CLAUDE BROUSSON, THE HUGUENOT ADVOCATE.
To give an account in detail of the varieties of cruelty inflicted on
the Huguenots, and of the agonies to which they were subjected for
many years before and after the passing of the Act of Revocation,
would occupy too much space, besides being tedious through the mere
repetition of like horrors. But in order to condense such an account,
we think it will be more interesting if we endeavour to give a brief
history of the state of France at that time, in connection with the
biography of one of the most celebrated Huguenots of his period, both
in his life, his piety, his trials, and his endurance--that of Claude
Brousson, the advocate, the pastor, and the martyr of Languedoc.
Claude Brousson was born at Nismes in 1647. He was designed by his
parents for the profession of the law, and prosecuted his studies at
the college of his native town, where he graduated as Doctor of Laws.
He commenced his professional career about the time when Louis XIV.
began to issue his oppressive edicts against the Huguenots. Protestant
advocates were not yet forbidden to practise, but they already
laboured under many disabilities. He continued, however, for some time
to exercise his profession, with much ability, at Castres,
Castelnaudry, and Toulouse. He was frequently employed in defending
Protestant pastors, and in contesting the measures for suppressing
their congregations and levelling their churches under existing
edicts, some time before the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes had
been finally resolved upon.
Thus, in 1682, he was engaged in disputing the process instituted
against the ministers and elders of the church at Nismes, with the
view of obtaining an order for the demolition of the remaining
Protestant temple of that city.[20] The pretext for suppressing this
church was, that a servant girl from the country, being a Catholic,
had attended worship and received the sacrament from the hands of M.
Peyrol, one of the ministers.
[Footnote 20: John Locke passed through Nismes about this
time. "The Protestants at Nismes," he said, "have now but one
temple, the other being pulled down by the King's order about
four years since. The Protestants had built themselves an
hospital for the sick, but that is taken from them; a chamber
in it is left for the sick, but never used, because the
priests trouble them when there. Notwithstanding these
discouragements [this was in 1676, _before_ the Revocation],
I do not find many go over; one of them told me, when I asked
them the question, that the Papists did nothing but by force
or by money."--KING'S _Life of Locke_, i. 100.]
Brousson defended the case, observing, at the conclusion of his
speech, that the number of Protestants was very great at Nismes; that
the ministers could not be personally acquainted with all the people,
and especially with occasional visitors and strangers; that the
ministers were quite unacquainted with the girl, or that she professed
the Roman Catholic religion: "facts which rendered it probable that
she was sent to the temple for the purpose of furnishing an occasion
for the prosecution." Sentence was for the present suspended.
Another process was instituted during the same year for the
suppression of the Protestant church at Uzes, and another for the
demolition of the large Protestant temple at Montpellier. The pretext
for destroying the latter was of a singular character.
A Protestant pastor, M. Paulet, had been bribed into embracing the
Roman Catholic religion, in reward for which he was appointed
counsellor to the Presidial Court of Montpellier. But his wife and one
of his daughters refused to apostatize with him. The daughter, though
only between ten and eleven years old, was sent to a convent at
Teirargues, where, after enduring considerable persecution, she
persisted in her steadfastness, and was released after a twelvemonth's
confinement. Five years later she was again seized and sent to another
convent; but, continuing immovable against the entreaties and threats
of the abbess and confessor, she was again set at liberty.
An apostate priest, however, who had many years before renounced the
Protestant faith, and become director and confessor of the nuns at
Teirargues, forged two documents; the one to show that while at the
convent, Mdlle. Paulet had consented to embrace the Catholic religion,
and the other containing her formal abjuration. It was alleged that
her abjuration had been signified to Isaac Dubourdieu, of Montpellier,
one of the most distinguished pastors of the French Church; but that,
nevertheless, he had admitted her to the sacrament. This, if true, was
contrary to law; upon which the Catholic clergy laid information
against the pastor and the young lady before the Parliament of
Toulouse, when they obtained sentence of imprisonment against the
former, and the penance of _amende honorable_ against the latter.
The demolition of temples was the usual consequence of convictions
like these. The Duc de Noailles, lieutenant-general of the province,
entered the city on the 16th of October, 1682, accompanied by a strong
military force; and at a sitting of the Assembly of the States which
shortly followed, the question of demolishing the Protestant temple at
Montpellier was brought under consideration. Four of the Protestant
pastors and several of the elders had before waited upon De Noailles
to claim a respite until they should have submitted their cause to the
King in Council.
The request having been refused, one of the deputation protested
against the illegality of the proceedings, and had the temerity to ask
his excellency whether he was aware that there were eighteen hundred
thousand Protestant families in France? Upon which the Duke, turning
to the officer of his guard, said, "Whilst we wait to see what will
become of these eighteen hundred thousand Protestant families, will
you please conduct these gentlemen to the citadel?"[21]
[Footnote 21: When released from prison, Gaultier escaped to
Berlin and became minister of a large Protestant congregation
there. Isaac Dubourdieu escaped to England, and was appointed
one of the ministers of the Savoy Church in London.]
The great temple of Montpellier was destroyed immediately on receipt
of the King's royal mandate. It required the destruction of the place
within twenty-four hours; "but you will give me pleasure," added the
King, in a letter to De Noailles, "if you accomplish it in two."
It was, perhaps, scarcely necessary, after the temple had been
destroyed, to make any effort to justify these high-handed
proceedings. But Mdlle. Paulet, on whose pretended conversion to
Catholicism the proceedings had been instituted, was now requested to
admit the authenticity of the documents. She was still imprisoned in
Toulouse; and although entreated and threatened by turns to admit
their truth, she steadfastly denied their genuineness, and asking for
a pen, she wrote under each of them, "I affirm that the above
signature was not written by my hand.--Isabeau de Paulet."
Of course the documents were forged; but they had answered their
purpose. The Protestant temple of Montpellier lay in ruins, and
Isabeau de Paulet was recommitted to prison. On hearing of this
incident, Brousson remarked, "This is what is called instituting a
process against persons _after_ they have been condemned"--a sort of
"Jedwood justice."
The repetition of these cases of persecution--the demolition of their
churches, and the suppression of their worship--led the Protestants of
the Cevennes, Viverais, and Dauphiny to combine for the purpose of
endeavouring to stem the torrent of injustice. With this object, a
meeting of twenty-eight deputies took place in the house of Brousson,
at Toulouse, in the month of May, 1683. As the Assembly of the States
were about to take steps to demolish the Protestant temple at
Montauban and other towns in the south, and as Brousson was the
well-known advocate of the persecuted, the deputies were able to meet
at his house to conduct their deliberations, without exciting the
jealousy of the priests and the vigilance of the police.
What the meeting of Protestant deputies recommended to their brethren
was embodied in a measure, which was afterwards known as "The
Project." The chief objects of the project were to exhort the
Protestant people to sincere conversion, and the exhibition of the
good life which such conversion implies; constant prayer to the Holy
Spirit to enable them to remain steadfast in their profession and in
the reading and meditation of the Scriptures; encouragements to them
to hold together as congregations for the purpose of united worship;
"submitting themselves unto the common instructions and to the yoke of
Christ, in all places wheresoever He shall have established the true
discipline, although the edicts of earthly magistrates be contrary
thereto."
At the same time, Brousson drew up a petition to the Sovereign, humbly
requesting him to grant permission to the Huguenots to worship God in
peace after their consciences, copies of which were sent to Louvois
and the other ministers of State. On this and other petitions,
Brousson observes, "Surely all the world and posterity will be
surprised, that so many respectful petitions, so many complaints of
injuries, and so many solid reasons urged for their removal, produced
no good result whatever in favour of the Protestants."
The members of the churches which had been interdicted, and whose
temples had been demolished, were accordingly invited to assemble in
private, in the neighbouring fields or woods--not in public places,
nor around the ruins of their ancient temples--for the purpose of
worshipping God, exciting each other to piety by prayer and singing,
receiving instruction, and celebrating the Lord's Supper.
Various meetings were accordingly held, in the following month of
July, in the Cevennes and Viverais. At St. Hypolite, where the temple
of the Protestants had been destroyed, about four thousand persons met
in a field near the town, when the minister preached to them from the
text--"Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God
the things which are God's." The meeting was conducted with the utmost
solemnity; and a Catholic priest who was present, on giving
information to the Bishop of Nismes of the transaction, admitted that
the preacher had advanced nothing but what the bishop himself might
have spoken.
The dragoons were at once sent to St. Hypolite to put an end to these
meetings, and to "convert" the Protestants. The town was almost wholly
Protestant. The troops were quartered in numbers in every house; and
the people soon became "new converts."
The losses sustained by the inhabitants of the Cevennes from this
forced quartering of the troops upon them--and Anduze, Sauve, St.
Germain, Vigan, and Ganges were as full of them as St. Hypolite--may
be inferred from the items charged upon the inhabitants of St.
Hypolite alone[22]:--
To the regiment of Montpezat, for a billet for
sixty-five days 50,000 livres.
To the three companies of Red Dragoons,
for ninety-five days 30,000 "
To three companies of Villeneuve's Dragoons,
for thirty days 6,000 "
To three companies of the Blue Dragoons of
Languedoc, for three months and nine days 37,000 "
To a company of Cravates (troopers) for
fourteen days 1,400 "
To the transport of three hundred and nine
companies of cavalry and infantry 10,000 "
To provisions for the troops 60,000 "
To damage sustained by the destruction done
by the soldiers, of furniture, and losses
by the seizure of property, &c. 50,000 "
----------
Total 244,400
[Footnote 22: Claude Brousson, "Apologie du Projet des
Reformes."]
Meetings of the persecuted were also held, under the terms of "The
Project," in Viverais and Dauphiny. These meetings having been
repeated for several weeks, the priests of the respective districts
called upon their bishops for help to put down this heretical display.
The Bishop of Valence (Daniel de Cosmac) accordingly informed them
that he had taken the necessary steps, and that he had been apprised
that twenty thousand soldiers were now on their march to the South to
put down the Protestant movement.
On their arrival, the troops were scattered over the country, to watch
and suppress any meetings that might be held. The first took place on
the 8th of August, at Chateaudouble, a manufacturing village in Drome.
The assembly was surprised by a troop of dragoons; but most of the
congregation contrived to escape. Those who were taken were hung upon
the nearest trees.
Another meeting was held about a fortnight later at Bezaudun, which
was attended by many persons from Bourdeaux, a village about half a
league distant. While the meeting was at prayer, intelligence was
brought that the dragoons had entered Bourdeaux, and that it was a
scene of general pillage. The Bourdeaux villagers at once set out for
the protection of their families. The troopers met them, and suddenly
fell upon them. A few of the villagers were armed, but the principal
part defended themselves with stones. Of course they were overpowered;
many were killed by the sword, and those taken prisoners were
immediately hanged.
A few, who took to flight, sheltered themselves in a barn, where the
soldiers found them, set fire to the place, and murdered them as they
endeavoured to escape from the flames. One young man was taken
prisoner, David Chamier,[23] son of an advocate, and related to some
of the most eminent Protestants in France. He was taken to the
neighbouring town of Montelimar, and, after a summary trial, he was
condemned to be broken to death upon the wheel. The sentence was
executed before his father's door; but the young man bore his
frightful tortures with astonishing courage.
[Footnote 23: The grandfather of this Chamier drew up for
Henry IV. the celebrated Edict of Nantes. The greater number
of the Chamiers left France. Several were ministers in London
and Maryland, U.S. Captain Chamier is descended from the
family.]
The contumacious attitude of the Protestants after so many reports had
reached Louis XIV. of their entire "conversion," induced him to take
more active measures for their suppression. He appointed Marshal
Saint-Ruth commander of the district--a man who was a stranger to
mercy, who breathed only carnage, and who, because of his ferocity,
was known as "The Scourge of the Heretics."
Daniel de Cosmac, Bishop of Valence, had now the help of Saint-Ruth
and his twenty thousand troops. The instructions Saint-Ruth received
from Louvois were these: "Amnesty has no longer any place for the
Viverais, who continue in rebellion after having been informed of the
King's gracious designs. In one word, you are to cause such a
desolation in that country that its example may restrain all other
Huguenots, and may teach them how dangerous it is to rebel against the
King."
This was a work quite congenial to Saint-Ruth[24]--rushing about the
country, scourging, slaughtering, laying waste, and suppressing the
assemblies--his soldiers rushing upon their victims with cries of
"Death or the Mass!"
[Footnote 24: Saint-Ruth was afterwards, in 1691, sent to
Ireland to take the command of the army fighting for James
II. against William III. There, Saint-Ruth had soldiers, many
of them Huguenots banished from France, to contend with; and
he was accordingly somewhat less successful than in Viverais,
where his opponents were mostly peasants and workmen, armed
(where armed at all) with stones picked from the roads.
Saint-Ruth and his garrison were driven from Athlone, where a
Huguenot soldier was the first to mount the breach. The army
of William III., though eight thousand fewer in number,
followed Saint-Ruth and his Irish army to the field of
Aughrim. His host was there drawn up in an almost impregnable
position--along the heights of Kilcommeden, with the Castle
of Aughrim on his left wing, a deep bog on his right, and
another bog of about two miles extending along the front, and
apparently completely protecting the Irish encampment.
Nevertheless, the English and Huguenot army under Ginckle,
bravely attacked it, forced the pass to the camp, and routed
the army of Saint-Ruth, who himself was killed by a
cannon-ball. The principal share of this victory was
attributed to the gallant conduct of the three regiments of
Huguenot horse, under the command of the Marquess de Ruvigny
(himself a banished Huguenot nobleman) who, in consequence of
his services, was raised to the Irish peerage, under the
title of Earl of Galway.]
Tracking the Protestants in this way was like "a hunt in a great
enclosure." When the soldiers found a meeting of the people going on,
they shot them down at once, though unarmed. If they were unable to
fly, they met death upon their knees. Antoine Court recounts meetings
in which as many as between three and four hundred persons, old men,
women, and children, were shot dead on the spot.
De Cosmac, the bishop, was very active in the midst of these
massacres. When he went out to convert the people, he first began by
sending out Saint-Ruth with the dragoons. Afterwards he himself
followed to give instructions for their "conversion," partly through
favours, partly by money. "My efforts," he himself admitted, "were not
always without success; yet I must avow that the fear of the dragoons,
and of their being quartered in the houses of the heretics,
contributed much more to their conversion than anything that I did."
The same course was followed throughout the Cevennes. It would be a
simple record of cruelty to describe in detail the military
proceedings there: the dispersion of meetings; the hanging of persons
found attending them; the breaking upon the wheel of the pastors
captured, amidst horrible tortures; the destruction of dwellings and
of the household goods which they contained. But let us take the
single instance of Homel, formerly pastor of the church at Soyon.
Homel was taken prisoner, and found guilty of preaching to his flock
after his temple had been destroyed. For this offence he was sentenced
to be broken to death upon the wheel. To receive this punishment he
was conducted to Tournon, in Viverais, where the Jesuits had a
college. He first received forty blows of the iron bar, after which he
was left to languish with his bones broken, for forty hours, until he
died. During his torments, he said: "I count myself happy that I can
die in my Master's service. What! did my glorious Redeemer descend
from heaven and suffer an ignominious death for my salvation, and
shall I, to prolong a miserable life, deny my blessed Saviour and
abandon his people?" While his bones were being broken on the wheel,
he said to his wife: "Farewell, once more, my beloved spouse! Though
you witness my bones broken to shivers, yet is my soul filled with
inexpressible joy." After life was finally extinct, his heart was
taken to Chalencon to be publicly exhibited, and his body was exposed
in like manner at Beauchatel.
De Noailles, the governor, when referring in one of his dispatches to
the heroism displayed by the tortured prisoners, said: "These wretches
go to the wheel with the firm assurance of dying martyrs, and ask no
other favour than that of dying quickly. They request pardon of the
soldiers, but there is not one of them that will ask pardon of the
King."
To return to Claude Brousson. After his eloquent defence of the
Huguenots of Montauban--the result of which, of course, was that the
church was ordered to be demolished--and the institution of processes
for the demolition of fourteen more Protestant temples, Brousson at
last became aware that the fury of the Catholics and the King was not
to be satisfied until they had utterly crushed the religion which he
served.
Brousson was repeatedly offered the office of counsellor of
Parliament, equivalent to the office of judge, if he would prove an
apostate; but the conscience of Brousson was not one that could be
bought. He also found that his office of defender of the doomed
Huguenots could not be maintained without personal danger, whilst (as
events proved) his defence was of no avail to them; and he resolved,
with much regret, to give up his profession for a time, and retire for
safety and rest to his native town of Nismes.
He resided there, however, only about four months. Saint-Ruth and De
Noailles were now overawing Upper Languedoc with their troops. The
Protestants of Nismes had taken no part in "The Project;" their
remaining temple was still open. But they got up a respectful petition
to the King, imploring his consideration of their case. Roman
Catholics and Protestants, they said, had so many interests in common,
that the ruin of the one must have the effect of ruining the
other,--the flourishing manufactures of the province, which were
mostly followed by the Protestants, being now rapidly proceeding to
ruin. They, therefore, implored his Majesty to grant them permission
to prosecute their employments unmolested on account of their
religious profession; and lastly, they conjured the King, by his
piety, by his paternal clemency, and by every law of equity, to grant
them freedom of religious worship.
It was of no use. The hearts of the King, his clergy, and his
ministers, were all hardened against them. A copy of the above
petition was presented by two ministers of Nismes and several
influential gentlemen of Lower Languedoc to the Duke de Noailles, the
governor of the province. He treated the deputation with contempt, and
their petition with scorn. Writing to Louvois, the King's prime
minister, De Noailles said: "Astonished at the effrontery of these
wretched persons, I did not hesitate to send them all prisoners to the
Citadel of St. Esprit (in the Cevennes), telling them that if there
had been _petites maisons_[25] enough in Languedoc I should not have
sent them there."
[Footnote 25: The prisons of Languedoc were already crowded
with Protestants, and hundreds had been sent to the galleys
at Marseilles.]
Nismes was now placed under the same ban as Vivarais, and denounced as
"insurrectionary." To quell the pretended revolt, as well as to
capture certain persons who were supposed to have been accessory to
the framing of the petition, a detachment of four hundred dragoons was
ordered into the place. One of those to be apprehended was Claude
Brousson. Hundreds of persons knew of his abode in the city, but
notwithstanding the public proclamation (which he himself heard from
the window of the house where he was staying), and the reward offered
for his apprehension, no one attempted to betray him.
After remaining in the city for three days, he adopted a disguised
dress, passed out of the Crown Gate, and in the course of a few days
found a safe retreat in Switzerland.
Peyrol and Icard, two of the Protestant ministers whom the dragoons
were ordered to apprehend, also escaped into Switzerland, Peyrol
settling at Lausanne, and Icard becoming the minister of a Huguenot
church in Holland. But although the ministers had escaped, all the
property they had left behind them was confiscated to the Crown.
Hideous effigies of them were prepared and hung on gibbets in the
market-place of Nismes by the public executioner, the magistrates and
dragoons attending the sham proceeding with the usual ceremony.
At Lausanne, where Claude Brousson settled for a time, he first
attempted to occupy himself as a lawyer; but this he shortly gave up
to devote himself to the help of the persecuted Huguenots. Like Jurieu
and others in Holland, who flooded Europe with accounts of the hideous
cruelties of Louis XIV. and his myrmidons the clergy and dragoons, he
composed and published a work, addressed to the Roman Catholic party
as well as to the Protestants of all countries, entitled, "The State
of the Reformed Church of France." He afterwards composed a series of
letters specially addressed to the Roman Catholic clergy of France.
But expostulation was of no use. With each succeeding year the
persecution became more bitter, until at length, in 1685, the Edict
was revoked. In September of that year Brousson learnt that the
Protestant church of his native city had been suppressed, and their
temple given over to a society of female converters; that the wives
and daughters of the Protestants who refused to abjure their faith had
been seized and imprisoned in nunneries and religious seminaries; and
that three hundred of their husbands and fathers were chained together
and sent off in one day for confinement in the galleys at Marseilles.
The number of Huguenots resorting to Switzerland being so great,[26]
and they often came so destitute, that a committee was formed at
Lausanne to assist the emigrants, and facilitate their settlement in
the canton, or enable them to proceed elsewhere. Brousson was from the
first an energetic member of this committee. Part of their work was to
visit the Protestant states of the north, and find out places to which
the emigrants might be forwarded, as well as to collect subscriptions
for their conveyance.
[Footnote 26: Within about three weeks no fewer than
seventeen thousand five hundred French emigrants passed into
Lausanne. Two hundred Protestant ministers fled to
Switzerland, the greater number of whom settled in Lausanne,
until they could journey elsewhere.]
In November 1685, a month after the Revocation, Brousson and La Porte
set out for Berlin with this object. La Porte was one of the ministers
of the Cevennes, who had fled before a sentence of death pronounced
against him for having been concerned in "The Project." At Berlin they
were received very cordially by the Elector of Brandenburg, who had
already given great assistance to the Huguenot emigrants, and
expressed himself as willing to do all that he could for their
protection. Brousson and La Porte here met the Rev. David Ancillon,
who had been for thirty-three years pastor at Metz,[27] and was now
pastor of the Elector at Berlin; Gaultier, banished from Montpellier;
and Abbadie, banished from Saumur--all ministers of the Huguenot
Church there; with a large number of banished ministers and emigrant
Protestants from all the provinces of France.
[Footnote 27: Ancillon was an eminently learned man. His
library was one of the choicest that had ever been collected,
and on his expulsion from Metz it was pillaged by the
Jesuits. Metz, now part of German Lorraine, was probably not
so ferociously dragooned as other places. Yet the inhabitants
were under the apprehension that the massacre of St.
Bartholomew was about to be repeated upon them on Christmas
Day, 1685, the soldiers of the garrison having been kept
under arms all night. The Protestant churches were all pulled
down, the ministers were expelled, and many of their people
followed them into Germany. There were numerous Protestant
soldiers in the Metz garrison, and the order of the King was
that, like the rest of his subjects, they should become
converted. Many of the officers resigned and entered the
service of William of Orange, and many of the soldiers
deserted. The bribe offered for the conversion of privates
was as follows: Common soldiers and dragoons, two pistoles
per head; troopers, three pistoles per head. The Protestants
of Alsace were differently treated. They constituted a
majority of the population; Alsace and Strasbourg having only
recently been seized by Louis XIV. It was therefore necessary
to be cautious in that quarter; for violence would speedily
have raised a revolution in the province which would have
driven them over to Germany, whose language they spoke.
Louvois could therefore only proceed by bribing; and he was
successful in buying over some of the most popular and
influential men.]
The Elector suggested to Brousson that while at Berlin he should
compose a summary account of the condition of the French Protestants,
such as should excite the interest and evoke the help of the
Protestant rulers and people of the northern States. This was done by
Brousson, and the volume was published, entitled "Letters of the
Protestants of France who have abandoned all for the cause of the
Gospel, to other Protestants; with a particular Letter addressed to
Protestant Kings, Electors, Rulers, and Magistrates." The Elector
circulated this volume, accompanying it with a letter written in his
name, to all the princes of the Continent professing the Augsburg
Confession; and it was thus mainly owing to the Elector's intercession
that the Huguenots obtained the privilege of establishing
congregations in several of the states of Germany, as well as in
Sweden and Denmark.
Brousson remained nearly five months at Berlin, after which he
departed for Holland to note the progress of the emigration in that
country, and there he met a large number of his countrymen. Nearly two
hundred and fifty Huguenot ministers had taken refuge in Holland;
there were many merchants and manufacturers who had set up their
branches of industry in the country; and there were many soldiers who
had entered the service of William of Orange. While in Holland,
Brousson resided principally with his brother, a banished Huguenot,
who had settled at Amsterdam as a merchant.
Having accomplished all that he could for his Huguenot brethren in
exile, Brousson returned to Lausanne, where he continued his former
labours. He bethought him very much of the Protestants still remaining
in France, wandering like sheep without shepherds, deprived of
guidance, books, and worship--the prey of ravenous wolves,--and it
occurred to him whether the Protestant pastors had done right in
leaving their flocks, even though by so doing they had secured the
safety of their own lives. Accordingly, in 1686, he wrote and
published a "Letter to the Pastors of France at present in Protestant
States, concerning the Desolation of their own Churches, and their own
Exile."
In this letter he says:--"If, instead of retiring before your
persecutors, you had remained in the country; if you had taken refuge
in forests and caverns; if you had gone from place to place, risking
your lives to instruct and rally the people, until the first shock of
the enemy was past; and had you even courageously exposed yourselves
to martyrdom--as in fact those have done who have endeavoured to
perform your duties in your absence--perhaps the examples of
constancy, or zeal, or of piety you had discovered, might have
animated your flocks, revived their courage, and arrested the fury of
your enemies." He accordingly exhorted the Protestant ministers who
had left France to return to their flocks at all hazards.
This advice, if acted on, was virtually condemning the pastors to
death. Brousson was not a pastor. Would _he_ like to return to France
at the daily risk of the rack and the gibbet? The Protestant ministers
in exile defended themselves. Benoit, then residing in Germany,
replied in a "History and Apology for the Retreat of the Pastors."
Another, who did not give his name, treated Brousson's censure as that
of a fanatic, who meddled with matters beyond his vocation. "You who
condemn the pastors for not returning to France at the risk of their
lives," said he, "_why do you not first return to France yourself?_"
Brousson was as brave as his words. He was not a pastor, but he might
return to the deserted flocks, and encourage and comfort them. He
could no longer be happy in his exile at Lausanne. He heard by night
the groans of the prisoners in the Tower of Constance, and the noise
of the chains borne by the galley slaves at Toulon and Marseilles. He
reproached himself as if it were a crime with the repose which he
enjoyed. Life became insupportable to him and he fell ill. His health
was even despaired of; but one day he suddenly rose up and said to his
wife, "I must set out; I will go to console, to relieve, to strengthen
my brethren, groaning under their oppressions."
His wife threw herself at his feet. "Thou wouldst go to certain
death," she said; "think of me and thy little children." She implored
him again and again to remain. He loved his wife and children, but he
thought a higher duty called him away from them. When his friends told
him that he would be taken prisoner and hung, he said, "When God
permits his servants to die for the Gospel, they preach louder from
the grave than they did during life." He remained unshaken. He would
go to the help of the oppressed with the love of a brother, the faith
of an apostle, and the courage of a martyr.
Brousson knew the danger of the office he was about to undertake.
There had, as we have seen, been numerous attempts made to gather the
Protestant people together, and to administer consolation to them by
public prayers and preaching. The persons who conducted these services
were not regular pastors, but only private members of their former
churches. Some of them were very young men, and they were nearly all
uneducated as regards clerical instruction. One of the most successful
was Isaac Vidal, a lame young man, a mechanic of Colognac, near St.
Hypolite, in the Cevennes. His self-imposed ministrations were
attended by large numbers of people. He preached for only six months
and then died--a natural death, for nearly all who followed him were
first tortured and then hung.
We have already referred to Fulcran Rey, who preached for about nine
months, and was then executed. In the same year were executed
Meyrueis, by trade a wool-carder, and Rocher, who had been a reader in
one of the Protestant churches. Emanuel Dalgues, a respectable
inhabitant of Salle, in the Cevennes, also received the crown of
martyrdom. Ever since the Revocation of the Edict, he had proclaimed
the Gospel o'er hill and dale, in woods and caverns, to assemblies of
the people wherever he could collect them. He was executed in 1687.
Three other persons--Gransille, Mercier, and Esclopier--who devoted
themselves to preaching, were transported as slaves to America; and
David Mazel, a boy twelve years of age, who had a wonderful memory,
and preached sermons which he had learned by heart, was transported,
with his father and other frequenters of the assemblies, to the
Carribee Islands.
At length Brousson collected about him a number of Huguenots willing
to return with him into France, in order to collect the Protestant
people together again, to pray with them, and even to preach to them
if the opportunity occurred. Brousson's companions were these: Francis
Vivens, formerly a schoolmaster in the Cevennes; Anthony Bertezene, a
carpenter, brother of a preacher who had recently been condemned to
death; and seven other persons named Papus, La Pierre, Serein,
Dombres, Poutant, Boisson, and M. de Bruc, an aged minister, who had
been formerly pastor of one of the churches in the Cevennes. They
prepared to enter France in four distinct companies, in the month of
July, 1689.