The Huguenots in France after the revocation of the edict of Nantes

Front matter

Book,

5^

By SAMUEL SMILES.

Preface

vii

Huguenots who left France to avoid the cruelties of Louis XIV., as well as of those who perforce remained to endure them. It shakes one's faith in history to observe the contradictory statements published with regard to French political or religious facts, even of recent date. A general impression has long prevailed that there was a Massacre of St. Bartholemew in Paris in the year 1572 ; but even that has recently been denied, or softened down into a mere political squabble. It is not, however, possible to deny the fact that there was a Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, though it has been vindicated as a noble act of legislation, worthy even of the reputation and character of Louis the Great.

No two writers agree as to the number of French citizens who were driven from their country by the Revocation. A learned Roman Catholic, Mr. Charles Butler, states that only 50,000 persons " retired" from France ; whereas M. Capefigue, equally opposed to the Reformation, who consulted the population tables of the period (although the intendants made their returns as small as possible in order to avoid the reproach of negligence), calculates the emigration at 230,000 souls, namely, 1,580 ministers, 2,300 elders, 15,000 gentlemen, the remainder consisting almost entirely of traders and artisans.

These returns, quoted by M. Capefigue, were made only a few years after the Revocation, although the emigration continued without intermission for many years later. M. Charles Coquerel says that whatever viii

PREFACE.

horror may be felt for the Massacre of St. Bartholomew of 1572, the persecutions which preceded and followed the Act of Revocation in 1685, "kept France under a perpetual St. Bartholomew for about sixty years." During that time it is believed that more than 1,000,000 Frenchmen either left the kingdom, or were killed, imprisoned, or sent to the galleys in their efforts to escape.

The Intendant of Saintonge, a King's officer, not likely to exaggerate the number of emigrants, reported in 1698, long before the emigration had ceased, that his province had lost 100,000 Reformers. Languedoc suffered far more ; whilst Boulainvilliers reports that besides the emigrants who succeeded in making their escape, the province lost not fewer than 100,000 persons by premature death, the sword, strangulation, and the wheel.

The number of French emigrants who resorted to England may be inferred from the fact that at the beginning of last century there were not fewer than thirty -five French Protestant churches in London alone, at a time wdien the population of the metropolis was not one-fourth of what it is now ; while there were other large French settlements at Canterbury, Norwich, Southampton, Bristol, Exeter, &c, as well as at Dublin, Lisburn, Portarlington, and other towns in Ireland.

Then, with respect to the much larger number of Protestants who remained in France after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, there is the same difference

PREFACE.

IX of opinion. A deputation of Huguenot pastors and elders, who waited upon the Due de Noailles in 1682, informed him that there were then 1,800,000 Protestant families in France. Thirty years after that date, Louis XI Y. proclaimed that there were no Protestants whatever in France ; that Protestantism had been entirely suppressed, and that any one found professing that faith must be considered as a " relapsed heretic," and sentenced to imprisonment, the galleys, or the other punishments to which Protestants were then subject.

After an interval of about seventy-five years, during which Protestantism (though suppressed by the law) contrived to lead a sort of underground life — the Protestants meeting by night, and sometimes by day, in caves, valleys, moors, woods, old quarries, hollow beds of rivers, or, as they themselves called it, "in the Desert " — they at length contrived to lift their heads into the light of day, and then Pabaut St. Etienne stood up in the Constituent Assembly at Paris, in 1787, and claimed the rights of his Protestant fellowcountrymen — the rights of " 2,000,000 useful citizens." Louis XYI. granted them an Edict of Tolerance, about a hundred years after Louis XIY. had revoked the Edict of Nantes ; but the measure proved too late for the King, and too late for France, which had already been sacrificed to the intolerance of Louis XIY. and his Jesuit advisers.

After- all the sufferings of France — after the cruelties to which her people have been subjected by

X

PREFACE.

the tyranny of her monarchs and the intolerance of her priests, — it is doubtful whether she has yet learnt wisdom from her experience and trials. France was brought to ruin a century ago by the Jesuits who held the entire education of the country in their hands. They have again recovered their ground, and the Congreganistes are now what the J esuits were before. The Sans-Cullotes of 1793 were the pupils of the priests ; so were the Communists of 1871.* M. Edgar Quinet has recently said to his countrymen : " The Jesuitical and clerical spirit which has sneaked in among you and all your affairs has ruined you. It has corrupted the spring of life ; it has delivered you over to the enemy ... Is this to last for ever ? For heaven's sake spare us at least the sight of a Jesuits' Hepublic as the coronation of our century."

In the midst of these prophecies of ruin, we have M. Yeuillot frankly -avowing his Ultramontane policy in the TTnivers. He is quite willing to go back to the old burnings, hangings, and quarterings, to prevent any freedom of opinion about religious matters. "For my part," he says, "I frankly avow my regret not only that John Huss was not burnt sooner, but that Luther was not burnt too. And I regret further that there has not been some prince sufficiently pious and politic to have made a crusade against the Protestants."

M. Yeuillot is perhaps entitled to some respect for boldly speaking out what he means and thinks * M. Simiot's speech before the National Assembly, 16th March, 1873

PREFACE.

xi

There are many amongst ourselves who mean the same thing, without having the courage to say so — who hate the Reformation quite as much as JSL Yeuillot does, and would like to see the principles of free examination and individual liberty torn up root and branch.

With respect to the proposed crusade against Protestantism, it will be seen from the following work what the " pious and politic" Louis XI Y. attempted, and how very inefficient his measures eventually proved in putting down Protestantism, or in extending Catholicism. Louis XIY. found it easier to make martyrs than apostates ; and discovered that hanging, banishment, the galleys, and the sword were not amongst the most successful of " converters."

The history of the Huguenots during the time of

their submergence as an "underground church" is

scarcely treated in the general histories of France.

Courtly writers blot them out of history as Louis XIY.

desired to blot them out of France. Most histories of

France published in England contain little notice of

them. Those who desire to pursue the subject further,

will obtain abundant information, more particularly

from the following works : —

Elie Benoit : Histoire de VFdit de Nantes.

Charles Coquebel : Histoire des Eglises du Desert.

Napoleon Peyrat : Histoire des Pasteurs de Desert.

Antoine Court: Histoire des Troubles de Cevennes.

Edmund Hughes : Histoire de la Eestauration du Protestantisme en

France au xviii. Siecle.

A. Bonnemere : Histoire des Camisardes. Adolphe Michel : Louvois et Des Protestantes. Athanase Coquerel Fils : Les Forcats pour La Foi, §c, §c.

xii

PREFACE.

It remains to be added that part of this work — viz., the " Wars of the Camisards," and the " Journey in the Country of the Yaudois " — originally appeared in Good Words.

S. S.

London, October, 1873.

Contents

THE HUGUENOTS IN FRANCE AFTER THE REVOCATION

OF THE EDICT OF NANTES.

CHAPTER PAGE I. REVOCATION OF THE EDICT OF NANTES ..... 1 II. EFFECTS OF THE REVOCATION — CHURCH IN THE DESERT . 12

Chapter II. Effects Of The Revocation

THE Revocation struck with civil death the entire Protestant population of France. All the liberty of conscience which they had enjoyed under the Edict of Nantes, was swept away by the act of the King. They were deprived of every right and privilege ; their social life was destroyed ; their callings were proscribed ; their property was liable to be confiscated at any moment ; and they were subjected to mean, detestable, and outrageous cruelties.

Prom the day of the Revocation, the relation of Louis XI Y. to his Huguenot subjects was that of the Tyrant and his Yictims. The only resource which remained to the latter was that of flying from their native country ; and an immense number of persons took the opportunity of escaping from France.

The Edict of Revocation proclaimed that the Huguenot subjects of Prance must thenceforward be of "the King's religion and the order was promulgated throughout the kingdom. The Prime Minister, Louvois, wrote to the provincial governors, " His Majesty desires that the severest rigour shall be shown to those who will not conform to His Religion, and those who seek the foolish glory of wishing to be the last, must be pushed to the utmost extremity."

The Huguenots were forbidden, under the penalty of death, to worship publicly after their own religious forms. They were also forbidden, under the penalty of being sent to the galleys for life, to worship privately in their own homes. If they were overheard singing their favourite psalms, they were liable to fine, imprisonment, or the galleys. They were compelled to hang out flags from their houses on the days of Catholic processions ; but they were forbidden, under a heavy penalty, to look out of their windows when the Corpus Domini was borne along the streets.

The Huguenots were rigidly forbidden to instruct their children in . their own faith. They were commanded to send them to the priest to be baptized and brought up in the Roman Catholic faith, under the penalty of five hundred livres fine in each case. The boys were educated in Jesuit schools, the girls in nunneries, the parents being compelled to pay the required expenses ; and where the parents were too poor to pay, the children were at once transferred to the general hospitals. A decree of the King, published in December, 1685, ordered that every child of five years and upwards was to be taken possession of by the authorities, and removed from its Protestant parents. This decree often proved a sentence of death, not only to the child, but to its parents.

The whole of the Protestant temples throughout Prance were subject to demolition. The expelled pastors were compelled to evacuate the country within fifteen days. If, in the meantime, they were found performing their functions, they were liable to be sent to the galleys for life. If they undertook to marry Protestants, the marriages were declared illegal, and the children bastards. If, after the expiry of the

THE HUGUENOTS.

fifteen days, they were found lingering in France, the pastors were then liable to the penalty of death.

Protestants could neither be born, nor live, nor die, without state and priestly interference. Protestant sages-femmes were not permitted to exercise their functions ; Protestant doctors were prohibited from practising ; Protestant surgeons and apothecaries were suppressed; Protestant advocates, notaries, and lawyers were interdicted ; Protestants could not teach, and all their schools, public and private, were put down. Protestants were no longer employed by the Government in affairs of finance, as collectors of taxes, or even as labourers on the public roads, or in any other office. Even Protestant grocers were forbidden to exercise their calling.

There must be no Protestant librarians, booksellers, or printers. There was, indeed, a general raid upon Protestant literature all over France. All Bibles, Testaments, and books of religious instruction, werecollected and publicly burnt. There were bonfires in almost every town. At Metz, it occupied a whole day to burn the Protestant books which had been seized, handed over to the clergy, and condemned to be destroyed.

Protestants were even forbidden to hire out horses, and Protestant grooms were forbidden to give riding lessons. Protestant domestics were forbidden to hire themselves as servants, and Protestant mistresses were forbidden to hire them under heavy penalties. If they engaged Protestant servants, they were liable to be sent to the galleys for life. They were even prevented employing " new converts."

Artisans were forbidden to work without certificates that their religion was Catholic. Protestant apprenticeships were suppressed. Protestant washerwomen were excluded from their washing-places on the river. In fact, there was scarcely a degradation that could be invented, or an insult that could be perpetrated, that was not practised upon those poor Huguenots who refused to be of " the King's religion."

Even when Protestants were about to take refuge in death, their troubles were not over. The priests had the power of forcing their way into the dying man's house, where they presented themselves at his bedside, and offered him conversion and the viaticum. If the dying man refused these, he was liable to be seized after death, dragged from the house, pulled along the streets naked, and buried in a ditch, or thrown upon a dunghill.*

For several years before the Revocation, while the persecutions of the Huguenots had been increasing, many had realised their means, and fled abroad into Switzerland, Germany, Holland, and England. But after the Revocation, emigration from France was strictly forbidden, under penalty of confiscation of the whole goods and property of the emigrant. Any person found attempting to leave the country, was liable to the seizure of all that belonged to him, and to perpetual imprisonment at the galleys ; one half the amount realised by the sale of the property being paid to the informers, who thus became the most active agents of the Government. The Act also ordered that all landed proprietors who had left France before the

* Such, was, in fact, the end of a man so distinguished as M. Paul Chenevix, Councillor of the Court of Metz, who died in 1686, the year after the Eevocation. Although of the age of eighty, and so illustrious for his learning, his dead hody was dragged along the streets on a hurdle and thrown upon a dunghill. See " Huguenot Refugees and their Descendants," under the name Chenevix. The present Archhishop of Dublin is descended from his brother Philip Chenevix. who settled in England shortly after the Revocation.

Revocation, should return within four months, under penalty of confiscation of all their property.

Amongst those of the King's subjects who were the most ready to obey his orders were some of the old Huguenot noble families, such as the members of the houses of Bouillon, Coligny, Rohan, Tremouille, Sully, and La Force. These great vassals, whom a turbulent feudalism had probably in the first instance induced to embrace Protestantism, were now found ready to change their profession of religion in servile obedience to the monarch.

The lesser nobility were more faithful and consistent. Many of them abandoned their estates and fled across the frontier, rather than live a daily lie to God by forswearing the religion of their conscience. Others of this class, on whom religion sat more lightly, as the only means of saving their property from confiscation, pretended to be converted to Roman Catholicism ; though, we shall find, that these "new converts," as they were called, were treated with as much suspicion on the one side as they were regarded with contempt on the other.

There were also the Huguenot manufacturers, merchants, and employers of labour, of whom a large number closed their workshops and factories, sold off their goods, converted everything into cash, at whatever sacrifice, and fled across the frontier into Switzerland — either settling there, or passing through it on their way to Germany, Holland, or England.

It was necessary to stop this emigration, which was rapidly diminishing the population, and steadily impoverishing the country. It was indeed a terrible thing for Frenchmen to tear themselves away from their country — Frenchmen, who have always clung so

EFFECTS OF THE REVOCATION.

close to their soil that they have rarely been able to form colonies of emigration elsewhere — it was breaking so many living fibres to leave France, to quit the homes of their fathers, their firesides, their kin, and their race. Yet, in a multitude of cases, they were compelled to tear themselves by the roots out of the France they so loved.

Yet it was so very easy for them to remain. The King merely required them to be "converted." He held that loyalty required them to be of "his religion." On the 19th of October, 1685, the day after he had signed the Act of Revocation, La Reynee, lieutenant of the police of Paris, issued a notice to the Huguenot tradespeople and working-classes, requiring them to be converted instantly. Many of them were terrified, and conformed accordingly. Next day, another notice was issued to the Huguenot bourgeois, requiring them to assemble on the following day for the purpose of publicly making a declaration of their conversion.

The result of these measures was to make hypocrites rather than believers, and they took effect upon the weakest and least-principled persons. The strongest, most independent, and high-minded of the Huguenots, who would not be hypocrites, resolved passively to resist them, and if they could not be allowed to exercise freedom of conscience in their own country, they determined to seek it elsewhere. Hence the large increase in the emigration from all parts of France immediately after the Act of Revocation had been proclaimed.* All the roads leading to the frontier

* It is believed that 400,000 emigrants left France through religious persecution during the twenty years previous to the Revocation, and that 600,000 escaped during the twenty years after that event. M. Charles Coquerel estimates the number of Protestants in France at that time to have been two millions of men (" Eglises du Desert," i. 497). The number of Protestant pastors was about one thousand — i8

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or tlie sea-coast streamed with, fugitives. They went in various forms and guises — sometimes in bodies of armed men, at other times in solitary parties, travelling at night and sleeping in the woods by day. They went as beggars, travelling merchants, sellers of beads and chaplets, gipsies, soldiers, shepherds, women with their faces dyed and sometimes dressed in men's clothes, and in all manner of disguises.

To prevent this extensive emigration, more violent measures were adopted. Every road out of France was posted with guards. The towns, highways, bridges, and ferries, were all watched ; and heavy rewards were promised to those who would stop and bring back the fugitives. Many were taken, loaded with irons, and dispatched by the most public roads through France — as a sight to be seen by other Protestants — to the galleys at Marseilles, Brest, and other ports. As they went along they were subject to every sort of indignity in the towns and villages through which they passed. They were hooted, stoned, spit upon, and loaded with insult.

Many others went by sea, in French as well as in foreign ships. Though the sailors of France were prohibited the exercise of the reformed religion, under the penalty of fines, corporal punishment, and seizure of the vessels where the worship was allowed, yet many of the emigrants contrived to get away by the help of French ship captains, masters of sloops, fishing-boats, and coast pilots — who most probably sympathized with the views of those who wished to fly their country rather than become hypocrites and forswear their religion. A large number of emigrants, who went

of whom six hundred went into exile, one hundred were ..executed or sent to the galleys, and the rest are supposed to have accepted pensions as " new converts."

EFFECTS OF THE REVOCATION.

hurriedly off to sea in little boats, must nave been drowned, as they were never afterwards heard of.

There were also many English ships that appeared off the coast to take the flying Huguenots away by night. They also escaped in foreign ships taking in their cargoes in the western harbours. They got cooped up in casks or wine barraques, with holes for breathing places ; others contrived to get surreptitiously into the hold, and stowed themselves away among the goods. When it became known to the Government that many Protestants were escaping in this way, provision was made to meet the case ; and a Royal Order was issued that, before any ship was allowed to set sail for a foreign port, the hold should be fumigated with deadly gas, so that any hidden Huguenot who couid not otherwise be detected, might thus be suffocated ! *

In the meantime, however, numerous efforts were being made to convert the Huguenots. The King, his ministers, the dragoons, the bishops, and clergy used all due diligence. " Everybody is now missionary/* said the fascinating Madame de Sevigne; " each has his mission — above all the magistrates and governors of provinces, helped by the dragoons. It is the grandest and finest thing that has ever been imagined and executed." f

The conversions effected by the dragoons were much more sudden than those effected by the priests. Sometimes a hundred or more persons were converted by a single troop within an hour. In this way Murillac converted thousands of persons in a week. The regi-

* We refer to " The Huguenots : their Settlements, Churches, and Industries in England and Ireland," where a great many incidents are given relative to the escape of refugees by land and sea, which need not here be repeated.

t Letter to the President de Moulceau, November 24th, 1685. 3

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ment of Ashfeld converted the whole province of Poitou in a month.

De Xoailles was very successful in his conversions. He converted Xismes in twenty-four hours ; the day after he converted Montpellier ; and he promised in a few weeks to deliver all Lower Languedoc from the leprosy of heresy. In one of his dispatches soon after the Revocation, he boasted that he had converted 350 nobility and gentry, 54 ministers, and 25,000 individuals of various classes.

The quickness of the conversions effected by the dragoons is easily to be accounted for. The principal cause was the free quartering of soldiers in the houses of the Protestants. The soldiers knew what was the object for which they were thus quartered. They lived freely in all ways. They drank, swore, shouted, beat the heretics, insulted their women, and subjected them to every imaginable outrage and insult.

One of their methods of making converts was borrowed from the persecutions of the Taudois. It consisted in forcing the feet of the intended converts into boots full of boiling grease, or they would hang them up by the feet, sometimes forgetting to cut them down until they were dead. They would also force them to drink water perpetually, or make them sit under a slow dripping upon their heads until they died of madness. Sometimes they placed burning coals in their hands, or used an instrument of torture resembling that known in Scotland as the thumbscrews.* Many of their attempts at conversion were accompanied by details too hideous to be recorded.

* Thumbscrews were used in the reign of James II. Louis and James borrowed from each other the means of converting heretics ; 1 at whether the origin of the thumbscrew be French or Scotch is not known.

Of those who would not be converted, the prisons were kept full. They were kept there without the usual allowance of straw, and almost without food. In winter they had no fire, and at night no lamp. Though ill, they had no doctors. Besides the gaoler, their only visitors were priests and monks, entreating them to make abjuration. Of course many died in prison — feeble women, and aged and infirm men. In the society of obscene criminals, with whom many were imprisoned, they prayed for speedy deliverance by death, and death often came to their help.

More agreeable, but still more insulting, methods of conversion were also attempted. Louis tried to bribe the pastors by offering them an increase of annual pay beyond their former stipends. If there were a Protestant judge or advocate, Louvois at once endeavoured to bribe him over. For instance, there was a heretical syndic of Strasburg, to whom Louvois wrote, "Will you be converted? I will give you 6,000 livres of pension. — Will you not ? I will dismiss you."

Of course many of the efforts made to convert the Huguenots proved successful. The orders of the Prime Minister, the free quarters afforded to the dragoons, the preachings and threatenings of the clergy, all contributed to terrify the Protestants. The fear of being sent to the galleys for life — the threat of losing the whole of one's goods and property — the alarm of seeing one's household broken up, the children seized by the priests and sent to the nearest monkery or nunnery for maintenance and education — all these considerations doubtless had their effect in increasing the number of conversions.

Persecution is not easy to bear. To have all the public powers and authorities employed against one's

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life, interests, and faith, is what few can persistently oppose. And torture, whether it be slow or sudden, is what many persons, by reason of their physical capacity, have not the power to resist. Even the slow torment of dragoons quartered in the houses of the heretics — their noise and shoutings, their drinking and roistering, the insults and outrages they were allowed to practise — was sufficient to compel many at once to declare themselves to be converted.

Indeed, pain is, of all things, one of the most terrible of converters. One of the prisoners condemned to the galleys, when he saw the tortures which the victims about him had to endure by night and by day, said that sufferings such as these were " enough to make one conform to Buddhism or Mahomm edanism as well as to Popery " ; and doubtless it was force* and suffering which converted the Huguenots, far more than love of the King or love of the Pope.

By all these means — forcible, threatening, insulting, and bribing — employed for the conversion of the Huguenots, the Catholics boasted that in the space of three months they had received an accession of five hundred thousand new converts to the Church of Pome.

But the "new converts " did not gain much by their change. They were forced to attend mass, but remained suspected. Even the dragoons who converted them, called them dastards and deniers of their faith. They tried, if they could, to avoid confession, but confess they must. There was the fine, confiscation of goods, and imprisonment at the priest's back.

Places were set apart for them in the churches, where they were penned up like lepers. A person was stationed at the door with a roll of their names, to which they were obliged to answer. During the ser-

EFFECTS OF THE REVOCATION.

vice, the most prominent among them were made to carry the lights, the holy water, the incense, and such things, which to Huguenots were an abomination. They were also required to partake of the Host, which Protestants regarded as an awful mockery of the glorious Godhead.

The Due de Saint-Simon, in his memoirs, after referring to the unmanly cruelties practised by Louis XIY. on the Huguenots, " without the slightest pretext or necessity/ 5 characterizes this forced participation in the Eucharist as sacrilegious and blasphemous folly, notwithstanding that nearly all the bishops lent themselves to the practice. " From simulated abjuration," he says, " they [the Huguenots] are dragged to endorse what they do not believe in, and to receive the divine body of the Saint of saints whilst remaining persuaded that they are only eating bread which they ought to abhor. Such is the general abomination born of flattery and cruelty. Prom torture to abjuration, and from that to the communion, there were only twenty-four hours' distance ; and the executioners were the conductors of the converts, and their witnesses. Those who in the end appeared to have become reconciled, when more at leisure did not fail, by their flight or their behaviour, to contradict their pretended conversion."*

Indeed, many of the new converts, finding life in France to be all but intolerable, determined to follow the example of the Huguenots who had already fled, and took the first opportunity of disposing of their goods and leaving the country. One of the first things they did on reaching a foreign soil, was to attend a congre-

* "Memoirs of the Duke of Saint-Simon," Bayle St. John's Translation, iii. 259.

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gation of their brethren, and make " reconnaisances," or acknowledgment of their repentance for having attended mass and pretended to be converted to the Roman Catholic Church.* At one of the sittings of the Threadneedle Street Huguenot Church in London, held in May, 1687 — two years after the Revocation — not fewer than 497 members were again received into the Church which, by force, they had pretended to abandon.

Not many pastors abjured. A few who yielded in the first instance through terror and stupor, almost invariably returned to their ancient faith. They were offered considerable pensions if they would conform and become Catholics. The King promised to augment their income by one-third, and if they became advocates or doctors in law, to dispense with their three years' study, and with the right of diploma.