OUTBREAK IN LANGUEDOC.
Although the arbitrary measures of the King were felt all over France,
they nowhere excited more dismay and consternation than in the
province of Languedoc. This province had always been inhabited by a
spirited and energetic people, born lovers of liberty. They were among
the earliest to call in question the despotic authority over mind and
conscience claimed by the see of Rome. The country is sown with the
ashes of martyrs. Long before the execution of Brousson, the Peyrou at
Montpellier had been the Calvary of the South of France.
As early as the twelfth century, the Albigenses, who inhabited the
district, excited the wrath of the Popes. Simple, sincere believers in
the Divine providence, they rejected Rome, and took their stand upon
the individual responsibility of man to God. Count de Foix said to the
legate of Innocent III.: "As to my religion, the Pope has nothing to
do with it. Every man's conscience must be free. My father has always
recommended to me this liberty, and I am content to die for it."
A crusade was waged against the Albigenses, which lasted for a period
of about sixty years. Armies were concentrated upon Languedoc, and
after great slaughter the heretics were supposed to be exterminated.
But enough of the people survived to perpetuate the love of liberty in
their descendants, who continued to exercise a degree of independence
in matters of religion and politics almost unknown in other parts of
France. Languedoc was the principal stronghold of the Huguenots in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; and when, in 1685, Louis XIV.
revoked the Edict of Nantes, which interdicted freedom of worship
under penalty of confiscation, banishment, and death, it is not
surprising that such a policy should have occasioned widespread
consternation, if not hostility and open resistance.
At the period of the Revocation there were, according to the Intendant
of the province, not fewer than 250,000 Protestants in Languedoc, and
these formed the most skilled, industrious, enterprising, and wealthy
portion of the community. They were the best farmers, vine-dressers,
manufacturers, and traders. The valley of Vaunage, lying to the
westward of Nismes, was one of the richest and most highly cultivated
parts of France. It contained more than sixty temples, its population
being almost exclusively Protestant; and it was known as "The Little
Canaan," abounding as it did in corn, and wine, and oil.
The greater part of the commerce of the South of France was conducted
by the Protestant merchants of Nismes, of whom the Intendant wrote to
the King in 1699, "If they are still bad Catholics, at any rate they
have not ceased to be very good traders."
The Marquis d'Aguesseau bore similar testimony to the intelligent
industry of the Huguenot population. "By an unfortunate fatality,"
said he, "in nearly every kind of art the most skilful workmen, as
well as the richest merchants, belong to the pretended reformed
religion."
The Marquis, who governed Languedoc for many years, was further of
opinion that the intelligence of the Protestants was in a great
measure due to the instructions of their pastors. "It is certain,"
said he, "that one of the things which holds the Huguenots to their
religion is the amount of information which they receive from their
instructors, and which it is not thought necessary to give in ours.
The Huguenots _will_ be instructed, and it is a general complaint
amongst the new converts not to find in our religion the same mental
and moral discipline they find in their own."
Baville, the intendant, made an observation to a similar effect in a
confidential communication which he made to the authorities at Paris
in 1697, in which he boasted that the Protestants had now all been
converted, and that there were 198,483 new converts in Languedoc.
"Generally speaking," he said, "the new converts are much better off,
being more laborious and industrious than the old Catholics of the
province. The new converts must not be regarded as Catholics; they
almost all preserve in their heart their attachment to their former
religion. They may confess and communicate as much as you will,
because they are menaced and forced to do so by the secular power. But
this only leads to sacrilege. To gain them, _their hearts must be
won_. It is there that religion resides, and it can only be solely
established by effecting that conquest."
From the number, as well as the wealth and education, of the
Protestants of Languedoc, it is reasonable to suppose that the
emigration from this quarter of France should have been very
considerable during the persecutions which followed the Revocation. Of
course nearly all the pastors fled, death being their punishment if
they remained in France. Hence many of the most celebrated French
preachers in Holland, Germany, and England were pastors banished from
Languedoc. Claude and Saurin both belonged to the province; and among
the London preachers were the Dubourdieus, the Bertheaus, Graverol,
and Pegorier.
It is also interesting to find how many of the distinguished Huguenots
who settled in England came from Languedoc. The Romillys and Layards
came from Montpellier; the Saurins from Nismes; the Gaussens from
Lunel; and the Bosanquets from Caila;[32] besides the Auriols,
Arnauds, Pechels, De Beauvoirs, Durands, Portals, Boileaus, D'Albiacs,
D'Oliers, Rious, and Vignoles, all of whom belonged to the Huguenot
landed gentry of Languedoc, who fled and sacrificed everything rather
than conform to the religion of Louis XIV.
[Footnote 32: There are still Gaussens at St. Mamert, in the
department of Gard; and some of the Bosanquet family must
have remained on their estates or returned to Protestantism,
as we find a Bosanquet of Caila broken alive at Nismes,
because of his religion, on the 7th September, 1702, after
which his corpse was publicly exposed on the Montpellier high
road.]
When Brousson was executed at Montpellier, it was believed that
Protestantism was finally dead. At all events, it was supposed that
those of the Protestants who remained, without becoming converted,
were at length reduced to utter powerlessness. It was not believed
that the smouldering ashes contained any sparks that might yet be
fanned into flames. The Huguenot landed proprietors, the principal
manufacturers, the best of the artisans, had left for other countries.
Protestantism was now entirely without leaders. The very existence of
Protestantism in any form was denied by the law; and it might perhaps
reasonably have been expected that, being thus crushed out of sight,
it would die.
But there still remained another important and vital element--the
common people--the peasants, the small farmers, the artisans, and
labouring classes--persons of slender means, for the most part too
poor to emigrate, and who remained, as it were, rooted to the soil on
which they had been born. This was especially the case in the
Cevennes, where, in many of the communes, almost the entire
inhabitants were Protestants; in others, they formed a large
proportion of the population; while in all the larger towns and
villages they were very numerous, as well as widely spread over the
whole province.
* * * * *
The mountainous district of the Cevennes is the most rugged, broken,
and elevated region in the South of France. It fills the department of
Lozere, as well as the greater part of Gard and Herault. The principal
mountain-chain, about a hundred leagues in length, runs from
north-east to south-west, and may almost be said to unite the Alps
with the Pyrenees. From the centre of France the surface rises with a
gradual slope, forming an inclined plane, which reaches its greatest
height in the Cevennic chain, several of the summits of which are
about five thousand five hundred feet above the sea level. Its
connection with the Alpine range is, however, broken abruptly by the
deep valley of the Rhone, running nearly due north and south.
The whole of this mountain district maybe regarded as a triangular
plateau rising gradually from the northwest, and tilted up at its
south-eastern angle. It is composed for the most part of granite,
overlapped by strata belonging to the Jurassic-system; and in many
places, especially in Auvergne, the granitic rocks have been burst
through by volcanoes, long since extinct, which rise like enormous
protuberances from the higher parts of the platform. Towards the
southern border of the district, the limestone strata overlapping the
granite assume a remarkable development, exhibiting a series of
flat-topped hills bounded by perpendicular cliffs some six or eight
hundred feet high.
"These plateaux," says Mr. Scrope, in his interesting account of the
geology of Central France, "are called 'causses' in the provincial
dialect, and they have a singularly dreary and desert aspect from the
monotony of their form and their barren and rocky character. The
valleys which separate them are rarely of considerable width. Winding,
narrow, and all but impassable cliff-like glens predominate, giving to
the Cevennes that peculiarly intricate character which enabled its
Protestant inhabitants, in the beginning of the last century, to offer
so stubborn and gallant a resistance to the atrocious persecutions of
Louis XIV."
Such being the character of this mountain district--rocky, elevated,
and sterile--the people inhabiting it, though exceedingly industrious,
are for the most very poor. Sheep-farming is the principal occupation
of the people of the hill country; and in the summer season, when the
lower districts are parched with drought, tens of thousands of sheep
may be seen covering the roads leading to the Upper Cevennes, whither
they are driven for pasture. There is a comparatively small breadth of
arable land in the district. The mountains in many places contain only
soil enough to grow juniper-bushes. There is very little verdure to
relieve the eye--few turf-clad slopes or earth-covered ledges to
repay the tillage of the farmer. Even the mountains of lower elevation
are for the most part stony deserts. Chestnut-trees, it is true, grow
luxuriantly in the sheltered places, and occasionally scanty crops of
rye on the lower mountain-sides. Mulberry-trees also thrive in the
valleys, their leaves being used for the feeding of silkworms, the
rearing of which forms one of the principal industries of the
district.
Even in the immediate neighbourhood of Nismes--a rich and beautiful
town, abounding in Roman remains, which exhibit ample evidences of its
ancient grandeur--the country is arid, stony, and barren-looking,
though here the vine, the olive, and the fig-tree, wherever there is
soil enough, grow luxuriantly in the open air. Indeed, the country
very much resembles in its character the land of Judea, being rocky,
parched, and in many places waste, though in others abounding in corn
and wine and oil. In the interior parts of the district the scenery is
wild and grand, especially in the valleys lying under the lofty
mountain of Lozere. But the rocks and stones are everywhere in the
ascendant.
A few years ago we visited the district; and while proceeding in the
old-fashioned diligence which runs between Alais and Florac--for the
district is altogether beyond the reach of railways--a French
contractor, accompanying a band of Italian miners, whom he was taking
into the mountains to search for minerals, pointing to the sterile
rocks, exclaimed to us, "Messieurs, behold the very poorest district
in France! It contains nothing but juniper-bushes! As for its
agriculture, it produces nothing; manufactures, nothing; commerce,
nothing! _Rien, rien, rien!_"
The observation of this French _entrepreneur_ reminds us of an
anecdote that Telford, the Scotch engineer, used to relate of a
countryman with reference to his appreciation of Scotch mountain
beauty. An English artist, enraptured by the scenery of Ben MacDhui,
was expatiating on its magnificence, and appealed to the native guide
for confirmation of his news. "I dinna ken aboot the scenery," replied
the man, "but there's plenty o' big rocks and stanes; an' the kintra's
awfu' puir." The same observation might doubtless apply to the
Cevennes. Yet, though the people may be poor, they are not miserable
or destitute, for they are all well-clad and respectable-looking
peasants, and there is not a beggar to be seen in the district.
But the one country, as the other, grows strong and brave men. These
barren mountain districts of the Cevennes have bred a race of heroes;
and the men are as simple and kind as they are brave. Hospitality is a
characteristic of the people, which never fails to strike the visitor
accustomed to the exactions which are so common along the hackneyed
tourist routes.
As in other parts of France, the peasantry here are laborious almost
to excess. Robust and hardy, they are distinguished for their
perseverance against the obstacles which nature constantly opposes to
them. Out-door industry being suspended in winter, during which they
are shut up in their cabins for nearly six months by the ice and snow,
they occupy themselves in preparing their wool for manufacture into
cloth. The women card, the children spin, the men weave; and each
cottage is a little manufactory of drugget and serge, which is taken
to market in spring, and sold in the low-country towns. Such was the
industry of the Cevennes nearly two hundred years since, and such it
remains to the present day.
The people are of a contented nature, and bear their poverty with
cheerfulness and even dignity. While they partake of the ardour and
strong temper which characterize the inhabitants of the South of
France, they are probably, on the whole, more grave and staid than
Frenchmen generally, and are thought to be more urbane and
intelligent; and though they are unmanageable by force, they are
remarkably accessible to kindness and moral suasion.
Such, in a few words, are the more prominent characteristics of the
country and people of the Cevennes.
* * * * *
When the popular worship of the mountain district of Languedoc--in
which the Protestants constituted the majority of the population--was
suppressed, great dismay fell upon the people; but they made no signs
of resistance to the royal authority. For a time they remained
comparatively passive, and it was at first thought they were
indifferent. Their astonished enemies derisively spoke of them as
displaying "the patience of a Huguenot,"--the words having passed into
a proverb.
But their persecutors did not know the stuff of which these
mountaineers were made. They had seen their temples demolished one
after another, and their pastors banished, leaving them "like poor
starved sheep looking for the pasture of life." Next they heard that
such of their pastors as had been apprehended for venturing to
minister to them in "the Desert" had been taken to Nismes and
Montpellier and hanged. Then they began to feel excited and indignant.
For they could not shake off their own belief and embrace another
man's, even though that man was their king. If Louis XIV. had ordered
them to believe that two and two make six, they could not possibly
believe, though they might pretend to do so, that it made any other
number than four. And so it was with the King's order to them to
profess a faith which they could not bring their minds to believe in.
These poor people entertained the conviction that they possessed
certain paramount rights as men. Of these they held the right of
conscience to be one of the principal. They were willing to give unto
Caesar the things that were Caesar's; but they could not give him those
which belonged unto God. And if they were forced to make a choice,
then they must rather disobey their King than the King of kings.
Though deprived of their leaders and pastors, the dispossessed
Huguenots emerged by degrees from their obscurity, and began to
recognise each other openly. If their temples were destroyed, there
remained the woods and fields and mountain pastures, where they might
still meet and worship God, even though it were in defiance of the
law. Having taken counsel together, they resolved "not to forsake the
assembling of themselves together;" and they proceeded, in all the
Protestant districts in the South of France--in Viverais, Dauphiny,
and the Cevennes--to hold meetings of the people, mostly by night, for
worship--in woods, in caves, in rocky gorges, and in hollows of the
hills. Then began those famous assemblies of "the Desert," which were
the nightmare of Louvois and the horror of Louis XIV.
When it came to the knowledge of the authorities that such meetings
were being held, large bodies of troops were sent into the southern
provinces, with orders to disperse them and apprehend the ringleaders.
These orders were carried out with much barbarity. Amongst various
assemblies which were discovered and attacked in the Cevennes, were
those of Auduze and Vigan, where the soldiers fell upon the
defenceless people, put the greater number to the sword, and hanged
upon the nearest trees those who did not succeed in making their
escape.
The authorities waited to see the effect of these "vigorous measures;"
but they were egregiously disappointed. The meetings in the Desert
went on as before, and even increased in number. Then milder means
were tried. Other meetings were attacked in like manner, and the
people found attending them taken prisoners. They were then threatened
with death unless they became converted, and promised to attend Mass.
They declared that they preferred death. A passion for martyrdom even
seemed to be spreading amongst the infatuated people!
Then the peasantry began secretly to take up arms for their defence.
They had thus far been passive in their resistance, and were content
to brave death provided they could but worship together. At length
they felt themselves driven in their despair to resist force by
force--acting, however, in the first place, entirely on the
defensive--"leaving the issue," to use the words of one of their
solemn declarations, "to the providence of God."
They began--these poor labourers, herdsmen, and wool-carders--by
instituting a common fund for the purpose of helping their distressed
brethren in surrounding districts. They then invited such as were
disposed to join them to form themselves into companies, so as to be
prepared to come together and give their assistance as occasion
required. When meetings in the Desert were held, it became the duty of
these enrolled men to post themselves as sentinels on the surrounding
heights, and give notice of the approach of their enemies. They also
constituted a sort of voluntary police for their respective districts,
taking notice of the changes of the royal troops, and dispatching
information by trusty emissaries, intimating the direction of their
march.
The Intendant, Baville, wrote to Louvois, minister of Louis XIV.
during the persecutions, expressing his surprise and alarm at the
apparent evidences of organization amongst the peasantry. "I have just
learned," said he in one letter,[33] "that last Sunday there was an
assembly of nearly four hundred men, many of them armed, at the foot
of the mountain of Lozere. I had thought," he added, "that the great
lesson taught them at Vigan and Anduze would have restored
tranquillity to the Cevennes, at least for a time. But, on the
contrary, the severity of the measures heretofore adopted seems only
to have had the effect of exasperating and hardening them in their
iniquitous courses."
[Footnote 33: October 20, 1686.]
* * * * *
As the massacres had failed, the question next arose whether the
inhabitants might not be driven into exile, and the country entirely
cleared of them. "They pretend," said Louvois, "to meet in 'the
Desert;' why not take them at their word, and make the Cevennes
_really_ a Desert?" But there were difficulties in the way of
executing this plan. In the first place, the Protestants of Languedoc
were a quarter of a million in number. And, besides, if they were
driven out of it, what would become of the industry and the wealth of
this great province--what of the King's taxes?
The Duke de Noailles advised that it would be necessary to proceed
with some caution in the matter. "If his Majesty," he wrote to
Baville, "thinks there is no other remedy than changing the whole
people of the Cevennes, it would be better to begin by expelling those
who are not engaged in commerce, who inhabit inaccessible mountain
districts, where the severity of the climate and the poverty of the
soil render them rude and barbarous, as in the case of those people
who recently met at the foot of the Lozere. Should the King consent to
this course, it will be necessary to send here at least four
additional battalions of foot to execute his orders."[34]
[Footnote 34: Noailles to Baville, 29th October, 1686.]
An attempt was made to carry out this measure of deportation of the
people, but totally failed. With the aid of spies, stimulated by high
rewards, numerous meetings in the Desert were fallen upon by the
troops, and those who were not hanged were transported--some to Italy,
some to Switzerland, and some to America. But transportation had no
terrors for the people, and the meetings continued to be held as
before.
Baville then determined to occupy the entire province with troops, and
to carry out a general disarmament of the population. Eight
regiments of regular infantry were sent into the Cevennes, and fifty
regiments of militia were raised throughout the province, forming
together an army of some forty thousand men. Strong military posts
were established in the mountains, and new forts and barracks were
erected at Alais, Anduze, St. Hyppolyte, and Nismes. The
mountain-roads being almost impassable, many of them mere mule paths,
Baville had more than a hundred new high-roads and branch-roads
constructed and made practicable for the passage of troops and
transport of cannon.
By these means the whole country became strongly occupied, but still
the meetings in the Desert went on. The peasantry continued to brave
all risks--of exile, the galleys, the rack, and the gibbet--and
persevered in their assemblies, until the very ferocity of their
persecutors became wearied. The people would not be converted either
by the dragoons or the priests who were stationed amongst them. In the
dead of the night they would sally forth to their meetings in the
hills; though their mountains were not too steep, their valleys not
too secluded, their denies not too impenetrable to protect them from
pursuit and attack, for they were liable at any moment to be fallen
upon and put to the sword.
The darkness, the dangers, the awe and mystery attending these
midnight meetings invested them with an extraordinary degree of
interest and even fascination. It is not surprising that under such
circumstances the devotion of these poor people should have run into
fanaticism and superstition. Singing the psalms of Marot by night,
under the shadow of echoing rocks, they fancied they heard the sounds
of heavenly voices filling the air. At other times they would meet
amidst the ruins of their fallen sanctuaries, and mysterious sounds of
sobbing and wailing and groaning would seem as if to rise from the
tombs of their fathers.
* * * * *
Under these distressing circumstances--in the midst of poverty,
suffering, and terror--a sort of religious hysteria suddenly developed
itself amongst the people, breaking out and spreading like many other
forms of disease, and displaying itself chiefly in the most persecuted
quarters of Dauphiny, Viverais, and the Cevennes. The people had lost
their pastors; they had not the guidance of sober and intelligent
persons; and they were left merely to pray and to suffer. The terrible
raid of the priests against the Protestant books had even deprived
most of the Huguenots of their Bibles and psalm-books, so that they
were in a great measure left to profit by their own light, such as it
was.
The disease to which we refer, had often before been experienced,
under different forms, amongst uneducated people when afflicted by
terror and excitement; such, for instance, as the Brotherhood of the
Flagellants, which followed the attack of the plague in the Middle
Ages; the Dancing Mania, which followed upon the Black Death; the
Child's Pilgrimages, the Convulsionaires, the Revival epilepsies and
swoons, which have so often accompanied fits of religious devotion
worked up into frenzy; these diseases being merely the result of
excitement of the senses, which convulse the mind and powerfully
affect the whole nervous system.
The "prophetic malady," as we may call it, which suddenly broke out
amongst the poor Huguenots, began with epileptic convulsions. They
fell to the ground senseless, foamed at the mouth, sobbed, and
eventually revived so far as to be able to speak and "prophesy," like
a mesmerised person in a state of _clairvoyance_. The disease spread
rapidly by the influence of morbid sympathy, which, under the peculiar
circumstances we have described, exercises an amazing power over human
minds. Those who spoke with power were considered "inspired." They
prayed and preached ecstatically, the most inspired of the whole being
women, boys, and even children.
One of the first "prophets" who appeared was Isabel Vincent, a young
shepherdess of Crest, in Dauphiny, who could neither read nor write.
Her usual speech was the patois of her country, but when she became
inspired she spoke perfectly, and, according to Michelet, with great
eloquence. "She chanted," he says, "at first the Commandments, then a
psalm, in a low and fascinating voice. She meditated a moment, then
began the lamentation of the Church, tortured, exiled, at the galleys,
in the dungeons: for all those evils she blamed our sins only, and
called all to penitence. Then, starting anew, she spoke angelically of
the Divine goodness."
Boucher, the intendant of the province, had her apprehended and
examined. She would not renounce. "You may take my life," she said,
"but God will raise up others to speak better things than I have
done." She was at last imprisoned at Grenoble, and afterwards in the
Tower of Constance.
As Isabel Vincent had predicted, many prophets followed in her steps,
but they did not prophesy as divinely as she. They denounced "Woe,
woe" upon their persecutors. They reviled Babylon as the oppressor of
the House of Israel. They preached the most violent declamations
against Rome, drawn from the most lugubrious of the prophets, and
stirred the minds of their hearers into the most furious indignation.
The rapidity with which the contagion of convulsive prophesying spread
was extraordinary. The adherents were all of the poorer classes, who
read nothing but the Bible, and had it nearly by heart. It spread from
Dauphiny to Viverais, and from thence into the Cevennes. "I have
seen," said Marshal Villars, "things that I could never have believed
if they had not passed under my own eyes--an entire city, in which all
the women and girls, without exception, appeared possessed by the
devil; they quaked and prophesied publicly in the streets."[35]
[Footnote 35: "Vie du Marechal de Villars," i. 125.]
Flottard says there were eight thousand persons in one province who
had inspiration. All were not, however, equally inspired. There were
four degrees of ecstasy: first, the being called; next, the
inspiration; then, the prophesy; and, lastly, the gift, which was the
inspiration in the highest degree.
All this may appear ludicrous to some. And yet the school of credulity
is a very wide one. Even in these enlightened times in which we live,
we hear of tables turning, spelling out words, and "prophesying" in
their own way. There are even philosophers, men of science, and
literati who believe in spiritualists that rise on sofas and float
about in the air, who project themselves suddenly out of one window
and enter by another, and do many other remarkable things. And though
our spiritual table-rapping and floating about may seem to be of no
possible use, the "prophesying" of the Camisards was all but essential
to the existence of the movement in which they were engaged.
The population became intensely excited by the prevalence of this
enthusiasm or fanaticism. "When a Huguenot assembly," says Brueys,
"was appointed, even before daybreak, from all the hamlets round, the
men, women, boys, girls, and even infants, came in crowds, hurrying
from their huts, pierced through the woods, leapt over the rocks, and
flew to the place of appointment."[36]
[Footnote 36: Brueys, "Histoire du Fanaticisme de Notre
Temps."]
Mere force was of no avail against people who supposed themselves to
be under supernatural influences. The meetings in the Desert,
accordingly, were attended with increased and increasing fascination,
and Baville, who had reported to the King the entire pacification and
conversion of Languedoc, to his dismay found the whole province
bursting with excitement, which a spark at any moment might fire into
frenzy. And that spark was shortly afterwards supplied by the
archpriest Chayla, director of missions at Pont-de-Montvert.
Although it was known that many of the peasantry attended the meetings
armed, there had as yet been no open outbreak against the royal
authority in the Cevennes. At Cheilaret, in the Vivarais, there had
been an encounter between the troops and the peasantry; but the people
were speedily dispersed, leaving three hundred dead and fifty wounded
on the field.
The Intendant Baville, after thus pacifying the Vivarais, was
proceeding on his way back to Montpellier, escorted by some companies
of dragoons and militia, passing through the Cevennes by one of the
new roads he had caused to be constructed along the valley of the
Tarn, by Pont-de-Montvert to Florac. What was his surprise, on passing
through the village of Pont-de-Montvert, to hear the roll of a drum,
and shortly after to perceive a column of rustics, some three or four
hundred in number, advancing as if to give him battle. Baville at once
drew up his troops and charged the column, which broke and fled into
an adjoining wood. Some were killed and others taken prisoners, who
were hanged next day at St. Jean-du-Gard. A reward of five hundred
louis d'or was advertised for the leader, who was shortly after
tracked to his hiding-place in a cavern situated between Anduze and
Alais, and was there shot, but not until after he had killed three
soldiers with his fusil.
After this event persecution was redoubled throughout the Cevennes.
The militia ran night and day after the meetings in the Desert. All
persons found attending them, who could be captured, were either
killed on the spot or hanged. Two companies of militia were quartered
in Pont-de-Montvert at the expense of the inhabitants; and they acted
under the direction of the archpriest Du Chayla. This priest, who was
a native of the district, had been for some time settled as a
missionary in Siam engaged in the conversion of Buddhists, and on his
return to France he was appointed to undertake the conversion of the
people of the Cevennes to the faith of Rome.
* * * * *
The village of Pont-de-Montvert is situated in the hollow of a deep
valley formed by the mountain of Lozere on the north, and of Bouges on
the south, at the point at which two streams, descending from their
respective summits, flow into the Tarn. The village is separated by
these streams into three little hamlets, which are joined together by
the bridge which gives its name to the place. The addition of "Mont
Vert," however, is a misnomer; for though seated at the foot of a
steep mountain, it is not green, but sterile, rocky, and verdureless.
The village is best reached from Florac, from which it is about twenty
miles distant. The valley runs east and west, and is traversed by a
tolerably good road, which at the lower part follows the windings of
the Tarn, and higher up runs in and out along the mountain ledges, at
every turn presenting new views of the bold, grand, and picturesque
scenery which characterizes the wilder parts of the Cevennes. Along
this route the old mule-road is still discernible in some places--a
difficult, rugged, mountain path, which must have kept the district
sealed up during the greater part of the year, until Baville
constructed the new road for the purpose of opening up the country for
the easier passage of troops and munitions of war.
A few poor hamlets occur at intervals along the road, sometimes
perched on apparently inaccessible rocks, and at the lower part of the
valley an occasional chateau is to be seen, as at Miral, picturesquely
situated on a height. But the country is too poor by nature--the
breadth of land in the bottom of the ravine being too narrow and that
on the mountain ledges too stony and sterile--ever to have enabled it
to maintain a considerable population. On all sides little is to be
seen but rocky mountain sides, stony and precipitous, with bold
mountain peaks extending beyond them far away in the distance.
Pont-de-Montvert is the centre of a series of hamlets, the inhabitants
of which were in former times almost exclusively Protestant, as they
are now; and where meetings in the Desert were of the most frequent
occurrence. Strong detachments of troops were accordingly stationed
there and at Florac for the purpose of preventing the meetings and
overawing the population. Besides soldiers, the authorities also
established missions throughout the Cevennes, and the principal
inspector of these missions was the archpriest Chayla. The house in
which he resided at Pont-de-Montvert is still pointed out. It is
situated near the north end of the bridge over the Tarn; but though
the lower part of the building remains as it was in his time, the
upper portion has been for the most part rebuilt.
Chayla was a man of great force of character--zealous, laborious, and
indefatigable--but pitiless, relentless, and cruel. He had no bowels
of compassion. He was deaf to all appeals for mercy. With him the
penalty of non-belief in the faith of Rome was imprisonment, torture,
death. Eight young priests lived with him, whose labours he directed;
and great was his annoyance to find that the people would not attend
his ministrations, but continued to flock after their own
prophet-preachers in the Desert.
Moral means having failed, he next tried physical. He converted the
arched cellars of his dwelling into dungeons, where he shut up those
guilty of contumacy; and day by day he put them to torture. It seems
like a satire on religion to say that, in his attempt to convert
souls, this vehement missionary made it one of his principal studies
to find out what amount of agony the bodies of those who differed from
him would bear short of actual death. He put hot coals into their
hands, which they were then made to clench; wrapped round their
fingers cotton steeped in oil, which was then set on fire; besides
practising upon them the more ordinary and commonplace tortures. No
wonder that the archpriest came to be detested by the inhabitants of
Pont-de-Montvert.
At length, a number of people in the district, in order to get beyond
reach of Chayla's cruelty, determined to emigrate from France and take
refuge in Geneva. They assembled one morning secretly, a cavalcade of
men and women, and set out under the direction of a guide who knew the
mountain paths towards the east. When they had travelled a few hours,
they fell into an ambuscade of militia, and were marched back to the
archpriest's quarters at Pont-de-Montvert. The women were sent to
Mende to be immured in convents, and the men were imprisoned in the
archpriest's dungeons. The parents of some of the captives ran to
throw themselves at his feet, and implored mercy for their sons; but
Chayla was inexorable. He declared harshly that the prisoners must
suffer according to the law--that the fugitives must go the galleys,
and their guide to the gibbet.
On the following Sunday, the 23rd of July, 1702, one of the preaching
prophets, Pierre Seguier of Magistavols, a hamlet lying to the south
of Pont-de-Montvert, preached to an assembly on the neighbouring
mountain of Bouges; and there he declared that the Lord had ordered
him to take up arms to deliver the captives and exterminate the
archpriest of Moloch. Another and another preacher followed in the
same strain, the excited assembly encouraging them by their cries, and
calling upon them to execute God's vengeance on the persecutors of
God's people.
That same night Seguier and his companions went round amongst the
neighbouring hamlets to summon an assemblage of their sworn followers
for the evening of the following day. They met punctually in the
Altefage Wood, and under the shadow of three gigantic beech trees, the
trunks of which were standing but a few years ago, they solemnly swore
to deliver their companions and destroy the archpriest.
When night fell, a band of fifty determined men marched down the
mountain towards the bridge, led by Seguier. Twenty of them were armed
with guns and pistols. The rest carried scythes and hatchets. As they
approached the village, they sang Marot's version of the
seventy-fourth Psalm. The archpriest heard the unwonted sound as they
came marching along. Thinking it was a nocturnal assembly, he cried to
his soldiers, "Run and see what this means." But the doors of the
house were already invested by the mountaineers, who shouted out for
"The prisoners! the prisoners!" "Back, Huguenot canaille!" cried
Chayla from the window. But they only shouted the louder for "The
prisoners!"
The archpriest then directed the militia to fire, and one of the
peasants fell dead. Infuriated, they seized the trunk of a tree, and
using it as a battering-ram, at once broke in the door. They next
proceeded to force the entrance to the dungeon, in which they
succeeded, and called upon the prisoners to come forth. But some of
them were so crippled by the tortures to which they had been
subjected, that they could not stand. At sight of their sufferings the
fury of the assailants increased, and, running up the staircase, they
called out for the archpriest. "Burn the priest and the satellites of
Baal!" cried their leader; and heaping together the soldiers' straw
beds, the chairs, and other combustibles, they set the whole on fire.
Chayla, in the hope of escaping, jumped from a window into the garden,
and in the fall broke his leg. The peasants discovered him by the
light of the blazing dwelling. He called for mercy. "No," said
Seguier, "only such mercy as you have shown to others;" and he struck
him the first blow.
The others followed. "This for my father," said the next, "whom you
racked to death!"
"This for my brother," said another, "whom you sent to the galleys!"
"This for my mother, who died of grief!"
This for my sister, my relatives, my friends, in exile, in prison, in
misery!
And thus blow followed blow, fifty-two in all, half of which would
probably have been mortal, and the detested Chayla lay a bleeding mass
at their feet!
[Illustration: Map of the Country of the Cevennes.]