IV.
When the dynasty of the Bourbons returned in 1814, the Protestants made no effort to form a distinct political party. As agriculturists, proprietors, members of the liberal and enlightened classes, they did not regret the military domination of Napoleon. Those among them, who were merchants and engaged in industrial pursuits, rejoiced at the prospect of a peace that opened a wider field to their activity. If they could not repress some disquietude in seeing a descendant of the prince who had revoked the Edict of Nantes upon the throne, their recollections reverted to the king who had bestowed it, and the memory of Henry IV. reassured them against that of Louis XIV.
It might have been expected that the Bourbons, who had to contend with so many adversaries, would not causelessly have irritated a million and a half of peaceable citizens; and who could have supposed, moreover, that they would have attacked Protestantism in France, when Louis XVIII. said that he owed his crown, next to God, to a Protestant prince, the regent of Great Britain.
The first acts of the restoration were dictated by a spirit of impartiality and prudence. The Count d’Artois, afterwards Charles X., having gone to Nismes in 1814, gave a very gracious reception to the Reformed, and distributed several decorations of the Legion of Honour among them. Policy, perhaps, had as much to do with this as confidence; but the Protestants, satisfied with the protection promised to them, might refrain from scrutinizing intentions.
The charter given by Louis XVIII. said, in its 5th article, “Every one professes his religion with equal liberty, and obtains the same protection for his form of worship.” It is true, it added in the 6th article, that the Catholic, Roman, and Apostolic religion was the religion of the state. Nevertheless, the equality between creeds having been proclaimed first and formally, the distinction granted to (Roman) Catholicism would be, according to the terms of the Constitution, nothing more than a simple privilege of honour, without any hurtful or oppressive privilege, and the Protestants were all disposed to concede the honour of the first place to the Romish church, provided their rights were as much respected as those of the (Roman) Catholics.
If the charter, therefore, had been well understood by the masses of the (Roman) Catholics, duly carried out by people in power, and sincerely admitted by the members of the ancient privileged orders, there would have been no Protestant party, in the political sense of the word, nor collision of any kind. But the first were wanting in intelligence; there was no spirit of justice in the next, or love of liberal institutions in the last.
In the south, particularly, the workmen and the peasants, who belonged to the Romish church, openly threatened the Reformed with new persecutions, and were not sufficiently contradicted and repressed by the local authorities. Sinister reports were spread abroad. It was rumoured that the places of worship would be closed, and the public services of the Reformed interdicted. (Roman) Catholics of the lower order, when they met Protestants in the streets, shouted out: Vive le roi! (long live the king), as if they were the only royalists. Those of the highest classes, who called themselves respectable people, openly insulted the most honourable men of the Reformed communion.
The emigrants, who had returned with the Bourbons, and others of the nobility, who, shut up for five-and-twenty years in their castles, had only learned to curse the Revolution, were indignant at the liberties granted by Louis XVIII., and, ignorant of any direct means to abolish the charter, they fell into the old plans of the conspirators of 1790. A religious contest, which should make a second Vendée of the southern provinces, might bring the fundamental law into question; and the occult government, so frequently denounced by the sincerest friends of the Bourbons in the two legislative chambers, began its secret work. It has been said that these men were more inveterate royalists than the king himself. But it was not so: they had interests wholly different from those of the king, interests of position and caste, and their aim was to satisfy and secure them at any price, were it at the expense of the kingly office itself.
Fresh addresses were signed, as in 1790, demanding that there should be only one religion in France. Handbills were distributed in many of the churches, with these words: “The faithful are requested to say five Paters and five Aves every day, for the prosperity of the kingdom and the re-establishment of the Jesuits.” The anti-Protestant controversy reappeared in many of the pulpits under the most bitter and violent forms, denouncing heresy as a public calamity; and the Reformed, pursued with as many provocations, were in a manner forced to adopt political opinions in unison with their religious convictions.
We wish to do justice without delay to those, to whom justice is due. The fault of the attempt, which we are about to narrate, is not chargeable to the majority of the (Roman) Catholics; on the contrary, they were as indignant against them, and regretted them as much as the Protestants. Nor must it be allowed to fall on the majority of the priests. They were no longer to be seen in the foremost ranks of persecution, as they had been in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The populace, excited by some of the secret leaders, acted without the priests, and often in spite of the priests. Many of the Roman ecclesiastics courageously interposed to shield the victims. We shall have occasion to cite an admirable instance of this.
Such was the situation of the south when the emperor disembarked upon the coasts of France. The Protestants of Nismes offered the Duke d’Angoulême their services as royal volunteers. The prince was ready to accept them, when the fanatics repulsed them with this insult: “We will not endure these rascally Protestants!” Their purses were, however, taken, if not their persons.
On Napoleon’s re-entry into Paris, the Protestants resumed the places and the legitimate influence, of which they had been deprived. They could count upon the protection of the laws, and testified a satisfaction that may be easily comprehended. But they were far from committing the excesses with which they have been reproached. The faction of 1815 felt it necessary to accuse them with expressly invented crimes, in order to extenuate their own. All the massacres of the Hundred Days, which have been ascribed to them, are confined, as the official documents attest, to the death of two royal volunteers, who were killed at Arpillargues (Gard), in a disturbance they had themselves provoked, by obstinately persisting in marching through the village with fifty of their companions, sword in hand.
As soon as the defeat of Waterloo was known at Nismes, the royalist bands were reorganized, and ordered the municipal council to declare immediately for the government of Louis XVIII., although no order of any kind had arrived from Paris. The council replied that it was necessary to wait for official instructions, and published a proclamation, in which it said: “Fellow-countrymen of every opinion, for whom we have equal solicitude, in the name of the efforts we have made to avert the disasters which threaten our country, in the name of your dearest interests, in the name of God, who enjoins upon you clemency and concord, do not be deaf to our voice.” (18th July, 1815.)
The following day a courier announced the return of the king to the capital, and the Reformed population quietly resumed the white cockade. This prompt submission did not satisfy the men who had adopted the white and green colours, attesting by this that they served another cause than that of royalty. Then terror rose and spread itself over the south.
On the 14th of July, a hideous populace, recruited at Nismes, Beaucaire, and the surrounding places, attacked the garrison, which, weakened by the numerous desertions after the news of the emperor’s fall, did not reckon more than two hundred men. These brave soldiers, besieged in their barracks, were aware that any resistance would produce only a useless effusion of blood, and consented to capitulate. The next day, at break of dawn, having laid down their arms in compliance with an express arrangement, they marched out of their quarters, four abreast, with firm though sorrowful demeanour. But the miscreants through whom they had to pass, fired upon them in treacherous violation of the surrender, and trampled underfoot the corpses of the murdered veterans.
All regular authority was at an end in Nismes. Pillage, incendiarism, and assassination, desolated this great city. The details are horrible. “Of crimes upon crimes,” says M. Lauze de Peret, with energetic eloquence, “shall I have to speak; of wretches without fear, of peace without repose, of entire submission without security, of a city without guardianship, of victims without defence, and of chiefs mute without being absent.”[141]
The Count René de Bernis, the royal commissioner, and the Marquis d’Arbaud-Jonques, appointed prefect of the department after the Marquis Jules de Calvières, who was only provisional prefect, have published justificatory memoirs. These have, however, been contradicted upon almost every point by M. Madier de Montjau, in his petition to the Chamber of Deputies, and by other respectable citizens. It is right that persecutors should learn that truth has necessarily its day; it is also right that they should remember that history does not stop to pick from the gore the names of the subordinate cut-throats, but that it casts the blame and odium upon those who ought to have withheld and punished them.
This spirit of savage fanaticism soon spread beyond the precincts of Nismes. The whole surrounding country was abandoned to the fury of some hundreds of brigands, who, while they imposed ruinous contributions, devastated property, sacked houses, maltreated the most inoffensive citizens, insulted women, profaned the sacredness of the burial-grounds, and finally massacred those, whose position or some false rumour marked out for popular vengeance, huzzaed for the Cross! and the King! committing at the same time crimes equally opposed to the holiest interests of religion and royalty.
If the unhappy Protestants assembled anywhere in arms for their common defence, or for the protection of the asylum of the aged and the cradle of the young, they were treated as factious rebels. They were dragged before judges, who would not, or dared not do them justice; and these contemptible tribunals raged against the victims, instead of striking the murderers.
Among other towns, that of Uzès had been invaded by a band of robbers, on which occasion a priest evinced remarkable self-devotion. The authorities were either alarmed or were accomplices, and the national guard remained passive. “One single man, a worthy minister of the law of charity, a priest of the God, who has commanded all mankind to live together as brethren, the abbé Palhien, set a different example. He encountered Graffan (Quatretaillons) near the church of Saint Etienne; he prayed, he insisted, he knelt to him: but he followed him in vain to the fatal place, he pleaded in vain the words of religion to this bandit armed for the defence of the altar and the throne. On this memorable day, Uzès appeared to contain but one single Christian, one single Frenchman.”[142]
Terror lasted for several months. Towards the end of August, four thousand Austrians arrived in the department of Gard. They had been made to believe that the Protestants menaced public tranquillity, and that it was necessary to defend both law and order against their hatred. They advanced with great precaution, sword in hand, as if they had entered an enemy’s country, and were surprised to find a peaceful population, abandoned to the fury of robbers, and decimated by assassination.
It may be asked how such disorders could have happened without exciting universal indignation, at such a period and in a country like France. The answer is, that the whole country was at that time delivered up to a violent reaction. There was no liberty of the press; no right, save that of the conqueror; the spirit of party oppressed and disorganized everything. The official journal of Gard, which was published in the police offices or in those of the prefecture, did not hesitate to contest the most evident facts, nor to deny the most authentic,—to boast of the clemency and the generosity of the enemies of the Protestants, with the corpses of the victims before their eyes. And if any one, even away from this unfortunate province, uttered a free thought respecting these atrocities, he was reputed as a calumniator and a rebel.
M. Voyer-d’Argenson experienced this, when in the session of the 23rd October, 1815, he demanded an inquiry, affirming that his heart bled to hear the reports of the massacres of Protestants in the south. He was violently interrupted with cries of order, and notwithstanding the forms of speech which he employed in his explanations were expressive of doubt, the call to order was agreed to by a large majority. Did the chamber of 1815 think that by stopping M. Voyer-d’Argenson’s mouth, it could smother the terrible cry for blood and the voice of truth?
The government was better instructed than it cared to make known. Louis XVIII. was an enlightened prince, who was aware of the true position of affairs, and he was not a little anxious respecting the impression which the crimes of the south would produce upon the opinion of France and of Europe. England and Prussia, the two countries whose armies had restored his crown on the battle-field of Waterloo, began to show signs of disquietude; and the cabinet of London, interrogated in the House of Commons, appealed to the guarantees of the charter in favour of the French Protestants.
The Duke d’Angoulême was sent, in the month of November, to the southern provinces. He found the places of worship of Nismes closed,—all public exercise of religion had been suspended from the middle of July,—that a part of the Protestant population had been driven from their homes by the dread of massacres,—that others were hidden in their houses as if they were a proscribed race, whilst assassins stalked boldly abroad, the magistrates powerless, and the laws inoperative.
Some delegates of the consistory, confounded by the crowd of civil functionaries, in order that they might avoid the ill-treatment of the populace, went to pay their respects to the duke, and met with a most favourable reception. He gave them an order to reopen their places of worship from the following Thursday, the 9th of November. But none were opened until Sunday, and then but one. The result proved that too much reliance had been placed upon the good disposition of the people and their leaders. Tumultuous assemblages collected round the religious edifice, shouting: “Down with the Protestants! Death to the Protestants! Let us have back our churches! Scourge them back to the desert!” The doors were broken open, and a band of wretches burst into the place of meeting. The General Lagarde, who was endeavouring, with some fellow-officers, to repress the assailants, was shot through the heart; and perhaps this disaster prevented the commission of still greater crime; for the populace, struck with dismay, hastily fled, thinking only of their own safety.
This assassination of a soldier of high rank, committed before the whole town, obeying the orders of a prince of the blood, left the government no longer the opportunity of denying the excesses of the reaction or of temporizing. On the 21st of November, Louis XVIII. published an ordinance with the following preamble: “An atrocious crime has stained our town of Nismes. Despite the constitutional charter, which recognises the Catholic religion as the religion of the State, but which guarantees to other creeds protection and liberty (the minister thought of this very tardily), seditious crowds have dared to oppose the opening of a Protestant place of worship. Our military commandant, whilst striving to disperse them by persuasion before using force, has been assassinated, and his murderer has fled from the officers of justice. If such a crime were to remain unpunished, public order and government would be at an end, and our ministers guilty of not executing the laws.”
Notwithstanding the more than usual solemnity of this ordinance, which commanded the arrest not only of the assassin of General Lagarde, but also of the authors, fautors, and accomplices of the disturbance of the 12th of November, the judges punished no one. Even the murderer of the general was acquitted; and the other bandits, who had devastated half the province with incendiarism and assassination, were allowed to display an insolent and odious impunity upon the very scene of their misdeeds. Witnesses were afraid to come forward to give testimony against them, and mysterious protectors gained their absolution.
The Protestant worship was at length re-established in Nismes, after an interruption of six months, on the 17th of December, 1815. Yet the apprehensions of the Reformed were not calmed, and security did not fully return until the issue of the ordinance of the 5th of September, 1816, which again raised the hopes and the strength of the liberal party.
We will not terminate the narrative of the troubles of Gard, without paying a just tribute of respect to the pastors of this province. Some threw themselves before their armed parishioners, conjuring them in the name of the Gospel, not to return evil for evil. One particularly, M. Juillerat Chasseur, now president of the consistory of Paris, who was called to officiate on the fatal day of the 12th November, continued his prayers with a serene countenance and unfaltering voice, in the midst of the shouts of death from an enraged populace, and compelled the respect of these madmen, who had cast aside all reverence for the majesty of the sanctuary. He felt that the least sign of weakness on his part might have led to a frightful catastrophe. Such courage is both more grand and rare than that of the soldier on the battle-field.
In the other departments, saving two or three exceptions of little importance, the Protestants were neither molested in their worship, nor assailed in their persons or their property. Public opinion came to the assistance of the law, and deprived intolerance of its hope of again renewing the persecutions of the olden times.