pastors. Wonderful that there should have been students of a profession, to follow which was almost equal to a sentence of death! But there were plenty of young enthusiasts ready to brave martyrdom in the service of the proscribed Church. Sometimes it was even necessary to restrain them in their applications.

Court once wrote to Pierre Durand, at a time when the latter was restoring order and organization in Viverais: "Sound and examine well the persons offering themselves for your approval, before permitting them to enter on this glorious employment. Secure good, virtuous men, full of zeal for the cause of truth. It is piety only that inspires nobility and greatness of soul. Piety sustains us under the most extreme dangers, and triumphs over the severest obstacles. The good conscience always marches forward with its head erect."

When the character of the young applicants was approved, their studies then proceeded, like everything else connected with the proscribed religion, in secret. The students followed the professor and pastor in his wanderings over the country, passing long nights in marching, sometimes hiding in caves by day, or sleeping under the stars by night, passing from meeting to meeting, always with death looming before them.

"I have often pitched my professor's chair," said Court, "in a torrent underneath a rock. The sky was our roof, and the leafy branches thrown out from the crevices in the rock overhead, were our canopy. There I and my students would remain for about eight days; it was our hall, our lecture-room, and our study. To make the most of our time, and to practise the students properly, I gave them a text of Scripture to discuss before me—say the first eleven verses of the fifth chapter of Luke. I would afterwards propose to them some point of doctrine, some passage of Scripture, some moral precept, or sometimes I gave them some difficult passages to reconcile. After the whole had stated their views upon the question under discussion, I asked the youngest if he had anything to state against the arguments advanced; then the others were asked in turn; and after they had finished, I stated the views which I considered most just and correct. When the more advanced students were required to preach, they mounted a particular place, where a pole had been set across some rocks in the ravine, and which for the time served for a pulpit. And when they had delivered themselves, the others were requested by turns to express themselves freely upon the subject of the sermon which they had heard."

When the proposant or probationer was considered sufficiently able to preach, he was sent on a mission to visit the churches. Sometimes he preached the approved sermons of other pastors; sometimes he preached his own sermons, after they had been examined by persons appointed by the synod. After a time, if approved by the moderator and a committee of the synod, the proposant was licensed to preach. His work then resembled that of a pastor; but he could not yet administer the sacrament. It was only when he had passed the synod, and been appointed by the laying on of hands, that he could exercise the higher pastoral functions.

Then, with respect to the maintenance of the pastors and preachers, Court recounts, not without pride, that for the ten years between 1713 and 1723 (excepting the years which he spent at Geneva), he served the Huguenot churches without receiving a farthing. His family and friends saw to the supply of his private wants. With respect to the others, they were supported by collections made at the assemblies; and, as the people were nearly all poor, the amount collected was very small. On one occasion, three assemblies produced a halfpenny and six half-farthings.

But a regular system of collecting moneys was framed by the synods (consisting of a meeting of pastors and elders), and out of the common fund so raised, emoluments were assigned, first to those preachers who were married, and afterwards to those who were single. In either case the pay was very small, scarcely sufficient to keep the wolf from the door.

The students for the ministry were at first educated by Court and trained to preach, while he was on his dangerous journeys from one assembly in the Desert to another. Nor was the supply of preachers sufficient to visit the congregations already organized. Court had long determined, so soon as the opportunity offered, of starting a school for the special education of preachers and pastors, so that the work he was engaged in might be more efficiently carried on. He at first corresponded with influential French refugees in England and Holland with reference to the subject. He wrote to Basnage and Saurin, but they received his propositions coolly. He wrote to William Wake, then Archbishop of Canterbury, who promised his assistance. At last Court resolved to proceed into Switzerland, to stir up the French refugees disposed to help him in his labours.

Arrived at Geneva, Court sought out M. Pictet, to whom he explained the state of affairs in France. It had been rumoured amongst the foreign Protestants that fanaticism and "inspiration" were now in the ascendant among the Protestants of France. Court showed that this was entirely a mistake, and that all which the proscribed Huguenots in France wanted, was a supply of properly educated pastors. The friends of true religion, and the enemies of fanaticism, ought therefore to come to their help and supply them with that of which they stood most in need. If they would find teachers, Court would undertake to supply them with congregations. And Huguenot congregations were rapidly increasing, not only in Languedoc and Dauphiny, but in Normandy, Picardy, Poitou, Saintonge, Bearn, and the other provinces.

At length the subject became matured. It was not found desirable to establish the proposed school at Geneva, that city being closely watched by France, and frequently under the censure of its government for giving shelter to refugee Frenchmen. It was eventually determined that the college for the education of preachers should begin at Lausanne. It was accordingly commenced in the year 1726, and established under the superintendence of M. Duplan.

A committee of refugees called the "Society of Help for the Afflicted Faithful," was formed at Lausanne to collect subscriptions for the maintenance of the preachers, the pastors, and the seminary. These were in the first place received from Huguenots settled in Switzerland, afterwards increased by subscriptions obtained from refugees settled in Holland, Germany, and England. The King of England subscribed five hundred guineas yearly. Duplan was an indefatigable agent. In fourteen years he collected fourteen thousand pounds. By these efforts the number of students was gradually increased. They came from all parts of France, but chiefly from Languedoc. Between 1726 (the year in which it was started) and 1753, ninety students had passed through the seminary.

When the students had passed the range of study appointed by the professors, they returned from Switzerland to France to enter upon the work of their lives. They had passed the school for martyrdom, and were ready to preach to the assemblies—they had paved their way to the scaffold!

The preachers always went abroad with their lives in their hands. They travelled mostly by night, shunning the open highways, and selecting abandoned routes, often sheep-paths across the hills, to reach the scene of their next meeting. The trace of their steps is still marked upon the soil of the Cevennes, the people of the country still speaking of the solitary routes taken by their instructors when passing from parish to parish, to preach to their fathers.

They were dressed, for disguise, in various ways; sometimes as peasants, as workmen, or as shepherds. On one occasion, Court and Duplan travelled the country disguised as officers! The police heard of it, and ordered their immediate arrest, pointing out the town and the very house where they were to be taken. But the preachers escaped, and assumed a new dress.

When living near Nismes, Court was one day seated under a tree composing a sermon, when a party of soldiers, hearing that he was in the neighbourhood, came within sight. Court climbed up into the tree, where he remained concealed among the branches, and thus contrived to escape their search.

On another occasion, he was staying with a friend, in whose house he had slept during the previous night. A detachment of troops suddenly surrounded the house, and the officer knocked loudly at the door. Court made his friend go at once to bed pretending to be ill, while he himself cowered down in the narrow space between the bed and the wall. His wife slowly answered the door, which the soldiers were threatening to blow open. They entered, rummaged the house, opened all the chests and closets, sounded the walls, examined the sick man's room, and found nothing!

Court himself, as well as the other pastors, worked very hard. On one occasion, Court made a round of visits in Lower Languedoc and in the Cevennes, at first alone, and afterwards accompanied by a young preacher. In the space of two months and a few days he visited thirty-one churches, holding assemblies, preaching, and administering the sacrament, during which he travelled over three hundred miles. The weather did not matter to the pastors—rain nor snow, wind nor storm, never hindered them. They took the road and braved all. Even sickness often failed to stay them. Sickness might weaken but did not overthrow them. The spies and police so abounded throughout the country, and were so active, that they knew all the houses in which the preachers might take refuge. A list of these was prepared and placed in the hands of the intendant of the province.[55] If preachers were found in them, both the shelterers and the sheltered knew what they had to expect. The whole property and goods of the former were confiscated and they were sent to the galleys for life; and the latter were first tortured by the rack, and then hanged. The houses in which preachers were found were almost invariably burnt down.

Notwithstanding the great secrecy with which the whole organization proceeded, preachers were frequently apprehended, assemblies were often surprised, and many persons were imprisoned and sent to the galleys for life. Each village had its chief spy—the priest; and beneath the priest there were a number of other spies—spies for money, spies for cruelty, spies for revenge.

Was an assembly of Huguenots about to be held? A spy, perhaps a traitor, would make it known. The priest's order was sufficient for the captain of the nearest troop of soldiers to proceed to disperse it. They marched and surrounded the assembly. A sound of volley-firing was heard. The soldiers shot down, hanged, or made prisoners of the unlawful worshippers. Punishments were sudden, and inquiry was never made into them, however brutal. There was the fire for Bibles, Testaments, and psalm-books; galleys for men; prisons and convents for women; and gibbets for preachers. In 1720 a large number of prisoners were captured in the famous old quarry near Nismes, long the seat of secret Protestant worship. But the troops surrounded the meeting suddenly, and the whole were taken. The women were sent for life to the Tour de Constance, and the men, chained in gangs, were sent all through France to La Rochelle, to be imprisoned in the galleys there. The ambassador of England made intercession for the prisoners, and their sentence was commuted into one of perpetual banishment from France. They were accordingly transported to New Orleans on the Mississippi, to populate the rising French colony in that quarter of North America.

Thus crimes abounded, and cruelty when practised upon Huguenots was never investigated. The seizure and violation of women was common. Fathers knew the probable consequence when their daughters were seized. The daughter of a Huguenot was seized at Uzes, in 1733, when the father immediately died of grief. Two sisters were seized at the same place to be "converted," and their immediate relations were thrown into gaol in the meantime. This was a common proceeding. The Tour de Constance was always filling, and kept full.

The dying were tortured. If they refused the viaticum they were treated as "damned persons." When Jean de MolÈnes of Cahors died, making a profession of Protestantism, his body was denounced as damned, and it was abandoned without sepulture. A woman who addressed some words of consolation to Joseph Martin when dying was condemned to pay a fine of six thousand livres, and be imprisoned in the castle of Beauregard; and as for Martin, his memory was declared to be damned for ever. Many such outrages to the living and dead were constantly occurring.[56] Gaolers were accustomed to earn money by exhibiting the corpses of Huguenot women at fairs, inviting those who paid for admission, to walk up and "see the corpse of a damned person."[57]

Notwithstanding all these cruelties, Protestantism was making considerable progress, both in Languedoc and Dauphiny. In reorganizing the Church, the whole country had been divided into districts, and preachers and pastors endeavoured to visit the whole of their members with as much regularity as possible. Thus Languedoc was divided into seven districts, and to each of those a proposant or probationary preacher was appointed. The presbyteries and synods met regularly and secretly in a cave, or the hollow bed of a river, or among the mountains. They cheered each other up, though their progress was usually over the bodies of their dead friends.

For any pastor or preacher to be apprehended, was, of course, certain death. Thus, out of thirteen Huguenots who were found worshipping in a private apartment at Montpellier, in 1723, Vesson, the pastor, and Bonicel and Antoine Comte, his assistants, were at once condemned and hanged on the Peyrou, the other ten persons being imprisoned or sent to the galleys for life.

Shortly after, Huc, the aged pastor, was taken prisoner in the Cevennes, brought to Montpellier, and hanged in the same place. A reward of a thousand livres was offered by Bernage, the intendant, for the heads of the remaining preachers, the fatal list comprising the names of Court, Cortez, Durand, Rouviere, Bombonnoux, and others. The names of these "others" were not mentioned, not being yet thought worthy of the gibbet.

And yet it was at this time that the Bishop of Alais made an appeal to the government against the toleration shown to the Huguenots! In 1723, he sent a long memorial to Paris, alleging that Catholicism was suffering a serious injury; that not only had the "new converts" withdrawn themselves from the Catholic Church, but that the old Catholics themselves were resorting to the Huguenot assemblies; that sometimes their meetings numbered from three to four thousand persons; that their psalms were sometimes overheard in the surrounding villages; that the churches were becoming deserted, the curÉs in some parishes not being able to find a single Catholic to serve at Mass; that the Protestants had ceased to send their children to school, and were baptized and married without the intervention of the Church.

In consequence of these representations, the then Regent, the Duke of Bourbon, sent down an urgent order to the authorities to carry out the law—to prevent meetings, under penalty of death to preachers, and imprisonment at the galleys to all who attended them, ordering that the people should be forced to go to church and the children to school, and reviving generally the severe laws against Protestantism issued by Louis XIV. The result was that many of the assemblies were shortly after attacked and dispersed, many persons were made prisoners and sent to the galleys, and many more preachers were apprehended, racked, and hanged.

Repeated attempts were made to apprehend Antoine Court, as being the soul of the renewed Protestant organization. A heavy reward was offered for his head. The spies and police hunted after him in all directions. Houses where he was supposed to be concealed were surrounded by soldiers at night, and every hole and corner in them ransacked. Three houses were searched in one night. Court sometimes escaped with great difficulty. On one occasion he remained concealed for more than twenty hours under a heap of manure. His friends endeavoured to persuade him to leave the country until the activity of the search for him had passed.

Since the year 1722, Court had undertaken new responsibilities. He had become married, and was now the father of three children. He had married a young Huguenot woman of Uzes. He first met her in her father's house, while he was in hiding from the spies. While he was engaged in his pastoral work his wife and family continued to live at Uzes. Court was never seen in her company, but could only visit his family secretly. The woman was known to be of estimable character, but it gave rise to suspicions that she had three children without a known father. The spies were endeavouring to unravel the secret, tempted by the heavy reward offered for Court's head.

One day the new commandant of the town, passing before the door of the house where Court's wife lived, stopped, and, pointing to the house, put some questions to the neighbours. Court was informed of this, and immediately supposed that his house had become known, that his wife and family had been discovered and would be apprehended. He at once made arrangements for having them removed to Geneva. They reached that city in safety, in the month of April, 1729. Shortly after, Court, still wandering and preaching about Languedoc, became seriously ill. He feared for his wife, he feared for his family, and conceived the design of joining them in Switzerland. A few months later, exhausted by his labours and continued illness, he left Languedoc and journeyed by slow stages to Geneva. He was still a young man, only thirty-three; but he had worked excessively hard during the last dozen years. Since the age of fourteen, in fact, he had evangelized Languedoc.

Shortly before Court left France for Switzerland, the preacher, Alexandre Roussel, was, in the year 1728, added to the number of martyrs. He was only twenty-six years of age. The occasion on which he was made prisoner was while attending an assembly near Vigan. The whole of the people had departed, and Roussel was the last to leave the meeting. He was taken to Montpellier, and imprisoned in the citadel, which had before held so many Huguenot pastors. He was asked to abjure, and offered a handsome bribe if he would become a Catholic. He refused to deny his faith, and was sentenced to die. When Antoine Court went to offer consolation to his mother, she replied, "If my son had given way I should have been greatly distressed; but as he died with constancy, I thank God for strengthening him to perform this last work in his service."

Court did not leave his brethren in France without the expostulations of his friends. They alleged that his affection for his wife and family had cooled his zeal for God's service. Duplan and Cortez expostulated with him; and the churches of Languedoc, which he himself had established, called upon him to return to his duties amongst them.

But Court did not attend to their request. His determination was for the present unshaken. He had a long arrears of work to do in quiet. He had money to raise for the support of the suffering Church of France, and for the proper maintenance of the college for students, preachers, and pastors. He had to help the refugees, who still continued to leave France for Switzerland, and to write letters and rouse the Protestant kingdoms of the north, as Brousson had done before him some thirty years ago.

The city of Berne was very generous in its treatment of Court and the Huguenots generally. The Bernish Government allotted Court a pension of five hundred livres a-year—for he was without the means of supporting his family—all his own and his wife's property having been seized and sequestrated in France. Court preached with great success in the principal towns of Switzerland, more particularly at Berne, and afterwards at Lausanne, where he spent the rest of his days.

Though he worked there more peacefully, he laboured as continuously as ever in the service of the Huguenot churches. He composed addresses to them; he educated preachers and pastors for them; and one of his principal works, while at Lausanne, was to compose a history of the Huguenots in France subsequent to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

What he had done for the reorganization of the Huguenot Church in France may be thus briefly stated. Court had begun his work in 1715, at which time there was no settled congregation in the South of France. The Huguenots were only ministered to by occasional wandering pastors. In 1729, the year in which Court finally left France, there were in Lower Languedoc 29 organized, though secretly governed, churches; in Upper Languedoc, 11; in the Cevennes, 18; in the LozÈre 12; and in Viverais, 42 churches. There were now over 200,000 recognised Protestants in Languedoc alone. The ancient discipline had been restored; 120 churches had been organized; a seminary for the education of preachers and pastors had been established; and Protestantism was extending in Dauphiny, Bearn, Saintonge,[58] and other quarters.

Such were, in a great measure, the results of the labours of Antoine Court and his assistants during the previous fifteen years.[Back to Contents]

CHAPTER XII.

THE CHURCH IN THE DESERT, 1730-62—PAUL RABAUT.

The persecutions of the Huguenots increased at one time and relaxed at another. When France was at war, and the soldiers were fighting in Flanders or on the Rhine, the bishops became furious, and complained bitterly to the government of the toleration shown to the Protestants. The reason was that there were no regiments at liberty to pursue the Huguenots and disperse their meetings in the Desert. When the soldiers returned from the wars, persecution began again.

It usually began with the seizing and burning of books. The book-burning days were considered amongst the great days of fÊte.

One day in June, 1730, the Intendant of Languedoc visited Nismes, escorted by four battalions of troops. On arriving, the principal Catholics were selected, and placed as commissaries to watch the houses of the suspected Huguenots. At night, while the inhabitants slept, the troops turned out, and the commissaries pointed out the Huguenot houses to be searched. The inmates were knocked up, the soldiers entered, the houses were rummaged, and all the books that could be found were taken to the HÔtel de Ville. A few days after a great auto-da-fÉ was held. The entire Catholic population turned out. There were the four battalions of troops, the gendarmes, the Catholic priests, and the chief dignitaries; and in their presence all the Huguenot books were destroyed. They were thrown into a pile on the usual place of execution, and the hangman set fire to this great mass of Bibles, psalm-books, catechisms, and sermons.[59] The officers laughed, the priests sneered, the multitude cheered. These bonfires were of frequent occurrence in all the towns of Languedoc.

But if the priests hated the printed word, still more did they hate the spoken word. They did not like the Bible, but they hated the preachers. Fines, auto-da-fÉs, condemnation to the galleys, seizures of women and girls, and profanation of the dead, were tolerable punishments, but there was nothing like hanging a preacher. "Nothing," said Saint-Florentin to the commandant of La Devese, "can produce more impression than hanging a preacher; and it is very desirable that you should immediately take steps to arrest one of them."

The commandant obeyed orders, and apprehended Pierre Durand. He was on his way to baptize the child of one of his congregation, who lived on a farm in Viverais. An apparent peasant, who seemed to be waiting his approach, offered to conduct him to the farm. Durand followed him. The peasant proved to be a soldier in disguise. He led Durand directly into the midst of his troop. There he was bound and carried off to Montpellier.

Durand was executed at the old place—the Peyrou—the soldiers beating their drums to stifle his voice while he prayed. His corpse was laid beside that of Alexandre Roussel, under the rampart of the fortress of Montpellier. Durand was the last of the preachers in France who had attended the synod of 1715. They had all been executed, excepting only Antoine Court, who was safe in Switzerland.

The priests were not so successful with Claris, the preacher, who contrived to escape their clutches. Claris had just reached France on his return from the seminary at Lausanne. He had taken shelter for the night with a Protestant friend at Foissac, near Uzes. Scarcely had he fallen asleep, when the soldiers, informed by the spies, entered his chamber, bound him, and marched him off on foot by night, to Alais. He was thrown into gaol, and was afterwards judged and condemned to death. His friends in Alais, however, secretly contrived to get an iron chisel passed to him in prison. He raised the stone of a chamber which communicated with his dungeon, descended to the ground, and silently leapt the wall. He was saved.

Pastors and preachers continued to be tracked and hunted with renewed ardour in Saintonge, Poitou, Gascony, and Dauphiny. "The Chase," as it was called, was better organized than it had been for twenty years previously. The Catholic clergy, however, continued to complain. The chase, they said, was not productive enough! The hangings of pastors were too few. The curates of the Cevennes thus addressed the intendants: "You do not perform your duty: you are neither active enough nor pitiless enough;"[60] and they requested the government to adopt more vigorous measures. The intendants, who were thus accused, insisted that they had done their duty. They had hanged all the Huguenot preachers that the priests and their spies had discovered and brought to them. They had also offered increased rewards for the preachers' heads. If Protestantism counted so large a number of adherents, they were surely not to blame for that! Had the priests themselves done their duty? Thus the intendants and the curÉs reproached each other by turns.

And yet the pastors and preachers had not been spared. They had been hanged without mercy. They knew they were in the peril of constant death. "I have slept fifteen days in a meadow," wrote Cortez, the pastor, "and I write this under a tree." Morel, the preacher, when attending an assembly, was fired at by the soldiers and died of his wounds. Pierre Dortial was also taken prisoner when holding an assembly. The host with whom he lived was condemned to the galleys for life; the arrondissement in which the assembly had been held was compelled to pay a fine of three thousand livres; and Dortial himself was sentenced to be hanged. When the aged preacher was informed of his sentence he exclaimed: "What an honour for me, oh my God! to have been chosen from so many others to suffer death because of my constancy to the truth." He was executed at Nismes, and died with courage.

In 1742 France was at war, and the Huguenots enjoyed a certain amount of liberty. The edicts against them were by no means revoked; their execution was merely suspended. The provinces were stripped of troops, and the clergy could no longer call upon them to scatter the meetings in the Desert. Hence the assemblies increased. The people began to think that the commandants of the provinces had received orders to shut their eyes, and see nothing of the proceedings of the Huguenots.

At a meeting held in a valley between Calvisson and Langlade, in Languedoc, no fewer than ten thousand persons openly met for worship. No troops appeared. There was no alarm nor surprise. Everything passed in perfect quiet. In many other places, public worship was celebrated, the sacrament was administered, children were baptized, and marriages were celebrated in the open day.[61]

The Catholics again urgently complained to the government of the increasing number of Huguenot meetings. The Bishop of Poitiers complained that in certain parishes of his diocese there was not now a single Catholic. Low Poitou contained thirty Protestant churches, divided into twelve arrondissements, and each arrondissement contained about seven thousand members. The Procureur-GÉnÉral of Normandy said, "All this country is full of Huguenots." But the government had at present no troops to spare, and the Catholic bishops and clergy must necessarily wait until the war with the English and the Austrians had come to an end.

Antoine Court paid a short visit to Languedoc in 1744, to reconcile a difference which had arisen in the Church through the irregular conduct of Pastor Boyer. Court was received with great enthusiasm, and when Boyer was re-established in his position as pastor, after making his submission to the synod, a convocation of Huguenots was held near Sauzet, at which thousands of people were present. Court remained for about a month in France, preaching almost daily to immense audiences. At Nismes, he preached at the famous place for Huguenot meetings—in the old quarry, about three miles from the town. There were about twenty thousand persons present, ranged, as in an amphitheatre, along the sides of the quarry. It was a most impressive sight. Peasants and gentlemen mixed together. Even the "beau monde" of Nismes was present. Everybody thought that there was now an end of the persecution.[62]

In the meantime the clergy continued to show signs of increasing irritation. They complained, denounced, and threatened. Various calumnies were invented respecting the Huguenots. The priests of Dauphiny gave out that Roger, the pastor, had read an edict purporting to be signed by Louis XV. granting complete toleration to the Huguenots! The report was entirely without foundation, and Roger indignantly denied that he had read any such edict. But the report reached the ears of the King, then before Ypres with his army; on which he issued a proclamation announcing that the rumour publicly circulated that it was his intention to tolerate the Huguenots was absolutely false.

No sooner had the war terminated, and the army returned to France, than the persecutions recommenced as hotly as ever. The citizens of Nismes, for having recently encouraged the Huguenots and attended Court's great meeting, were heavily fined. All the existing laws for the repression and destruction of Protestantism were enforced. Suspected persons were apprehended and imprisoned without trial. A new "hunt" was set on foot for preachers. There were now plenty of soldiers at liberty to suppress the meetings in the Desert, and they were ordered into the infested quarters. In a word, persecution was let loose all over France. Nor was it without the usual results. It was very hot in Dauphiny. There a detachment of horse police, accompanied by regular troops and a hangman, ran through the province early in 1745, spreading terror everywhere. One of their exploits was to seize a sick old Huguenot, drag him from his bed, and force him towards prison. He died upon the road.

In February, it was ascertained that the Huguenots met for worship in a certain cavern. The owner of the estate on which the cavern was situated, though unaware of the meetings, was fined a thousand crowns, and imprisoned for a year in the Castle of Cret.

Next month, Louis Ranc, a pastor, was seized at Livron while baptizing an infant, taken to Die, and hanged. He had scarcely breathed his last, when the hangman cut the cord, hewed off the head, and made a young Protestant draw the corpse along the streets of Die.

In the month of April, 1745, Jacques Roger, the old friend and coadjutor of Court—the apostle of Dauphiny as Court had been of Languedoc—was taken prisoner and conducted to Grenoble. Roger was then eighty years old, worn out with privation and hard work. He was condemned to death. He professed his joy at being still able to seal with his blood the truths he had so often proclaimed. On his way to the scaffold, he sang aloud the fifty-first Psalm. He was executed in the Place du Breuil. After he had hung for twenty-four hours, his body was taken down, dragged along the streets of Grenoble, and thrown into the IsÈre.

At Grenoble also, in the same year, seven persons were condemned to the galleys. A young woman was publicly whipped at the same place for attending a Huguenot meeting. Seven students and pastors who could not be found, were hanged in effigy. Four houses were demolished for having served as asylums for preachers. Fines were levied on all sides, and punishments of various kinds were awarded to many hundred persons. Thus persecution ran riot in Dauphiny in the years 1745 and 1746.

In Languedoc it was the same. The prisons and the galleys were always kept full. Dragoons were quartered in the Huguenot villages, and by this means the inhabitants were soon ruined. The soldiers pillaged the houses, destroyed the furniture, tore up the linen, drank all the wine, and, when they were in good humour, followed the cattle, swine, and fowl, and killed them off sword in hand. Montauban, an old Huguenot town, was thus ruined in the course of a very few months.

One day, in a Languedoc village, a soldier seized a young girl with a foul intention. She cried aloud, and the villagers came to her rescue. The dragoons turned out in a body, and fired upon the people. An old man was shot dead, a number of the villagers were taken prisoners, and, with their hands tied to the horses' tails, were conducted for punishment to Montauban. All the towns and villages in Upper Languedoc were treated with the same cruelty. Nismes was fined over and over again. Viverais was treated with the usual severity. M. DÉsubas, the pastor, was taken prisoner there, and conducted to Vernoux. As the soldiers led him through the country to prison, the villagers came out in crowds to see him pass. Many followed the pastor, thinking they might be able to induce the magistrates of Vernoux to liberate him. The villagers were no sooner cooped up in a mass in the chief street of the town, than they were suddenly fired upon by the soldiers. Thirty persons were killed on the spot, more than two hundred were wounded, and many afterwards died of their wounds.

DÉsubas, the pastor, was conducted to Nismes, and from Nismes to Montpellier. While on his way to death at Montpellier, some of his peasant friends, who lived along the road, determined to rescue him. But when Paul Rabaut heard of the proposed attempt, he ran to the place where the people had assembled and held them back. He was opposed to all resistance to the governing power, and thought it possible, by patience and righteousness, to live down all this horrible persecution.

DÉsubas was judged, and, as usual, condemned to death. Though it was winter time, he was led to his punishment almost naked; his legs uncovered, and only in thin linen vest over his body. Arrived at the gallows, his books and papers were burnt before his eyes, and he was then delivered over to the executioner. A Jesuit presented a crucifix for him to kiss, but he turned his head to one side, raised his eyes upwards, and was then hanged.

The same persecution prevailed over the greater part of France. In Saintonge, Elie Vivien, the preacher, was taken prisoner, and hanged at La Rochelle. His body remained for twenty-four hours on the gallows. It was then placed upon a forked gibbet, where it hung until the bones were picked clean by the crows and bleached by the wind and the sun.[63]

The same series of persecutions went on from one year to another. It was a miserable monotony of cruelty. There was hanging for the pastors; the galleys for men attending meetings in the Desert; the prisons and convents for women and children. Wherever it was found that persons had been married by the Huguenot pastors, they were haled before the magistrate, fined and imprisoned, and told that they had been merely living in concubinage, and that their children were illegitimate.

Sometimes it was thought that the persecutors would relent. France was again engaged in a disastrous war with England and Austria; and it was feared that England would endeavour to stir up a rebellion amongst the Huguenots. But the pastors met in a general synod, and passed resolutions assuring the government of their loyalty to the King,[64] and of their devotion to the laws of France!

Their "loyalty" proved of no use. The towns of Languedoc were as heavily fined as before, for attending meetings in the Desert.[65] Children were, as usual, taken away from their parents and placed in Jesuit convents. Le Nain apprehended Jean Desjours, and had him hanged at Montpellier, on the ground that he had accompanied the peasants who, as above recited, went into Vernoux after the martyr DÉsubas.

The Catholics would not even allow Protestant corpses to be buried in peace. At Levaur a well-known Huguenot died. Two of his friends went to dig a grave for him by night; they were observed by spies and informed against. By dint of money and entreaties, however, the friends succeeded in getting the dead man buried. The populace, stirred up by the White Penitents (monks), opened the grave, took out the corpse, sawed the head from the body, and prepared to commit further outrages, when the police interfered, and buried the body again, in consideration of the large sum that had been paid to the authorities for its interment.

The populace were always wild for an exhibition of cruelty. In Provence, a Protestant named Montague died, and was secretly interred. The Catholics having discovered the place where he was buried determined to disinter him. The grave was opened, and the corpse taken out. A cord was attached to the neck, and the body was hauled through the village to the music of a tambourine and flageolet. At every step it was kicked or mauled by the crowd who accompanied it. Under the kicks the corpse burst. The furious brutes then took out the entrails and attached them to poles, going through the village crying, "Who wants preachings? Who wants preachings?"[66]

To such a pitch of brutality had the kings of France and their instigators, the Jesuits—who, since the Revocation of the Edict, had nearly the whole education of the country in their hands—reduced the people; from whom they were themselves, however, to suffer almost an equal amount of indignity.

In the midst of these hangings and cruelties, the bishops again complained bitterly of the tolerance granted to the Huguenots. M. de Montclus, Bishop of Alais, urged "that the true cause of all the evils that afflict the country was the relaxation of the laws against heresy by the magistrates, that they gave themselves no trouble to persecute the Protestants, and that their further emigration from the kingdom was no more to be feared than formerly." It was, they alleged, a great danger to the country that there should be in it two millions of men allowed to live without church and outside the law.[67]

The afflicted Church at this time had many misfortunes to contend with. In 1748, the noble, self-denying, indefatigable Claris died—one of the few Protestant pastors who died in his bed. In 1750, the eloquent young preacher, FranÇois Benezet,[68] was taken and hanged at Montpellier. Meetings in the Desert were more vigorously attacked and dispersed, and when surrounded by the soldiers, most persons were shot; the others were taken prisoners.

The Huguenot pastors repeatedly addressed Louis XV. and his ministers, appealing to them for protection as loyal subjects. In 1750 they addressed the King in a new memorial, respectfully representing that their meetings for public worship, sacraments, baptisms, and marriages, were matters of conscience. They added: "Your troops pursue us in the deserts as if we were wild beasts; our property is confiscated; our children are torn from us; we are condemned to the galleys; and although our ministers continually exhort us to discharge our duty as good citizens and faithful subjects, a price is set upon their heads, and when they are taken, they are cruelly executed." But Louis XV. and his ministers gave no greater heed to this petition than they had done to those which had preceded it.

After occasional relays the Catholic persecutions again broke out. In 1752 there was a considerable emigration in consequence of a new intendant having been appointed to Languedoc. The Catholics called upon him to put in force the powers of the law. New brooms sweep clean. The Intendant proceeded to carry out the law with such ferocity as to excite great terror throughout the province. Meetings were surrounded; prisoners taken and sent to the galleys; and all the gaols and convents were filled with women and children.

The emigration began again. Many hundred persons went to Holland; and a still larger number went to settle with their compatriots as silk and poplin weavers in Dublin. The Intendant of Languedoc tried to stop their flight. The roads were again watched as before. All the outlets from the kingdom were closed by the royalist troops. Many of the intending emigrants were made prisoners. They were spoiled of everything, robbed of their money, and thrown into gaol. Nevertheless, another large troop started, passed through Switzerland, and reached Ireland at the end of the year.

At the same time, emigration was going on from Normandy and Poitou, where persecution was compelling the people to fly from their own shores and take refuge in England. This religious emigration of 1752 was, however, almost the last which took place from France. Though the persecutions were drawing to an end, they had not yet come to a close.

In 1754, the young pastor Tessier (called Lafage), had just returned from Lausanne, where he had been pursuing his studies for three years. He had been tracked by a spy to a certain house, where he had spent the night. Next morning the house was surrounded by soldiers. Tessier tried to escape by getting out of a top window and running along the roofs of the adjoining houses. A soldier saw him escaping and shot at him. He was severely wounded in the arm. He was captured, taken before the Intendant of Languedoc, condemned, and hanged in the course of the same day.

Religious meetings also continued to be surrounded, and were treated in the usual brutal manner. For instance, an assembly was held in Lower Languedoc on the 8th of August, 1756, for the purpose of ordaining to the ministry three young men who had arrived from Lausanne, where they had been educated. A number of pastors were present, and as many as from ten to twelve thousand men, women, and children were there from the surrounding country. The congregation was singing a psalm, when a detachment of soldiers approached. The people saw them; the singing ceased; the pastors urging patience and submission. The soldiers fired; every shot told; and the crowd fled in all directions. The meeting was thus dispersed, leaving the murderers—in other words, the gallant soldiers—masters of the field; a long track of blood remaining to mark the site on which the prayer-meeting had been held. It is not necessary to recount further cruelties and tortures. Assemblies surrounded and people shot; preachers seized and hanged; men sent to the galleys; women sent to the Tour de Constance; children carried off to the convents—such was the horrible ministry of torture in France. When Court heard of the re-inflictions of some old form of torture—"Alas," said he, "there is nothing new under the sun. In all times, the storm of persecution has cleansed the threshing-floor of the Lord."

And yet, notwithstanding all the bitterness of the persecution, the number of Protestants increased. It is difficult to determine their numbers. Their apologists said they amounted to three millions;[69] their detractors that they did not amount to four hundred thousand. The number of itinerant pastors, however, steadily grew. In 1756 there were 48 pastors at work, with 22 probationary preachers and students. In 1763 there were 62 pastors, 35 preachers, and 15 students.

Then followed the death of Antoine Court himself in Switzerland—after watching over the education and training of preachers at the Lausanne Seminary. Feeling his powers beginning to fail, he had left Lausanne, and resided at Timonex. There, assisted by his son Court de GÉbelin, Professor of Logic at the College, he conducted an immense correspondence with French Protestants at home and abroad.

Court's wife died in 1755, to his irreparable loss. His "Rachel," during his many years of peril, had been his constant friend and consoler. Unable, after her death, to live at Timonex, so full of cruel recollections, Court returned to Lausanne. He did not long survive his wife's death. While engaged in writing the history of the Reformed Church of France, he was taken ill. His history of the Camisards was sent to press, and he lived to revise the first proof-sheets. But he did not survive to see the book published. He died on the 15th June, 1760, in the sixty-fourth year of his age.

From the time of Court's death—indeed from the time that Court left France to settle at Lausanne—Paul Rabaut continued to be looked upon as the leader and director of the proscribed Huguenot Church. Rabaut originally belonged to Bedarieux in Languedoc. He was a great friend of Pradel's. Rabaut served the Church at Nismes, and Pradel at Uzes. Both spent two years at Lausanne in 1744-5. Court entertained the highest affection for Rabaut, and regarded him as his successor. And indeed he nobly continued the work which Court had begun.

Besides being zealous, studious, and pious, Rabaut was firm, active, shrewd, and gentle. He stood strongly upon moral force. Once, when the Huguenots had become more than usually provoked by the persecutions practised on them, they determined to appear armed at the assemblies. Rabaut peremptorily forbade it. If they persevered, he would forsake their meetings. He prevailed, and they came armed only with their Bibles.

The directness of Rabaut's character, the nobility of his sentiments, the austerity of his life, and his heroic courage, evidently destined him as the head of the work which Court had begun. Antoine Court! Paul Rabaut! The one restored Protestantism in France, the other rooted and established it. Rabaut's enthusiasm may be gathered from the following extract of a letter which he wrote to a friend at Geneva: "When I fix my attention upon the divine fire with which, I will not say Jesus Christ and the Apostles, but the Reformed and their immediate successors, burned for the salvation of souls, it seems to me that, in comparison with them, we are ice. Their immense works astound me, and at the same time cover me with confusion. What would I not give to resemble them in everything laudable!"

Rabaut had the same privations, perils, and difficulties to undergo as the rest of the pastors in the Desert. He had to assume all sorts of names and disguises while he travelled through the country, in order to preach at the appointed places. He went by the names of M. Paul, M. Denis, M. Pastourel, and M. Theophile; and he travelled under the disguises of a common labourer, a trader, a journeyman, and a baker.

He was condemned to death, as a pastor who preached in defiance of the law; but his disguises were so well prepared, and the people for whom he ministered were so faithful to him, that the priests and other spies never succeeded in apprehending him. Singularly enough, he was in all other respects in favour of the recognition of legal authority, and strongly urged his brethren never to adopt any means whatever of forcibly resisting the King's orders.

Many of the military commanders were becoming disgusted with the despicable and cowardly business which the priests called upon them to do. Thus, on one occasion, a number of Protestants had assembled at the house of Paul Rabaut at Nismes, and, while they were on their knees, the door was suddenly burst open, when a man, muffled up, presented himself, and throwing open his cloak, discovered the military commandant of the town. "My friends," he said, "you have Paul Rabaut with you; in a quarter of an hour I shall be here with my soldiers, accompanied by Father ——, who has just laid the information against you." When the soldiers arrived, headed by the commandant and the father, of course no Paul Rabaut was to be found.

"For more than thirty years," says one of Paul Rabaut's biographers, "caverns and huts, whence he was unearthed like a wild animal, were his only habitation. For a long time he dwelt in a safe hiding-place that one of his faithful guides had provided for him, under a pile of stones and thorn-bushes. It was discovered at length by a shepherd, and such was the wretchedness of his condition, that, when he was forced to abandon the place, he still regretted this retreat, which was more fit for savage beasts than men."

Yet this hut of piled stones was for some time the centre of Protestant affairs in France. All the faithful instinctively turned to Rabaut when assailed by fresh difficulties and persecutions, and acted on his advice. He obtained the respect even of the Catholics themselves, because it was known that he was a friend of peace, and opposed to all risings and rebellions amongst his people.

Once he had the courage to present a petition to the Marquis de Paulmy, Minister of War, when changing horses at a post-house between Nismes and Montpellier. Rabaut introduced himself by name, and the Marquis knew that it was the proscribed pastor who stood before him. He might have arrested and hanged Rabaut on the spot; but, impressed by the noble bearing of the pastor, he accepted the petition, and promised to lay it before the king.[Back to Contents]

CHAPTER XIII.

END OF THE PERSECUTIONS—THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

In the year 1762, the execution of an unknown Protestant at Toulouse made an extraordinary noise in Europe. Protestant pastors had so often been executed, that the punishment had ceased to be a novelty. Sometimes they were simply hanged; at other times they were racked, and then hanged; and lastly, they were racked, had their larger bones broken, and were then hanged. Yet none of the various tortures practised on the Protestant pastors had up to that time excited any particular sensation in France itself, and still less in Europe.

Cruelty against French Huguenots was so common a thing in those days, that few persons who were of any other religion, or of no religion at all, cured anything about it. The Protestants were altogether outside the law. When a Protestant meeting was discovered and surrounded, and men, women, and children were at once shot down, no one could call the murderers in question, because the meetings were illegal. The persons taken prisoners at the meetings were brought before the magistrates and sentenced to punishments even worse than death. They might be sent to the galleys, to spend the remainder of their lives amongst thieves, murderers, and assassins. Women and children found at such meetings might also be sentenced to be imprisoned in the Tour de Constance. There were even cases of boys of twelve years old having been sent to the galleys for life, because of having accompanied their parents to "the Preaching."[70]

The same cruelties were at that time practised upon the common people generally, whether they were Huguenots or not. The poor creatures, whose only pleasure consisted in sometimes hunting a Protestant, were so badly off in some districts of France that they even fed upon grass. The most distressed districts in France were those in which the bishops and clergy were the principal owners of land. They were the last to abandon slavery, which continued upon their estates until after the Revolution.

All these abominations had grown up in France, because the people had begun to lose the sense of individual liberty. Louis XIV. had in his time prohibited the people from being of any religion different from his own. "His Majesty," said his Prime Minister Louvois, "will not suffer any person to remain in his kingdom who shall not be of his religion." And Louis XV. continued the delusion. The whole of the tyrannical edicts and ordinances of Louis XIV. continued to be maintained.

It was not that Louis XIV. and Louis XV. were kings of any virtue or religion. Both were men of exceedingly immoral habits. We have elsewhere described Louis XIV., but Louis XV., the Well-beloved, was perhaps the greatest profligate of the two. Madame de Pompadour, when she ceased to be his mistress, became his procuress. This infamous woman had the command of the state purse, and she contrived to build for the sovereign a harem, called the Parc-aux-Cerfs, in the park of Versailles, which cost the country at least a hundred millions of francs.[71] The number of young girls taken from Paris to this place excited great public discontent; and though morals generally were not very high at that time, the debauchery and intemperance of the King (for he was almost constantly drunk)[72] contributed to alienate the nation, and to foster those feelings of hatred which broke forth without restraint in the ensuing reign.

In the midst of all this public disregard for virtue, a spirit of ribaldry and disregard for the sanctions of religion had long been making its appearance in the literature of the time. The highest speculations which can occupy the attention of man were touched with a recklessness and power, a brilliancy of touch and a bitterness of satire, which forced the sceptical productions of the day upon the notice of all who studied, read, or delighted in literature;—for those were the days of Voltaire, Rousseau, Condorcet, and the great men of "The EncyclopÆdia."

While the King indulged in his vicious pleasures, and went reeking from his debaucheries to obtain absolution from his confessors, the persecution of the Protestants went on as before. Nor was it until public opinion (such as it was) was brought to bear upon the hideous incongruity that religious persecutions were at once brought summarily to an end.

The last executions of Huguenots in France because of their Protestantism occurred in 1762. Francis Rochette, a young pastor, twenty-six years old, was laid up by sickness at Montauban. He recovered sufficiently to proceed to the waters of St. Antonin for the recovery of his health, when he was seized, together with his two guides or bearers, by the burgess guard of the town of Caussade. The three brothers Grenier endeavoured to intercede for them; but the mayor of Caussade, proud of his capture, sent the whole of the prisoners to gaol.

They were tried by the judges of Toulouse on the 18th of February. Rochette was condemned to be hung in his shirt, his head and feet uncovered, with a paper pinned on his shirt before and behind, with the words written thereon—"Ministre de la religion prÉtendue rÉformÉe." The three brothers Grenier, who interfered on behalf of Rochette, were ordered to have their heads taken off for resisting the secular power; and the two guides, who were bearing the sick Rochette to St. Antonin for the benefit of the waters, were sent to the galleys for life.

Barbarous punishments such as these were so common when Protestants were the offenders, that the decision, of the judges did not excite any particular sensation. It was only when Jean Calas was shortly after executed at Toulouse that an extraordinary sensation was produced—and that not because Calas was a Protestant, but because his punishment came under the notice of Voltaire, who exposed the inhuman cruelty to France, Europe, and the world at large.

The reason why Protestant executions terminated with the death of Calas was as follows:—The family of Jean Calas resided at Toulouse, then one of the most bigoted cities in France. Toulouse swarmed with priests and monks, more Spanish than French in their leanings. They were great in relics, processions, and confraternities. While "mealy-mouthed" Catholics in other quarters were becoming somewhat ashamed of the murders perpetrated during the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, and were even disposed to deny them, the more outspoken Catholics of Toulouse were even proud of the feat, and publicly celebrated the great southern Massacre of St. Bartholomew which took place in 1572. The procession then held was one of the finest church commemorations in the south; it was followed by bishops, clergy, and the people of the neighbourhood, in immense numbers.

Calas was an old man of sixty-four, and reduced to great weakness by a paralytic complaint. He and his family were all Protestants excepting one son, who had become a Catholic. Another of the sons, however, a man of ill-regulated life, dissolute, and involved in pecuniary difficulties, committed suicide by hanging himself in an outhouse.

On this, the brotherhood of White Penitents stirred up a great fury against the Protestant family in the minds of the populace. The monks alleged that Jean Calas had murdered his son because he wished to become a Catholic. They gave out that it was a practice of the Protestants to keep an executioner to murder their children who wished to abjure the reformed faith, and that one of the objects of the meetings which they held in the Desert, was to elect this executioner. The White Penitents celebrated mass for the suicide's soul; they exhibited his figure with a palm branch in his hand, and treated him as a martyr.

The public mind became inflamed. A fanatical judge, called David, took up the case, and ordered Calas and his whole family to be sent to prison. Calas was tried by the court of Toulouse. They tortured the whole family to compel them to confess the murder;[73] but they did not confess. The court wished to burn the mother, but they ended by condemning the paralytic father to be broken alive on the wheel.[74] The parliament of Toulouse confirmed the atrocious sentence, and the old man perished in torments, declaring to the last his entire innocence. The rest of the family were discharged, although if there had been any truth in the charge for which Jean Calas was racked to death, they must necessarily have been his accomplices, and equally liable to punishment.

The ruined family left Toulouse and made for Geneva, then the head-quarters of Protestants from the South of France. And here it was that the murder of Jean Calas and the misfortunes of the Calas family came under the notice of Voltaire, then living at Ferney, near Geneva.

In the midst of the persecutions of the Protestants a great many changes had been going on in France. Although the clergy had for more than a century the sole control of the religious education of the people, the people had not become religious. They had become very ignorant and very fanatical. The upper classes were anything but religious; they were given up for the most part to frivolity and libertinage. The examples of their kings had been freely followed. Though ready to do honour to the court religion, the higher classes did not believe in it. The press was very free for the publication of licentious and immoral books, but not for Protestant Bibles. A great work was, however, in course of publication, under the editorship of D'Alembert and Diderot, to which Voltaire, Rousseau, and others contributed, entitled "The EncyclopÆdia." It was a description of the entire circle of human knowledge; but the dominant idea which pervaded it was the utter subversion of religion.

The abuses of the Church, its tyranny and cruelty, the ignorance and helplessness in which it kept the people, the frivolity and unbelief of the clergy themselves, had already condemned it in the minds of the nation. The writers in "The EncyclopÆdia" merely gave expression to their views, and the publication of its successive numbers was received with rapture. In the midst of the free publication of obscene books, there had also appeared, before the execution of Calas, the Marquis de Mirabeau's "Ami des Hommes," Rousseau's "Émile," the "Contrat Social," with other works, denying religion of all kinds, and pointing to the general downfall, which was now fast approaching.

When the Calas family took refuge in Geneva, Voltaire soon heard of their story. It was communicated to him by M. de VÉgobre, a French refugee. After he had related it, Voltaire said, "This is a horrible story. What has become of the family?" "They arrived in Geneva only three days ago." "In Geneva!" said Voltaire; "then let me see them at once." Madame Calas soon arrived, told him the whole facts of the case, and convinced Voltaire of the entire innocence of the family.

Voltaire was no friend of the Huguenots. He believed the Huguenot spirit to be a republican spirit. In his "SiÈcle de Louis XIV.," when treating of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, he affirmed that the Reformed were the enemies of the State; and though he depicted feelingly the cruelties they had suffered, he also stated clearly that he thought they had deserved them. Voltaire probably owed his hatred of the Protestants to the Jesuits, by whom he was educated. He was brought up at the Jesuit College of Louis le Grand, the chief persecutor of the Huguenots. Voltaire also owed much of the looseness of his principles to his godfather, the AbbÉ Chateauneuf, grand-prior of VendÔme, the AbbÉ de Chalieu, and others, who educated him in an utter contempt for the doctrines they were appointed and paid to teach. It was when but a mere youth that Father Lejay, one of Voltaire's instructors, predicted that he would yet be the CoryphÆus of Deism in France.

Nor was Voltaire better pleased with the Swiss Calvinists. He encountered some of the most pedantic of them while residing at Lausanne and Geneva.[75] At the latter place, he covered with sarcasm the "twenty-four periwigs"—the Protestant council of the city. They would not allow him to set up a theatre in Geneva, so he determined to set up one himself at La Chatelaine, about a mile off, but beyond the Genevese frontier. His object, he professed, was "to corrupt the pedantic city." The theatre is still standing, though it is now used only as a hayloft. The box is preserved from which Voltaire cheered the performance of his own and other plays.

But though Voltaire hated Protestantism like every other religion, he also hated injustice. It was because of this that he took up the case of the Calas family, so soon as he had become satisfied of their innocence. But what a difficulty he had to encounter in endeavouring to upset the decision of the judges, and the condemnation of Calas by the parliament of Toulouse. Moreover, he had to reverse their decision against a dead man, and that man a detested Huguenot.

Nevertheless Voltaire took up the case. He wrote letters to his friends in all parts of France. He wrote to the sovereigns of Europe. He published letters in the newspapers. He addressed the Duke de Choiseul, the King's Secretary of State. He appealed to philosophers, to men of letters, to ladies of the court, and even to priests and bishops, denouncing the sentence pronounced against Calas,—the most iniquitous, he said, that any court professing to act in the name of justice had ever pronounced. Ferney was visited by many foreigners, from Germany, America, England, and Russia; as well as by numerous persons of influence in France. To all these he spoke vehemently of Calas and his sentence. He gave himself no rest until he had inflamed the minds of all men against the horrible injustice.

At length, the case of Calas became known all over France, and in fact all over Europe. The press of Paris rang with it. In the boudoirs and salons, Calas was the subject of conversation. In the streets, men meeting each other would ask, "Have you heard of Calas?" The dead man had already become a hero and a martyr!

An important point was next reached. It was decided that the case of Calas should be remitted to a special court of judges appointed to consider the whole matter. Voltaire himself proceeded to get up the case. He prepared and revised the memorials, he revised all the pleadings of the advocates, transforming them into brief, conclusive arguments, sparkling with wit, reason, and eloquence. The revision of the process commenced. The people held their breaths while it proceeded.

At length, in the spring of 1766—four years after Calas had been broken to death on the wheel—four years after Voltaire had undertaken to have the unjust decision of the Toulouse magistrates and parliament reversed, the court of judges, after going completely over the evidence, pronounced the judgment to have been entirely unfounded! The decree was accordingly reversed. Jean Calas was declared to have been innocent. The man was, however, dead. But in order to compensate his family, the ministry granted 36,000 francs to Calas's widow, on the express recommendation of the court which reversed the abominable sentence.[76]

The French people never forgot Voltaire's efforts in this cause. Notwithstanding all his offences against morals and religion, Voltaire on this occasion acted on his best impulses. Many years after, in 1778, he visited Paris, where he was received with immense enthusiasm. He was followed in the streets wherever he went. One day when passing along the Pont Royal, some person asked, "Who is that man the crowd is following?" "Ne savez vous pas," answered a common woman, "que c'est le sauveur de Calas!" Voltaire was more touched with this simple tribute to his fame than with all the adoration of the Parisians.

It was soon found, however, that there were many persons still suffering in France from the cruelty of priests and judges; and one of these occurred shortly after the death of Calas. One of the ordinary practices of the Catholics was to seize the children of Protestants and carry them off to some nunnery to be educated at the expense of their parents. The priests of Toulouse had obtained a lettre de cachet to take away the daughter of a Protestant named Sirven, to compel her to change her religion. She was accordingly seized and carried off to a nunnery. She manifested such reluctance to embrace Catholicism, and she was treated with such cruelty, that she fled from the convent in the night, and fell into a well, where she was found drowned. The prejudices of the Catholic bigots being very much excited about this time by the case of Calas, blamed the family of Sirven (in the same manner as they had done that of Calas) with murdering their daughter. Foreseeing that they would be apprehended if they remained, the whole family left the city, and set out for Geneva. After they left, Sirven was in fact sentenced to death par contumace. It was about the middle of winter when they set out, and Sirven's wife died of cold on the way, amidst the snows of the Jura.

On his arrival at Geneva, Sirven stated his case to Voltaire, who took it up as he had done that of Calas. He exerted himself as before. Advocates of the highest rank offered to conduct Sirven's case; for public opinion had already made considerable progress. Sirven was advised to return to Toulouse, and offer himself as a prisoner. He did so. The case was tried with the same results as before; the advocates, acting under Voltaire's instructions and with his help, succeeded in obtaining the judges' unanimous decision that Sirven was innocent of the crime for which he had already been sentenced to death.

After this, there were no further executions of Protestants in France. But what became of the Huguenots at the galleys, who still continued to endure a punishment from day to day, even worse than death itself?[77] Although, they were often cut off by fever, starvation, and exposure, many of them contrived to live on to a considerable age. After the trials of Calas and Sirven, the punishment of the galleys was evidently drawing to an end. Only two persons were sent to the galleys during the year in which Pastor Rochette was hanged. But a circumstance came to light respecting one of the galley-slaves who had been liberated in that very year (1762), which had the effect of eventually putting an end to the cruelty.

The punishment was not, however, abolished by Christian feeling, or by greater humanity on the part of the Catholics; nor was it abolished through the ministers of justice, and still less by the order of the King. It was put an end to by the Stage! As Voltaire, the Deist, terminated the hanging of Protestants, so did Fenouillot, the player, put an end to their serving as galley-slaves. The termination of this latter punishment has a curious history attached to it.

It happened that a Huguenot meeting for worship was held in the neighbourhood of Nismes, on the first day of January, 1756. The place of meeting was called the Lecque,[78] situated immediately north of the Tour Magne, from which the greater part of the city has been built. It was a favourable place for holding meetings; but it was not so favourable for those who wished to escape. The assembly had scarcely been constituted by prayer, when the alarm was given that the soldiers were upon them! The people fled on all sides. The youngest and most agile made their escape by climbing the surrounding rocks.

Amongst these, Jean Fabre, a young silk merchant of Nismes, was already beyond reach of danger, when he heard that his father had been made a prisoner. The old man, who was seventy-eight, could not climb as the others had done, and the soldiers had taken him and were leading him away. The son, who knew that his father would be sentenced to the galleys for life, immediately determined, if possible, to rescue him from this horrible fate. He returned to the group of soldiers who had his father in charge, and asked them to take him prisoner in his place. On their refusal, he seized his father and drew him from their grasp, insisting upon them taking himself instead. The sergeant in command at first refused to adopt this strange substitution; but, conquered at last by the tears and prayers of the son, he liberated the aged man and accepted Jean Fabre as his prisoner.

Jean Fabre was first imprisoned at Nismes, where he was prevented seeing any of his friends, including a certain young lady to whom he was about shortly to be married. He was then transferred to Montpellier to be judged; where, of course, he was condemned, as he expected, to be sent to the galleys for life. With this dreadful prospect before him, of separation from all that he loved—from his father, for whom he was about to suffer so much; from his betrothed, who gave up all hope of ever seeing him again—and having no prospect of being relieved from his horrible destiny, his spirits failed, and he became seriously ill. But his youth and Christian resignation came to his aid, and he finally recovered.

The Protestants of Nismes, and indeed of all Languedoc, were greatly moved by the fate of Jean Fabre. The heroism of his devotion to his parent soon became known, and the name of the volunteer convict was in every mouth. The Duc de Mirepoix, then governor of the province, endeavoured to turn the popular feeling to some account. He offered pardon to Fabre and Turgis (who had been taken prisoner with him) provided Paul Rabaut, the chief pastor of the Desert, a hard-working and indefatigable man, would leave France and reside abroad. But neither Fabre, nor Rabaut, nor the Huguenots generally, had any confidence in the mercy of the Catholics, and the proposal was coldly declined.

Fabre was next sent to Toulon under a strong escort of cavalry. He was there registered in the class of convicts; his hair was cut close; he was clothed in the ignominious dress of the galley-slave, and placed in a galley among murderers and criminals, where he was chained to one of the worst. The dinner consisted of a porridge of cooked beans and black bread. At first he could not touch it, and preferred to suffer hunger. A friend of Fabre, who was informed of his starvation, sent him some food more savoury and digestible; but his stomach was in such a state that he could not eat even that. At length he became accustomed to the situation, though the place was a sort of hell, in which he was surrounded by criminals in rags, dirt, and vermin, and, worst of all, distinguished for their abominable vileness of speech. He was shortly after seized with a serious illness, when he was sent to the hospital, where he found many Huguenot convicts imprisoned, like himself, because of their religion.[79]

Repeated applications were made to Saint-Florentin, the Secretary of State, by Fabre's relatives, friends, and fellow Protestants for his liberation, but without result. After he had been imprisoned for some years, a circumstance happened which more than anything else exasperated his sufferings. The young lady to whom he was engaged had an offer of marriage made to her by a desirable person, which her friends were anxious that she should accept. Her father had been struck by paralysis, and was poor and unable to maintain himself as well as his daughter. He urged that she should give up Fabre, now hopelessly imprisoned for life, and accept her new lover.

Fabre himself was consulted on the subject; his conscience was appealed to, and how did he decide? It was only after the bitterest struggle, that he determined on liberating his betrothed. He saw no prospect of his release, and why should he sacrifice her? Let her no longer be bound up with his fearful fate, but be happy with another if she could.

The young lady yielded, though not without great misgivings. The day for her marriage with her new lover was fixed; but, at the last moment, she relented. Her faithfulness and love for the heroic galley-slave had never been shaken, and she resolved to remain constant to him, to remain unmarried if need be, or to wait for his liberation until death!

It is probable that her noble decision determined Fabre and Fabre's friends to make a renewed effort for his liberation. At last, after having been more than six years a galley-slave, he bethought him of a method of obtaining at least a temporary liberty. He proposed—without appealing to Saint-Florentin, who was the bitter enemy of the Protestants—to get his case made known to the Duc de Choiseul, Minister of Marine. This nobleman was a just man, and it had been in a great measure through his influence that the judgment of Calas had been reconsidered and reversed.

Fabre, while on the rowers' bench, had often met with a M. Johannot, a French Protestant, settled at Frankfort-on-Maine, to whom he stated his case. It may be mentioned that Huguenot refugees, on their visits to France, often visited the Protestant prisoners at the galleys, relieved their wants, and made intercession for them with the outside world. It may also be incidentally mentioned that this M. Johannot was the ancestor of two well-known painters and designers, Alfred and Tony, who have been the illustrators of some of our finest artistic works.

Johannot made the case of Fabre known to some French officers whom he met at Frankfort, interested them greatly in his noble character and self-sacrifice, and the result was that before long Fabre obtained, directly from the Duc de Choiseul, leave of absence from the position of galley-slave. The annoyance of Saint-Florentin, Minister of State, was so well-known, that Fabre, on his liberation, was induced to conceal himself. Nor could he yet marry his promised wife, as he had not been discharged, but was only on leave of absence; and Saint-Florentin obstinately refused to reverse the sentence that had been pronounced against him.

In the meantime, Fabre's name was becoming celebrated. He had no idea, while privately settled at Ganges as a silk stocking maker, that great people in France were interesting themselves about his fate. The Duchesse de Grammont, sister of the Duc de Choiseul, had heard about him from her brother; and the Prince de Beauvau, governor of Languedoc, the Duchesse de Villeroy, and many other distinguished personages, were celebrating his heroism. Inquiry was made of the sergeant who had originally apprehended Fabre, upon his offering himself in exchange for his father (long since dead), and the sergeant confirmed the truth of the noble and generous act. At the same time, M. Alison, first consul at Nismes, confirmed the statement by three witnesses, in presence of the secretary of the Prince de Beauvau. The result was, that Jean Fabre was completely exonerated from the charge on account of which he had been sent to the galleys. He was now a free man, and at last married the young lady who had loved him so long and so devotedly.

One day, to his extreme surprise, Fabre received from the Duc de Choiseul a packet containing a drama, in which he found his own history related in verse, by Fenouillot de Falbaire. It was entitled "The Honest Criminal." Fabre had never been a criminal, except in worshipping God according to his conscience, though that had for nearly a hundred years been pronounced a crime by the law of France.

The piece, which was of no great merit as a tragedy, was at first played before the Duchesse de Villeroy and her friends, with great applause, Mdlle. Clairon playing the principal female part. Saint-Florentin prohibited the playing of the piece in public, protesting to the last against the work and the author. Voltaire played it at Ferney, and Queen Marie Antoinette had it played in her presence at Versailles. It was not until 1789 that the piece was played in the theatres of Paris, when it had a considerable success.

We do not find that any Protestants were sent to be galley-slaves after 1762, the year that Calas was executed. A reaction against this barbarous method of treating men for differences of opinion seems to have set in; or, perhaps, it was because most men were ceasing to believe in the miraculous powers of the priests, for which the Protestants had so long been hanged and made galley-slaves.

After the liberation of Fabre in 1762, other galley-slaves were liberated from time to time. Thus, in the same year, Jean Albiges and Jean Barran were liberated after eight years of convict life. They had been condemned for assisting at Protestant assemblies. Next year, Maurice was liberated; he had been condemned for life for the same reason.

While Voltaire had been engaged in the case of Calas he asked the Duc de Choiseul for the liberation of a galley-slave. The man for whom he interceded, had been a convict twenty years for attending a Protestant meeting. Of course, Voltaire cared nothing for his religion, believing Catholicism and Protestantism to be only two forms of the same superstition. The name of this galley-slave was Claude Chaumont. Like nearly all the other convicts he was a working man—a little dark-faced shoemaker. Some Protestant friends he had at Geneva interceded with Voltaire for his liberation.

On Chaumont's release in 1764, he waited upon his deliverer to thank him. "What!" said Voltaire, on first seeing him, "my poor little bit of a man, have they put you in the galleys? What could they have done with you? The idea of sending a little creature to the galley-chain, for no other crime than that of praying to God in bad French!"[80] Voltaire ended by handing the impoverished fellow a sum of money to set him up in the world again, when he left the house the happiest of men.

We may briefly mention a few of the last of the galley-slaves. Daniel Bic and Jean CabdiÉ, liberated in 1764, for attending religious meetings. Both were condemned for life, and had been at the galley-chain for ten years.

Jean Pierre Espinas, an attorney, of St. Felix de ChÂteauneuf, in Viverais, who had been condemned for life for having given shelter to a pastor, was released in 1765, at the age of sixty-seven, after being chained at the galleys for twenty-five years.

Jean Raymond, of FangÈres, the father of six children, who had been a galley-slave for thirteen years, was liberated in 1767. Alexandre Chambon, a labourer, more than eighty years old, condemned for life in 1741, for attending a religious meeting, was released in 1769, on the entreaty of Voltaire, after being a galley-slave for twenty-eight years. His friends had forgotten him, and on his release he was utterly destitute and miserable.[81]

In 1772, three galley-slaves were liberated from their chains. AndrÉ Guisard, a labourer, aged eighty-two, Jean Roque, and Louis Tregon, of the same class, all condemned for life for attending religious meetings. They had all been confined at the chain for twenty years.

The two last galley-slaves were liberated in 1775, during the first year of the reign of Louis XVI., and close upon the outbreak of the French Revolution. They had been quite forgotten, until Court de GÉbelin, son of Antoine Court, discovered them. When he applied for their release to M. de Boyne, Minister of Marine, he answered that there were no more Protestant convicts at the galleys; at least, he believed so. Shortly after, Turgot succeeded Boyne, and application was made to him. He answered that there was no need to recommend such objects to him for liberation, as they were liberated already.

On the two old men being told they were released, they burst into tears; but were almost afraid of returning to the world which no longer knew them. One of them was Antoine Rialle, a tailor of Aoste, in Dauphiny, who had been condemned by the parliament of Grenoble to the galleys for life "for contravening the edicts of the King concerning religion." He was seventy-eight years old, and had been a galley-slave for thirty years.

The other, Paul Achard, had been a shoemaker of ChÂtillon, also in Dauphiny. He was condemned to be a galley-slave for life by the parliament of Grenoble, for having given shelter to a pastor. Achard had also been confined at the galleys for thirty years.

It is not known when the last Huguenot women were liberated from the Tour de Constance, at Aiguesmortes. It would probably be about the time when the last Huguenots were liberated from the galleys. An affecting picture has been left by an officer who visited the prison at the release of the last prisoners. "I accompanied," he says, "the Prince de Beauvau (the intendant of Languedoc under Louis XVI.) in a survey which he made of the coast. Arriving at Aiguesmortes, at the gate of the Tour de Constance, we found at the entrance the principal keeper, who conducted us by dark steps through a great gate, which opened with an ominous noise, and over which was inscribed a motto from Dante—'Lasciate ogni speranza voi che'ntrate.'

"Words fail me to describe the horror with which we regarded a scene to which we were so unaccustomed—a frightful and affecting picture, in which the interest was heightened by disgust. We beheld a large circular apartment, deprived of air and of light, in which fourteen females still languished in misery. It was with difficulty that the Prince smothered his emotion; and doubtless it was the first time that these unfortunate creatures had there witnessed compassion depicted upon a human countenance; I still seem to behold the affecting apparition. They fell at our feet, bathed in tears, and speechless, until, emboldened by our expressions of sympathy, they recounted to us their sufferings. Alas! all their crime consisted in having been attached to the same religion as Henry IV. The youngest of these martyrs was more than fifty years old. She was but eight when first imprisoned for having accompanied her mother to hear a religious service, and her punishment had continued until now!"[82]

After the liberation of the last of the galley-slaves there were no further apprehensions nor punishments of Protestants. The priests had lost their power; and the secular authority no longer obeyed their behests. The nation had ceased to believe in them; in some places they were laughed at; in others they were detested. They owed this partly to their cruelty and intolerance, partly to their luxury and self-indulgence amidst the poverty of the people, and partly to the sarcasms of the philosophers, who had become more powerful in France than themselves. "It is not enough," said Voltaire, "that we prove intolerance to be horrible; we must also prove to the French that it is ridiculous."

In looking back at the sufferings of the Huguenots remaining in France since the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes; at the purity, self-denial, honesty, and industry of their lives; at the devotion with which they adhered to religious duty and the worship of God; we cannot fail to regard them—labourers and peasants though they were—as amongst the truest, greatest, and worthiest heroes of their age. When society in France was falling to pieces; when its men and women were ceasing to believe in themselves and in each other; when the religion of the State had become a mass of abuse, consistent only in its cruelty; when the debauchery of its kings[83] had descended through the aristocracy to the people, until the whole mass was becoming thoroughly corrupt; these poor Huguenots seem to have been the only constant and true men, the only men holding to a great idea, for which they were willing to die—for they were always ready for martyrdom by the rack, the gibbet, or the galleys, rather than forsake the worship of God freely and according to conscience.

But their persecution was now in a great measure at an end. It is true the Protestants were not recognised, but they nevertheless held their worship openly, and were not interfered with. When Louis XVI. succeeded to the throne in 1774, on the administration of the oath for the extermination of heretics denounced by the Church, the Archbishop of Toulouse said to him: "It is reserved for you to strike the final blow against Calvinism in your dominions. Command the dispersion of the schismatic assemblies of the Protestants, exclude the sectarians, without distinction, from all offices of the public administration, and you will insure among your subjects the unity of the true Christian religion."

No attention was paid to this and similar appeals for the restoration of intolerance. On the contrary, an Edict of Toleration was issued by Louis XVI. in 1787, which, though granting a legal existence to the Protestants, nevertheless set forth that "The Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion alone shall continue to enjoy the right of public worship in our realm."

Opinion, however, moved very fast in those days. The Declaration of Rights of 1789 overthrew the barriers which debarred the admission of Protestants to public offices. On the question of tolerance, Rabaut Saint-Etienne, son of Paul Rabaut, who sat in the National Assembly for Nismes, insisted on the freedom of the Protestants to worship God after their accustomed forms. He said he represented a constituency of 360,000, of whom 120,000 were Protestants. The penal laws against the worship of the Reformed, he said, had never been formally abolished. He claimed the rights of Frenchmen for two millions of useful citizens. It was not toleration he asked for, it was liberty. "Toleration!" he exclaimed; "sufferance! pardon! clemency! ideas supremely unjust towards the Protestants, so long as it is true that difference of religion, that difference of opinion, is not a crime! Toleration! I demand that toleration should be proscribed in its turn, and deemed an iniquitous word, dealing with us as citizens worthy of pity, as criminals to whom pardon is to be granted!"[84]

The motion before the House was adopted with a modification, and all Frenchmen, without distinction of religious opinions, were declared admissible to all offices and employments. Four months later, on the 15th March, 1790, Rabaut Saint-Etienne himself, son of the long proscribed pastor of the Desert, was nominated President of the Constituent Assembly, succeeding to the chair of the AbbÉ Montesquieu.

He did not, however, occupy the position long. In the struggles of the Convention he took part with the Girondists, and refused to vote for the death of Louis XVI. He maintained an obstinate struggle against the violence of the Mountain. His arrest was decreed; he was dragged before the revolutionary tribunal, and condemned to be executed within twenty-four hours.

The horrors of the French Revolution hide the doings of Protestantism and Catholicism alike for several years, until Buonaparte came into power. He recognised Catholicism as the established religion, and paid for the maintenance of the bishops and priests. He also protected Protestantism, the members of which were entitled to all the benefits secured to the other Christian communions, "with the exception of pecuniary subvention."

The comparative liberty which the Protestants of France had enjoyed under the Republic and the Empire seemed to be in some peril at the restoration of the Bourbons. The more bigoted Roman Catholics of the South hailed their return as the precursors of renewed persecution: and they raised the cry of "Un Dieu, un Roi, une Foi."

The Protestant mayor of Nismes was publicly insulted, and compelled to resign his office. The mob assembled in the streets and sang ferocious songs, threatening to "make black puddings of the blood of the Calvinists' children."[85] Another St. Bartholomew was even threatened; the Protestants began to conceal themselves, and many fled for refuge to the Upper Cevennes. Houses were sacked, their inmates outraged, and in many cases murdered.

The same scenes occurred in most of the towns and villages of the department of Gard; and the authorities seemed to be powerless to prevent them. The Protestants at length began to take up arms for their defence; the peasantry of the Cevennes brought from their secret places the rusty arms which their fathers had wielded more than a century before; and another Camisard war seemed imminent.

In the meantime, the subject of the renewed Protestant persecutions in the South of France was, in May, 1816, brought under the notice of the British House of Commons by Sir Samuel Romilly—himself the descendant of a Languedoc Huguenot—in a powerful speech; and although the motion was opposed by the Government, there can be little doubt that the discussion produced its due effect; for the Bourbon Government, itself becoming alarmed, shortly after adopted vigorous measures, and the persecution was brought to an end.

Since that time the Protestants of France have remained comparatively unmolested. Evidences have not been wanting to show that the persecuting spirit of the priest-party has not become extinct. While the author was in France in 1870, to visit the scenes of the wars of the Camisards, he observed from the papers that a French deputy had recently brought a case before the Assembly, in which a Catholic curÉ of Ville-d'Avray refused burial in the public cemetery to the corpse of a young English lady, because she was a Protestant, and remitted it to the place allotted for criminals and suicides. The body accordingly lay for eighteen days in the cabin of the gravedigger, until it could be transported to the cemetery of SÈvres, where it was finally interred.

But the people of France, as well as the government, have become too indifferent about religion generally, to persecute any one on its account. The nation is probably even now suffering for its indifference, and the spectacle is a sad one. It is only the old, old story. The sins of the fathers are being visited on the children. Louis XIV. and the French nation of his time sowed the wind, and their descendants at the Revolution reaped the whirlwind. And who knows how much of the sufferings of France during the last few years may have been due to the ferocious intolerance, the abandonment to vicious pleasures, the thirst for dominion, and the hunger for "glory," which above all others characterized the reign of that monarch who is in history miscalled "the Great?"

It will have been noted that the chief scenes of the revival of Protestantism described in the preceding pages occurred in Languedoc and the South of France, where the chief strength of the Huguenots always lay. The Camisard civil war which happened there, was not without its influence. The resolute spirit which it had evoked survived. The people were purified by suffering, and though they did not conquer civil liberty, they continued to live strong, hardy, virtuous lives. When Protestantism was at length able to lift up its head after so long a period of persecution, it was found that, during its long submergence, it had lost neither in numbers, in moral or intellectual vigour, nor in industrial power.

To this day the Protestants of Languedoc cherish the memory of their wanderings and worshippings in the Desert; and they still occasionally hold their meetings in the old frequented places. Not far from Nismes are several of these ancient meeting-places of the persecuted, to which we have above referred. One of them is about two miles from the city, in the bed of a mountain torrent. The worshippers arranged themselves along the slopes of the narrow valley, the pastor preaching to them from the grassy level in the hollow, while sentinels posted on the adjoining heights gave warning of the approach of the enemy. Another favourite place of meeting was the hollow of an ancient quarry called the Echo, from which the Romans had excavated much of the stone used in the building of the city. The congregation seated themselves around the craggy sides, the preacher's pulpit being placed in the narrow pass leading into the quarry. Notwithstanding all the vigilance of the sentinels, many persons of both sexes and various ages were often dragged from the Echo to imprisonment or death. Even after the persecutions had ceased, these meeting-places continued to be frequented by the Protestants of Nismes, and they were sometimes attended by five or six thousand persons, and on sacrament days by even double that number.

Although the Protestants of Languedoc for the most part belong to the National Reformed Church, the independent character of the people has led them to embrace Protestantism in other forms. Thus, the Evangelical Church is especially strong in the South, whilst the Evangelical Methodists number more congregations and worshippers in Languedoc than in all the rest of France. There are also in the Cevennes several congregations of Moravian Brethren. But perhaps one of the most curious and interesting issues of the Camisard war is the branch of the Society of Friends still existing in Languedoc—the only representatives of that body in France, or indeed on the European continent.

When the Protestant peasants of the Cevennes took up arms and determined to resist force by force, there were several influential men amongst them who kept back and refused to join them. They held that the Gospel they professed did not warrant them in taking up arms and fighting, even against the enemies who plundered and persecuted them. And when they saw the excesses into which the Camisards were led by the war of retaliation on which they had entered, they were the more confirmed in their view that the attitude which the rebels had assumed, was inconsistent with the Christian religion.

After the war had ceased, these people continued to associate together, maintaining a faithful testimony against war, refusing to take oaths, and recognising silent worship, without dependence on human acquirements. They were not aware of the existence of a similar body in England and America until the period of the French Revolution, when some intercourse began to take place between them.

In 1807, Stephen Grellet, an American Friend, of French origin, visited Languedoc, and held many religious meetings in the towns and villages of the Lower Cevennes, which were not only attended by the Friends of Congenies, St. Hypolite, Granges, St. Grilles, Fontane's, Vauvert, Quissac, and other places in the neighbourhood of Nismes, but by the inhabitants at large, Roman Catholics as well as Protestants. At that time, as now, Congenies was regarded as the centre of the district principally inhabited by the Friends, and there they possess a large and commodious meeting-house, built for the purpose of worship.

At the time of Stephen Grellet's visit, he especially mentioned Louis Majolier as "a father and a pillar" amongst the little flock.[86] And it may not be unworthy to note that the daughter of the same Louis Majolier is at the present time one of the most acceptable female preachers of the Society of Friends in England.

It may also be mentioned, in passing, that there still exist amongst the Vosges mountains the remnants of an ancient sect—the Anabaptists of Munster—who hold views in many respects similar to those of the Friends. Amongst other things, they testify against war as unchristian, and refuse under any circumstances to carry arms. Rather than do so, they have at different times suffered imprisonment, persecution, and even death. The republic of 1793 respected their scruples, and did not require the Anabaptists to fight in the ranks, but employed them as pioneers and drivers, while Napoleon made them look after the wounded on the field of battle, and attend to the waggon train and ambulances.[87] And we understand that they continue to be similarly employed down to the present time.

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It forms no part of our subject to discuss the present state of the French Protestant Church. It has lost no part of its activity during the recent political changes. Although its clergy had for some time been supported by the State, they had not met in public synod until June, 1872, after an interval of more than two hundred years. During that period many things had become changed. Rationalism had invaded Evangelicalism. Without a synod, or a settled faith, the Protestant churches were only so many separate congregations, often representing merely individual interests. In fact, the old Huguenot Church required reorganization; and great results are expected from the proceedings adopted at the recently held synod of the French Protestant Church.[88]

With respect to the French Catholic Church, its relative position to the Protestants remains the same as before. But it has no longer the power to persecute. The Gallican Church has been replaced by the Ultramontane Church, but its impulses are no kindlier, though it has become "Infallible."

The principal movement of the Catholic priests of late years has been to get up appearances of the Virgin. The Virgin appears, usually, to a child or two, and pilgrimages are immediately got up to the scene of her visit. By getting up religious movements of this kind, the priests and their followers believe that France will yet be helped towards the Revanche, which she is said to long for.

But pilgrimages will not make men; and if France wishes to be free, she will have to adopt some other methods. Bismarck will never be put down by pilgrimages. It was a sad saying of Father Hyacinthe at Geneva, that "France is bound to two influences—Superstition and Irreligion."[Back to Contents]