In such a state, in the midst of these brutal and degrading scenes,

baptism was administered to them by force! If we were told that such

acts had been committed by a horde of savages, we should scarcely

believe it; and yet these things took place in France within a

century of our time!

When he had effected the re-baptism of Cayla, the commandant Pontual,

whose zeal increased with the gratification he experienced in the

capture of the children, continued his expeditions throughout

Vaunage, the whole length of the coast, placing sometimes as many as

fifteen or twenty garrison soldiers in the houses of the absentees

and the obstinate, whose property they sacked and demolished.

The court of Versailles was rejoiced at the news of so many

re-baptized children, and ordered the work to be prosecuted in

the mountains. But this was the limit of Pontual’s exploits. The

old recollections of the Camisards were awakened; and some of the

peasantry, rather encouraged than restrained by their minister

Coste, resumed the musket, declaring that on the first act of

violence against their children, blood should be spilled. Neither

the curates nor the soldiers heeded the menace; and in an ambush of

the Cévenoles, three priests fell on the 10th of August, 1752, two

mortally wounded, as they guided the military in an expedition into

Lédignan, on the banks of the Gardon.

These gunshots produced an extraordinary effect. The soldiers

evacuated the hills; the intendant stopped short; Versailles took

alarm; people remembered the war of the Camisards; the re-baptisms

were instantly abandoned, and for ever. If the ministers of state

had been fanatics, civil war would have broken out again with all

its horrors; but they were only unbelievers who parodied, while they

laughed at, the passions of bygone generations, and they halted at

the first symptoms of a serious conflict.

Emigration also, which had been renewed upon a large scale,

contributed to calm their factitious anger. It was true that the same

precautions had been taken to guard the passes as in 1685; but the

Protestants had used the same means to escape the vigilance of the

soldiers. Languedoc, Dauphiny, Saintonge, already impoverished by

the Edict of Revocation, were threatened with the loss of the last

remains of their industry and commerce. The frivolity of Versailles

retreated before this prospect.

A few weeks after this exhibition of insurgency, the Marquis de

Paulmy, the minister of war, visited the fortresses of Languedoc.

Being a man of prudence and integrity, he received the complaints of

the Protestants with kindness, and forbade the subaltern officers to

maltreat them.

A pastor, François Benezet, had been condemned to death during the

persecutions; he was executed at Montpellier, on the 27th March,

1752. Harassed by the importunities of an abbé, who continually

cried, “You are damned; hell will be your lot if you do not abjure;”

he replied, “If you were persuaded that there is a hell, would you

persecute me as you do? And should I have been condemned to lose

my life upon the gallows, merely because I have addressed a few

exhortations to my brethren?”

He endeavoured to speak at the foot of the gibbet; as usual, his

voice was drowned by the noise of drums. He died singing the 51st

Psalm. Benezet left behind him a child of two years old, and a

pregnant wife. Like Louis Ranc and Désubas, he was only twenty-six

years old.

Another pastor, Jean Molines, did not display the same courage. He

abjured before the scaffold; but until his last moment he repented

his weakness. He withdrew, inconsolable, to Holland; and although he

was reinstated in the communion of the faithful, after having given

proofs of profound remorse, he never forgave himself. An eyewitness

relates, that his countenance, furrowed with wrinkles, bore the

imprint of despair. His sight was dimmed with tears; and his head

hung heavily upon his breast. For thirty years he wandered about

insensible to everything around him, as one who reckoned himself no

longer among the living, and died with the one regret of not having

won the crown of martyrdom.

While he was in prison, some priests published a _Letter and

Abjuration of the Sieur Molines_, in his name. The Protestants

answered this work of pious fraud: “We cannot conceive how his

converters can have let him date his abjuration from the citadel of

Montpellier. A fortress has never yet been a school of enlightenment,

or a means of convincing people of the truth of religion. Every

retractation that comes from a fettered hand is so eminently

suspicious, that no one would dare to adduce it before a tribunal.”

XII.

We have yet to traverse the epoch of general persecutions,

particularly in the province of Languedoc; happily, it was but of

short duration, and it was the last.

The author of these new persecutions was a nobleman celebrated

for adventures of gallantry, the most brilliant epicurean of the

eighteenth century, an unbeliever, who protected Voltaire, and whom

Voltaire extolled,—in a word, the Marshal de Richelieu. Assuredly, of

all the parts he could play, not one became him so little as that of

an inquisitor of faith.

As governor of Languedoc he had for some time shown a degree of

kindness to the religionists; but on a sudden, in the month of

February, 1754, he ordered a proclamation, or instruction to the

military commandants, to be placarded in the principal towns and

villages of the dioceses of Montpellier, Nismes, Uzès, and Alais,

which re-awakened all the alarms of the Protestants. The marshal did

not mention re-baptism; that affair had been too unsuccessful in

its results; but he pointed now at the meetings of the desert, and

threatened to apply the most rigorous dispositions of the Edict of

1724 against them.

Orders were issued to arrest the new converts, and refugees or

suspected persons, who came from foreign countries without an express

authorization. The meetings were to be watched with the greatest

tenacity, and dispersed by force. As many prisoners were to be made

as possible; particularly the preachers were to be seized, and shot

if they attempted to fly, and no one was to be released until further

orders. A reward of a thousand crowns was promised to any one who

should capture a minister, and orders were given to arrest whomsoever

should be found in the same house with him.

When this proclamation appeared, people asked what had provoked

it. A tacit toleration had been established since the affair of

Lédignan. The confidence of the Reformed had returned. They assembled

peaceably, with very little mystery, but without ostentation, in the

depth of some valley, or upon the heights of their mountains. Their

relations with the [Roman] Catholics became more easy; agriculture,

industry, commerce, the revenues of the states, everything gained by

it. Wherefore, then, this new appeal to brutal force?

This has never been well known. The ill humour of a minister of

state, some pressing letters of the clergy, the caprice or the vanity

of a governor, who flattered himself that he would by ingenious

combinations terminate a struggle that had lasted eighty years,—any

of these things sufficed in those times to renew the persecution. But

if the Duke de Richelieu had hoped to terminate the struggle by means

of a strategetical plan, he was deceived. The courtier of Louis XV.

judged of the conscience of the Protestants by his own.

Some meetings were immediately suspended, others were attacked. The

prisons were filled; the tower of Aigues-Mortes received a further

number of unfortunate females; but the greater number of the people

would not submit. Richelieu reported his difficulties at Versailles,

and the Count de Saint Florentin sent him an answer, that “The

king’s judgment was, that it was absolutely imperative they should be

sickened of their taste for assemblies.” This was an easy sentence to

pen in a despatch; but the _taste for assemblies_, inherent in every

sincere faith, was even stronger than the will of Louis XV.

The Protestants simply redoubled the precautions, with which they

sought to hold their religious meetings. They procured information as

to the days and hours of the troops’ excursions, the direction they

took, the number of the soldiers on service, and the character, more

or less rigorous, of the commanding officer. The faithful were warned

even by (Roman) Catholics, who were ashamed of these brutalities, or,

on the first signal of alarm, they dispersed. If, however, they were

surprised, despite their precautious measures to ensure safety, their

hearts accepted the suffering as a divine trial.

It was in one of these attacks upon the meetings that Jean Fabre,

a Protestant of Nismes, supplicated a commander of a detachment

to put him in prison in the stead of his father, an old man of

seventy-eight. The governor of the province sent the pious son off

to the convict prison of Toulon, considering, it would seem, that

the Huguenots did not belong to the human race; and it was only when

the drama of the _Honest Convict_ informed the court, the ministers,

France, and Europe, of this act of treason against humanity, and when

Jean Fabre had worn the chains of the galley-slave for seven weary

years, that he was restored to his family.

All the other surprises of meetings offer a repetition of the

same enormities, and we will cite that only which happened in

Lower Languedoc on the 8th of August, 1756. Three young men were

to be ordained to the ministry of the Gospel at this assembly.

The solemnity had collected several pastors, and attracted a vast

concourse of people; as many as from ten to twelve thousand had come

from the whole surrounding country. They were singing a psalm, when

a detachment of fifteen or eighteen soldiers made their appearance,

hastening musket in hand to the spot. The multitude, although

unarmed, might have crushed this handful of assailants by their very

weight; but the pastors always preached patience and submission.

The crowd leaped to their feet, and precipitately fled in all

directions. The troop fired upon them,—every shot told; and while

some fell dead, and others wounded, the rest escaped uttering shrieks

of terror and grief; only a few stood their ground, and endeavoured

to defend their wives and children with stones. The murderers

remained masters of the field, and a long track of blood marked the

locality of this prayer-meeting. Do we relate a scene of the age of

Louis XV., or one of the time of Innocent III. and Simon de Montfort?

Another pastor perished in this deplorable epoch. Etienne Teissier,

whose surname of the desert was Lafage, was arrested near Castres, at

the farmhouse of a Protestant named Jacques Novis. On the approach of

the troops, he endeavoured to escape over the roof; but a gun-shot

broke his arm and wounded him in the chin. All the persons in the

house were arrested with him, and among them a woman and two young

girls. The prisoners followed the guards singing the psalms of the

desert-meetings.

Lafage was taken to the prison of Alais. “The Abbé Ricard, canon of

Alais, after showing the prisoner the greatest marks of politeness,

thought proper to lead off a controversial discussion; and it was

not until the unfortunate minister declared that he had not the

strength to discuss, that he was nearly mortally wounded, and that

his only desire was to prepare himself for his approaching end, that

he was relieved from the importunities of the priest. Several of the

faithful, however, were admitted to the consolation of visiting the

martyr. Even his father and one of his brothers were allowed to see

him; and he implored them, to pray for him, but to submit themselves

with holy resignation to the decrees of Providence; he assured

them, besides, that he was resolved to suffer everything for the

cause of the Gospel.... On his arrival at Montpellier, the trial of

the minister was arranged and consummated with barbarous rapidity.

The unhappy pastor, already dangerously wounded by the fire of the

troops, was fastened to the gibbet, which did not, any more than the

preparations for the execution, disturb the serenity of his soul.

The soldiers who encompassed the scaffold, could not restrain their

tears at the aspect of this last sacrifice of a faith so intrepid.

The sentence of death was pronounced by Guignard de Saint Priest, the

intendant.”[123]

This administrator condemned also, upon his own authority, Jacques

Novis as contumacious, sentenced him to perpetual imprisonment at the

galleys, confiscated two-thirds of his property, ordered that his

house should be razed to the ground (a house razed in 1754 for having

sheltered a pastor!), and released his wife and three children,

who were well-nigh reduced to beg their bread. All this was done

without the intervention of any judge, by the mere sentence of a

commissioner; the form of justice was not less outraged than justice

itself.

And this act, which would now rouse the indignation of all

France,[124] was not an isolated or exceptional iniquity. The other

provinces, although treated with more caution than Languedoc, because

they did not contain so many religionists, were not without their

share of sufferings and victims.

In Saintonge, the Protestants assembled in barns or remote buildings,

because the inclemency of the climate would not easily permit them

to celebrate their worship in the open air. Whereupon, one day, the

intendant ordered the demolition of these places of service to the

very last, and sentenced to detention for life at the galleys a poor

man, who had allowed meetings to be held in his house. A woman was

condemned to perpetual confinement on the bare suspicion of having

given asylum to the pastor Gibert; and this very pastor, happily

contumacious, was condemned, on the sentence of the intendant,

to be hanged, after humbly kneeling before the principal door of

a (Roman) Catholic church. His nephew, compelled to be present

at the execution, was then sent to the galleys, with a number of

Protestants, who had been convicted of having accompanied the

minister in his excursions. This took place in 1756.

In the county of Montauban, the soldiers committed brutalities, which

did not always pass without an effusion of blood, and the Parliament

of Toulouse conceived the idea of enjoining all persons who had been

married in the desert, to separate immediately, under pain of fine

and corporal punishment. This wrought the dissolution of thousands

of families at a single blow, or constrained them to purchase

the benediction of the priest by sacrilegious acts of (Roman)

Catholicism. The Protestants refused to submit, but they had to

suffer every kind of trouble and anguish in their homes. The decree

of the Parliament made hundreds of people miserable, but none of them

(Roman) Catholics.

The province of Béarn, once so oppressed, the first of the

provinces where Louis XIII. had forcibly reinstalled the (Roman)

Catholic religion, and where Louvois organized the expeditions of

the _dragonnades_, encountered fresh calamities in 1757 and 1758.

The governor put his troops at the disposal of the clergy. The

Protestants of Orthez, Salies, and Bellocq fled to the mountains, and

more than one hundred persons were proclaimed for capture dead or

alive. The curates were generally extremely exacting in the proofs

they required from the religionists. Those of Orthez, besides the

gifts of large amount, which it was necessary to guarantee in the

presence of the notary, made those who had been espoused wait one

year, and sometimes two years, before they would give the nuptial

benediction. In one case the curate imposed a delay of twelve years.

In Guienne, the Reformed of Sainte Foy, Bergerac, Tonneins, Clairac,

and other places, were forced to maintain dragoons, to pay fines, to

suffer vexations of every kind; nor were the ideas of re-baptism and

re-benediction yet abandoned there in 1758.

The Parliament of Bordeaux (it is true that Montesquieu was there

no longer), reprinted the declaration of 1724, sent it to all the

curates of the district to be publicly read, and in the month of

November, 1757, passed a decree commanding all those who had been

married by ministers, _or even by any other ecclesiastics than

their own curates_, to separate immediately; prohibiting them from

conversing under pain of exemplary punishment; branding their

cohabitation with the name of concubinage; declaring their children

illegitimate, and, as such, incapable of direct succession; lastly,

commanding fathers, mothers, and guardians to send their children to

the (Roman) Catholic schools, and to be catechized until they were

fourteen years old, and to the Sunday and feast-day teachings until

the age of twenty.[125]

To crown these tyrannical proceedings, this decree was published for

several days on the Exchange of Bordeaux, where the most eminent of

the Protestants were met: “a circumstance,” says a petition which

we have before us, “that materially injured their credit in their

commercial transactions on one hand; and that, on the other, tended

to make them an object of hatred or of contempt to the lower orders

of the people, always extreme in their opinions and heedless in their

proceedings.”

The petitioners further said, “We do not regret either office or

honours; it is with your majesty to dispense them to whomsoever you

please; but we claim the rights that we derive from nature, and which

every religion should hold sacred. It must be no longer hidden from

you: there are, sire, more than fifty thousand marriages that will

fall within the scope of the decree of the Parliament of Bordeaux;

and among these marriages, there are some of so old a date as to have

given birth to ten or twelve children. Behold, sire, what a multitude

of citizens are reduced in one instant to despair!”

Lastly, the Protestants took up the political question: “When a

neighbouring state, jealous of the prosperity of our armies, vainly

sought, last September, to penetrate into Saintonge and Aunis, what

class of your subjects showed more zeal than the Protestants to

repel the presumptuous enemy? Your generals did them justice in this

respect. Are not your armies and your navy at this present moment

filled with soldiers, officers, and sailors of the Reformed religion,

distinguished not less for their unshaken fidelity than for their

bravery?” (3rd January, 1758.)

This petition did not prevent the decree of the Parliament of

Bordeaux from being followed by cruel iniquities. The seneschal of

Nérac condemned five Protestants to the galleys, one of whom was an

old man of eighty. Numbers of others were thrust into the prisons

of Guienne, Périgord, and Agenois. The Reformed of Sainte Foy and

Bergerac had to pay upwards of forty thousand livres, besides the

losses they sustained through the soldiers billeted upon them. And

yet the authorities had not the courage to execute the decree in its

entirety; the rich merchants of Bordeaux had pronounced the word

“emigration” in their complaints, and the interest of the treasury

procured for them that which had been refused by the fanatic bigotry

of the priests and the despotism of the court.

XIII.

Until now we have delayed to mention the venerable pastor Paul

Rabaut, because he belongs to two epochs, and his long career

connects him both with the times of persecution and those of

toleration. During half a century, Paul Rabaut has afforded the

most elevated, and the most perfect type of a true servant of Jesus

Christ. He was firm and courageous, yet cautious, and as inflexible

in matters of religion as he was submissive in purely civil affairs;

and this rare union of qualities justly entitled him to the greatest

influence over the churches of the desert.

Paul Rabaut was born on the 9th of January, 1718, at Bédarieux,

near Montpellier, of an honest family of traders, who delighted in

sheltering the proscribed pastors. It was in his conversations with

them that he felt himself animated with a desire for the evangelical

ministry, or, as Antoine Court would have said, for the vocation of

martyrdom. He was grave, studious, and, beyond all, pious, which

procured him the surname of “_the minister of Charenton_” from his

schoolmaster.

From the age of sixteen he became, with his friend Jean Pradel, the

companion of the desert ministers. He shared their labours, and

imitated their patience. Rejoiced that he suffered with them for the

sake of his Divine Master, he undertook, without having the title or

the office of pastor, to instruct his brethren, reading the Bible

at the meetings, exhorting the faithful in their domestic circles,

encouraging some, comforting others, and setting an example to all.

But this noviciate, however dear it might be, was insufficient. The

churches wanted pastors capable of opposing the aberrations within

and the objections without, with a sound and intelligent theology.

Paul Rabaut perceived this, and in 1740 he went to study in the

seminary at Lausanne. Antoine Court received him as a son, and his

discernment soon marked the young disciple out as the man most fitted

to succeed him in the government of the flocks of the wilderness.

On his return in 1743 he was appointed pastor of Nismes, and from

this early moment, he took the lofty position which he occupied until

his death in 1795. His colleagues reposed implicit confidence in

him, and never failed to consult him on all difficult occasions. His

abode, which was often but a hut of piled stones, became the centre

of Protestant affairs. All the faithful respected him, and when

persecution began to rage anew, they instinctively turned towards

him, as sailors fix their look upon the lighthouse signal in a storm.

Every one knew the devotion with which he had embraced the pastoral

office, and that he had no other object than the welfare of religion.

A letter, which he addressed to the intendant Lenain in 1746, will

show how he himself explained this: “When I resolved upon exercising

the ministry in this kingdom, I knew well to what I exposed myself;

and, indeed, I have always considered myself a victim destined to

death. I believed that I was doing the greatest good in my power, by

devoting myself to the pastor’s calling. Since the Protestants are

deprived of the free exercise of their religion, since they think

it wrong for them to attend the services of the (Roman) Catholic

religion, since they cannot procure the books they require for their

instruction, you may judge, sir, what would be their condition, if

they were absolutely deprived of pastors. They would forget their

most essential duties; they would fall, either into fanaticism—that

fruitful source of extravagance and disorders—or into indifference

and contempt for religion altogether.”

Paul Rabaut, whom the law condemned to death, contributed more

than any one to dissuade the Protestant population from desperate

counsels, and, perhaps, no Frenchman throughout the whole eighteenth

century has been more useful to his country. Not only in the

synods, where he maintained the authority of a wise discipline, but

also in private interviews and conversations with individuals, he

continually and unceasingly recommended obedience to the laws and

the magistrates, never admitting an exception whatsoever but the

conscientious worship of God.

We read in his letters that he always, and with all his power, strove

to prevent the religionists from bringing weapons to the assemblies.

In the melancholy affair of the pastor Désubas, when thousands of the

peasantry vowed to avenge the blood of their brethren slaughtered at

Vernoux, he invoked religion, humanity, the duty of submission, and

whatever is of most avail in faith and Christian law, to induce them

to disarm. He did this again in the insurrection that had begun on

the borders of the Gardon, at the time of the general re-baptizement.

He wrote to the leaders in the province, on this head: “When I

desired to know whence the evil proceeded, I found that divers

persons, seeing themselves threatened either with loss of their

property and their freedom, or by compulsion to perform acts opposed

to their conscience, with reference to their marriages or the baptism

of their children, and perceiving no opportunity of quitting the

kingdom and freeing their conscience, gave themselves up to despair

and attacked some priests, because they regarded them as the first

and principal cause of their troubles. Once again, I blame these

folks, but I thought it my duty to explain to you the cause of their

despair. If it be thought that my ministry is necessary to calm the

minds of the people, I will undertake the task with pleasure. Above

all, if I could satisfy the Protestants of these parts that they will

not be molested in their conscience, I would earnestly recommend the

mass to stop those who are bent on rising, should there be any so

minded.” (21st August, 1752.)

It is thus that he obtained the esteem of the (Roman) Catholics as

well as the respect of the Reformed. People were confident that he

would decide all religious questions with that wise moderation,

which, without detracting from the obligations of faith, would never

unreasonably provoke the severity of power.

When the minister of war passed through Languedoc, Rabaut had the

boldness to present a petition to him for the king. This happened on

the 19th September, 1752, between Nismes and Montpellier. While he

waited at a post-house for a change of horses, the Marquis de Paulmy

perceived a stranger respectfully approaching him, with a paper in

his hand. Rabaut introduced himself by name: the minister knew him

to be the proscribed pastor, and might have ordered his arrest, and

even summary execution, according to the letter of the ordinances.

But impressed with admiration at the noble bearing of the pastor, he

bowed and accepted the petition, which he promised to lay before the

king. It is ascertained that he kept his word.

The intendant of Languedoc also refused to seize the person of

Rabaut, for the reason that the trial and execution of the venerated

pastor would have convulsed the whole province. As this officer,

however, entertained the idea, that the religious meetings would

cease to be held, on the departure of the minister, he used every

effort to make him quit the realm: sometimes he offered to release

a certain number of prisoners, as the price of his expatriation;

sometimes he persecuted his wife, Madeleine Gaidan, whose name

deserves to be associated with that of her husband. She never gave

such advice as might be expected from the weakness of her sex, and

preferred leading a wandering and uncertain life with her aged mother

and her children, rather than urge Rabaut to quit the post, which

God had allotted to him. The Duke de Mirepoix was ashamed of these

unworthy molestations, and allowed Madeleine Gaidan to return to

Nismes, after a lapse of two years of persecution.

Paul Rabaut, however, was not the less liable to the rigour of the

ordinances, which decreed sentence of death against the pastors.

“For more than thirty years,” says one of his biographers, “caverns

and huts, whence he was unearthed like a wild animal, were his only

habitation. For a long time lie 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.”[126]

He assumed all sorts of disguises and names, like the (Roman)

Catholic priests during the Reign of Terror. At one time it was M.

Paul, at another, M. Denis, or M. Pastourel, or M. Théophile, on his

way to perform the functions of his ministry under the garb of a

trader, or a journeyman baker.

It is difficult to picture to oneself the extent of his labours. He

wrote to one of his friends at Geneva, in 1755, that being occupied

all day with a multitude of affairs, he was often obliged to work far

into the night; then, he said, with that humility which characterizes

eminent men: “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!”

What was indeed a singular novelty in this time of disorder—he

entered into a correspondence with a prince of the blood, from

the depth of his retreat. The influence of philosophical ideas,

the desire of taking one of the causes of the opposition in hand,

or perhaps the mere heaviness of idleness, engaged the Prince de

Conti to interest himself in the fate of the Protestants. He sought

information from Paul Rabaut, and invited him to a conference. The

pastor of the desert started secretly for Paris, in the month of

July, 1755.

He had two interviews with the prince, and stated the following

points: “That the galley convicts and prisoners sentenced on account

of their religion, and the children of both sexes shut up in the

convents and seminaries, should be set at liberty; that baptisms and

marriages celebrated by the (Protestant) ministers should be valid,

under condition of being registered in offices established by the

king; that the exercise of religion should be permitted, if not in

the places of worship, at least in private houses at some distance

from the towns and villages; finally, that every one should be

allowed to sell his property without any special authority, and that

the refugees should have the right of returning to the realm.”

These demands were assuredly moderate enough. [What they asked for]

was far from full freedom of religion; it was not even toleration to

any great extent. The (Roman) Catholics of Ireland have never at any

time had less; and they already enjoyed much more in the eighteenth

century. The Prince de Conti, however, did not consider that there

was any chance of obtaining so much from the council and the clergy,

and these negotiations had no result.

Paul Rabaut returned to his labours in Languedoc. The author from

whom we have already quoted, gives the following description of him:

“He was short of stature; his complexion was dark; his physiognomy

and demeanour mild; lois manner grave, yet affable; and his habits

simple and patriarchal. His food was of the most sober kind. His

powers of endurance were remarkable. The hard and wandering life

he had been forced to lead from his youth upwards, in following

a proscribed faith, had strengthened his constitution; but his

unceasing devotion to his flock had injured and undermined his

vigour, and seriously affected him in his old age.”

People flocked from all parts to hear him preach. Another biographer

says: “We are told that his audience sometimes comprised from ten

to twelve thousand of the faithful. But his voice was so distinct

and sonorous that although [he preached] in the open air, it reached

those at the greatest distance, and all could take home with them

the useful lessons of the pastor. He prayed with a fervour and an

unction that penetrated every bosom, and disposed hearts the least

prepared to listen to the sermon. He frequently preached without

preparation, and his wild and uncultured eloquence seemed even to

grow in sublimity.”[127]

Some of the manuscript sermons of Paul Rabaut have been preserved.

It is said that they are not distinguished either for oratorical

genius or for studious finish: the venerable pastor had neither

leisure nor opportunity. But they are remarkable for order, mildness,

perspicuity, and unction: his style was of that simple and paternal

kind which suited the meetings of the wilderness.[128]

XIV.

The approach of the year 1760 witnessed a sensible relaxation of

persecution. The laws of intolerance were not, indeed, abrogated, but

they were relaxed by desuetude; for knowledge, public opinion, the

interest of the state, the relations of commerce and society, tended

every day to approximate the (Roman) Catholics to the Protestants.

The differences of confession were rapidly disappearing before the

common name and quality of Frenchmen.

The clergy perceived this with dismay, and in their general assembly

of 1760, they addressed urgent remonstrances to the king against

this remission of the laws: “Nearly every barrier opposed to

Calvinism,” they said, “has been successively broken down. Ministers

and preachers, reared in heretical schools and foreign nations,

have inundated some of our provinces. They have held consistories

and synods, and are constantly presiding over assemblies, sometimes

secret, sometimes solemn. They baptize, administer the [the Lord’s]

supper, preach their erroneous doctrines, and perform the marriage

ceremony. At first the Calvinists only demanded the power of

celebrating their marriages in a purely civil and profane form; and

although they feigned to limit themselves to this permission, it was

evident that it would, of itself, lead to the entire toleration of

Calvinism. Now this toleration is openly and loudly preached!”

Toleration, it would hence appear, was in the eyes of the priests,

an impious and immoral maxim. Their sayings were unheeded, and the

nation kept the even tenor of its new way.

Military and civil authorities, governors, intendants, subordinates,

officers, magistrates, were alike ashamed, both before the tribunal

of their own conscience and that of public opinion, of persecuting

individuals whom they were compelled to esteem as men of honour and

good citizens. Rulhières cites some curious instances of this: “Even

the troops,” he says “softened the inhumanity of the orders they had

to execute. The officers slackened the march of their detachments,

that the assembled religionists might have time to escape. They took

care that a sufficient warning should precede their approach; and

they purposely followed circuitous roads, to throw their soldiers off

the scent.”[129]

Sometimes the Protestants were still summoned by official means, to

return to the strict execution of the edicts: but this was nothing

more than the last discharge of artillery after a lost battle.

Thus, in 1761, the Marshal de Thomond, who had been appointed to

the government of Languedoc, commanded the religionists to reverse

their marriages and the baptisms of their children within six days.

This order caused much astonishment, but no dismay. No one feared

any serious conflict, and the simple force of _inertia_ effectively

defeated the measure; whilst the marshal himself undertook the charge

of transmitting the petitions of the pastors to Louis XV. In three

months the whole affair was forgotten.

Two synods were convoked in Lower Languedoc, in the year 1760. One

comprised twenty pastors and fifty-four elders; the other fifteen

pastors and thirty-eight elders. These gatherings were not publicly

announced, but neither were they held in secret; appearances were

preserved, though the law was disregarded.

Gradually, as persecution relaxed, the language of the leaders of the

churches became more resolute, as might be expected. Paul Rabaut and

his colleague, Paul Vincent, in 1761, addressed a pastoral letter to

the Reformed of Nismes, exhorting them to abstain from the _slightest

act of adhesion to the Church of Rome_. They were no longer to

assist at mass, to have their marriages blessed by the priest, or

their children baptized at the (Roman) Catholic church, even when

the curates remitted altogether their exactions; they were enjoined

to be entirely and constantly faithful to the practices of the

Reformed faith. The pastors were true to their duty in imposing these

injunctions; they could not require less, since it is of the essence

of every religion to be sufficient for the wants of its own members.

The Romish clergy did the same thing after the 9th Thermidor.

The meetings became more regular; they were held nearer and nearer to

the towns and villages; for _proximity_, to use the customary phrase,

largely increased the number of assistants. These meetings were held

in some places under the eye of the magistrates. The Protestants of

Nismes performed their religious services within cannon-shot of the

citadel, and those of Montauban in the suburbs.

Dating from 1755, the religionists confined at Toulon, the captives

detained in the different provinces of the kingdom, and the

prisoners of the tower of Constance, began to be set at liberty with

greater facility, but only one by one, and frequently, it must be

confessed, through the intervention of foreign influences, or by

means of ransom. The liberation of a religious convict was effected

for nothing, on a letter from Voltaire, or some Protestant prince;

otherwise, it cost a thousand crowns; and afterwards, two thousand

livres; the rate of ransom gradually lowering with the advance of

public morals. Yet in 1759 there were forty-one prisoners still

confined at the galleys, whose only crime was that they had been

present at a desert meeting, or had sheltered a pastor.

This improved condition was, however, disturbed in a horrible manner

by the capital execution of four persons in one case, and of a

venerable old man in another. It was the sad privilege of the town of

Toulouse, which had erected the first scaffold against the disciples

of the Reformation in 1532, to spill the last blood on account of an

heretical offence in 1762.

Toulouse, which has made a considerable advance in enlightenment

since this period, was at that time almost altogether wanting in

intelligence and commercial spirit. It was filled with nobles and

Parliament men, who had bent beneath the servile yoke of their

traditional prejudices. By their side swarmed legions of priests and

monks, more Spanish than French, who kept up an abject superstition

by then processions, their relics, and their confraternities. Below

them vegetated an ignorant and fanatic people. Every year the Church

pompously celebrated at Toulouse the commemoration of the great

southern massacre of Saint Bartholomew in 1562; and Toulouse was the

stage of the last executions.

François Rochette, a pastor, aged twenty-five years, who performed

the service of the numerous churches of Quercy, had gone to recruit

his exhausted health by means of the mineral waters of Saint

Antonin. He was invited, on the road, to administer baptism, and

while crossing the country in the neighbourhood of Caussade, during

the night of the 13th of September, 1761, was arrested with the

two peasants who were acting as his guides. They were suspected

of belonging to a band of robbers who infested the province. The

mistake was soon perceived; and as Rochette was not surprised in the

exercise of his functions, he might easily have escaped by concealing

his profession. Those, who interrogated him went even so far as to

point out to him this means of acquittal, but he refused to buy his

deliverance by the least disavowal of truth.

The morning spread the news of his arrest with the rapidity of

lightning through the whole country. The sorrowing and anxious

Protestants assembled together, and urgently solicited the liberation

of their pastor. A fair was held that day at Caussade, and the town

was crowded with people. The (Roman) Catholics conceived the notion

that the Huguenots had flown to arms, and intended a universal

massacre. The tocsin was sounded on every side; the villages rose _en

masse_, and the (Roman) Catholic peasantry stuck a white cross in

their hats, in imitation of the assassins of Saint Bartholomew. The

night of the 14th was spent in casting bullets, preparing cartouches,

and many a curate joined in and hastened the arming. The next day,

the whole population was on the alert, ready for the direst excesses,

and it was with the utmost difficulty the magistrates could restrain

them.

Three brothers named Grenier, glass-manufacturers in the county

of Foix, happened to be at this time in Montauban. Hearing that

the pastor Rochette had been arrested, that the Protestants were

threatened with attack, and that a terrible contest was imminent,

they hastened to the spot of danger, with the first arms they could

snatch up in their haste, a sword and two guns. They were pursued,

butchers’ dogs were put upon their track, and at length they were

captured and dragged to the prison of Rochette.

The Parliament of Toulouse took cognizance of the matter, as if it

were an affair of state, and the trial was conducted with the most

glaring partiality. Paul Rabaut and his companions, astounded with

a severity so long forgotten, fruitlessly petitioned the Duke de

Richelieu, the Duke de Fitz-James, and Marie-Adelaide de France. The

accused sent long justificatory memorials to the court in vain. A

sentence, passed on the 18th of February, 1762, condemned François

Rochette to death, as convicted of having exercised the functions of

a Protestant minister, and the three brothers Grenier, as guilty of

armed sedition. The other accused, who were poor peasants that had

never committed the shadow of a crime, were condemned to the galleys.

When the sentence was read to Rochette and his three fellow-sufferers,

they exclaimed with one voice, “Well! since we must die, let us beseech

God to accept the sacrifice we offer Him.” The pastor prayed with his

friends, and the court wept at the sight.

Four curates came to exhort them to abjure, and one of them

threatened the religionists with hell, if they persisted in their

heresy. “We are about to appear,” replied the pastor, “before a more

equitable judge than you, even before Him who shed His blood for our

salvation.”

They spent their time in prayer and pious exhortations, and

encouraged each other for the final struggle. All the assistants,

sentries, and gaolers, were moved at their calm and noble

resignation. Rochette, seeing a soldier more concerned than the rest

of his comrades, said to him, “My friend, are you not ready to die

for the king; why then should you grieve that I should die for God?”

The curates renewed their efforts to proselytize. “It is for your

salvation,” said they, “that we are here.” The answer of one of the

prisoners was, “If you were at Geneva, ready to die in your bed

(for no one is slain there on account of his religion), would you

be pleased if four ministers came, under the pretence of zeal, to

persecute you until your last breath? Do not, then, unto others that

which you would not wish to be done unto yourselves.”

On the 19th of February, at two o’clock in the afternoon, the

mournful procession started on its way. Rochette was, according to

the terms of the sentence, bareheaded, barefooted, with a halter hung

about his neck, from which, before and behind, labels were suspended,

with these words, _Minister of the pretended Reformed religion_.

When the array passed before the church of Saint Etienne, an attempt

was made to force him, in pursuance of the terms of the Parliament’s

condemnation, to kneel with a torch of yellow wax in his hand, and

to ask pardon of God, the king, and justice, for all his crimes and

misdeeds.

Rochette stepped down from the tumbril, and instead of abjuring or

making a confession which his heart denied, he pronounced on his

knees the following words: “I beseech God to pardon me for all my

sins, and I firmly believe that they have been washed away by the

blood of Jesus Christ, who has redeemed us so dearly. I have no

pardon to ask of the king, whom I have ever honoured as the Lord’s

anointed, and loved as the father of my native land; I have ever been

a good and faithful subject, and of this I believe my judges to be

convinced. I have always preached to my flock patience, obedience,

and submission; and my sermons, which you possess, are summed up in

these words, ‘_Fear God, honour the king_.’ If I have contravened the

law touching religious assemblies, it was by God’s commandments I

contravened them; God must be obeyed before men. As for justice and

the law, I am guilty of no offence against them, and I pray God may

pardon my judges.”

Every door, balcony, window, roof, and approach near to the place of

execution, was covered with spectators. “Toulouse,” says Count de

Gébelin, an eyewitness, who related these circumstances, “Toulouse,

that city drunk with the blood of martyrs, seemed a Protestant town.

People asked what was the creed of these heretics; and when they

heard our martyrs speak of Jesus Christ and of his death, every one

was surprised and afflicted. They were infinitely touched, also, with

the lofty, yet mild bearing of the three brothers, which compelled

their admiration almost as much as the inexpressible serenity of the

minister, whose graceful and spiritual physiognomy, whose words full

of firmness and courage, and whose youth, filled every beholder with

interest, knowing, as all did, that he only died because he disdained

to save his life by a lie.”[130]

Rochette was executed first. He exhorted his companions until the

end, and sang the canticle of the Protestant martyrs: _This is the

blessed day_. “Die a Catholic,” said the executioner, moved with

pity. “Judge which is the better religion,” replied Rochette, “that

which persecutes, or that which is persecuted.”

The youngest of the three brothers (he was only twenty-two years

of age), hid his face in his hands to shut out this tragic scene.

The two others contemplated it with calmness. As they were

gentlemen,[131] their sentence was, to be beheaded They embraced

each other, recommending their souls to God. The eldest offered his

head to the axe first. When it came to the turn of the last, the

executioner said: “You have seen your brothers die; change, lest

you perish like them.” “Do thy duty,” said the martyr, and his head

rolled upon the scaffold.

Count de Gébelin adds, as he concludes his recital: “Every one

present returned home in silence, in a state of consternation, and

unable to persuade themselves that there could be such courage and

such cruelty in the world; and I, who describe it, cannot refrain

from tears of joy and sadness, as I contemplate their blessed lot,

and that our church should be still capable of affording examples

of piety and firmness that will compare with the most illustrious

monuments of the primitive church.”

Eighteen days afterwards, on the 9th of March, 1762, the scaffold

rose again at Toulouse for the execution of Jean Calas, an old man of

sixty-eight. The whole world is familiar with his trial, and all its

circumstances. Every one knows that the unfortunate Calas was accused

of having murdered his son, Marc-Anthony, in order to prevent him, it

was said, from embracing (Roman) Catholicism. Every one knows that

the priests of Toulouse inflamed the fanaticism of the populace by

carrying the body of this young man in procession, who had really

committed suicide, and by representing him upon a funereal bier

as a skeleton holding in one hand a scroll, on which was written,

_abjuration of heresy_, and in the other the palm-branch of the

martyr. Every one, in short, knows that the magistracy and the clergy

accused Calvin and his disciples of declaring abjuration a lawful

cause of infanticide, and pretended that the assassination of Calas

had been decided in a conventicle of Protestants.

These calumnies, which were not less stupid than detestable, were so

credited by the fanatic people, that the advocate of Calas thought it

necessary to procure from Geneva a solemn declaration, signed by the

pastors and professors, attesting that neither synod nor any assembly

whatsoever of the Reformation had ever approved of the doctrine that

a father has the right of killing his child to prevent his changing

his religion. Paul Rabaut published under this head, _La Calumnie

confondue_ (“Calumny Confounded”), a work in which he denied these

execrable allegations with all the vehemence of a mind profoundly

indignant. The Parliament of Toulouse answered it by ordering that

the book should be torn and burned by the hand of the hangman.

In the most horrible agonies of the torture, Calas made no avowal,

for he had none to make. He continually repeated: “Where there is no

crime, there are no accomplices.” He suffered death with the serenity

of innocence and the firmness of faith. His execution lasted two

hours, his sentence having been to be broken on the wheel. He uttered

all the while no words but those of piety and charity, breathing

pardon to his judges, and expressive of his pain that the young

Lavaïsse should have been implicated in his misfortunes.

Father Bourges said to him: “My dear brother, you have but a moment

to live. By that God whom you invoke, in whom you hope, and who died

for you, I conjure you to glorify the truth.” “I have said it,”

answered Calas; “I die innocent. Jesus Christ, innocence himself, was

willing to die a more cruel death.”

“Unhappy man,” cried one of his judges, “see the faggot that shall

reduce thy body to ashes; confess the truth.” The old man gave him no

answer; he turned away his head, and received the final blow.

“The Fathers Bourges and Caldaguès,” writes Count de Gébelin, in his

twenty-third _Toulousaine_, “were honourable persons. These two monks

have conferred the highest praises upon his memory. Although Calas

died a Protestant, they have fearlessly said—_Thus died our martyrs

of old_.”

The widow and children of Calas demanded the repeal of this

iniquitous sentence. Voltaire supported their cause with his powerful

voice. The most celebrated advocates, Elie de Beaumont, Mariette,

Loyseau de Mauléon, interfered; and on the 9th of March, 1765, three

years exactly, day for day, after the fatal execution, a decree of

the council reversed the judgment of the Parliament of Toulouse, with

the unanimity of fifty votes. The sentence that restored the family

of Calas, tore its bloody axe from the hands of fanaticism, and

branded its forehead with an ignominy that will never be effaced.

XV.

The end of this period is the counterpart of the last years which

preceded it. A century before, from 1660 to 1685, each day witnessed

new acts of tyranny, and laid a heavier yoke upon the neck of the

Reformed people. From 1760 to 1787, on the contrary, each day

lightened their burden. Four generations of persecutors and of

victims had perished in the interval.

The sanguinary executions that we have just related, far from

injuring the Reformed churches, turned to their advantage.

Respectable people blushed to resemble, in the most distant degree,

the judges and priests of Toulouse. They became tolerant as much upon

a point of honour, as through a sentiment of justice. The Prince de

Beauveau, who succeeded the Marshal de Thomond in the government of

Languedoc, was loyal, generous, and also religious. He had several

interviews with the patriarch of the desert, Paul Rabaut, and granted

to the Protestants all he could under the existing _régime_ of the

laws of intolerance.

Fifteen months after the death of Rochette and Calas, in June, 1763,

a national synod was held in Languedoc. All the provinces, with

the exception of those of the north, were represented at it. The

pastors and elders, emboldened by public opinion, addressed a new

petition to the king, and held firmer language in speaking to their

co-religionists. “All the members of the synod,” they said, “have

renewed with a holy alacrity, as well in their own name, as in that

of their provinces, the solemn promise to maintain with all their

power ... that union so just and so advantageous, by persevering in

the profession of the same faith, in the celebration of the same

worship, the practice of the same morality, the exercise of the same

discipline, and in rendering each other the mutual help and services

which show that, like the first Christians, they are only of one

heart and one soul.”

Local or personal vexations annoyed the churches, but without

intimidating them, or disturbing their tranquillity. In Poitou and

elsewhere, the faithful had prepared houses of prayer, which were

demolished by order of the public authorities, and some soldiers were

even billeted upon a few families. The same was also done in Béarn,

which was a puerile parody of the _dragonnades_.

In the county of Poix, the Protestants had opened schools: they were

suppressed. At Nismes, they carried seats to the places of service,

and went thither in bodies: this was forbidden them. These unworthy

molestations were the last breath of expiring intolerance.

The last religious meeting, said to have been surprised and attacked,

was one near Orange, in 1767. Eight Protestants of respectable

station allowed themselves to be sensed, and held responsible for the

remainder. The officer who arrested them was more embarrassed than

his captives, and offered the opportunity of evasion. They answered,

however, “No; it is for the public authorities to liberate us.” They

were released at the expiration of two months.

The pastor Berenger was also condemned to capital punishment in the

same year, 1767, by the Parliament of Grenoble, as contumacious. He

was executed in effigy in the town of Mens. Lastly, two pastors were

arrested in Brie in 1774, and thrown into prison. One died there at

the end of nine days; the other was set at liberty, but sent to

Guienne by a _lettre de cachet_.

There were Protestant convicts confined at Toulon so late as 1769;

exemplifying the shocking contradiction of people detained in chains

for acts, which the government had ceased to punish. This was in the

end understood, and they were all liberated. At the same time, too,

the old tower of Constance, at Argues-Mortes, was set open. Some of

the women confined there had reached extreme old age, and had passed

more than half their lives in this confinement.

But the treasury was the most difficult oppressor to overcome. If

there were no longer imprisonments, it was still compulsory to pay

heavy fines, and suffer ruinous extortions. The religionists were

squeezed at one time by the judiciary bodies, at another by the

administrative power, and paid in a manner double taxes, of which a

very small proportion found its way into the treasury.

Many flocks, unknown until this time, because they hid themselves

in the sanctuary of the domestic roof; began to show themselves.

Lyons and Marseilles had their pastors. Sancerre, Orleans, Nanteuil

en Brie, Asnières, and the Protestants of Picardy and Artois,

endeavoured to reconstitute their respective churches.

Normandy was more advanced. It possessed two or three pastors, Louis

Campredon, Jean Godefroy, and a minister of Dauphiny, Alexandre Ranc,

who established himself in the province for a couple of years. The

little town of Bolbec was the centre of this Protestant population.

It would appear that the abduction of young girls continued there

after the year 1760; for we read in a petition of the inhabitants of

Bolbec, to whom Louis XV. had granted an exemption from taxes, to

help them to rebuild their town, which had been destroyed by fire:

“Sire, to what purpose shall we build houses, if we are not sure of

dwelling in them with our families?” (1763.)

At Paris, the Reformed attended the service of the Dutch chapel, a

neutral ground, which enabled them to discharge their duties towards

God, without openly contravening the ordinances.

The Protestants maintained at their common charge one or two general

agents in Paris, whose official character was not, indeed, and could

not be recognised by the ministers of state, but their intervention

was publicly accepted, and they proffered their advice in all

important affairs. This mission was confided, in 1763, to Court de

Gébelin, son of the pastor Antoine Court.

He inherited from his father a great devotion for the cause of the

Reformed churches. Upright, laborious, intimately connected with men

of letters, and known for his philological works, he brought to the

service of his co-religionists an indefatigable activity and numerous

social relations. He was esteemed at court; he was sought after in

the world; and if he died too soon to witness the abolition of the

edicts of Louis XIV., he contributed powerfully to their abandonment.

Still, the position of the Protestants at the time we have reached,

was singularly anomalous. There was [in it] nothing definitive, or

regular: moral order was enforced by means of legal disorder. The

arbitrary principle appeared at every turn; long circumlocutions

[were used] to avoid the letter of the laws without directly

violating them; the pastors [were] half-recognised, half-proscribed,

being neither public nor private persons; the civil condition of

so large a number of French people [was] delivered up to uncertain

chances; justice [was] wavering and contradictory; royalty

soliloquized that it must do something, and did nothing; the

subordinate agents of Church and State turned this precarious and

disordered establishment to their profit by infamous bargains—a

position which it is to be hoped, for the honour of France, will

never be witnessed again.

The political and philosophical writers of the eighteenth century

contributed largely to the triumph of toleration; but, it must be

avowed, they were influenced neither by zeal nor sympathy for the

fate of the French Protestants. Although they were so prompt in

raising bold and delicate questions, they did not attack the cruel

ordinances of Louis XIV., and never seemed to have heard of the

lengthened sorrows of more than a million of their fellow-citizens.

Montesquieu, who has something to say on every subject in his

_Lettres Persanes_, does not mention the oppressed Huguenots. In his

_Spirit of the Laws_, he seems to be rather adverse than favourable

to them; for he accuses the Calvinists of inclining to republican

institutions; and when he would recommend toleration, he pleads

through the lips of a Lisbon Jewess. He says, in another place: “This

is the fundamental principle of political laws in the matter of

religion. When it is optional in a state to receive a new religion,

or not to receive it, it ought not to be established; but when it is

established, it ought to be tolerated.”[132]

This left the question as regards the Reformed of France, entirely

undecided; for the laws precisely denied that they had yet been

established in the kingdom.

Helvetius, Diderot, and D’Alembert vouchsafed them not a word of

benevolence. Rousseau, the child of the town of Geneva, displayed

much greater desire to attack (Roman) Catholicism than to defend

Protestantism, and his correspondence shows that when he was invited

by some of his friends to write in favour of the victims of the laws

of Louis XIV., he refused. He thought it enough to sketch in a few

lines the argument of a plea, which he never resumed; and in his

_Social Contract_ he supported the principles of a state religion.

Voltaire did the Protestants a service in the affair of Calas, and

by his treatise on toleration; but further than this, he never made

himself exactly acquainted with the sufferings of this greatly

oppressed people, or showed any care to advocate a remedy for them.

In his book upon the _Siècle de Louis XIV._, he speaks of Calvinism

in a slighting tone, and dwells upon petty curious details, rather

than upon useful matters. In his _Précis du Siècle de Louis XIV._,

he explains at great length the quarrels with regard to the bull

_Unigenitus_, the refusal of the sacraments, and the expulsion of the

Jesuits; but says not a word about the Protestants.

There are many causes that will explain this indifference. The

Huguenots, as we believe we have remarked before, have borne the

penalty, not of the evil they had done, but of that which had been

inflicted upon them. After being violently cut off from the rest of

the French nation, they were treated as strangers, whose misfortunes

deserved no sympathy; and their isolation enabled their adversaries

to assail them, from generation to generation, with calumnies which

have found a ready credence in the minds of even cultivated men.

Let this be added, that the writers of the philosophic school

regarded the Calvinistic doctrines with no affection. They

entertained a repugnance for the austere principles and rigid

discipline maintained by the Reformed churches. (Roman) Catholicism

and Protestantism were for them nothing more than two forms of the

same superstitions. There is a saying of Voltaire that denotes

exactly what he thought thereon. When a Protestant was presented

to him, who had been released from the hulks of Toulon through his

intercession with the Duke de Choiseul, he said to him: “What would

they have done with you? How could they find it in their conscience

to chain and place a man at the oar, who had committed no crime, but

that of praying to God in bad French!”

It may be conceived that the pastors of the desert were not very

anxious to have recourse to the assistance of the philosophers; they

feared the influence such auxiliaries might exercise upon their

flocks, and perhaps over themselves. The pastor Pierre Encontre wrote

to Paul Rabaut upon the subject of the treatise on toleration: “As

for myself, who have read it very hastily, I have found in it much

good, but sadly mixed with poison!” And the veteran defender of the

Protestant faith observed in his turn: “Penetrated with grief at the

sight of the ravages made by the books of the infidels, I can only

moderate it by the thought that so dire a situation cannot endure.”

(1769.)

But if the philosophers could consign the condition of the

Protestants to oblivion, they compelled the attention of the legists,

the parliament men and statesmen. The fiction of the new converts

had become untenable. Not a single honest magistrate persisted in

believing, according to the letter of the law, that there were none

but (Roman) Catholics in France; and the expectation of bringing the

children to (Roman) Catholicism by the constraint exercised upon the

parents, had been too completely deceived for any to appeal to this

course again.

As the century advanced, the baptisms and marriages of the desert

multiplied. Whether the priests were exacting or not in their proofs,

this question, so grave in the first fifty years of the Revocation

of the Edict of Nantes, had lost all its importance. The Protestants

rejected at any price the intrusion of the (Roman) Catholic clergy

into their religious duties.

What course then was to be taken? Births, marriages, burials, were

all without rule, and without guarantee, for a considerable part

of the nation, whilst a shocking contradiction of jurisprudence

prevailed in these matters. One Parliament accepted the pastor’s

certificate, and treated the marriages contracted in the desert as

valid; another Parliament nullified them; and shameless collateral

relations disgraced the tribunals by claiming a succession to

possessions, to which, according to eternal justice, that spoke with

a louder voice than iniquitous ordinances, they had no right. The

confusion was intolerable.

Yet an issue must be found. It is true that the problem was more

difficult than might be thought or even imagined in our days. Only

complete and absolute principles can resolve questions with trenchant

conciseness. Full religious liberty, and perfect equality of sects,

would have cleared away every difficulty: but no politician before

1789, would have dared to make the proposition. The efforts of the

times, then, were exhausted in devising middle measures and laborious

compromises, which, without granting to the Protestants rights

common to their fellow-citizens, should restore to them their civil

condition.

The magistracy, the hierarchy of the Romish church, the superior

public administrative authority, and royalty itself interposed, each

distinctly and apart in this matter, until the promulgation of the

Edict of 1787.

XVI.

The magistrates, as we have elsewhere seen, took a different view

of the measure relating to the new converts, and also of the nature

of the proofs, to which they were submitted. This misunderstanding

increased with the growing struggle between the judicial and the

sacerdotal orders upon other subjects. When the Parliaments commanded

the burning of the bishops’ mandates, directed their temporalities to

be seized, and decreed the imprisonment of curates, who molested the

(Roman) Catholics by their fanatical exactions, it is clear that they

would be less severe towards the Protestants, who defended the sacred

rights of their domestic hearth.

It has been thought that the disputes between the Parliament and

the clergy had produced a contrary effect, because the magistrates

desired to establish, by the rigour of their sentences against the

Protestants, the sincerity of their (Roman) Catholic faith, which

had been compromised by their contests with the priests. This view

is correct, if confined to certain limits, and a certain period. The

general fact, however, is different. The magistracy, in their war

with the clergy, were constrained to reflect upon the boundaries

of ecclesiastical power, to define them, to circumscribe them in a

manner constantly more precise, and from that time to fix them also

in regard to dissentient creeds. Tactics sometimes prevailed over the

idea of right; but right ended in obtaining the mastery.

The procurator-general, Joly de Fleury, addressed a memorial to the

Council in 1752, in which he constituted himself the organ of the

Parliamentary spirit, all the while that he was subordinating his

thoughts to the fiction of the ordinances. “Let the priest,” said

this illustrious magistrate, “be simply an officer of the civil

state for the registration of baptisms and marriages; let him add no

injurious qualifications to the information furnished to him; let

him in respect of the nuptial benediction be content with a simple

exhortation, without exacting any verbal or written abjuration, or

any act specially applying to the religionists. All Frenchmen are

Catholics according to law; all should be treated as such, and in the

same manner.”

In 1755, another procurator-general, whom we have already named,

Rippert de Monclar, went farther. Shaking off the legal fiction,

he confessed that there still were Protestants in the realm, and

shuddered at the idea that a hundred and fifty thousand greedy

collaterals might claim the inheritance of these families, whose

marriages had been blessed in the desert. He proposed, as a remedy,

the publication of bans by a tribunal of justice, and the celebration

of marriages before a magistrate, “according to the practice in

Holland,” says he, “with regard to Catholics.” This was tantamount

to asking for a separation of the civil and the spiritual authority

in respect of the Protestants. Rippert de Monclar could not foresee

that, thirty-five years subsequently, the measure would be applied to

all citizens without distinction of creed.

In 1766, the advocate-general, Servan, maintained before the

Parliament of Grenoble the rights of a wife, whose husband sought to

desert her and his children, under the pretext that the marriage of

the desert was null and void. “This cause,” said the eloquent lawyer,

“does not strike us much at the first view. We see only a weeping

woman, who interests us, without doubt; but in her cause are involved

a host of other interests; her cause is that of all the other persons

of her sect.... Every Protestant is aware of the misfortunes, which

this female has suffered for her religion, and awaits a decision with

anxiety that will perhaps influence his own destiny as well as hers.

Scarcely will a decree be uttered, before it will be re-echoed among

the rocks of Cevennes, and repeated from mouth to mouth, becoming a

canticle of peace or an order of proscription.” The Parliament of

Grenoble only granted damages and interest, the sole remedy that a

deserted woman could claim; but the principle had made one further

step in advance.

In the same year, Gilbert de Voisins, formerly advocate-general, and

a councillor of state, drew up, at the request of Louis XV., certain

memorials upon the means of restoring a civil condition to the

Protestants of France. He proposed, among other things, to give some

of the ministry revocable safe-conducts, and to authorize them to

perform private services. The baptisms and marriages of the Reformed

would thus have obtained the double sanction of a civil contract and

a religious benediction, without in any way affecting the uniformity

of public worship in the kingdom.

The magistracy after this never quitted the course they had adopted;

and although they continued to devise strange or impracticable

arrangements, in order to reconcile the civil state of the

Protestants with the maintenance of external religious unity, they

advanced year by year in their memorials for the legal reversal of

the [laws against the] oppressed.

What line did the clergy pursue in the face of the progress of

toleration? Some of their members (it is apparent that throughout

the whole course of this history, we have joyfully adduced whatever

was favourable to them), fell in with public opinion; and we do

not speak merely of the philosophical bishops and abbés, who

affected to be tolerant through _bon ton_ or indifference, for the

worthy head of the diocese which counted the greatest number of

Reformed, M. de Becdelièvre, during forty-five years exhibited a

praiseworthy moderation, and merited the eulogy bestowed upon him by

Rabaut Saint Etienne, at his death. The abbé and doctor of theology

Bourlet-Vauxelles, says in his panegyric of Saint Louis, which he

pronounced before the French Academy in 1762: “The god of peace does

not permit us to massacre those, who do not know Him.” The abbé Audra

used his influence with the Parliament of Toulouse to legitimize a

Protestant marriage. The curate Bastide opened his own house to the

pastor Paul Vincent, whom soldiers were pursuing. Lastly, the bishop

of Langres, M. De la Luzerne, spoke in favour of the Protestants in

the assembly of Notables in 1787. “I prefer places of worship to

open-air preachings,” said he, “and ministers to preachers.”

We collect all the evidence of toleration that it is possible to

find in the acts of the (Roman) Catholic clergy, and doubtless many

similar facts have escaped our researches. But we must add that the

majority of the sacerdotal body obstinately resisted the generous

views of the court, the Parliaments, and the country.

The clergy administered to Louis XVI., at his coronation, the ancient

oath for the extermination of the heretics denounced by the Church,

and M. Loménie de Brienne, archbishop of Toulouse, said to the

monarch, “Sire, you will reprobate the counsels of a hollow peace,

and the systems of a criminal toleration. We conjure you, sire, do

not delay to dispel the hope, which error has conceived of having

places of worship and altars among us.... It is reserved for you to

strike the final blow against Calvinism in your dominions. Command

the dissipation of the schismatic assemblies of the Protestants;

exclude sectarians without distinction from all offices of the public

administration, and you will insure among your subjects the unity of

the true Christian religion.”

In 1780, the General Assembly of the clergy presented a long

memorial to the king upon _the enterprises of the Protestants_. They

complained that heresy lacerated the bosom of the Church, _that

tender and afflicted mother_; and demanded that recourse should be

had to the _salutary means and repressive measures of the good days

of Louis XIV._ “Formerly,” said the priests, “the religionists were

rigorously excluded from offices, public employments, and municipal

places; now infractions of all kinds increase. Formerly they held

no religious meetings; now the holding of assemblies is notorious.

Formerly they were not allowed to dogmatize in public; now every

day witnesses some fresh irreverence against our ceremonies and our

mysteries.... We have felt it to be our duty to deposit these alarms

in the paternal and religious breast of your majesty. The source

of the evil can never be seriously attacked, unless the foreign

preachers be for ever banished, and unless measures be taken to

prevent the natives from assuming for the future these functions of

pretended pastors.”

Thus they required the exclusion of the Protestants from all

public charges, the banishment of the pastors, the dispersion of

the assemblies; that is to say, the execution of the most odious

ordinances of Louis XIV.; and after having preferred these requests,

the prelates added: “The erring will ever be our fellow-citizens, our

brothers, and even our children in the order of religion. Ever shall

we love and cherish them. Far from us be the thought of the axe and

the sword!”

It is difficult to comprehend how the conclusion of this

memorial agreed with the premises, since it was absolutely

impossible—impossible as proved by the experience of more than a

century—to prevent fifteen hundred thousand of the French people from

exercising their worship, unless they were all to be drowned in their

own blood. But we will not let a word of bitterness escape us here.

We will, on the contrary, express our commiseration and our sympathy

for these bishops and these priests. Alas! how many of them were

destined to perish in the storms of the Revolution. Their misfortunes

excite our pity!

An ex-Jesuit, Father Lenfant, in 1787 published “_A Discourse for the

perusal of the Council upon the project of granting a civil condition

to the Protestants_.” His language was much less guarded than that of

the episcopacy, and before reading this tract, we could never have

imagined that even the blindest of fanatics could have heaped up in

a few pages so many infamous libels. The Reformed became, under the

pen of this ex-Jesuit, impious wretches, rebels, monsters, enemies

of all laws, human and divine. We may deplore also the lot of this

miserable madman; he was murdered in the prison of the Abbaye, on the

3rd of September, 1792, and it was not a Protestant hand that wielded

the homicidal axe.

This opposition of the clergy did not arrest [the purposes of]

the magistracy; nor was it a barrier for the statesman, who, less

influenced by legal traditions than the members of the Parliaments,

and more struck with the damage, which the ordinances of Louis XIV.

had inflicted upon public interest, therefore went still further than

the others in their propositions in favour of the Reformed.

From the year 1754, Turgot, who in many points was in advance of the

times in which he lived, demanded the separation of the spiritual

and civil powers for all creeds. He put these words into the king’s

mouth: “Although you be in error, I will not the less treat you as my

children. Show yourselves obedient to the laws, continue to be useful

to the state, and you shall receive from me the same protection as my

other subjects. My mission is to render you all happy.” Then, asking

himself the question whether the assemblies of the dissenting creeds

would not be dangerous, he answered it by saying: Yes, so long as

they are interdicted; not, when they shall be authorized.

The Baron de Breteuil, a minister of the king’s household, gave

instructions to Rulhières to draw up “_The Historical Evidences

concerning the cause of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes_,”

which have helped us so often in our researches; and in 1786 he

presented, under his own name, a memorial to Louis XVI., upon the

necessity of restoring their civil condition to the Protestants.

Nevertheless, royalty was loth to take a definitive step. Louis

XV., indifferent to everything that did not concern his debasing

pleasures, had constantly adjourned the serious examination of this

subject. Louis XVI. was animated with generous intentions, but

his intellect was narrow, his conscience easily alarmed by petty

scruples of devotion, his will feeble, and he was greatly governed

by a childish superstitious fear at the bare idea of touching the

laws of his predecessors. Louis XIV. had contemptuously cast aside

“_the perpetual and irrevocable_” edict of Henry IV., and Louis XVI.

trembled to correct in the slightest degree that monstrous iniquity

of Louis XIV.

Rulhières and the Baron de Breteuil were compelled to invent subtle

distinctions to prove that Louis XIV. did not intend to deprive the

Protestants of their civil rights; and that they might better quiet

the conscience of the new king, they represented toleration as the

best means of converting the heretics. They said, “We do not abandon

the hope of reuniting the French Calvinists to the Church; we would

rather aim at it by a more secure way; we would return to the true

course, which has been too long neglected and disregarded.”

While Louis XVI. hesitated, public opinion assumed a higher tone. The

close relations of France with North America contributed to spread

ideas of civil and religious liberty. General Lafayette, on his

return from the War of Independence, went to Nismes and visited Paul

Rabaut, embraced the old man cordially, and invited his son Rabaut

Saint Etienne to follow him to Paris and plead the cause of his

brethren.

The upright Malesherbes gave the Reformed the assistance of his

knowledge and his virtue. He composed, in 1785 and 1786, two memoirs

upon the marriage of Protestants, and annexed to them a _projet de

loi_ upon the subject. “It is but right,” said he, “that I should do

the Protestants some good service, since my father did them so much

injury!” Lamoignon de Malesherbes was a descendant of the ferocious

Lamoignon de Bâville.

All these feelings broke out in the assembly of the Notables held in

1787. In the records of the proceedings of that meeting, we read,

“The Marquis de la Fayette proposed to petition his majesty to

grant the same civil condition to the Protestants as to the (Roman)

Catholics, and to order the reformation of the criminal laws. He

asked permission to read a proposition on this subject. This having

been read, the Count d’Artois observed that the object being wholly

foreign to those which had been submitted to the assembly, it would

be going beyond the powers of the Notables to take cognizance of

it; that he would, however, willingly undertake to mention it to

the king, if the meeting desired it. Consequently, he asked for the

opinions of the members, and they were unanimous for adopting the

motion of the Marquis de la Fayette.” A suitable address was drawn

up, appealing to the king’s goodness on behalf of “this numerous

portion of his subjects, who groaned under a _régime_ of proscription

that was alike injurious to the general interests of religion, to

morality, to the whole population of the country, to the national

industry, and to every principle of politics and morals.”

The Edict of Toleration was signed, at length, in the month of

November, 1787, a hundred and two years after the Revocation, not

in the form that would have been required by the principle of

well-understood religious freedom, but restricted within the limits

of the opinions of Louis XVI. and his most influential advisers.

The name of Protestant does not occur in it; the law only spoke of

non-Catholics. The preamble even announced that the king “would

always countenance and favour with all his power, the means of

instruction and persuasion, which should tend to bind all his

subjects by a common profession of the ancient faith of the kingdom.”

The 1st article states that “The Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman

religion _alone_ shall continue to enjoy the right of public worship

in our realm.”

The new edict granted these four things only to the non-Catholics.

The right of living in France, and of exercising a profession or a

trade in the kingdom, without being disturbed on account of religion;

the permission to marry legally before the officers of justice; the

authority to record the births of their children before the local

judge; and a regulation for the interment of those, who could not be

buried according to the Roman Catholic ritual.

But these concessions, which were strict and narrow enough according

to the letter of the law, necessarily involved much more in the

practice. The legal existence of the Protestants was recognised. How

could they be prohibited thenceforth from having pastors, at least to

bless their marriages, to baptize their children, and to console the

faithful on their death-bed? How could they he forbidden to assemble

for the service of their worship, since they had done this under the

severest tyranny? Finally, who was to distinguish between the private

worship authorized by the edict, and the public worship, which

it still persisted in interdicting? Moreover, there was no penal

sanction whatever against the delinquents.

If this incomplete law gave but little, it allowed of everything

being taken. The Protestants were not deceived in this. “The Edict

of 1787,” says the younger Rabaut, “spread joy and consolation

throughout the families of the Reformed, and their religious

assemblies resounded with thanksgivings to God, and blessings on

the king and his ministers. The execution of this beneficent edict

followed close upon its promulgation, and the Reformed were soon

seen hastening in crowds to the royal judges for the registration of

their marriages and the births of their children.... Old men might be

seen registering, together with their own marriages, those of their

children and their grandchildren.”[133]

The edict raised some difficulties in the Parliament of Paris. The

impetuous D’Espremenil was one of its opponents. M. de Lacretelle

says that he had been initiated into the sect of the _Martinists_ or

_Illuminati_, and that he imagined he heard the voice of the Virgin

Mary, who commanded him to speak against the Protestants. In fact,

D’Espremenil exclaimed, as he displayed to his colleagues an image

of Christ, “Will you crucify the Saviour again?” This oratorical

incident was out of season, and after addressing some representations

to Louis XVI., the Parliament registered the Edict of Toleration.

All the churches laboured from this moment to reconstitute themselves

upon the bases of the ancient discipline: and we may convince

ourselves that Protestantism had preserved a strong hold in the

north as well as in the south, and that the blasts of the storm,

however they might have bent it to the earth, had neither broken, nor

uprooted it.

The last consideration that forces itself upon us, is not the least

important. The Reformed people of France had suffered more and

longer than any others in the world. From 1660 to 1787 they had been

deprived of all favours, excluded from all employments, fettered

in every liberal career, expelled from the corporations of arts

and trades, and violently driven back in agriculture and commerce.

At the Revocation, France lost its most illustrious men, the most

opulent, the most industrious, and the most energetic and active [of

its people]; the rest, overburdened with garrisoned soldiers, crushed

with taxes and fines, chased to the woods and mountains, without

schools, without legitimate family, without assured or certain

inheritance, without civil rights, had been treated like a race of

Pariahs; and yet, wonderful to behold! astonishing to relate! it was

found in 1787 that the Reformed people of France had lost nothing

either in intellectual and moral vigour, or in industrial power.

Far from sinking into degradation, like the Irish under a _régime_

incomparably less oppressive, it had not only maintained itself on

a level with the Roman Catholic population, but had, in the main,

attained a loftier step in the social scale, and possessed a more

extensive and a higher degree of intelligence and instruction. This

fact, which is beyond all serious doubt, offers one of the grandest

spectacles in the history of mankind.