IV.
This last struggle of the French Reformation bears no comparison with any that preceded it. Admiral Coligny and Henry of Navarre were backed by entire provinces, and half the nobility of the kingdom. The Duke de Rohan also was a redoubtable chief, and a skilful leader, who with his followers fought pitched battles. In this instance there were only poor peasants, without weapons but those which they wrenched from [the hands of] their enemies, ignorant of the art of war, and reduced to sell their lives dearly, behind the copses and rocks of their mountains. They were led on by no nobles; they were not even supported by the Reformed bourgeoisie of the plains and towns; this time it was the meanest of the people who spilled their blood, and died around the standard on which they had inscribed: “Freedom of religion!”
The Camisards were led by men, whom they regarded as inspired, or prophets. A new convert, half abbé, half playwright, who curiously mingled comedy with controversy,—Bruyëis, has attacked these prophets with irony and gall in his History of Fanaticism. Other (Roman) Catholic writers have followed him. Even the Bishop Fléchier pursues the prophets of Languedoc with his cold and harsh antitheses.
Rulhières was more just: he had the good faith to accuse the persecutors of the Cévenoles of these mental aberrations. “Can we forget then,” he asks, “that their places of worship had been cast down; their country delivered up to military pillage; their children carried off; the houses of those styled obstinate, razed; that the most zealous of their pastors had been broken upon the wheel, while no one had instructed them in our religion?”[105]
Such, in effect, were the causes of these wild ecstasies, or inspirations—the want of spiritual leaders and of schools, spoliations, sufferings, threatened executions, the continual fear of the hulks and the gibbet. The minds of these unfortunates became excited; and finding no support on earth, they easily believed that they had supernatural communications from on high.
This religious exaltation began in the province of Vivarais, from the time of the dragonnades and the Revocation [of the Edict of Nantes]. The fourth pastoral letter of Jurieu, dated the 15th of October, 1686, mentions that a man belonging to Codognan, imagined that he had seen a vision and heard a voice, which said to him, “Go, and console my people.” In Béarn and elsewhere, simple people fancied they had heard the singing of psalms in the air, and had witnessed miraculous apparitions.
Shortly afterwards, Isabeau Vincent appeared, the Shepherdess of Dauphiny, a young girl of sixteen or seventeen years of age, who could neither read nor write. She had ecstasies. “For the first five weeks,” says Jurieu, “she spoke during her ecstasies no language but that of her country, because her only auditors were the peasantry of her village. The noise of this miracle having spread, people came to see her who understood and spoke French. She then began to speak French, and with a diction as correct as if she had been brought up in the first houses of Paris. She composed admirable and excellent prayers. Her action had no violence. Her lips moved slightly, and without the least appearance of convulsion.”[106]
It was then as if a moral contagion had spread over the whole of Vivarais and Languedoc. Prophets were counted by hundreds. They were people of the lower classes, who had read nothing but the Bible; they quoted passage after passage, which they continually applied on every occasion. They particularly invoked the texts of the books of prophecies in the Old Testament and Apocrypha. Even children felt these inspirations, and persisted in them, notwithstanding the severe corrections of their parents, who were held responsible for these strange phenomena.
This ecstasy had four degrees: the calling, the inspiration, the prophecy, and the gift, or the inspiration in its highest degree. It cannot be doubted that the ecstasies were sincere. They were the first to believe in the spirit, which they said filled them, and obeyed it without reservation, hesitation, or delay, although they went to a certain death.
This spirit, they would say, made them better people. “The persons, who had received the inspiration,” they said, “directly abandoned every kind of licentiousness and vanity. Some who had led a debauched life, first became steady and pious, and every one who frequented their society also became better-behaved, and led an exemplary life. This spirit begot in us a horror of idolatry, a contempt for the world, charity, internal consolation, hope, and an unleavened joy of heart.”[107]
The Camisard chiefs were designated by the spirit. They believed themselves to be filled with it, and this was the source of their courage, their triumphs, and their constancy in the greatest extremities. Whether the necessity of the moment was to collect their scattered bands, to fix the point of attack, to choose the day of combat, to retreat, to advance, to discover traitors and spies, to spare prisoners, or to put them to death, it was the spirit they consulted: everywhere and in all things their persuasion was that they acted under the immediate and sovereign direction of heaven.
One of these Camisards, Elie Marion, thus tells this with great simplicity in his Théâtre Sacré des Cevennes: “We were without strength and without counsel, but our inspirations were our succour and our support. They elected our leaders, and conducted them; they were our military discipline. It is they who raised us, even weakness itself, to put a strong bridle upon an army of more than twenty thousand picked soldiers. It is they who banished sorrow from our hearts in the midst of the greatest peril, as well as in the deserts and the mountain fastnesses, when cold and famine oppressed us. Our heaviest crosses were but lightsome burdens, for this intimate communion that God allowed us to have with Him, bore up and consoled us; it was our safety and our happiness.”[108]
Upon what does the judgment of enlightened, as well as of ignorant men depend? These inspirations, those inner voices recall, trait for trait, the language and the history of Joan of Arc. The religious phenomenon is absolutely the same. But the Maid of Orleans delivered France, and the people of Cevennes were vanquished. The first has been almost worshipped: the others have been for the most part treated as madmen and fanatics. If the English had triumphed in the fifteenth century, the shepherdess of Vaucouleurs would also have been regarded by historians as a poor peasant girl, crazed by silly delusions!
Roland and Cavalier were the two principal leaders of the Cévenoles: the former, more resolute, firm, and inaccessible to seduction, remained to the very last sword in hand, and was the true type of the Camisards, although he has obtained less celebrity; the latter was more skilful, adventurous, and brilliant, brave amongst the brave, [no less than] an epic hero. Both trusted, like Oliver Cromwell, in the authority of inspiration, and never were military commanders better obeyed.
The soldiers called themselves children of God, people of God, the flock of the Lord, and bestowed upon their chieftains the names of brother Roland, brother Cavalier. Thus was equality and fraternity joined to the most rigorous discipline.
They made stern and bloody reprisals upon their persecutors, the priests and the soldiers; yet the spirit they consulted, habitually induced them to set their prisoners free who had not injured them. They punished with the utmost severity those of their number who were guilty of unnecessary slaughter or acts of depredation. There was no quarrelling, swearing, or drunkenness in their ranks. All their provisions were held in common. They have been accused by their enemies of having led a licentious life, because they had women in their camp: these women were the wives, mothers, and daughters of the Camisards, who attended them to prepare their food and to tend the wounded.
Their magazines and hospitals were caverns. They clothed themselves with the spoils of the soldiers of the royal army, and supplied themselves with balls from the church bells and utensils of the presbyteries. They had no money except such as was furnished them by villagers almost as poor as themselves, or such as they picked up on the fields of battle; but they needed it not.
Every band had its preacher, and like the Puritans of England, they consecrated long hours to religious services. “Although the camp was often in the week called to pray in common, Sunday was the Lord’s day, appointed for public assemblies and general prayer. Two days beforehand, the prophets announced to the neighbouring townships the place of meeting.... At break of day the people arrived, and mingled with the children of God. A prophet ascended a rock, which served instead of pulpit; a second preacher followed, then a third, and from homily to homily, from prayer to prayer, from canticle to canticle, the insatiable multitude remained unwearied until evening insensibly crept upon them. Then the people resumed the road to their villages, and the Camisards that to their camp.”[109]
Their number never exceeded ten thousand. But they maintained a secret intelligence with all the population of the new converts. The herdsmen and labourers gave them notice, by recognised signs, of the approach of the troops, and when they were obliged to fly, the Camisards had secure retreats. Theirs was a guerilla warfare, composed of surprises or encounters of a few hundreds of men on either side. When they were victorious, they took advantage of their success, to hold assemblies, at which all the Huguenots of the neighbourhood attended; if they were overpowered, they fled to the impenetrable gorges of the hills. They received the first fire of their enemies on one knee, singing the sixty-eighth Psalm: “Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered;” then, precipitating themselves upon the foe, they fought with all the fury of despair, aware that they would receive no quarter or mercy, and preferring the death of the soldier to the gallows or the wheel.
The war of the Camisards lasted from 1702 to 1704. The Count de Broglie, brother-in-law of Bâville, and the king’s lieutenant-general in Languedoc, ordered horrible devastations, without succeeding in stifling the insurrection. His want of success led to his recall in 1703, and the court replaced him by the Marshal de Montrevel, a brave but ignorant and presumptuous soldier, who also imagined that he should put an end to the revolt by the terror of his executions.
Louis XIV. was deceived concerning this war, as he had been about the conversion of the Protestants. Those who had promised that the Revocation would not cost a drop of blood, were afraid to apprize him of the extent of the evil. Montrevel was sent into Languedoc by a subterfuge, the young Duke du Maine, who had been instructed beforehand, having asked as a mark of honour, that a marshal of France might command the troops in the province where he governed. Madame de Maintenon said on this occasion: “It is useless for the king to occupy himself with the details of this war; this would not cure the evil, and would do him much harm.” And a secretary of state wrote to the intendant of the province: “Take care not to give this war the appearance of a serious matter.”
As soon as he had arrived in Languedoc, the Marshal de Montrevel published two ordinances, in which the penalty of death was pronounced, not only against those who had recourse to arms, but also against all persons, who gave the Camisards food, or retreat, or any assistance whatever. He announced that for every (Roman) Catholic killed, he would hang two or three religionists, and that the villages of the new converts, in which a priest or soldier perished, should be immediately burned.
Massacres were now no longer counted. Gibbets, scaffolds, even stakes were kept in permanent readiness. All the suspected were arrested. Every population was put under restraint. The parents of the rebels were carried off for punishment, the notables of each place were kept as hostages, the young people were confined lest they should fly to swell the bands of the Camisards, and when the prisoners were too numerous, the executioner was put in play to thin them.
The (Roman) Catholics were invited to take refuge in the towns, and the country was pitilessly laid waste, and as the work of destruction did not make sufficient progress to satisfy Montrevel, he caused the dwellings of the peasantry to be burned. Thus the land, so flourishing before the Revocation, became a vast and mournful desert.
On the 1st of April, 1703, being Palm-Sunday, about three hundred persons assembled in a mill near Nismes, for the purpose of religious worship. Information of the meeting having been given to Montrevel, he rose from table, and hastening to the place of meeting with a troop of soldiers, ordered the doors to be burst open and the slaughter of all present; the slowness of the carnage irritated his impatience, and he gave the mill to the flames. Every one perished; not a single person escaped, excepting a young girl, who was saved by the humanity of a lackey of the marshal. She was hanged next day, and her liberator only escaped the same fate through the earnest intercession of some nuns.
The Bishop Fléchier, relating this atrocious butchery, says, with the utmost coolness: “This example was necessary to arrest the pride of these folks.” Priests and nobles, you complain of the executions of 1793, and with reason; but you yourselves set the example, and the cruelties of the men of the Reign of Terror have never surpassed yours!
As an auxiliary to the regular troops, Montrevel formed companies of (Roman) Catholic volunteers, under the name of Cadets of the Cross, or White Camisards, in contrast to the Huguenots, who were called Black Camisards. These new Crusaders were encouraged by a bull of Clement XI., who granted them a general and absolute remission of their sins, on the condition of exterminating the heretics of Cevennes, “a cursed brood issuing from the execrable race of Albigenses.”
The Cadets of the Cross were soon dissolved by their own party. They were rogues, who, rejecting all discipline and not even respecting the Church whose defenders they styled themselves, attacked indiscriminately (Roman) Catholics and Huguenots, so that there was spoil to be obtained.
Far from triumphing by his system of terror, Montrevel only increased the number of his opponents. The Cévenoles, reduced to despair, with nothing left to lose, and as ill used when they stayed at home as when they took arms, fled in crowds to the ranks of the Camisards. The detachments of Montrevel were defeated on every side, in the winter of 1703-1704, at Nayes, by the rocks of Aubais, at Martignargues, at the bridge of Salindres; and the marshal was recalled.
The war began to excite serious uneasiness at Versailles. Holland and England had put themselves in communication with the insurgents, and had promised to send them succours. If a foreign fleet had appeared upon the shores of the southern provinces, it might have decided a general rising of the religionists of Languedoc, Vivarais, Dauphiny, and Guienne, and might have thrown into the heart of the kingdom fifty thousand combatants, and have struck a terrible blow at the already sunken fortune of Louis XIV. The court comprehended the danger, and the Marshal de Villars, who was sent to replace Montrevel, received orders to try milder means.
Some of the Camisard leaders, having encountered great losses, showed a disposition, soon after the new commander’s appointment, to enter into an arrangement. They required, as the foremost condition, liberty of conscience and worship: Villars answered this point with equivocal phrases. Protestant historians affirm that the marshal accepted the condition; the historians of the (Roman) Catholics, with Fléchier at their head, deny it. It is difficult to unravel the truth from such contradictory assertions.
This, however, is incontestable; during the negotiations between the Duke de Villars and Cavalier, the Camisards held public assemblies at Calvisson, singing psalms, praying, and preaching, in the midst of an innumerable concourse of Protestants.
The interview of the marshal with the once baker’s boy took place in the garden of the Récolets monks, at the gates of Nismes, on the 16th of May, 1704. “He is,” writes Villars to the minister of war, “a peasant of the lowest rank, not yet twenty-two years of age, and scarcely seeming eighteen, small and with no imposing mien, but possessing firmness and good sense that are altogether surprising. He has great talent in arranging for the subsistence of his men, and disposes his troops as well as the best-trained officers could do it. From the moment Cavalier began to treat, up to the conclusion, he has always acted in good faith.”
Cavalier received a colonel’s commission, and went to Versailles, where finding a cold reception, and suspecting that he was not safe, he entered into a foreign service. He died governor of the island of Jersey, with the reputation of a good general, and a worthy man.
The other leader of the Camisards, Roland, essayed to prolong the struggle. To every proposition for an arrangement, he replied: “I will not trust myself in the lion’s mouth.” A traitor sold him to the intendant for a hundred louis, and he fell after a desperate resistance. Some of his lieutenants still endeavoured to reinflame the insurrection; and until as late as 1715 daring partisans agitated Cevennes; but their attempts, which were not without courage, had no success.
Such was the termination of the Protestant La Vendée. Its analogy with the (Roman) Catholic La Vendée is striking. On both sides oppressed conscience, and religion trodden underfoot, placed arms in the hands of the people. Cathelineau, the driver, was the chief of the Vendéans, as the baker’s boy, Cavalier, was of the Cévenoles. Marshal de Villars and General Hoche could succeed in pacifying either revolt by moderation alone. But the camp of the Vendéans reckoned amongst its numbers the nobility and clergy; the Camisards had with them neither gentlemen nor pastors. The first maintained, without desiring it, the cause of ancient privileges, together with the great principle of religious freedom; the latter fought for their religion alone, and their blood was not spilled in vain.
The war of the Camisards, respecting which there may be different opinions, which it is not our province to examine here, had a double result; it reassured the Protestants, who nearly all returned to their former faith, and it inspired the court of Versailles with salutary apprehensions. The men, whom justice and respect for conscience did not restrain, were arrested by fear, during the remainder of the eighteenth century, from pushing the intrepid mountaineers to extremities, who had once risen from beneath the axe of the executioner.