The Huguenots in France

ict of Nantes, was swept away by the act of the King. They were deprived of every right and privilege; their social life was destroyed; their callin

e Tyrant and his Victims. The only resource which remained to the latter was that of flying from t

throughout the kingdom. The Prime Minister, Louvois, wrote to the provincial governors, "His Majesty desires that the severest rigour shall be shown t

ife, to worship privately in their own homes. If they were overheard singing their favourite psalms, they were liable to fine, imprisonment, or the galleys. They were compelled to hang out

boys were educated in Jesuit schools, the girls in nunneries, the parents being compelled to pay the required expenses; and where the parents were too poor to pay, the children were at once transferred to the general hospitals. A decree of the King, publ

e meantime, they were found performing their functions, they were liable to be sent to the galleys for life. If they undertook to marry Protestants, the marriages were decl

Protestant surgeons and apothecaries were suppressed; Protestant advocates, notaries, and lawyers were interdicted; Protestants could not teach, and all their schools, public and private, were put down. Protestants we

e. All Bibles, Testaments, and books of religious instruction, were collected and publicly burnt. There were bonfires in almost every town. A

s were forbidden to hire themselves as servants, and Protestant mistresses were forbidden to hire them under heavy penalties. If the

estant washerwomen were excluded from their washing-places on the river. In fact, there was scarcely a degradation that could be invent

ying man's house, where they presented themselves at his bedside, and offered him conversion and the viaticum. If the dying man refused these, he

er penalty of confiscation of the whole goods and property of the emigrant. Any person found attempting to leave the country, was liable to the seizure of all that belonged to him, and to perpetual imprisonment at the galleys; one half the amount realised by the sale of the

of the houses of Bouillon, Coligny, Rohan, Tremouille, Sully, and La Force. These great vassals, whom a turbulent feudalism had probably in the

ion of their conscience. Others of this class, on whom religion sat more lightly, as the only means of saving their property from confiscation, pretended to be converted to Roman Cat

rkshops and factories, sold off their goods, converted everything into cash, at whatever sacrifice, and fled across th

from their country-Frenchmen, who have always clung so close to their soil that they have rarely been able to form colonies of emigration elsewhere-it was breaking so many living fibres to leave Fra

ed the Act of Revocation, La Reynée, lieutenant of the police of Paris, issued a notice to the Huguenot tradespeople and working-classes, requiring them to be converted instantly. Many of them were terrified,

of conscience in their own country, they determined to seek it elsewhere. Hence the large increase in the emigration from all parts of France immediately after the Act of Revocation had been proclaimed.[11] All the roads leading to the frontier or the sea-coast streamed with fugitives. They went in various forms and guises-

ised to those who would stop and bring back the fugitives. Many were taken, loaded with irons, and dispatched by the most public roads through France-as a sight to be seen by other Protestants-to the galleys at

here the worship was allowed, yet many of the emigrants contrived to get away by the help of French ship captains, masters of sloops, fishing-boats, and coast pilots-who most probably sympathized with the views of those who w

holes for breathing places; others contrived to get surreptitiously into the hold, and stowed themselves away among the goods. When it became known to the Government that many Protestants were escaping in this way, provision was made to meet t

clergy used all due diligence. "Everybody is now missionary," said the fascinating Madame de Sévigné; "each has his mission-above all the mag

s a hundred or more persons were converted by a single troop within an hour. In this way Murillac converted

er; and he promised in a few weeks to deliver all Lower Languedoc from the leprosy of heresy. In one of his dispatches soon after

oldiers in the houses of the Protestants. The soldiers knew what was the object for which they were thus quartered. They lived freely in

eet, sometimes forgetting to cut them down until they were dead. They would also force them to drink water perpetually, or make them sit under a slow dripping upon their heads until they died of madness. Sometimes they

night no lamp. Though ill, they had no doctors. Besides the gaoler, their only visitors were priests and monks, entreating them to make abjuration. Of course many died in prison-feeb

al pay beyond their former stipends. If there were a Protestant judge or advocate, Louvois at once endeavoured to bribe him over. For instance, there was

gy, all contributed to terrify the Protestants. The fear of being sent to the galleys for life-the threat of losing the whole of one's goods and property-the alarm of seeing one's household broken up,

e slow or sudden, is what many persons, by reason of their physical capacity, have not the power to resist. Even the slow torment of dragoons quartered in the houses of the heretics-the

the victims about him had to endure by night and by day, said that sufferings such as these were "enough to make one conform to Buddhism or Mahommedan

ersion of the Huguenots, the Catholics boasted that in the space of three months they

n the dragoons who converted them, called them dastards and deniers of their faith. They tried, if they could, to avoi

they were obliged to answer. During the service, the most prominent among them were made to carry the lights, the holy water, the incense, and such things, w

ce. "From simulated abjuration," he says, "they [the Huguenots] are dragged to endorse what they do not believe in, and to receive the divine body of the Saint of saints whilst remaining persuaded that they are only eating bread which they ought to abhor. Such is the general abomination born of flattery and cruelty. From torture to abju

the first things they did on reaching a foreign soil, was to attend a congregation of their brethren, and make "reconnaisances," or acknowledgment of their repentance for having attended mass and pretended to be converted to the Roman Catholic C

t faith. They were offered considerable pensions if they would conform and become Catholics. The King promised to augment their income

going about to meetings of the peasantry, at the daily risk of death; for every pastor taken was hung. A reward of 5,500 livres was promised to whoever sho

, for the most part, held at night, amidst the ruins of their pulled-down temples. But this expose

rom great distances. They were, however, often surprised, cut to pieces by the dragoons, who hung part of the prisoners on the ne

r him to preach in. The only reward he could earn by proceeding on his mission was death, yet he determined to preach. The first assemblies he joined were in the neighbourhood of Nismes, where his addresses were interrupted by assaults of the dr

saying that he was willing, if necessary, to give his life for the cause of truth. "Oh! what happiness it would give me," he sai

eached to them, encouraging all to suffer in the name of Christ. He remained at this work for about six weeks, when a spy who accompanied him

ected to further examination, avowing that he had preached wherever he had found faithful people ready to hear him. At Nismes, he was told that he had broken the law, in preachin

d when the intendant Baville informed him of the frightful death before him if he refused, he replied, "My life is not of value to me, provided I gain Christ." He remained

e. "Let me alone," he said, "you annoy me with your consolations." On coming in sight of the gallows at Beaucaire

e public his confession of faith. But the authorities had arranged beforehand that this should be prevented. When he opened his mouth, a roll of military drums muffled his voice. His radiant look and gestures spoke for him. A few minutes

bodies of their brethren hung on the nearest trees, and the heads of their pastors rolling on the scaffold, did not deter them from conti

ewer than seventeen pastors were publicly executed; namely, three at Nismes, two at St. Hippolyte and Marsillargues in the Cevennes, and

the Huguenots, in which they got the worst of it. The number of persons killed on the occasion has been reduced to a very small number. It has been doubted whether the Pope had anything to do with th

continued for more than half a century, and had the effect of driving from France about a million of the best, most vigorous, and industrious of Frenchmen. In the single province of

amations, edicts and laws published against the Huguenots were known to all Frenchmen. Béno?t[17] gives a list of three hundred and thirty-three

framed in the same infernal spirit, which maintained a perpetual St. Bartholomew's day in this country for about sixty years! If

urtiers only! But he forgets that these upper barbarians were supported by the soldiers and the people everywhere. He adds, however, that if the Revocation were popular, "it would be the most overwhelming accusation against the Church of Rome, that it had thus educated and fashioned France."[19] There is, however, no doubt whatever