GALLEY-SLAVES FOR THE FAITH.
After the death of the last of the Camisard leaders, there was no
further effort at revolt. The Huguenots seemed to be entirely put
down, and Protestantism completely destroyed. There was no longer any
resistance nor protest. If there were any Huguenots who had not become
Catholics, they remained mute. Force had at last succeeded in stifling
them.
A profound quiet reigned for a time throughout France. The country had
become a circle, closely watched by armed men--by dragoons, infantry,
archers, and coastguards--beyond which the Huguenots could not escape
without running the risk of the prison, the galley, or the gibbet.
The intendants throughout the kingdom flattered Louis XIV., and Louis
XIV. flattered himself, that the Huguenots had either been converted,
extirpated, or expelled the kingdom. The King had medals struck,
announcing the "_extinction of heresy_." A proclamation to this effect
was also published by the King, dated the 8th of March, 1715,
declaring the entire conversion of the French Huguenots, and
sentencing those who, after that date, relapsed from Catholicism to
Protestantism, to all the penalties of heresy.
What, then, had become of the Huguenots? They were for the moment
prostrate, but their life had not gone out of them. Many were no doubt
"converted." They had not strength to resist the pains and penalties
threatened by the State if they refused. They accordingly attended
Mass, and assisted in ceremonies which at heart they detested. Though
they blushed at their apostasy, they were too much broken down and
weary of oppression and suffering to attempt to be free.
But though many Huguenots pretended to be "converted," the greater
number silently refrained. They held their peace and bided their time.
Meanwhile, however, they were subject to all the annoyances of
persecution. Persecution had seized them from the day of their birth,
and never relaxed its hold until the day of their death. Every
new-born child must be taken to the priest to be baptized. When the
children had grown into boys and girls, they must go to school and be
educated, also by the priest. If their parents refused to send them,
the children were forcibly seized, taken away, and brought up in the
Jesuit schools and nunneries. And lastly, when grown up into young men
and women, they must be married by the priest, or their offspring be
declared illegitimate.
The Huguenots refused to conform to all this. Nevertheless, it was by
no means easy to continue to refuse obeying the priest. The priest was
well served with spies, though the principal spy in every parish was
himself. There were also numerous other professional spies--besides
idlers, mischief-makers, and "good-natured friends." In time of peace,
also, soldiers were usually employed in performing the disgraceful
duty of acting as spies upon the Huguenots.
The Huguenot was ordered to attend Mass under the penalty of fine and
imprisonment. Supposing he refused, because he did not believe that
the priest had the miraculous power of converting bread and wine into
something the very opposite. The priest insisted that he did possess
this power, and that he was supported by the State in demanding that
the Huguenot _must_ come and worship his transubstantiation of bread
into flesh and wine into blood. "I do not believe it," said the
Huguenot. "But I _order_ you to come, for Louis XIV. has proclaimed
you to be a converted Catholic, and if you refuse you will be at once
subject to all the penalties of heresy." It was certainly very
difficult to argue with a priest who had the hangman at his back, or
with the King who had his hundred thousand dragoons. And so, perhaps,
the threatened Huguenot went to Mass, and pretended to believe all
that the priest had said about his miraculous powers.
But many resolutely continued to refuse, willing to incur the last and
heaviest penalties. Then it came to be seen that Protestantism,
although, declared defunct by the King's edict, had not in fact expired,
but was merely reposing for a time in order to make a fresh start
forward. The Huguenots who still remained in France, whether as "new
converts" or as "obstinate heretics," at length began to emerge from
their obscurity. They met together in caves and solitary places--in deep
and rocky gorges--in valleys among the mountains--where they prayed
together, sang together their songs of David, and took counsel one with
another.
At length, from private meetings for prayer, religious assemblies
began to be held in the Desert, and preachers made their appearance.
The spies spread about the country informed the intendants. The
meetings were often surprised by the military. Sometimes the soldiers
would come upon them suddenly, and fire into the crowd of men, women,
and children. On some occasions a hundred persons or more would be
killed upon the spot. Of those taken prisoners, the preachers were
hanged or broken on the wheel, the women were sent to prison, and the
children, to nunneries, while the men were sent to be galley-slaves
for life.[46]
[Footnote 46: In the Viverais and elsewhere they sang the
song of the persecuted Church:--
"Nos filles dans les monasteres,
Nos prisonniers dans les cachots.
Nos martyrs dont le sang se repand a grands flots,
Nos confesseurs sur les galeres,
Nos malades persecutes,
Nos mourants exposes a plus d'une furie,
Nos morts traines a la voierie,
Te disent (o Dieu!) nos calamites."]
The persecutions to which Huguenot women and children were exposed
caused a sudden enlargement of all the prisons and nunneries in
France. Many of the old castles were fitted up as gaols, and even
their dungeons were used for the incorrigible heretics. One of the
worst of these was the Tour de Constance in the town of Aiguesmortes,
which is to this day remembered with horror as the principal dungeon
of the Huguenot women.
The town of Aiguesmortes is situated in the department of Gard, close
to the Mediterranean, whose waters wash into the salt marshes and
lagunes by which it is surrounded. It was erected in the thirteenth
century for Philip the Bold, and is still interesting as an example of
the ancient feudal fortress. The fosse has since been filled up, on
account of the malaria produced by the stagnant water which it
contained.
The place is approached by a long causeway raised above the marsh, and
the entrance to the tower is spanned by an ancient gatehouse. In
advance of the tower, to the north, in an angle of the wall, is a
single, large round tower, which served as a citadel. It is sixty-six
feet in diameter and ninety feet high, surmounted by a lighthouse
turret of thirty-four feet. It consists of two large vaulted
apartments, the staircase from the one to the other being built within
the wall itself, which is about eighteen feet thick. The upper chamber
is dimly lighted by narrow chinks through the walls. The lowest of the
apartments is the dungeon, which is almost without light and air. In
the centre of the floor is a hole connected with a reservoir of water
below.
This Tour de Constance continued to be the principal prison for
Huguenot women in France for a period of about a hundred years. It was
always horribly unhealthy; and to be condemned to this dungeon was
considered almost as certain though a slower death than to be
condemned to the gallows. Sixteen Huguenot women confined there in
1686 died within five months. Most of them were the wives of merchants
of Nismes, or of men of property in the district. When the prisoners
died off, the dungeon was at once filled up again with more victims,
and it was rarely, if ever, empty, down to a period within only a few
years before the outbreak of the French Revolution.
The punishment of the men found attending religious meetings, and
taken prisoners by the soldiers, was to be sentenced to the galleys,
mostly for life. They were usually collected in large numbers, and
sent to the seaports attached together by chains. They were sent
openly, sometimes through the entire length of the kingdom, by way of
a show. The object was to teach the horrible delinquency of professing
Protestantism; for it could not be to show the greater beautifulness
and mercifulness of Catholicism.
The punishment of the Chain varied in degree. Sometimes it was more
cruel than at other times. This depended upon the drivers of the
prisoners. Marteilhe describes the punishment during his conveyance
from Havre to Marseilles in the winter of 1712.[47] The Chain to which
he belonged did not reach Marseilles until the 17th January, 1713. The
season was bitterly cold; but that made no difference in the treatment
of Huguenot prisoners.
[Footnote 47: "Autobiography of a French Protestant condemned
to the Galleys because of his Religion." Rotterdam, 1757.
(Since reprinted by the Religious Tract Society.)]
The Chain consisted of a file of prisoners, chained one to another in
various ways. On this occasion, each pair was fastened by the neck
with a thick chain three feet long, in the middle of which was a round
ring. After being thus chained, the pairs were placed in file, couple
behind couple, when another long thick chain was passed through the
rings, thus running along the centre of the gang, and the whole were
thus doubly-chained together. There were no less than four hundred
prisoners in the chain described by Marteilhe. The number had,
however, greatly fallen off through deaths by barbarous treatment
before it reached Marseilles.
It must, however, be added, that the whole gang did not consist of
Huguenots, but only a part of it--the Huguenots being distinguished by
their red jackets. The rest consisted of murderers, thieves,
deserters, and criminals of various sorts.
The difficulty which the prisoners had in marching along the roads was
very great; the weight of chain which each member had to carry being
no less than one hundred and fifty pounds. The lodging they had at
night was of the worst description. While at Paris, the galley-slaves
were quartered in the Chateau de la Tournelle, which was under the
spiritual direction of the Jesuits. The gaol consisted of a large
cellar or dungeon, fitted with huge beams of oak fixed close to the
floor. Thick iron collars were attached by iron chains to the beams.
The collar being placed round the prisoner's neck, it was closed and
riveted upon an anvil with heavy blows of a hammer.
Twenty men in pairs were thus chained to each beam. The dungeon was so
large that five hundred men could thus be fastened up. They could not
sleep lying at full length, nor could they sleep sitting or standing
up straight; the beam to which they were chained being too high in the
one case and too low in the other. The torture which they endured,
therefore, is scarcely to be described. The prisoners were kept there
until a sufficient number could be collected to set out in a great
chain for Marseilles.
When they arrived at the first stage out of Paris, at Charenton, after
a heavy day's fatigue, their lodging was no better than before. A
stable was found in which they were chained up in such a way that they
could with difficulty sit down, and then only on a dung-heap. After
they had lain there for a few hours, the prisoners' chains were taken
off, and they were turned out into the spacious courtyard of the inn,
where they were ordered to strip off their clothes, put them down at
their feet, and march over to the other side of the courtyard.
The object of this proceeding was to search the pockets of the
prisoners, examine their clothes, and find whether they contained any
knives, files, or other tools which might be used for cutting the
chains. All money and other valuables or necessaries that the clothes
contained were at the same time taken away.
The night was cold and frosty, with a keen north wind blowing; and
after the prisoners had been exposed to it for about half an hour,
their bodies became so benumbed that they could scarcely move across
the yard to where their clothes were lying. Next morning it was found
that eighteen of the unfortunates were happily released by death.
It is not necessary to describe the tortures endured by the
galley-slaves to the end of their journey. One little circumstance
may, however, be mentioned. While marching towards the coast, the
exhausted Huguenots, weary and worn out by the heaviness of their
chains, were accustomed to stretch out their little wooden cups for a
drop of water to the inhabitants of the villages through which they
passed. The women, whom they mostly addressed, answered their
entreaties with the bitterest spite. "Away, away!" they cried; "you
are going where you will have _water enough_!"
When the gang or chain reached the port at which the prisoners were to
be confined, they were drafted on board the different galleys. These
were for the most part stationed at Toulon, but there were also other
galleys in which Huguenots were imprisoned--at Marseilles, Dunkirk,
Brest, St. Malo, and Bordeaux. Let us briefly describe the galley of
those days.
The royal galley was about a hundred and fifty feet long and forty feet
broad, and was capable of containing about five hundred men. It had
fifty benches for rowers, twenty-five on each side. Between these two
rows of benches was the raised middle gallery, commonly called the waist
of the ship, four feet high and about three or four feet broad. The oars
were fifty feet long, of which thirty-seven feet were outside the ship
and thirteen within. Six men worked at each oar, all chained to the same
bench. They had to row in unison, otherwise they would be heavily struck
by the return rowers both before and behind them. They were under the
constant command of the _comite_ or galley-slave-driver, who struck all
about him with his long whip in urging them to work. To enable his
strokes to _tell_, the men sat naked while they rowed.[48] Their dress
was always insufficient, summer and winter--the lower part of their
bodies being covered with a short red jacket and a sort of apron, for
their manacles prevented them wearing any other dress.
[Footnote 48: Le comite ou chef de chiourme, aide de deux
_sous-comites_, allait et venait sans cesse sur le coursier,
frappant les forcats a coup de nerfs de boeuf, comme un
cocher ses chevaux. Pour rendre les coups plus sensible et
pour economiser les vetements, _les galeriens etaient nus_
quand ils ramaient.--ATHANASE COQUEREL FILS. _Les Forcats
pour la Foi_, 64.]
The chain which bound each rower to his bench was fastened to his leg,
and was of such a length as to enable his feet to come and go whilst
rowing. At night, the galley-slave slept where he sat--on the bench on
which he had been rowing all day. There was no room for him to lie
down. He never quitted his bench except for the hospital or the grave;
yet some of the Huguenot rowers contrived to live upon their benches
for thirty or forty years!
During all these years they toiled in their chains in a hell of foul
and disgusting utterance, for they were mixed up with thieves and the
worst of criminals. They ate the bread and drank the waters of
bitterness. They seemed to be forsaken by the world. They had no one
to love them, for most had left their families behind them at home, or
perhaps in convents or prisons. They lived under the constant threats
of their keepers, who lashed them to make them row harder, who lashed
them to make them sit up, or lashed them to make them lie down. The
Chevalier Langeron, captain of _La Palme_, of which Marteilhe was at
first a rower, used to call the _comite_ to him and say, "Go and
refresh the backs of these Huguenots with a salad of strokes of the
whip." For the captain, it seems, "held the most Jesuitical
sentiments," and hated his Huguenot prisoners far worse than his
thieves or his murderers.[49]
[Footnote 49: "The Autobiography of a French Protestant,"
68.]
And yet, at any moment, a word spoken would have made these Huguenots
free. The Catholic priests frequently visited the galleys and
entreated them to become converted. If "converted," and the Huguenots
would only declare that they believed in the miraculous powers of the
clergy, their chains would fall away from their limbs at once; and
they would have been restored to the world, to their families, and to
liberty! And who would not have declared themselves "converted,"
rather than endure these horrible punishments? Yet by far the greater
number of the Huguenots did not. They could not be hypocrites. They
would not lie to God. Rather than do this, they had the heroism--some
will call it the obstinacy--to remain galley-slaves for life!
Many of the galley-slaves did not survive their torture long. Men of
all ages and conditions, accustomed to indoor life, could not bear the
exposure to the sun, rain, and snow, which the punishment of the
galley-slave involved. The old men and the young soon succumbed and
died. Middle-aged men survived the longest. But there was always a
change going on. When the numbers of a galley became thinned by death,
there were other Huguenots ready to be sent on board--perhaps waiting
in some inland prison until another "Great Chain" could be made up for
the seaports, to go on board the galley-ships, to be manacled,
tortured, and killed off as before.
Such was the treatment of the galley-slaves in time of peace. But the
galleys were also war-ships. They carried large numbers of armed men
on board. Sometimes they scoured the Mediterranean, and protected
French merchant-ships against the Sallee rovers. At other times they
were engaged in the English channel, attacking Dutch and English
ships, sometimes picking up a prize, at other times in actual
sea-fight.
When the service required, they were compelled to row incessantly
night and day, without rest, save in the last extremity; and they were
treated as if, on the first opportunity, in sight of the enemy, they
would revolt and betray the ship; hence they were constantly watched
by the soldiers on board, and if any commotion appeared amongst them,
they were shot down without ceremony, and their bodies thrown into the
sea. Loaded cannons were also placed at the end of the benches of
rowers, so as to shoot them down in case of necessity.
Whenever an enemy's ship came up, the galley-slaves were covered over
with a linen screen, so as to prevent them giving signals to the
enemy. When an action occurred, they were particularly exposed to
danger, for the rowers and their oars were the first to be shot
at--just as the boiler or screw of a war-steamer would be shot at
now--in order to disable the ship. The galley-slaves thus suffered
much more from the enemy's shot than the other armed men of the ship.
The rowers benches were often filled with dead, before the soldiers
and mariners on board had been touched.
Marteilhe, while a galley-slave on board _La Palme_, was engaged in an
adventure which had nearly cost him his life. Four French galleys,
after cruising along the English coast from Dover to the Downs, got
sight of a fleet of thirty-five merchant vessels on their way from the
Texel to the Thames, under the protection of one small English
frigate. The commanders of the galleys, taking counsel together,
determined to attack the frigate (which they thought themselves easily
able to master), and so capture the entire English fleet.
The captain of the frigate, when he saw the galleys approach him,
ordered the merchantmen to crowd sail and make for the Thames, the
mouth of which they had nearly reached. He then sailed down upon the
galleys, determined to sacrifice his ship if necessary for the safety
of his charge. The galleys fired into him, but he returned never a
shot. The captain of the galley in which Marteilhe was, said, "Oh, he
is coming to surrender!" The frigate was so near that the French
musqueteers were already firing full upon her. All of a sudden the
frigate tacked and veered round as if about to fly from the galleys.
The Frenchmen called out that the English were cowards in thus trying
to avoid the battle. If they did not surrender at once, they would
sink the frigate!
The English captain took no notice. The frigate then turned her stern
towards the galley, as if to give the Frenchmen an opportunity of
boarding her. The French commander ordered the galley at once to run
at the enemy's stern, and the crew to board the frigate. The rush was
made; the galley-slaves, urged by blows of the whip, rowing with great
force. The galley was suddenly nearing the stern of the frigate, when
by a clever stroke of the helm the ship moved to one side, and the
galley, missing it, rushed past. All the oars on that side were
suddenly broken off, and the galley was placed immediately under the
broadside of the enemy.
Then began the English part of the game. The French galley was seized
with grappling irons and hooked on to the English broadside. The men
on board the galley were as exposed as if they had been upon a raft or
a bridge. The frigate's guns, which were charged with grapeshot, were
discharged full upon them, and a frightful carnage ensued. The English
also threw hand grenades, which went down amongst the rowers and
killed many. They next boarded the galley, and cut to pieces all the
armed men they could lay hold of, only sparing the convicts, who could
make no attempt at defence.
The English captain then threw off the galley, which he had broadsided
and disarmed, in order to look after the merchantmen, which some of
the other galleys had gone to intercept on their way to the mouth of
the Thames. Some of the ships had already been captured; but the
commanders of the galleys, seeing their fellow-commodores flying
signals of distress, let go their prey, and concentrated their attack
upon the frigate. This they surrounded, and after a very hard struggle
the frigate was captured, but not until the English captain had
ascertained that all the fleet of which he had been in charge had
entered the Thames and were safe.
In the above encounter with the English frigate Marteilhe had nearly
lost his life. The bench on which he was seated, with five other
slaves, was opposite one of the loaded guns of the frigate. He saw
that it must be discharged directly upon them. His fellows tried to
lie down flat, while Marteilhe himself stood up. He saw the gunner
with his lighted match approach the touchhole; then he lifted up his
heart to God; the next moment he was lying stunned and prostrate in
the centre of the galley, as far as the chain would allow him to
reach. He was lying across the body of the lieutenant, who was killed.
A long time passed, during which the fight was still going on, and
then Marteilhe came to himself, towards dark. Most of his
fellow-slaves were killed. He himself was bleeding from a large open
wound on his shoulder, another on his knee, and a third in his
stomach. Of the eighteen men around him he was the only one that
escaped, with his three wounds.
The dead were all thrown into the sea. The men were about to throw
Marteilhe after them, but while attempting to release him from his
chain, they touched the wound upon his knee, and he groaned heavily.
They let him remain where he lay. Shortly after, he was taken down to
the bottom of the hold with the other men, where he long lay amongst
the wounded and dying. At length he recovered from his wounds, and was
again returned to his bench, to re-enter the horrible life of a
galley-slave.
There was another mean and unmanly cruelty, connected with this
galley-slave service, which was practised only upon the Huguenots. If
an assassin or other criminal received a wound in the service of the
state while engaged in battle, he was at once restored to his
liberty; but if a Huguenot was wounded, he was never released. He was
returned to his bench and chained as before; the wounds he had
received being only so many additional tortures to be borne by him in
the course of his punishment.
Marteilhe, as we have already stated, was disembarked when he had
sufficiently recovered, and marched through the entire length of
France, enchained with other malefactors. On his arrival at
Marseilles, he was placed on board the galley _Grand Reale_, where he
remained until peace was declared between England and France by the
Treaty of Utrecht.[50]
[Footnote 50: "Autobiography of a French Protestant,"
112-21.]
Queen Anne of England, at the instigation of the Marquis de Rochegade,
then made an effort to obtain the liberation of Protestants serving at
the galleys; and at length, out of seven hundred and forty-two
Huguenots who were then enslaved, a hundred and thirty-six were
liberated, of whom Marteilhe was one. He was thus enabled to get rid
of his inhuman countrymen, and to spend the remainder of his life in
Holland and England, where Protestants were free.