One clause, at the end of the edict of October 15, seemed to extenuate its effect. “Those of our subjects of the religion styled Reformed who shall persist in their errors, pending the time when it may please God to enlighten them like the rest, shall be allowed to remain in the kingdom, country, and lands, which obey the king, there to continue their trade and enjoy their property without being liable to be vexed or hindered on pretext of prayer or worship of the said religion of whatsoever nature they may be.” “Never was there illusion more cruel than that which this clause caused people,” says Benoit, in his Histoire de l’Edit de Nantes.” It was believed that the king meant only to forbid special exercises, but that he intended to leave conscience free, since he granted this grace to all those who were still Reformers, pending the time when it should please God to enlighten them. Many gave up the measures they had taken for leaving the country with their families, many voluntarily returned from the retreats where they had hitherto been fortunate enough to lie hid. The most mistrustful dared not suppose that so solemn a promise was only made to be broken on the morrow. They were all, nevertheless, mistaken; and those who were imprudent enough to return to their homes were only just in time to receive the dragoons there.” A letter from Louvois to the Duke of Noailles put a stop to all illusion. “I have no doubt,” he wrote, “that some rather heavy billets upon the few amongst the nobility and third estate still remaining of the religionists will undeceive them as to the mistake they are under about the edict M. de Chateauneuf drew up for us. His Majesty desires that you should explain yourself very sternly, and that extreme severity should be employed against those who are not willing to become of his religion; those who have the silly vanity to glory in holding out to the last must be driven to extremity.” The pride of Louis XIV. was engaged in the struggle; those of his subjects who refused to sacrifice their religion to him were disobedient, rebellious, and besotted with silly vanity. “It will be quite ridiculous before long to be of that religion,” wrote Madame de Maintenon.
Even in his court and amongst his most useful servants the king encountered unexpected opposition. Marshal Schomberg with great difficulty obtained authority to leave the kingdom; Duquesne was refused. The illustrious old man, whom the Algerian corsairs called “the old French capitan, whose bride is the sea, and whom the angel of death has forgotten,” received permission to reside in France without being troubled about his religion. “For sixty years I have rendered to Caesar that which was Caesar’s,” said the sailor proudly; “it is time to render unto God that which is God’s.” And, when the king regretted that his religion prevented him from properly recognizing his glorious career, “Sir,” said Duquesne, “I am a Protestant, but I always thought that my services were Catholic.” Duquesne’s children went abroad. When he died, 1688, his body was refused to them. His sons raised a monument to him at Aubonne, in the canton of Berne, with this inscription: “This tomb awaits the remains of Duquesne. Passer, should you ask why the Hollanders have raised a superb monument to Ruyter vanquished, and why the French have refused a tomb to Ruyter’s vanquisher, the fear and respect inspired by a monarch whose power extends afar do not allow me to answer.”
Of the rest, only the Marquis of Ruvigny and the Princess of Tarento, daughter-in-law of the Duke of La Tremoille and issue of the house of Hesse, obtained authority to leave France. All ports were closed, all frontiers watched. The great lords gave way, one after another. Accustomed to enjoy royal favors, attaching to them excessive value, living at court, close to Paris, which was spared a great deal during the persecution, they, without much effort, renounced a faith which closed to them henceforth the door to all offices and all honors. The gentlemen of the provinces were more resolute; many realized as much as they could of their property, and went abroad, braving all dangers, even that of the galleys in case of arrest. The Duke of La Force had abjured, then repented of his abjuration, only to relapse again. One of his cousins, seventy-five years of age, was taken to the galleys. He had for his companion Louis de Marolles, late king’s councillor. “I live just now all alone,” wrote the latter to his wife. “My meals are brought from outside; if you saw me in my beautiful convict-dress, you would be charmed. The iron I wear on my leg, though it weighs only three pounds, inconvenienced me at first far more than that which you saw me in at La Tournelle.” Files of Protestant galley-convicts were halted in the towns, in the hope of inspiring the obstinate with a salutary terror.
The error which had been fallen into, however, was perceived at court. The stand made by Protestants astounded the superintendents as well as Louvois himself. Everywhere men said, as they said at Dieppe, “We will not change our religion for anybody; the king has power over our persons and our property, but he has no power over our consciences.” There was fleeing in all directions. The governors grew weary of watching the coasts and the frontiers. “The way to make only a few go,” said Louvois, “is to leave them liberty to do so without letting them know it.” Any way was good enough to escape from such oppression. “Two days ago,” wrote M. de Tesse, who commanded at Grenoble, “a woman, to get safe away, hit upon an invention which deserves to be known. She made a bargain with a Savoyard, an ironmonger, and had herself packed up in a load of iron rods, the ends of which showed. It was carried to the custom-house, and the tradesman paid on the weight of the iron, which was weighed together with the woman, who was not unpacked until she was six leagues from the frontier.” “For a long time,” says M. Floquet, “there was talk in Normandy of the Count of Marance, who, in the middle of a severe winter, flying with thirty-nine others on board a fishing-smack, encountered a tempest, and remained a long time at sea without provisions, dying of hunger, he, the countess, and all the passengers, amongst whom were pregnant women, mothers with infants at the breast, without resources of any sort, reduced for lack of everything to a little melted snow, with which they moistened the parched lips of the dying babes.” It were impossible to estimate precisely the number of emigrations; it was probably between three and four hundred thousand. “To speak only of our own province,” writes M. Floquet in his Histoire du Parlement de Normandie, “about one hundred and eighty-four thousand religionists went away; more than twenty-six thousand habitations were deserted; in Rouen there were counted no more than sixty thousand men instead of the eighty thousand that were to be seen there a few years before. Almost all trade was stopped there as well as in the rest of Normandy. The little amount of manufacture that was possible rotted away on the spot for want of transport to foreign countries, whence vessels were no longer found to come. Rouen, Darnetal, Elbeuf, Louviers, Caudebec, Le Havre, Pont-Audemer, Caen, St. Lo, Alencon, and Bayeux were falling into decay, the different branches of trade and industry which had but lately been seen flourishing there having perished through the emigration of the masters whom their skilled workmen followed in shoals.” The Norman emigration had been very numerous, thanks to the extent of its coasts and to the habitual communication between Normandy, England, and Holland; Vauban, however, remained very far from the truth when he deplored, in 1688, “the desertion of one hundred thousand men, the withdrawal from the kingdom of sixty millions of livres, the enemy’s fleets swelled by nine thousand sailors, the best in the kingdom, and the enemy’s armies by six hundred officers and twelve thousand soldiers, who had seen service.” It is a natural but a striking fact that the Reformers who left France and were received with open arms in Brandenburg, Holland, England, and Switzerland carried in their hearts a profound hatred for the king who drove them away from their country, and everywhere took service against him, whilst the Protestants who remained in France, bound to the soil by a thousand indissoluble ties, continued at the same time to be submissive and faithful. “It is right,” said Chanlay, in a Memoire addressed to the king, “whilst we condemn the conduct of the new converts, fugitives, who have borne arms against France since the commencement of this war up to the present, it is right, say I, to give those who have staid in France the praise and credit they deserve. Indeed, if we except a few disturbances of little consequence which have taken place in Languedoc, we have, besides the fact of their remaining faithful to the king in the provinces, and especially in Dauphiny, even whilst the confederated armies of the emperor, of Spain, and of the Duke of Savoy were in the heart of that province in greater strength than the forces of the king, to note that those who were fit to bear arms have enlisted amongst the troops of his Majesty and done good service.” In 1745, after sixty years’ persecution, consequent upon the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, Matthew Desubas, a young pastor accused before the superintendent of Languedoc, Lenain, said with high-spirited modesty, “The ministers preach nothing but patience and fidelity to the king.” “I am aware of it, sir,” answered the superintendent. The pastors were hanged or burned, the faithful flock dragged to the galleys and the Tower of Constance. Prayers for the king, nevertheless, were sent up from the proscribed assemblies in the desert, whilst the pulpit of Saurin at the Hague resounded with his anathemas against Louis XIV., and the regiments of emigrant Huguenots were marching against the king’s troops under the flags of England or Holland.
The peace of Ryswick had not brought the Protestants the hoped-for alleviation of their woes. Louis XIV. haughtily rejected the petition of the English and Dutch plenipotentiaries on behalf of “those in affliction who ought to have their share in the happiness of Europe.” The persecution everywhere continued,—with determination and legality in the north, with violence and passion in the south, abandoned to the tyranny of M. de Lamoignon de Baville, a crafty and cold-bloodedly cruel politician, without the excuse of any zealous religious conviction. The execution of several ministers who had remained in hiding in the Cevennes, or had returned from exile to instruct and comfort their flocks, raised to the highest pitch the enthusiasm of the Reformers of Languedoc. Deprived of their highly-prized assemblies and of their pastors’ guidance, men and women, graybeards and children, all at once fancied themselves animated by the spirit of prophecy. Young girls had celestial visions; the little peasant lasses poured out their utterances in French, sometimes in the language and with the sublime eloquence of the Bible, sole source of their religious knowledge. The rumor of these marvels ran from village to village; meetings were held to hear the inspired maidens, in contempt of edicts, the galleys, and the stake. A gentleman glass-worker, named Abraham de la Serre, was, as it were, the Samuel of this new school of prophets. In vain did M. de Baville have three hundred children imprisoned at Uzes, and then send them to the galleys; the religious contagion was too strong for the punishments. “Women found themselves in a single day husbandless, childless, houseless, and penniless,” says Court; they remained immovable in their pious ecstasy; the assemblies multiplied; the troops which had so long occupied Languedoc had been summoned away by the war of succession in Spain; the militia could no longer restrain the Reformers growing every day more enthusiastic through the prophetic hopes which were born of their long sufferings. The arch-priest of the Cevennes, Abbe du Chayla, a tyrannical and cruel man, had undertaken a mission at the head of the Capuchins. His house was crammed with condemned Protestants; the breath of revolt passed over the mountains on the night of July 27, 1702, the castle of the arch-priest was surrounded by Huguenots in arms, who demanded the surrender of the prisoners. Du Chayla refused. The gates were forced, the condemned released, the priests who happened to be in the house killed or dispersed. The archpriest had let himself down by a window; he broke his thigh; he was found hiding in a bush; the castle was in flames. “No mercy, no mercy!” shouted the madmen; “the Spirit willeth that he die.” Every one of the Huguenots stabbed the poor wretch with their poniards: “That’s for my father, broken on the wheel; that’s for my brother, sent to the galleys; that’s for my mother, who died of grief; that’s for my relations in exile!” He received fifty-two wounds. Next day the Cevennes were everywhere in revolt. A prophet named Seguier was at the head of the insurrection. He was soon made prisoner. “How dost thou expect me to treat thee?” asked his judge. “As I would have treated thee, had I caught thee,” answered the prophet. He was burned alive in the public square of Pont-de-Montvert, a mountain burgh. “Where do you live?” he had been asked at his examination. “In the desert,” he replied, “and soon in heaven.” He exhorted the people from the midst of the flames. The insurrection went on spreading. “Say not, What can we do? we are so few; we have no arms!” said another prophet, named Laporte. “The Lord of hosts is our strength! We will intone the battle-psalms, and, from the Lozere to the sea, Israel shall arise! And, as for arms, have we not our axes? They will beget muskets!” The plain rose like the mountain. Baron St. Comes, an early convert, and colonel of the militia, was assassinated near Vauvert; murders multiplied; the priests were especially the object of the revolters’ vengeance. They assembled under the name of Children of God, and marched under the command of two chiefs, one, named Roland, who formerly served under Catinat, and the other, a young man, whiles a baker and whiles a shepherd, who was born in the neighborhood of Anduze, and whose name has remained famous. John Cavalier was barely eighteen when M. de Baville launched his brother-in-law, the Count of Broglie, with a few troops upon the revolted Cevenols. The Catholic peasants called them Camisards, the origin of which name has never been clearly ascertained. M. de Broglie was beaten; the insurrection, which was entirely confined to the populace, disappeared all at once in the woods and rocks of the country, to burst once more unexpectedly upon the troops of the king. The great name of Lamoignon shielded Baville; Chamillard had for a long while concealed from Louis XIV. the rising in the Cevennes. He never did know all its gravity. “It is useless,” said Madame de Maintenon, “for the king to trouble himself with all the circumstances of this war; it would not cure the mischief, and would do him much.” “Take care,” wrote Chamillard to Baville, on superseding the Count of Broglie by Marshal Montrevel, “not to give this business the appearance of a serious war.” The rumor of the insurrection in Languedoc, however, began to spread in Europe. Conflagrations, murders, executions in cold blood or in the heat of passion, crimes on the part of the insurgents, as well as cruelties on the part of judges and generals, succeeded one another uninterruptedly, without the military authorities being able to crush a revolt that it was impossible to put down by terror or punishments. “I take it for a fact,” said a letter to Chamillard from M. de Julien, an able captain of irregulars, lately sent into Languedoc to aid the Count of Broglie, “that there are not in this district forty who are real converts, and are not entirely on the side of the Camisards. I include in that number females as well as males, and the mothers and daughters would give the more striking proofs of their fury if they had the strength of the men. . . . I will say but one word more, which is, that the children who were in their cradles at the time of the general conversions, as well as those who were four or five years old, are now more Huguenot than the fathers; nobody, however, has set eyes upon any minister; how, then, comes it that they are so Huguenot? Because the fathers and mothers brought them up in those sentiments all the time they were going to mass. You may rely upon it that this will continue for many generations.” M. de Julien came to the conclusion that the proper way was to put to the sword all the Protestants of the country districts and burn all the villages. M. de Baville protested. “It is not a question of exterminating these people,” he said, “but of reducing them, of forcing them to fidelity; the king must have industrious people and flourishing districts preserved to him.” The opinion of the generals prevailed; the Cevenols were proclaimed outlaws, and the pope decreed a crusade against them. The military and religious enthusiasm of the Camisards went on increasing. Cavalier, young and enterprising, divided his time between the boldest attempts at surprise and mystical ecstasies, during which he singled out traitors who would have assassinated him or sinners who were not worthy to take part in the Lord’s Supper. The king’s troops ravaged the country; the Camisards, by way of reprisal, burned the Catholic villages; everywhere the war was becoming horrible. The peaceable inhabitants, Catholic or Protestant, were incessantly changing from wrath to terror. Cavalier, naturally sensible and humane, sometimes sank into despondency. He would fling himself on his knees, crying, “Lord, turn aside the king from following the counsels of the wicked!” and then he would set off again upon a new expedition. The struggle had been going on for two years, and Languedoc was a scene of fire and bloodshed. Marshal Montrevel had gained great advantages when the king ordered Villars to put an end to the revolt. “I made up my mind,” writes Villars, in his Memoires, “to try everything, to employ all sorts of ways except that of ruining one of the finest provinces in the kingdom, and that, if I could bring back the offenders without punishing them, I should preserve the best soldiers there are in the kingdom. They are, said I to myself, Frenchmen, very brave and very strong, three qualities to be considered.” “I shall always,” he adds, “have two ears for two sides.”
“We have to do here with a very extraordinary people,” wrote the marshal to Chamillard, soon after his arrival; “it is a people unlike anything I ever knew—all alive, turbulent, hasty, susceptible of light as well as deep impressions, tenacious in its opinions. Add thereto zeal for religion, which is as ardent amongst heretics as Catholics, and you will no longer be surprised that we should be often very much embarrassed. There are three sorts of Camisards: the first, with whom we might arrange matters by reason of their being weary of the miseries of war. The second, stark mad on the subject of religion, absolutely intractable on that point; the first little boy or little girl that falls a-trembling and declares that the Holy Spirit is speaking to it, all the people believe it, and, if God with all his angels were to come and speak to them, they would not believe them more; people, moreover, on whom the penalty of death makes not the least impression; in battle they thank those who inflict it upon them; they walk to execution singing the praises of God and exhorting those present, insomuch that it has often been necessary to surround the criminals with drums to prevent the pernicious effect of their speeches. Finally, the third: people without religion, accustomed to pillage, to murder, to quarter themselves upon the peasants; a rascalry furious, fanatical, and swarming with prophetesses.”
Villars had arrived in Languedoc the day after the checks encountered by the Camisards. The despondency and suffering were extreme; and the marshal had Cavalier sounded.
“What do you want to lay down your arms?” said the envoy. “Three things,” replied the Cevenol chief: “liberty of conscience, the release of our brethren detained in the prisons and the galleys, and if these demands are refused, permission to quit France with ten thousand persons.” The negotiators were intrusted with the most flattering offers for Cavalier. Sensible, and yet vain, moved by his country’s woes, and flattered by the idea of commanding a king’s regiment, the young Camisard allowed himself to be won. He repaired formally to Nimes for an interview with the marshal. “He is a peasant of the lowest grade,” wrote Villars to Chamillard, “who is not twenty-two, and does not look eighteen; short, and with no imposing air, qualities essential for the lower orders, but surprising good sense and firmness. I asked him yesterday how he managed to keep his fellows under. ‘Is it possible,’ said I, ‘that, at your age, and not being long used to command, you found no difficulty in often ordering to death your own men?’ ‘No, sir,’ said he, ‘when it seemed to me just.’ ‘But whom did you employ to inflict it?’ ‘The first whom I ordered, and nobody ever hesitated to follow my orders.’ I fancy, sir, that you will consider this rather surprising. Furthermore, he shows great method in the matter of his supplies, and he disposes his troops for an engagement as well as very experienced officers could do. It is a piece of luck if I get such a man away from them.”
Cavalier’s fellows began to escape from his sway. They had hoped, for a while, that they would get back that liberty for which they had shed their blood. “They are permitted to have public prayer and chant their psalms. No sooner was that known all round,” writes Villars, “than behold my madmen rushing up from burghs and castles in the neighborhood, not to surrender, but to chant with the rest. The gates were closed; they leap the walls and force the guards. It is published abroad that I have indefinitely granted free exercise of the religion.” The bishops let the marshal be.
“Stuff we our ears,” said the Bishop of Narbonne, “and make we an end.” The Camisards refused to listen to Cavalier.