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]
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.
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]