The edict which dissolved this special tribunal laid down stringent laws to protect the public against future poisoning. A clean sweep was made of the charlatans, the pretended magicians who came from abroad and imposed upon the credulity of the French people, who united sacrilege and impious practices with the manufacture and distribution of noxious drugs. Several clauses in the edict dealt with poisons, describing their action and effect,—in some cases instantaneous, in others slow, gradually undermining health and originating mysterious maladies, that proved fatal in the end. The sale of deleterious substances was strictly regulated, such as arsenic and corrosive sublimate, and the use of poisonous vermin, “snakes, vipers and frogs,” in medical prescriptions was forbidden.
A few words more as to the Comtesse de Soissons, who was suffered to fly from France, but could find no resting place. Her reputation preceded her, and she was refused admittance into Antwerp. In Flanders she ingratiated herself with the Duke of Parma, and lived under his protection for several years. Finally she appeared in Madrid, and was received at court. Then the young Queen of Spain died suddenly with all the symptoms of poisoning, and Madame de Soissons was immediately suspected, for unexpected and mysterious deaths always followed in her trail. She was driven from the country, and died a wanderer in great poverty.
No account of the means of repression of those days in France would be complete without including the galleys,—the system of enforced labor at the oars, practised for many centuries by all the Mediterranean nations, and dating back to classical times. These ancient warships, making at best but six miles an hour by human effort under the lash, are in strong contrast with the modern ironclad impelled by steam. But the Venetians and the Genoese owned fine fleets of galleys and won signal naval victories with them. France long desired to rival these powers, and Henry III, when returning from Poland to mount the French throne, paused at Venice to visit the arsenal and see the warships in process of construction. At that time France had thirty galleys afloat, twenty-six of the highest order and worked by convicts (galeriens). This number was not always maintained, and in 1662 Colbert, bidding for sea power and striving hard to add to the French navy, ordered six new ships to be laid down at Marseilles, and sought to buy a number, all standing, from the Republic of Genoa and the Grand Duke of Tuscany. These efforts were crowned with success. In 1670 there were twenty galleys under the French flag, and Colbert wrote the intendant at Marseilles that his Master, Louis XIV, was eager to possess one royal ship which would outvie any hitherto launched on the seas. The increase continued, and in 1677 the fleet numbered thirty, rising to forty-two by the end of the century.
It was not enough to build the ships; the difficulty was to man them. The custom of sending condemned convicts to ply the oar was ancient, and dated back to the reign of Charles VII. But it was little used until Francis I desired to strengthen his navy, and he ordered parliaments and tribunals to consign to the galleys all able-bodied offenders who deserved death and had been condemned to bodily penalties, whatsoever crimes they had committed. The supply of this personnel was precarious, and Colbert wrote to the judges to be more severe with their sentences, and to inflict the galleys in preference to death, a commutation likely to be welcome to the culprit. But some of the parliaments demurred. That of Dijon called it changing the law, and the President, protesting, asked for new ordinances. Colbert put the objection aside arbitrarily. He increased the pressure on the courts and dealt sharply with the keepers of local gaols, who did not use sufficient promptness in sending on their quotas of convicts to Marseilles and Toulon. Many escapes from the chain were made by the way, so carelessly conducted was the transfer.
This “chain,” a disgrace to humanity, was employed in France till quite within our own day. The wretched convicts made their long pilgrimage on foot from all parts of the country to the southern coast. They were chained together in gangs and marched painfully in all weathers, mile after mile, along their weary road under military escort. No arrangements were made for them by the way. They were fed on any coarse food that could be picked up, and were lodged for the night in sheds and stables if any could be found; if not, under the sky. Death took its toll of them ere they reached their destination. They were a scarce commodity and yet no measures were adopted to preserve their health and strength. The ministers in Paris were continually urging the presidents of parliaments to augment the supplies of the condemned, and were told that the system was in fault, that numbers died in their miserable cells waiting removal, and many made their escape on the journey.
Still the demands of the galleys were insatiable, and many contrivances were adopted to reinforce the crews. Colbert desired to send to them all vagabonds, all sturdy beggars, smugglers and men without visible means of support, but a change in the law was required and the authorities for a time shrank from it. Another expedient was to hire forcats from the Duke of Savoy, who had no warships. Turkish and Russian slaves were purchased to work the oars, and Negroes from the Guinea coast. As a measure of retaliation against Spain, prisoners of war of that nation were treated as galley slaves, a custom abhorrent to fair usage. It was carried so far as to include the Red Indians, Iroquois, captured in Canada in the fierce war then in progress. Numbers were taken by unworthy stratagem and passed over to France, and the result was an embittered contest, which endured for four years.
A fresh device was to seek volunteers. These “bonne-voglies,” or “bonivoglios,” the Italian form most commonly used, were so called because they contracted of their own free will to accept service in the galleys, to live the wretched life of the galley slave, to submit to all his hardships, meagre fare and cruel usage, to be chained to the oar, and driven to labor under the ready lash of the overseers. These free forcats soon claimed greater consideration, and it was necessary to treat them more leniently and in a way injurious to discipline in the opinion of the captains and intendants. The convicts were more submissive and more laborious, and still the authorities sought to multiply them. A more disgraceful system than any of these already mentioned was now practised,—that of illegal detention long after the sentence had expired. By an old ordinance, any captain who thus detained a convict was liable to instant dismissal. Other laws, however, fixed a minimum term of ten years’ detention, what though the original sentence was considerable. Under Louis XIII it was ruled that six years should be the lowest term, on the ground that during the two first years a galley slave was useless on account of weak physique and want of skill in rowing. Later a good Bishop of Marseilles pleaded the cause of convicts who had endured a term of twice or three times their first sentence. A case was quoted in which thirty-four, convicted between 1652 and 1660, and sentenced to two, three or four years, were still languishing in chains in 1674. An official document of that year gives the names of twenty who had served fifteen to twenty years beyond their sentence. The intendant of the galleys at Marseilles reports in 1679, that on examining the registers he had found a certain soldier still in custody who was sentenced by a military court in 1660 to five years, and who had therefore endured fourteen. Again, a man named Caneau was sentenced in 1605 to two years and was still in confinement twelve years later. True it was open to the galerien to buy a substitute, a Turkish or other “bonivoglio,” but the price, eight hundred or one thousand francs, was scarcely within the reach of the miserable creatures at the bagnes.
It is difficult to exaggerate the horrors of the galleys. No wonder that many preferred suicide or self-mutilation to enduring it! Afloat or ashore, the convict’s condition was wretched in the extreme. On board ship each individual was chained to his bench, day and night, and the short length of the chain, as well as the nearness of his neighbors, limited his movements. His whole clothing consisted of a single loose blouse of coarse red canvas, with neither shoes nor stockings and little underlinen. His diet was of brown beans cooked in a little oil, black bread and a morsel of bacon. Personal cleanliness was entirely neglected, and all alike suffered from scurvy and were infested with vermin. Labor was incessant while at sea, and the overseers, walking on a raised platform, which ran fore and aft between the benches of rowers, stimulated effort by using their whips upon the bending backs below them. At times silence was strictly required,—as when moving to the attack or creeping away from an enemy and the whole ship’s company was gagged with a wooden ball inserted in the mouth. In the barracks ashore, when the ships were laid up for the winter, the convicts’ lot was somewhat better, for they were not at the mercy of the elements, and there was no severe labor; but the other conditions, such as diet, clothing and general discomfort, were the same. Now and again if any distinguished visitor arrived at the port, it was the custom to treat them to a cruise in one of the great galleys. The ship was dressed with all her colors, the convicts were washed clean, and wore their best red shirts, and they were trained to salute the great folk who condescended to come on board, by a strange shout of welcome: “Hou! Hou! Hou!” a cry thrice repeated, resembling the roar of a wild beast.
The merciless treatment accorded by Louis XIV to the Protestants, who dared to hold their own religious opinions, will be better realised when it is stated that great numbers of them were consigned to the galleys, to serve for years side by side with the worst malefactors, with savage Iroquois and infidel Turks, and to endure the selfsame barbarities inflicted on the wretched refuse of mankind. No greater stain rests upon the memory of a ruler, whom the weak-kneed sycophants of his age misnamed La Grande Monarque, than this monstrous persecution of honest, honorable people, who were ready to suffer all rather than sacrifice liberty of conscience. How deep and ineffaceable is the stain shall be shown in the next chapter.