The Huguenots in France Part 21

We may briefly mention a few of the last of the galley-slaves. Daniel Bic and Jean Cabdie, liberated in 1764, for attending religious meetings. Both were condemned for life, and had been at the galley-chain for ten years.

Jean Pierre Espinas, an attorney, of St. Felix de Chateauneuf, in Viverais, who had been condemned for life for having given shelter to a pastor, was released in 1765, at the age of sixty-seven, after being chained at the galleys for twenty-five years.

Jean Raymond, of Fangeres, the father of six children, who had been a galley-slave for thirteen years, was liberated in 1767. Alexandre Chambon, a labourer, more than eighty years old, condemned for life in 1741, for attending a religious meeting, was released in 1769, on the entreaty of Voltaire, after being a galley-slave for twenty-eight years. His friends had forgotten him, and on his release he was utterly dest.i.tute and miserable.[81]

[Footnote 81: "Lettres inedites des Voltaire," publiees par Athanase Coquerel fils, 247.]

In 1772, three galley-slaves were liberated from their chains. Andre Guisard, a labourer, aged eighty-two, Jean Roque, and Louis Tregon, of the same cla.s.s, all condemned for life for attending religious meetings. They had all been confined at the chain for twenty years.

The two last galley-slaves were liberated in 1775, during the first year of the reign of Louis XVI., and close upon the outbreak of the French Revolution. They had been quite forgotten, until Court de Gebelin, son of Antoine Court, discovered them. When he applied for their release to M. de Boyne, Minister of Marine, he answered that there were no more Protestant convicts at the galleys; at least, he believed so. Shortly after, Turgot succeeded Boyne, and application was made to him. He answered that there was no need to recommend such objects to him for liberation, as they were liberated already.

On the two old men being told they were released, they burst into tears; but were almost afraid of returning to the world which no longer knew them. One of them was Antoine Rialle, a tailor of Aoste, in Dauphiny, who had been condemned by the parliament of Gren.o.ble to the galleys for life "for contravening the edicts of the King concerning religion." He was seventy-eight years old, and had been a galley-slave for thirty years.

The other, Paul Achard, had been a shoemaker of Chatillon, also in Dauphiny. He was condemned to be a galley-slave for life by the parliament of Gren.o.ble, for having given shelter to a pastor. Achard had also been confined at the galleys for thirty years.

It is not known when the last Huguenot women were liberated from the Tour de Constance, at Aiguesmortes. It would probably be about the time when the last Huguenots were liberated from the galleys. An affecting picture has been left by an officer who visited the prison at the release of the last prisoners. "I accompanied," he says, "the Prince de Beauvau (the intendant of Languedoc under Louis XVI.) in a survey which he made of the coast. Arriving at Aiguesmortes, at the gate of the Tour de Constance, we found at the entrance the princ.i.p.al keeper, who conducted us by dark steps through a great gate, which opened with an ominous noise, and over which was inscribed a motto from Dante--'Lasciate ogni speranza voi che'ntrate.'

"Words fail me to describe the horror with which we regarded a scene to which we were so unaccustomed--a frightful and affecting picture, in which the interest was heightened by disgust. We beheld a large circular apartment, deprived of air and of light, in which fourteen females still languished in misery. It was with difficulty that the Prince smothered his emotion; and doubtless it was the first time that these unfortunate creatures had there witnessed compa.s.sion depicted upon a human countenance; I still seem to behold the affecting apparition. They fell at our feet, bathed in tears, and speechless, until, emboldened by our expressions of sympathy, they recounted to us their sufferings. Alas! all their crime consisted in having been attached to the same religion as Henry IV. The youngest of these martyrs was more than fifty years old. She was but _eight_ when first imprisoned for having accompanied her mother to hear a religious service, and her punishment had continued until now!"[82]

[Footnote 82: Froissard, "Nismes et ses Environs," ii. 217.]

After the liberation of the last of the galley-slaves there were no further apprehensions nor punishments of Protestants. The priests had lost their power; and the secular authority no longer obeyed their behests. The nation had ceased to believe in them; in some places they were laughed at; in others they were detested. They owed this partly to their cruelty and intolerance, partly to their luxury and self-indulgence amidst the poverty of the people, and partly to the sarcasms of the philosophers, who had become more powerful in France than themselves. "It is not enough," said Voltaire, "that we prove intolerance to be horrible; we must also prove to the French that it is ridiculous."

In looking back at the sufferings of the Huguenots remaining in France since the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes; at the purity, self-denial, honesty, and industry of their lives; at the devotion with which they adhered to religious duty and the wors.h.i.+p of G.o.d; we cannot fail to regard them--labourers and peasants though they were--as amongst the truest, greatest, and worthiest heroes of their age. When society in France was falling to pieces; when its men and women were ceasing to believe in themselves and in each other; when the religion of the State had become a ma.s.s of abuse, consistent only in its cruelty; when the debauchery of its kings[83] had descended through the aristocracy to the people, until the whole ma.s.s was becoming thoroughly corrupt; these poor Huguenots seem to have been the only constant and true men, the only men holding to a great idea, for which they were willing to die--for they were always ready for martyrdom by the rack, the gibbet, or the galleys, rather than forsake the wors.h.i.+p of G.o.d freely and according to conscience.

[Footnote 83: Such was the dissoluteness of the manners of the court, that no less than 500,000,000 francs of the public debt, or 20,000,000 sterling, had been incurred for expenses too ignominious to bear the light, or even to be named in the public accounts. It appears from an authentic doc.u.ment, quoted in Soulavie's history, that in the sixteen months immediately preceding the death of Louis XV., Madame du Barry (originally a courtesan,) had drawn from the royal treasury no less than 2,450,000 francs, or equal to about 200,000 of our present money. ["Histoire de la Decadence de la Monarchie Francaise," par Soulavie l'Aine, iii. 330.] "La corruption,"

says Lacretelle, "entrait dans les plus paisibles menages, dans les familles les plus obscures. Elle [Madame du Barri]

etait savamment et longtemps combinee par ceux qui servaient les debauches de Louis. Des emissaires etaient employees a seduire des filles qui n'etaient point encore nubiles, a combattre dans de jeunes femmes des principes de pudeur et de fidelite. Amant de grade, il livrait a la prost.i.tution publique celles de ses sujettes qu'il avait prematurement corrompues. Il souffrait que les enfans de ses infames plaisirs partagea.s.sent la destinee obscure et dangereuse de ceux qu'un pere n'avoue point." LACRETELLE, _Histoire de France pendant le xviii Siecle_, iii. 171-173.]

But their persecution was now in a great measure at an end. It is true the Protestants were not recognised, but they nevertheless held their wors.h.i.+p openly, and were not interfered with. When Louis XVI.

succeeded to the throne in 1774, on the administration of the oath for the extermination of heretics denounced by the Church, the Archbishop of Toulouse said to him: "It is reserved for you to strike the final blow against Calvinism in your dominions. Command the dispersion of the schismatic a.s.semblies of the Protestants, exclude the sectarians, without distinction, from all offices of the public administration, and you will insure among your subjects the unity of the true Christian religion."

No attention was paid to this and similar appeals for the restoration of intolerance. On the contrary, an Edict of Toleration was issued by Louis XVI. in 1787, which, though granting a legal existence to the Protestants, nevertheless set forth that "The Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion alone shall continue to enjoy the right of public wors.h.i.+p in our realm."

Opinion, however, moved very fast in those days. The Declaration of Rights of 1789 overthrew the barriers which debarred the admission of Protestants to public offices. On the question of tolerance, Rabaut Saint-Etienne, son of Paul Rabaut, who sat in the National a.s.sembly for Nismes, insisted on the freedom of the Protestants to wors.h.i.+p G.o.d after their accustomed forms. He said he represented a const.i.tuency of 360,000, of whom 120,000 were Protestants. The penal laws against the wors.h.i.+p of the Reformed, he said, had never been formally abolished.

He claimed the rights of Frenchmen for two millions of useful citizens. It was not toleration he asked for, _it was liberty_.

"Toleration!" he exclaimed; "sufferance! pardon! clemency! ideas supremely unjust towards the Protestants, so long as it is true that difference of religion, that difference of opinion, is not a crime!

Toleration! I demand that toleration should be proscribed in its turn, and deemed an iniquitous word, dealing with us as citizens worthy of pity, as criminals to whom pardon is to be granted!"[84]

[Footnote 84: "History of the Protestants of France," by G.

de Felice, book v. sect. i.]

The motion before the House was adopted with a modification, and all Frenchmen, without distinction of religious opinions, were declared admissible to all offices and employments. Four months later, on the 15th March, 1790, Rabaut Saint-Etienne himself, son of the long proscribed pastor of the Desert, was nominated President of the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly, succeeding to the chair of the Abbe Montesquieu.

He did not, however, occupy the position long. In the struggles of the Convention he took part with the Girondists, and refused to vote for the death of Louis XVI. He maintained an obstinate struggle against the violence of the Mountain. His arrest was decreed; he was dragged before the revolutionary tribunal, and condemned to be executed within twenty-four hours.

The horrors of the French Revolution hide the doings of Protestantism and Catholicism alike for several years, until Buonaparte came into power. He recognised Catholicism as the established religion, and paid for the maintenance of the bishops and priests. He also protected Protestantism, the members of which were ent.i.tled to all the benefits secured to the other Christian communions, "with the exception of pecuniary subvention."

The comparative liberty which the Protestants of France had enjoyed under the Republic and the Empire seemed to be in some peril at the restoration of the Bourbons. The more bigoted Roman Catholics of the South hailed their return as the precursors of renewed persecution: and they raised the cry of "Un Dieu, un Roi, une Foi."

The Protestant mayor of Nismes was publicly insulted, and compelled to resign his office. The mob a.s.sembled in the streets and sang ferocious songs, threatening to "make black puddings of the blood of the Calvinists' children."[85] Another St. Bartholomew was even threatened; the Protestants began to conceal themselves, and many fled for refuge to the Upper Cevennes. Houses were sacked, their inmates outraged, and in many cases murdered.

[Footnote 85: See the Rev. Mark Wilks's "History of the Persecutions endured by the Protestants of the South of France, 1814, 1815, 1816." Longmans, 1821.]

The same scenes occurred in most of the towns and villages of the department of Gard; and the authorities seemed to be powerless to prevent them. The Protestants at length began to take up arms for their defence; the peasantry of the Cevennes brought from their secret places the rusty arms which their fathers had wielded more than a century before; and another Camisard war seemed imminent.

In the meantime, the subject of the renewed Protestant persecutions in the South of France was, in May, 1816, brought under the notice of the British House of Commons by Sir Samuel Romilly--himself the descendant of a Languedoc Huguenot--in a powerful speech; and although the motion was opposed by the Government, there can be little doubt that the discussion produced its due effect; for the Bourbon Government, itself becoming alarmed, shortly after adopted vigorous measures, and the persecution was brought to an end.

Since that time the Protestants of France have remained comparatively unmolested. Evidences have not been wanting to show that the persecuting spirit of the priest-party has not become extinct. While the author was in France in 1870, to visit the scenes of the wars of the Camisards, he observed from the papers that a French deputy had recently brought a case before the a.s.sembly, in which a Catholic cure of Ville-d'Avray refused burial in the public cemetery to the corpse of a young English lady, because she was a Protestant, and remitted it to the place allotted for criminals and suicides. The body accordingly lay for eighteen days in the cabin of the gravedigger, until it could be transported to the cemetery of Sevres, where it was finally interred.

But the people of France, as well as the government, have become too indifferent about religion generally, to persecute any one on its account. The nation is probably even now suffering for its indifference, and the spectacle is a sad one. It is only the old, old story. The sins of the fathers are being visited on the children.

Louis XIV. and the French nation of his time sowed the wind, and their descendants at the Revolution reaped the whirlwind. And who knows how much of the sufferings of France during the last few years may have been due to the ferocious intolerance, the abandonment to vicious pleasures, the thirst for dominion, and the hunger for "glory," which above all others characterized the reign of that monarch who is in history miscalled "the Great?"

It will have been noted that the chief scenes of the revival of Protestantism described in the preceding pages occurred in Languedoc and the South of France, where the chief strength of the Huguenots always lay. The Camisard civil war which happened there, was not without its influence. The resolute spirit which it had evoked survived. The people were purified by suffering, and though they did not conquer civil liberty, they continued to live strong, hardy, virtuous lives. When Protestantism was at length able to lift up its head after so long a period of persecution, it was found that, during its long submergence, it had lost neither in numbers, in moral or intellectual vigour, nor in industrial power.

To this day the Protestants of Languedoc cherish the memory of their wanderings and wors.h.i.+ppings in the Desert; and they still occasionally hold their meetings in the old frequented places. Not far from Nismes are several of these ancient meeting-places of the persecuted, to which we have above referred. One of them is about two miles from the city, in the bed of a mountain torrent. The wors.h.i.+ppers arranged themselves along the slopes of the narrow valley, the pastor preaching to them from the gra.s.sy level in the hollow, while sentinels posted on the adjoining heights gave warning of the approach of the enemy.

Another favourite place of meeting was the hollow of an ancient quarry called the Echo, from which the Romans had excavated much of the stone used in the building of the city. The congregation seated themselves around the craggy sides, the preacher's pulpit being placed in the narrow pa.s.s leading into the quarry. Notwithstanding all the vigilance of the sentinels, many persons of both s.e.xes and various ages were often dragged from the Echo to imprisonment or death. Even after the persecutions had ceased, these meeting-places continued to be frequented by the Protestants of Nismes, and they were sometimes attended by five or six thousand persons, and on sacrament days by even double that number.

Although the Protestants of Languedoc for the most part belong to the National Reformed Church, the independent character of the people has led them to embrace Protestantism in other forms. Thus, the Evangelical Church is especially strong in the South, whilst the Evangelical Methodists number more congregations and wors.h.i.+ppers in Languedoc than in all the rest of France. There are also in the Cevennes several congregations of Moravian Brethren. But perhaps one of the most curious and interesting issues of the Camisard war is the branch of the Society of Friends still existing in Languedoc--the only representatives of that body in France, or indeed on the European continent.

When the Protestant peasants of the Cevennes took up arms and determined to resist force by force, there were several influential men amongst them who kept back and refused to join them. They held that the Gospel they professed did not warrant them in taking up arms and fighting, even against the enemies who plundered and persecuted them. And when they saw the excesses into which the Camisards were led by the war of retaliation on which they had entered, they were the more confirmed in their view that the att.i.tude which the rebels had a.s.sumed, was inconsistent with the Christian religion.

After the war had ceased, these people continued to a.s.sociate together, maintaining a faithful testimony against war, refusing to take oaths, and recognising silent wors.h.i.+p, without dependence on human acquirements. They were not aware of the existence of a similar body in England and America until the period of the French Revolution, when some intercourse began to take place between them.

In 1807, Stephen Grellet, an American Friend, of French origin, visited Languedoc, and held many religious meetings in the towns and villages of the Lower Cevennes, which were not only attended by the Friends of Congenies, St. Hypolite, Granges, St. Grilles, Fontane's, Vauvert, Quissac, and other places in the neighbourhood of Nismes, but by the inhabitants at large, Roman Catholics as well as Protestants.

At that time, as now, Congenies was regarded as the centre of the district princ.i.p.ally inhabited by the Friends, and there they possess a large and commodious meeting-house, built for the purpose of wors.h.i.+p.

At the time of Stephen Grellet's visit, he especially mentioned Louis Majolier as "a father and a pillar" amongst the little flock.[86] And it may not be unworthy to note that the daughter of the same Louis Majolier is at the present time one of the most acceptable female preachers of the Society of Friends in England.

[Footnote 86: "Life of Stephen Grellet," third edition.

London, 1870.]

It may also be mentioned, in pa.s.sing, that there still exist amongst the Vosges mountains the remnants of an ancient sect--the Anabaptists of Munster--who hold views in many respects similar to those of the Friends. Amongst other things, they testify against war as unchristian, and refuse under any circ.u.mstances to carry arms. Rather than do so, they have at different times suffered imprisonment, persecution, and even death. The republic of 1793 respected their scruples, and did not require the Anabaptists to fight in the ranks, but employed them as pioneers and drivers, while Napoleon made them look after the wounded on the field of battle, and attend to the waggon train and ambulances.[87] And we understand that they continue to be similarly employed down to the present time.

[Footnote 87: Michel, "Les Anabaptistes des Vosges." Paris, 1862.]

It forms no part of our subject to discuss the present state of the French Protestant Church. It has lost no part of its activity during the recent political changes. Although its clergy had for some time been supported by the State, they had not met in public synod until June, 1872, after an interval of more than two hundred years. During that period many things had become changed. Rationalism had invaded Evangelicalism. Without a synod, or a settled faith, the Protestant churches were only so many separate congregations, often representing merely individual interests. In fact, the old Huguenot Church required reorganization; and great results are expected from the proceedings adopted at the recently held synod of the French Protestant Church.[88]

[Footnote 88: The best account of the proceedings at this synod is given in _Blackwood's Magazine_ for January, 1873.]

With respect to the French Catholic Church, its relative position to the Protestants remains the same as before. But it has no longer the power to persecute. The Gallican Church has been replaced by the Ultramontane Church, but its impulses are no kindlier, though it has become "Infallible."

The princ.i.p.al movement of the Catholic priests of late years has been to get up appearances of the Virgin. The Virgin appears, usually, to a child or two, and pilgrimages are immediately got up to the scene of her visit. By getting up religious movements of this kind, the priests and their followers believe that France will yet be helped towards the _Revanche_, which she is said to long for.

But pilgrimages will not make men; and if France wishes to be free, she will have to adopt some other methods. Bismarck will never be put down by pilgrimages. It was a sad saying of Father Hyacinthe at Geneva, that "France is bound to two influences--Superst.i.tion and Irreligion."