XVI.
It is evident how intolerable the condition of the Reformed must have become. They had no longer rights of any kind, guarantees or safety; their persons, their children, their property, were all at the mercy of the oppressor; the sword of proscription hung incessantly suspended over their heads. What race in the Christian world was ever more unhappy than this?
A multitude of fugitives already filled Europe with their complaints and their wailings. Jurieu, who had found an asylum in Holland, wrote in 1682, in his book upon the Politique du Clergé de France, “We are treated as if we were enemies of the Christian name. In places where the Jews are tolerated, they have all kinds of privileges; they encourage the arts and commerce; they are physicians; they are consulted; they are intrusted with the health and lives of Christians. And we, as if we were infamous, are forbidden to approach newborn children; we are banished from the bar and the faculties; we are kept from the presence of the king; we are despoiled of our offices; we are forbidden the use of all the means of providing against perishing of hunger; we are abandoned to the hatred of the populace; we are deprived of that precious liberty that we have bought with so many services; our children, who are a part of ourselves, are torn from us.... Are we Turks? Are we infidels? We believe in Jesus Christ; we believe Him to be the eternal Son of God, the Redeemer of the world; the maxims of our morality are so pure that none dare gainsay them; we respect kings; we are good subjects, good citizens; we are as much Frenchmen as Reformed Christians.”[92]
Jurieu spoke in vain. The books of heretics could not pass the frontier. It was even attempted in the interior of the kingdom to destroy the ancient works which attacked (Roman) Catholicism. The archbishop of Paris drew up a catalogue comprising the names of five hundred authors, and domiciliary visits were paid in the houses of the ministers and the elders, in order to burn all the condemned books that might be found in their libraries.
The Reformed transmitted petition after petition to the court, the council, and to the king himself. Their cause was pleaded by the deputy-general, or by special delegates. Sometimes they recapitulated their grievances in general requests, conjoining the most humble protestations of obedience and respect.
All was useless. The ministers of state disputed the best-supported facts, and threatened the petitioners with still direr treatment. The king closed his palace, or when, after long remonstrance, they were admitted, his words were cold and constrained. The deputy-general Ruvigny, having represented to him the great misery of more than two millions of Frenchmen, Louis XIV., it is said, answered him that to “bring all his subjects back to the Catholic unity, he would give one of his arms, or would cut off one of his hands with the other.” This saying filled the Reformed with the darkest presentiments.
Nevertheless, they persisted in believing that Louis XIV., the grandson of the Béarnese, would have compassion upon them, if he knew the extent of their sufferings, and filled with this idea, they resolved to make a last effort.
Sixteen deputies from Languedoc, Cevennes, Vivarais, and Dauphiny, met secretly at Toulouse, in the spring of 1683, and drew up a draft in eighteen articles, destined to restore their liberty of conscience and of worship, without, however, doing the slightest act which could bear the appearance of rebellion. After enjoining repentance, prayer, and union among the faithful, they decided that on the 27th of June following, all the interdicted assemblies should recommence at the same time, without ostentation, but also without mystery, with open doors, or upon the ruins of the razed places of worship. Those who had performed a forced abjuration were to assemble separately, for fear of furnishing the pretext for fresh persecutions. On the 4th of July, a solemn fast was to be celebrated in all the churches. The pastors were exhorted to remain courageously in the midst of their flocks, and not to quit them, but with the leave of a conference, or in the most imminent peril. Lastly, the deputies framed a petition to the chancellor and all the ministers of state, in which they pledged their obedience to the king in everything that was not absolutely contrary to their duty to God. “What is our situation?” they said; “if we obey, it is pretended that we are converted, and our very submission is made use of to deceive the king.”
The chief object of this bold measure was to prove to Louis XIV. that the abjurations en masse, which were recounted to him, were unworthy fabrications. Unhappily, there was not sufficient unanimity among the oppressed. The prudent, the timid, those who had not suffered so much as others, those who saw danger only when it was upon them, determined to abstain from the enterprise, and stood apart.
On the appointed day, however, a great many houses of worship were reopened, the assemblies were reconstituted, and religious service was again performed in many places where it had been interdicted. The military governors and the intendants immediately took alarm; they believed, or feigned to believe, that a general insurrection was taking place, and troops were sent against these poor peasants, who, pleading the solemn promises of the Edict of Nantes, had met together to read the Bible and to pray.
The Marquis d’Aguesseau, the father of the illustrious chancellor of the same name, and intendant of Languedoc, advised that a stop should be put to the barbarities of the soldiers; but Louvois refused, and ordered frightful executions. The peasants were tracked in the woods, and slaughtered by hundreds. “It was a butchery without a combat,” says Rulhières. “Their places of worship were thrown down, and their houses razed. Pardon was offered to the prisoners on condition that they should abjure: they would not comply, and were hanged!”
The Reformers of Vivarais and Dauphiny, reduced to despair, sought to defend themselves by force. Louvois promised them an amnesty, but his promise was derisive. All the ministers and fifty other prisoners were exempted from it, without counting those that were sent to the galleys. The pastor, Isaac Hornel, an old man of seventy-two, who was accused of having fomented the disturbances, was condemned to be broken alive on the wheel, although the most inveterate criminals were never subjected to so terrible a punishment in those times. The executioner, who made himself drunk for the task, inflicted more than thirty blows upon him before he killed him, accompanying the torture with dastardly insults. Hornel died with the constancy of a martyr (16th of October, 1683).
In several provinces there were left no more than one or two places of worship, and these were interdicted under the least pretext. The church of Marennes, in Saintonge, for instance, which still remained, was soon suppressed in its turn, with accompanying circumstances of an odious nature. This church comprised from thirteen to fourteen thousand persons; but because, as was pretended, some who had relapsed, and some children of new converts had entered the places of worship, their services were prohibited by a decree notified at the very last moment, on the night before Sunday (1684).
On the sabbath, more than ten thousand of the faithful arrived before the doors of their place of worship, and among them were twenty-three children, who had been brought a distance of seven leagues for baptism. As the weather was extremely inclement, several died on the way. “The people, as they withdrew,” says Elie Bénoit, “loudly expressed their grief. Nothing was heard but cries, and weeping, and wailing. There was no restraint either in the streets or in the country. Parents and friends embraced in tears and without uttering a word. Men and women, with clasped hands, and eyes raised to heaven, clung to the holy place whither they had come, regardless of the severity of the season, to find consolation in praying to God; and yet, amidst so sad a scene, it was necessary that they should be watchful to give no new hold to their persecutors, by remaining in such numbers upon a spot where the decree against the pastors rendered such meetings unlawful.”[93]
It is gratifying to add, that if the persecution was great, the very sufferings of the people strengthened their piety. There were provinces where the faithful made a journey of fifty and even sixty leagues to be present at the religious service; and not only did men in the vigour of manhood, but old men of eighty took the road, on foot, with staff in hand, enduring all the fatigues and dangers of the journey, in order that they might have the consolation of praying together with their brethren for the last time. The first-comers found an asylum in the place of worship, while the others halted around it, singing psalms or reading prayers. And as these assemblies would have been esteemed unlawful without the presence of a minister, the preacher passed the night with them, exhorting them by his tears as much as by his discourses, to remain steadfast in the faith.
Elsewhere, as all the ministers had been exiled or imprisoned, the intendants were under the necessity of summoning pastors from other places, to baptize the children, and to celebrate marriages, “without the addition of any sermon, exhortation, or service of the pretended Reformed religion.” These pastors were kept under guard, as if they were pest-smitten, and they were taken back as soon as they had given to the acts of the heretics the civil sanction, which in those times was confounded with the religious blessing.
The court was not yet satisfied. Louis XIV., who had just contracted a secret marriage with Madame de Maintenon, had passed from ignorant devotion to outrageous bigotry. He was irritated by the obstacles that delayed the general conversion of the Reformers, and, governed by the triumvirate of Father La Chaise, Madame de Maintenon, and the Marquis de Louvois, his mind gradually familiarized itself with the idea of altogether abrogating the Edict of Nantes.
The Marquis de Châteauneuf, who had the charge of ecclesiastical affairs, was opposed to precipitating matters, saying, that “it was unwise to put too much fuel upon the fire.” Louvois himself seemed for a moment to incline towards moderation. The other secretaries of state were of the contrary opinion; and the aged chancellor Letellier,—a false and unfeeling man, of whom the Count de Grammont said, when he saw him come from an interview with the king, “I see a ferret licking his muzzle, bloody with the slaughter of fowls,”—wanted the work to be accomplished before his death.
Madame de Maintenon thus wrote on the 13th of August, 1684: “The king is prepared to do everything that shall be judged useful for the welfare of religion. This undertaking will cover him with glory before God and man.” Glory! She did not foresee that, far from increasing the glory of Louis, the Edict of Revocation would impress an indelible stain upon his reign, and that posterity would inquire whether he had not, by this single act, more injured the material power and the policy of France than he had benefited it by his conquest of Flanders, Alsatia, and Franche-Comté.
In the month of May, 1685, the clergy held a general assembly, and complimented the king upon the admirable success, which had attended his efforts to extirpate heresy. Louis was extolled above the greatest princes of Christian antiquity. The bishop of Valence and the coadjutor of Rouen said, “he had found the (Roman) Catholic church cast down and enslaved; but he had re-established it by his zeal; he had without violence and without arms induced all rational persons to abandon heresy, had subdued their minds by winning their hearts with his favours, and had led back wanderers, who would perchance never have returned to the bosom of the Church, had it not been for the flowery path he had thrown open to them.” We copy these words as they were actually spoken, and will add nothing to them!
Rulhières, who was permitted to search the state papers, when speaking of the intervention of the priests in the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, says, “I hold in my hands a collection of the letters of the clergy, some of which cause me to shudder.”