The Huguenots in France Part 28

"Her Majesty's s.h.i.+p _Guardian_, "_December, 1789._

"If any part of the officers or crew of the _Guardian_ should ever survive to reach home, I have only to say that their conduct, after the fatal stroke against an island of ice, was admirable and wonderful in everything that relates to their duties, considered either as private men or in his Majesty's service. As there seems no possibility of my remaining many hours in this world, I beg leave to recommend to the consideration of the Admiralty a sister, to whom, if my conduct or services should be found deserving any memory, favour might be shown, together with a widowed mother.

"I am, sir, with great respect, "Your ever obedient servant, "EDWARD RIOU.

"PHILIP STEPHENS, ESQ., "Admiralty."

About half the crew remained with Riou, some because they determined to stand by their commander, and others because they could not get away in the boats, which, to avoid being overcrowded, had put off in haste, for the most part insufficiently stored and provided. The sea, still high, continued to make breaches over the s.h.i.+p, and many were drowned in their attempts to reach the boats. Those who remained were exhausted by fatigue; and, without the most distant hope of life, some were mad with despair. A party of these last contrived to break open the spirit-room, and found a temporary oblivion in intoxication. "It is hardly a time to be a disciplinarian," wrote Riou in his log, which continues a valued treasury in his family, "when only a few more hours of life seem to present themselves; but this behaviour greatly hurts me." This log gives a detailed account, day by day, of the eight weeks' heroic fort.i.tude and scientific seamans.h.i.+p which preserved the _Guardian_ afloat until she got into the track of s.h.i.+ps, and was finally towed by Dutch whalers into Table Bay, Cape of Good Hope.

The master's boat, in which were also the purser and chaplain, had by a miracle been picked up, and those officers, on their return to England, reported to the Admiralty "the total loss of the _Guardian_".

They also at the same time spoke of Riou's n.o.ble conduct in terms of such enthusiasm as to awaken general admiration, and occasion the greatest regret at his loss. Accordingly, when the Admiralty received from his own hand the unexpected intelligence of his safety, his widowed mother and only sister had the affectionate sympathy of all England. Lord Hood himself, before unknown to the family, hastened to their house with the news, calling to the servants as he ran up the stairs to "throw off their mourning!" The following was Riou's brief letter to his mother, which he found time to scrawl and send off by a s.h.i.+p just leaving Table Bay for England as the poor helpless _Guardian_ was being towed in:--

"Cape of Good Hope, "_February, 22, 1790_.

"DEAREST,--G.o.d has been merciful. I hope you have no fatal accounts of the _Guardian_. I am safe; I am well, notwithstanding you may hear otherwise. Join with me in prayer to that blessed Saviour who hath hung over my s.h.i.+p for two months, and kept thy dear son safe, to be, I hope, thankful for almost a miracle. I can say no more because I am hurried, and the s.h.i.+p sails for England this afternoon.

"Yours ever and ever, "EDWARD RIOU."

Riou remained many months at the Cape trying to patch up the _Guardian_, and repair it so as to bring it back to port; but all his exertions were fruitless, and in October the Admiralty despatched the _Sphinx_ s.h.i.+p-of-war to bring him and the survivors of his crew to England, where they landed shortly after. There was, of course, the usual court-martial held upon him for the loss of his s.h.i.+p, but it was merely a matter of form. At its conclusion he was complimented by the Court in the warmest terms; and "as a mark of the high consideration in which the magnanimity of his conduct was held, in remaining by his s.h.i.+p from an exalted sense of duty when all reasonable prospects of saving her were at an end," he received the special thanks of the Admiralty, was made commander, and at the same time promoted to the rank of post captain.

No record exists of the services of Captain Riou from the date of his promotion until 1794, when we find him in command of his Majesty's s.h.i.+p _Rose_, a.s.sisting in the reduction of Martinique. He was then transferred to the _Beaulieu_, and remained cruising in the West Indian seas till his health became so injured by the climate that he found himself compelled to solicit his recall, and he consequently returned to England in the _Theseus_ in the following year. Shortly after, in recognition of his distinguished services, he was appointed to the command of the royal yacht, the _Princess Augusta_, in which he remained until the spring of 1790. So soon as his health was sufficiently re-established, he earnestly solicited active employment, and he was accordingly appointed to the command of the fine frigate, the _Amazon_, thirty-eight guns, whose name afterwards figured so prominently in Nelson's famous battle before Copenhagen.

After cruising about in her on various stations, and picking up a few prizes, the _Amazon_, early in 1801, was attached to Sir Hyde Parker's fleet, destined for the Baltic. The last letter which Riou wrote home to his mother was dated Sunday, the 29th March, "at the entrance to the Sound;" and in it he said:--"It yet remains in doubt whether we are to fight the Danes, or whether they will be our friends." Already, however, Nelson was arranging his plan of attack, and on the following day, the 30th, the Admiral and all the artillery officers were on board the _Amazon_, which proceeded to examine the northern channel outside Copenhagen Harbour. It was on this occasion that Riou first became known to Nelson, who was struck with admiration at the superior discipline and seamans.h.i.+p which were observable on board the frigate during the proceedings of that day.

Early in the evening of the 1st of April the signal to prepare for action was made; and Lord Nelson, with Riou and Foley, on board the _Elephant_--all the other officers having returned to their respective s.h.i.+ps--arranged the order of battle on the following day.

What remains to be told of Riou is matter of history. The science and skill in navigation which made Nelson intrust to him the last soundings, and place under his command the fire-s.h.i.+ps which were to lead the way on the following morning,--the gallantry with which the captain of the _Amazon_ throw himself, _impar congressus_, under the fearful fire of the Trekroner battery, to redeem the failure threatened by the grounding of the s.h.i.+ps of the line,--have all been told with a skilful pen, and forms a picture of a great sailor's last hours, which is cherished with equal pride in the affections of his family and the annals of his country.

Sir Hyde Parker's signal to "leave off action," which Nelson, putting his telescope to his blind eye, refused to see, was seen, by Riou and reluctantly obeyed. Indeed, nothing but that signal for retreat saved the _Amazon_ from destruction, though it did not save its heroic commander. As he unwillingly drew off from the destructive fire of the battery he mournfully exclaimed, "What will Nelson think of us!" His clerk had been killed by his side. He himself had been wounded in the head by a splinter, but continued to sit on a gun encouraging his men, who were falling in numbers around him. "Come then, my boys," he cried, "let us all die together." Scarcely had he uttered the words, when a raking shot cut him in two. And thus, in an instant, perished the "gallant good Riou," at the early age of thirty-nine.

Riou was a man of the truest and tenderest feelings, yet the bravest of the brave. His private correspondence revealed the most endearing qualities of mind and heart, while the n.o.bility of his actions was heightened by lofty Christian sentiment, and a firm reliance on the power and mercy of G.o.d. His chivalrous devotion to duty in the face of difficulty and danger heightened the affectionate admiration with which he was regarded, and his death before Copenhagen was mourned almost as a national bereavement. The monument erected to his memory in St. Paul's Cathedral represented, however inadequately, the widely felt sorrow which pervaded all cla.s.ses at the early death of this heroic officer. "Except it had been Nelson himself," says Southey, "the British navy could not have suffered a severer loss."

Captain Riou's only sister married Colonel Lyde Browne, who closed his honourable career of twenty-three years' active service in Dublin, on July 23rd, 1803. Within two years of her bitter mourning for the death of her brother, she had also to mourn for the loss of her husband. He was colonel of the 21st Fusiliers. He was hastening to the a.s.sistance of Lord Kilwarden on the fatal night of Emmett's rebellion, when he was basely a.s.sa.s.sinated. He was buried in the churchyard of St.

Paul's, Dublin, where his brother officers erected a marble tablet to his memory. He left an only daughter, who was married, in 1826, to M.

G. Benson, Esq., of Lulwyche Hall, Salop. It is through this lady that we have been permitted to inspect the family papers relating to the life and death of Captain Riou.

A VISIT TO THE COUNTRY OF THE VAUDOIS.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "The country of Felix Neff." (Dauphiny.)]

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

Dauphiny is one of the least visited of all the provinces of France.

It occupies a remote corner of the empire, lying completely out of the track of ordinary tourists. No great road pa.s.ses through it into Italy, the Piedmontese frontier of which it adjoins; and the annual streams of English and American travellers accordingly enter that kingdom by other routes. Even to Frenchmen, who travel little in their own country and still less in others, Dauphiny is very little known; and M. Joanne, who has written an excellent Itinerary of the South of France, almost takes the credit of having discovered it.

Yet Dauphiny is a province full of interest. Its scenery almost vies with that of Switzerland in grandeur, beauty, and wildness. The great mountain ma.s.ses of the Alps do not end in Savoy, but extend through the south-eastern parts of France, almost to the mouths of the Rhone.

Packed closer together than in most parts of Switzerland, the mountains of Dauphiny are furrowed by deep valleys, each with its rapid stream or torrent at bottom, in some places overhung by precipitous rocks, in others hemmed in by green hills, over which are seen the distant snowy peaks and glaciers of the loftier mountain ranges. Of these, Mont Pelvoux--whose double pyramid can be seen from Lyons on a clear day, a hundred miles off--and the Aiguille du Midi, are among the larger ma.s.ses, rising to a height little short of Mont Blanc itself.

From the ramparts of Gren.o.ble the panoramic view is of wonderful beauty and grandeur, extending along the valleys of the Isere and the Drac, and across that of the Romanche. The ma.s.sive heads of the Grand Chartreuse mountains bound the prospect to the north; and the summits of the snow-clad Dauphiny Alps on the south and east present a combination of bold valley and mountain scenery, the like of which is not to be seen in France, if in Europe.

But it is not the scenery, or the geology, or the flora of the province, however marvellous these may be, that const.i.tutes the chief interest for the traveller through these Dauphiny valleys, so much as the human endurance, suffering, and faithfulness of the people who have lived in them in past times, and of which so many interesting remnants still survive. For Dauphiny forms a princ.i.p.al part of the country of the ancient Vaudois or Waldenses--literally, the people inhabiting the _Vaux_, or valleys--who for nearly seven hundred years bore the heavy brunt of Papal persecution, and are now, after all their sufferings, free to wors.h.i.+p G.o.d according to the dictates of their conscience.

The country of the Vaudois is not confined, as is generally supposed, to the valleys of Piedmont, but extends over the greater part of Dauphiny and Provence. From the main ridge of the Cottian Alps, which, divide France from Italy, great mountain spurs are thrown out, which run westward as well as eastward, and enclose narrow strips of pasturage, cultivable land, and green shelves on the mountain sides, where a poor, virtuous, and hard-working race have long contrived to earn a scanty subsistence, amidst trials and difficulties of no ordinary kind,--the greatest of which, strange to say, have arisen from the pure and simple character of the religion they professed.

The tradition which exists among them is, that the early Christian missionaries, when travelling from Italy into Gaul by the Roman road pa.s.sing over Mont Genevre, taught the Gospel in its primitive form to the people of the adjoining districts. It is even surmised that St.

Paul journeyed from Rome into Spain by that route, and may himself have imparted to the people of the valleys their first Christian instruction. The Italian and Gallic provinces in that quarter were certainly Christianized in the second century at the latest, and it is known that the early missionaries were in the habit of making frequent journeys from the provinces to Rome. Wherefore it is reasonable to suppose that the people of the valleys would receive occasional visits from the wayfaring teachers who travelled by the mountain pa.s.ses in the immediate neighbourhood of their dwellings.

As years rolled on, and the Church at Rome became rich and allied itself with the secular power, it gradually departed more and more from its primitive condition,[92] until at length it was scarcely to be recognised from the Paganism which it had superseded. The heathen G.o.ds were replaced by canonised mortals; Venus and Cupid by the Virgin and Child; Lares and Penates by images and crucifixes; while incense, flowers, tapers, and showy dresses came to be regarded as essential parts of the ceremonial of the new religion as they had been of the old. Madonnas winked and bled again, as the statues of Juno and Pompey had done before; and stones and relics worked miracles as in the time of the Augurs.

[Footnote 92: The ancient Vaudois had a saying, known in other countries--"Religion brought forth wealth, and the daughter devoured the mother;" and another of like meaning, but less known--"When the bishops' croziers became golden, the bishops themselves became Wooden."]

Attempts were made by some of the early bishops to stem this tide of innovation. Thus, in the fourth, century, Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, and Philastrius, Bishop of Brescia, acknowledging no authority on earth as superior to that of the Bible, protested against the introduction of images in churches, which they held to be a return to Paganism. Four centuries later, Claude, Bishop of Turin, advanced like views, and opposed with energy the wors.h.i.+p of images, which he regarded as absolute idolatry. In the meanwhile, the simple Vaudois, shut up in their almost inaccessible valleys, and knowing nothing of these innovations, continued to adhere to their original primitive form of wors.h.i.+p; and it clearly appears, from a pa.s.sage in the writings of St. Ambrose, that, in his time, the superst.i.tions which prevailed elsewhere had not at all extended into the mountainous regions of his diocese.

The Vaudois Church was never, in the ordinary sense of the word, a "Reformed" Church, simply because it had not become corrupted, and did not stand in need of "reformation." It was not the Vaudois who left the Church, but the Roman Church that left them in search of idols.

Adhering to their primitive faith, they never recognised the paramount authority of the Pope; they never wors.h.i.+pped images, nor used incense, nor observed Ma.s.s; and when, in the course of time, these corruptions became known to them, and they found that the Western Church had ceased to be Catholic, and become merely Roman; they openly separated from it, as being no longer in conformity with the principles of the Gospel as inculcated in the Bible and delivered to them by their fathers. Their ancient ma.n.u.scripts, still extant, attest to the purity of their doctrines. They are written, like the n.o.bla Leycon, in the Romance or Provencal--the earliest of the modern cla.s.sical languages, the language of the troubadours--though now only spoken as a _patois_ in Dauphiny, Piedmont, Sardinia, the north of Spain, and the Balearic Isles.[93]

[Footnote 93: Sismondi, "Litterature du Midi de l'Europe," i.

159.]

If the age counts for anything, the Vaudois are justified in their claim to be considered one of the oldest churches in Europe. Long before the conquest of England by the Normans, before the time of Wallace and Bruce in Scotland, before England had planted its foot in Ireland, the Vaudois Church existed. Their remoteness, their poverty, and their comparative unimportance as a people, for a long time protected them from interference; and for centuries they remained unnoticed by Rome. But as the Western Church extended its power, it became insatiable for uniformity. It would not tolerate the independence which characterized the early churches, but aimed at subjecting them to the exclusive authority of Rome.

The Vaudois, however, persisted in repudiating the doctrines and formularies of the Pope. When argument failed, the Church called the secular arm to its aid, and then began a series of persecutions, extending over several centuries, which, for brutality and ferocity, are probably unexampled in history. To crush this unoffending but faithful people, Rome employed her most irrefragable arguments--the curses of Lucius and the horrible cruelties of Innocent--and the "Vicar of Christ" bathed the banner of the Cross in a carnage from which the wolves of Romulus and the eagles of Caesar would have turned with loathing.

Long before the period of the Reformation, the Vaudois valleys were ravaged by fire and sword because of the alleged heresy of the people.

Luther was not born until 1483; whereas nearly four centuries before, the Vaudois were stigmatized as heretics by Rome. As early as 1096, we find Pope Urban II. describing Val Louise, one of the Dauphiny valleys--then called Vallis Gyrontana, from the torrent of Gyr, which flows through it--as "infested with heresy." In 1179, hot persecution raged all over Dauphiny, extending to the Albigeois of the South of France, as far as Lyons and Toulouse; one of the first martyrs being Pierre Waldo, or Waldensis,[94] of Lyons, who was executed for heresy by the Archbishop of Lyons in 1180.

[Footnote 94: It has been surmised by some writers that the Waldenses derived their name from this martyr; but being known as "heretics" long before his time, it is more probable that they gave the name to him than that he did to them.]

Of one of the early persecutions, an ancient writer says: "In the year 1243, Pope Innocent II. ordered the Bishop of Metz rigorously to prosecute the Vaudois, especially because they read the sacred books in the vulgar tongue."[95] From time to time, new persecutions were ordered, and conducted with ever-increasing ferocity--the scourge, the brand, and the sword being employed by turns. In 1486, while Luther was still in his cradle, Pope Innocent VIII. issued a bull of extermination against the Vaudois, summoning all true Catholics to the holy crusade, promising free pardon to all manner of criminals who should take part in it, and concluding with the promise of the remission of sins to every one who should slay a heretic.[96] The consequence was, the a.s.semblage of an immense horde of brigands, who were let loose on the valleys of Dauphiny and Piedmont, which they ravaged and pillaged, in company with eighteen thousand regular troops, jointly furnished by the French king and the Duke of Savoy.

[Footnote 95: Jean Leger, "Histoire Generale des eglises evangeliques des Vallees de Piedmont, ou Vaudoises." Leyde, 1669. Part ii. 330.]

[Footnote 96: Leger, ii. 8-20.]

Sometimes the valleys were under the authority of the kings of France, sometimes under that of the dukes of Savoy, whose armies alternately overran them; but change of masters and change of popes made little difference to the Vaudois. It sometimes, however, happened, that the persecution waxed hotter on one side of the Cottian Alps, while it temporarily relaxed on the other; and on such occasions the French and Italian Vaudois were accustomed to cross the mountain pa.s.ses, and take refuge in each others' valleys. But when, as in the above case, the kings, soldiers, and brigands, on both sides, simultaneously plied the brand and the sword, the times were very troublous indeed for these poor hunted people. They had then no alternative but to climb up the mountains into the least accessible places, or hide themselves away in dens and caverns with their families, until their enemies had departed. But they were often, tracked to their hiding-places by their persecutors, and suffocated, strangled, or shot--men, women, and children. Hence there is scarcely a hiding-place along the mountain-sides of Dauphiny but has some tradition connected with it relating to those dreadful times. In one, so many women and children were suffocated; in another, so many perished of cold and hunger; in a third, so many were ruthlessly put to the sword. If these caves of Dauphiny had voices, what deeds of horror they could tell!

What is known as the Easter ma.s.sacre of 1655 made an unusual sensation in Europe, but especially in England, princ.i.p.ally through the att.i.tude which Oliver Cromwell a.s.sumed in the matter. Persecution had followed persecution for nearly four hundred years, and still the Vaudois were neither converted nor extirpated. The dukes of Savoy during all that time pursued a uniform course of treachery and cruelty towards this portion of their subjects. Sometimes the Vaudois, pressed by their persecutors, turned upon them, and drove them ignominiously out of their valleys. Then the reigning dukes would refrain for a time; and, probably needing their help in one or other of the wars in which they were constantly engaged, would promise them protection and privileges.

But such promises were invariably broken; and at some moment when the Vaudois were thrown off their guard by his pretended graciousness, the duke for the time being would suddenly pounce upon them and carry fire and sword through their valleys.