rebellion; at which he grew so uneasy that he desired them to speak to him
of other matters. They next charged him with the sin of living with Lady
Wentworth, as he had done. In that he justified himself; he had married his
duchess too young to give a true consent; he said that lady was a pious
worthy woman, and that he had never lived so well, in all respects, as
since his engagements with her. All the pains they took to convince him of
the unlawfulness of that course of life had no effect. They did certainly
very well in discharging their consciences and speaking so plainly to him.
But they did very ill to talk so much of this matter and to make it so
public, as they did, for divines ought not to repeat what they say to dying
penitents no more than what the penitents say to them. By this means the
Duke of Monmouth had little satisfaction in them and they had as little in
him.
He was much better pleased with Dr. Tennison, who did very plainly speak to
him with relation to his public actings and to his course of life; but he
did it in a softer and less peremptory manner. And having said all that he
thought proper, he left those points, in which he saw he could not convince
him, to his own conscience, and turned to other things fit to be laid
before a dying man. The Duke begged one day more of life with such repeated
earnestness that as the King was much blamed for denying so small a favor,
so it gave occasion to others to believe that he had some hope from
astrologers that if he outlived that day he might have a better fate. As
long as he fancied there was any hope, he was too much unsettled in his
mind to be capable of anything.
But when he saw all was to no purpose and that he must die he complained a
little that his death was hurried on so fast. But all on a sudden he came
into a composure of mind that surprised those that saw it. There was no
affectation in it. His whole behavior was easy and calm, not without a
decent cheerfulness. He prayed God to forgive all his sins, unknown as well
as known. He seemed confident of the mercies of God, and that he was going
to be happy with him. And he went to the place of execution on Tower Hill
with an air of undisturbed courage that was grave and composed. He said
little there, only that he was sorry for the blood that was shed, but he
had ever meant well to the nation. When he saw the axe he touched it and
said it was not sharp enough. He gave the hangman but half the reward he
intended, and said if he cut off his head cleverly, and not so butcherly as
he did the Lord Russel's, his man would give him the rest.
The executioner was in great disorder, trembling all over; so he gave him
two or three strokes without being able to finish the matter and then flung
the axe out of his hand. But the sheriff forced him to take it up; and at
three or four more strokes he severed his head from his body and both were
presently buried in the chapel of the Tower. Thus lived and died this
unfortunate young man. He had several good qualities in him, and some that
were as bad. He was soft and gentle even to excess and too easy to those
who had credit with him. He was both sincere and good-natured, and
understood war well. But he was too much given to pleasure and to
favorites.
%REVOCATION OF THE EDICT OF NANTES%
A.D. 1685
BON LOUIS HENRI MARTIN
It was one of the glories of Henry of Navarre to end the religious wars of
France by publishing the Edict of Nantes (1598), which placed Catholics and
Protestants on a practically equal footing as subjects. By the revocation
of that edict, in 1685, Louis XIV opened the way for fresh persecution of
the Huguenots. Of the hundreds of thousands whom the King and his agents
then caused to flee the country and seek civil and religious liberty in
other lands, many crossed the sea and settled in the colonies of North
America, especially in South Carolina.
By revoking the Edict of Nantes Louis XIV arrayed against himself all the
Protestant countries of Europe. By seizures of territory he also offended
Catholic states. In 1686 the League of Augsburg combined the greater part
of Europe for resisting his encroachments.
This period of the "Huguenots of the Dispersion" was marked by complicated
strifes in politics, religion, and philosophy. It was one of the most
reactionary epochs in French history. No writer has better depicted the
time, with the severities, atrocities, and effects of the revocation of the
great edict, than Martin, the celebrated historian of his country.
For many years the government of Louis XIV had been acting toward the
Reformation as toward a victim entangled in a noose which is drawn tighter
and tighter till it strangles its prey. In 1683 the oppressed had finally
lost patience, and their partial attempts at resistance, disavowed by the
most distinguished of their brethren, had been stifled in blood. After
the truce of Ratisbon, declarations and decrees hostile to Protestantism
succeeded each other with frightful rapidity; nothing else was seen in the
official gazette. Protestant ministers were prohibited from officiating
longer than three years in the same church (August, 1684); Protestant
individuals were forbidden to give asylum to their sick coreligionists; the
sick who were not treated at home were required to go to the hospitals,
where they were put in the hands of churchmen. A beautiful and touching
request, written by Pastor Claude, was in vain presented to the King
in January, 1685. Each day beheld some Protestant church closed for
contraventions either imaginary or fraudulently fabricated by persecutors.
It was enough that the child of a "convert" or a bastard (all bastards were
reputed Catholic) should enter a Protestant church for the exercise of
worship, to be interdicted there.
If this state of things had continued long, not a single Protestant church
would have been left. The Protestant academy or university of Saumur,
which had formed so many eminent theologians and orators, was closed; the
ministers were subjected to the villein tax for their real estate (January,
1685). The quinquennial assembly of the clergy, held in May, presented to
the King a multitude of new demands against the heretics; among others, for
the establishment of penalties against the "converts" who did not fulfil
their duties as Catholics. The penalty of death, which had been decreed
against emigrants, was commuted into perpetual confinement in the galleys,
by the request of the clergy. The first penalty had been little more than
a threat; the second, which confounded with the vilest miscreants,
unfortunates guilty of having desired to flee from persecution, was to be
applied in the sternest reality! It was extended to Protestants living in
France who should authorize their children to marry foreigners. It was
interdicted to Reformers to follow the occupation of printer or bookseller.
It was forbidden to confer on them degrees in arts, law, or medicine.
Protestant orphans could have only Catholic guardians. Half of the goods
of emigrants was promised to informers. It was forbidden to Reformers to
preach or write against Catholicism (July, August, 1685).
A multitude of Protestant churches had been demolished, and the inhabitants
of places where worship had been suppressed were prohibited from going
to churches in places where it was still permitted. Grave difficulties
resulted with respect to the principal acts of civil life, which, among
Protestants as among Catholics, owed their authenticity only to the
intervention of ministers of religion. A decree in council of September 15,
1685, enacted that, in places deprived of the exercise of worship, a pastor
chosen by the intendant of the generality should celebrate, in the presence
of relatives only, the marriages of Reformers; that their bans should be
published to the congregations, and the registries of their marriages
entered on the rolls of the local court. Similar decrees had been issued
concerning baptisms and burials. Hitherto Protestantism had been struck
right and left with all kinds of weapons, without any very definite method:
these decrees seemed to indicate a definite plan; that is, the suppression
of external worship, with a certain tolerance, at least provisionally, for
conscience, and a kind of civil state separately constituted for obstinate
Protestants.
This plan had, in fact, been debated in council. "The King," wrote Madame
de Maintenon, August 13, 1684, "has it in mind to work for the _entire_
conversion of heretics; he has frequent conferences for this purpose with
M. le Tellier and M. de Chateauneuf (the secretary of state charged with
the affairs of the so-called Reformed religion), in which they wish to
persuade me to take part. M. de Chateauneuf has proposed means that are
unsuitable. Things must not be hastened. _It is necessary to convert, not
to persecute_. M. de Louvois prefers mild measures which do not accord with
his nature and his eagerness to see things ended."
The means proposed by Chateauneuf was apparently the immediate revocation
of the Edict of Nantes, which was judged premature. As to the "mildness" of
Louvois, it was soon seen in operation. Louvois pretended to be moderate,
lest the King, through scruples of humanity, should hesitate to confer on
him the management of the affair. He had his plan ready: it was to recur to
the "salutary constraint" already tried in 1681 by the instrumentality
of soldiers to the Dragonade. Colbert was no longer at hand to interpose
obstacles to this.
Louvois had persuaded the King that in the moral situation of Protestant
communities it would be enough "to show them the troops," to compel them to
abjure. The troops had been "shown," therefore, to the Reformers of Béarn;
the intendant of that province, Foucault, had come to Paris to concert with
the minister the management of the enterprise; Louvois could not have found
a fitter instrument than this pitiless and indefatigable man, who had the
soul of an inquisitor under the garb of a pliant courtier. On his return
from Paris, Foucault, seconded by the Parliament of Pau and the clergy,
began by the demolition, on account of "contraventions," of fifteen out of
twenty Protestant churches that remained in Béarn, and the "conversion" of
eleven hundred persons in two months (February-April, 1685). He then called
for the assistance of the army to complete the work, promising "to keep a
tight rein over the soldiers, so that they should do no violence." This
was for the purpose of allaying the scruples of the King. The troops were
therefore concentrated in the cities and villages filled with Reformers;
the five remaining Protestant churches shared the fate of the rest, and
the pastors were banished, some to a distance of six leagues from their
demolished churches, others beyond the jurisdiction of the Parliament of
Pau.
Terror flew before the soldiers; as soon as the scarlet uniforms and the
high caps of the dragoons were descried, corporations, whole cities, sent
their submission to the intendant. An almost universal panic chilled all
hearts. The mass of Reformers signed or verbally accepted a confession of
the Catholic faith, suffered themselves to be led to the church, bowed
their heads to the benediction of the bishop or the missionary, and cannon
and bonfires celebrated the "happy reconciliation." Protestants who had
hoped to find a refuge in liberty of conscience without external worship
saw this hope vanish. Foucault paid no attention to the decrees in council
that regulated the baptisms, marriages, and burials of Protestants,
because, he said in a despatch to the minister, "in the present disposition
to general and speedy conversion, this would expose those who waver, and
harden the obstinate." The council issued a new order confirmatory of the
preceding ones, and specially for Béarn. Foucault, according to his
own words, "did not judge proper to execute it." This insolence went
unpunished. Success justified everything. Before the end of August the
twenty-two thousand Protestants of Béarn were "converted," save a few
hundred. Foucault, in his _Memoirs_, in which he exhibits his triumphs with
cynicism, does not, however, avow all the means. Although he confesses that
"the distribution of money drew many souls to the Church," he does not
say how he kept his promise of preventing the "soldiers from doing any
violence." He does not recount the brutalities, the devastations, the
tortures resorted to against the refractory, the outrages to women, nor
how these soldiers took turns from hour to hour to hinder their hosts from
sleeping during entire weeks till these unfortunates, stupefied, delirious,
signed an abjuration.
The King saw only the result. The resolution was taken to send everywhere
these "booted missionaries" who had succeeded so well in Béarn. Louvois
sent, on the part of the King, July 31st, a command to the Marquis de
Boufflers, their general, to lead them into Guienne, and "to quarter them
all on the Reformers"; "observing to endeavor to diminish the number of
Reformers in such a manner that in each community the Catholics shall be
twice or three times more numerous than they; so that when, in due time,
his majesty shall wish no longer to permit the exercise of this religion in
his kingdom, he may no longer have to apprehend that the small number that
shall remain can undertake anything." The troops were to be withdrawn as
fast as this object should be obtained in each place, without undertaking
to convert all at once. The ministers should be driven out of the country,
and by no means should they be retained by force; the pastors absent, the
flocks could more easily be brought to reason. The soldiers were to commit
"no other disorders than to levy (daily) twenty sous for each horseman or
dragoon, and ten sous for each foot-soldier." Excesses were to be severely
punished. Louvois, in another letter, warned the general not to yield to
all the suggestions of the ecclesiastics, nor even of the intendants. They
did not calculate on being able to proceed so rapidly as in Béarn.
These instructions show precisely, not what was done, but what the King
wished should be done. The subalterns, sure of immunity in case of success,
acted more in accordance with the spirit of Louvois than according to the
words dictated by Louis. The King, when by chance he heard that his orders
had been transcended, rarely chastised the transgressor, lest it might be
"said to the Reformers that his majesty disapproves of whatsoever has been
done to convert them." Louis XIV, therefore, cannot repudiate, before
history, his share of this terrible responsibility.
The result exceeded the hopes of the King and of Louvois. Guienne yielded
as easily as Béarn. The Church of Montauban, the head-quarters of the
Reformation in this region, was "reunited" in great majority, after several
days of military vexations; Bergerac held out a little longer; then all
collective resistance ceased. The cities and villages, for ten or twelve
leagues around, sent to the military leaders their promises of abjuration.
In three weeks there were sixty thousand conversions in the district of
Bordeaux or Lower Guienne, twenty thousand in that of Montauban or Upper
Guienne. According to the reports of Boufflers, Louvois, September 7th,
reckoned that before the end of the month there would not remain in Lower
Guienne ten thousand Reformers out of the one hundred fifty thousand found
there August 15th. "There is not a courier," wrote Madame de Maintenon,
September 26th, "that does not bring the King great causes of joy; to wit,
news of conversions by thousands." The only resistance that they deigned to
notice here and there was that of certain provincial gentlemen, of simple
and rigid habits, less disposed than the court nobility to sacrifice their
faith to interest and vanity.
Guienne subjected, the army of Béarn was marched, a part into Limousin,
Saintonge, and Poitou, a part into Languedoc. Poitou, already "dragooned"
in 1681 by the intendant Marillac, had just been so well labored with by
Marillac's successor, Lamoignon de Basville, aided by some troops, that
Foucault, sent from Béarn into Poitou, found nothing more to glean. The
King even caused Louvois to recommend that they should not undertake to
convert all the Reformers at once, lest the rich and powerful families, who
had in their hands the commerce of those regions, should avail themselves
of the proximity of the sea to take flight (September 8th). Basville, a
great administrator, but harshly inflexible, was sent from Poitou into
Lower Languedoc, in the first part of September, in order to coöperate
there with the Duke de Noailles, governor of the province. The intendant of
Lower Languedoc, D'Aguesseau, although he had zealously coöperated in all
the restrictive measures of the Reformed worship, had asked for his recall
as soon as he had seen that the King was determined on the employment of
military force; convinced that this determination would not be less fatal
to religion than to the country, he retired, broken-hearted, his spirit
troubled for the future.
The conversion of Languedoc seemed a great undertaking. The mass of
Protestants, nearly all concentrated in Lower Languedoc, and in the
mountainous regions adjoining, was estimated at more than two hundred forty
thousand souls; these people, more ardent, more constant than the mobile
and sceptical Gascons, did not seem capable of so easily abandoning
their belief. The result, however, was the same as elsewhere. Nîmes and
Montpellier followed the example of Montauban. The quartering of a hundred
soldiers in their houses quickly reduced the notables of Nîmes; in this
diocese alone, the principal centre of Protestantism, sixty thousand souls
abjured in three days. Several of the leading ministers did the same. From
Nîmes the Duc de Noailles led the troops into the mountains. Cévennes and
Gevaudan submitted to invasion like the rest, as the armed mission advanced
from valley to valley. These cantons were still under the terror of the
sanguinary repressions of 1683, and had been disarmed, as far as it was
possible, as well as all Lower Languedoc. Noailles, in the earlier part of
October, wrote to Louvois that he would answer "upon his head" that, before
the end of November, the province would contain no more Huguenots. If we
are to believe his letters, prepared for the eyes of the King, everything
must have taken place "with all possible wisdom and discipline"; but the
Chancellor d'Aguesseau, in the "life" of his father, the intendant, teaches
us what we are to think of it. "The manner in which this miracle was
wrought," he says, "the singular facts that were recounted to us day by
day, would have sufficed to pierce a heart less religious than that of my
father!" Noailles himself, in a confidential letter, announced to Louvois
that he would ere long send "some capable men to answer about any matters
which he desired to know, and about which he could not write." There was
a half tacit understanding established between the minister, the military
chiefs, and the intendants. The King, in their opinion, desired the end
without sufficiently desiring the means.
Dauphiny, Limousin, La Rochelle, that holy Zion of the Huguenots, all
yielded at the same time. Louis was intoxicated. It had sufficed for him
to say a word, to lay his hand upon the hilt of his sword, to make those
fierce Huguenots, who had formerly worn out so many armies, and had forced
so many kings to capitulate before their rebellions, fall at his feet and
the feet of the Church. Who would henceforth dare to doubt his divine
mission and his infallible genius!
Not that Louis, nor especially those that surrounded him, precisely
believed that terror produced the effects of _grace_, or that these
innumerable conversions were sincere; but they saw in this the extinction
of all strong conviction among the heretics, the moral exhaustion of an
expiring sect. "The children at least will be Catholics, if the fathers
are hypocrites," wrote Madame de Maintenon. At present it was necessary to
complete the work and to prevent dangerous relapses in these subjugated
multitudes. It was necessary to put to flight as quickly as possible the
"false pastors" who might again lead their old flocks astray, and to make
the law conform to the fact, by solemnly revoking the concessions formerly
wrung by powerful and armed heresy from the feebleness of the ruling power.
Louis had long preserved some scruples about the violation of engagements
entered into by his grandfather Henry IV; but his last doubts had been
set at rest, several months since, by a "special council of conscience,"
composed of two theologians and two jurisconsults, who had decided that he
might and should revoke the Edict of Nantes. The names of the men who took
upon themselves the consequences of such a decision have remained unknown:
doubtless the confessor La Chaise was one of the theologians; who was the
other? The Archbishop of Paris, Harlai, was not, perhaps, in sufficient
esteem, on account of his habits. The great name of the Bishop of Meaux
naturally presents itself to the mind; but neither the correspondence of
Bossuet nor the documents relating to his life throw any light on this
subject, and we know not whether a direct and material responsibility must
be added to the moral responsibility with which the maxims of Bossuet and
the spirit of his works burden his memory.
After the "council of conscience," the council of the King was convened
for a definitive deliberation in the earlier part of October. Some of the
ministers, apparently the two Colberts, Seignelai, and Croissi, insinuated
that it would be better not to be precipitate. The Dauphin, a young prince
of twenty-four, who resembled, in his undefined character, his grandfather
more than his father, and who was destined to remain always as it were lost
in the splendid halo of Louis the Great, attempted an intervention that
deserves to rescue his name from oblivion. "He represented, from an
anonymous memorial that had been addressed to him the evening before, that
it was, perhaps, to be apprehended that the Huguenots might take up arms;"
"that in case they did not dare to do this, a great number would leave the
kingdom, which would injure commerce and agriculture, and thereby even
weaken the state." The King replied that he had foreseen all and provided
for all, that nothing in the world would be more painful to him than to
shed a drop of the blood of his subjects, but that he had armies and good
generals whom he would employ, in case of necessity, against rebels who
desired their own destruction. As to the argument of interest, he judged
it little worthy of consideration, compared with the advantages of an
undertaking that would restore to religion its splendor, to the state its
tranquillity, and to authority all its rights. The suppression of the Edict
of Nantes was resolved upon without further opposition.
Father la Chaise and Louvois, according to their ecclesiastical and
military correspondence, had promised that it should not even cost the drop
of blood of which the King spoke. The aged Chancellor le Tellier, already
a prey to the malady that was to bring him to his grave, drew up with
trembling hand the fatal declaration, which the King signed October 17th.
Louis professed in this preamble to do nothing but continue the pious
designs of his grandfather and his father for the reunion of their subjects
to the Church. He spoke of the "perpetual and irrevocable" edict of Henry
IV as a temporary regulation. "Our cares," he said, "since the truce that
we facilitated for this purpose, have had the effect that we proposed to
ourselves, since the better and the greater part of our subjects of the
so-called Reformed religion have embraced the Catholic; and inasmuch as by
reason of this the execution of the Edict of Nantes" "remains useless, we
have judged that we could not do better, in order wholly to efface the
memory of evils that this false religion had caused in our kingdom, than
entirely to revoke the said Edict of Nantes and all that has been done
since in favor of the said religion."