Such was the origin of those dragonnades, which have left an indelible stain of disgrace upon the reign of Louis XIV., and of horror in the mind of the inhabitants. The march of Marillac’s troops was ordered, as if they were in an enemy’s country, exacting arrears of taxes, exempting those who became converts, and throwing all the burden upon the obstinate. From four to ten dragoons were billeted in the houses, with directions not to kill the inhabitants, but with authority to do anything short of that, in order to extort an abjuration. Curates followed the soldiers in the towns and villages, shouting: “Courage, gentlemen, it is the will of the king.”
Without a check upon their passions, the military committed horrible excesses: a horde of brigands had penetrated into the heart of the kingdom. The Journal of Jean Migault, published in these later times, will give an idea of their barbarities. Devastations, pillages, tortures, cruelties [prevailed; in fact,] they hesitated at nothing.
Elie Bénoit has filled page after page of his History of the Edict of Nantes [with a narrative of these cruelties]; we will only extract one or two passages: “The horsemen,” he writes, “fastened crosses to the mouth of their musquetoons to compel the people to kiss them by force, and when they met with any resistance, they thrust their crosses into the face and stomach of their unhappy victims. They spared children as little as persons of more advanced age, and without the slightest regard for their years; they loaded them with blows with the flat of their swords, or with the butt-end of their musquetoons; such was their violence that in many instances many were crippled for life. These infamous wretches took a pleasure in maltreating women. They beat them with whips; they struck them in the face with canes in order to disfigure them; they dragged them by their hair in the mud and over the stones. Sometimes the soldiers, meeting labourers on the road, or with their carts, drove them to the (Roman) Catholic churches, pricking them like cattle with their own spurs, to hasten their unwilling march....”[90]
Crowds of unfortunates fled to the woods; others hid themselves in the houses of their friends; many determined to fly the kingdom at all hazards; and there might be seen men, women, and children, half-dead, stretched upon the stones or rugged rocks. Many at length consented to abjure under the sabre of the soldier; but what an abjuration! Numbers went mad, or died of grief, or put an end to their days in paroxysms of remorse and despair. There were some who, flinging themselves upon the road, beat their breasts and filled the air with wailings. “When any two of these unfortunate converts met,” still further relates Bénoit, “when one beheld the other at the foot of an image, or in any other act of Catholic devotion, their cries redoubled, and their grief burst out anew. The labourer, abandoned to his reflections during his work, felt the sharp stimulus of remorse, and quitting his waggon in the midst of his fields, threw himself upon his knees, and while prostrate on the earth, sought for pardon, and took all nature to witness that it was violence alone that he had obeyed.”[91]
Madame de Maintenon wrote to her brother, who was about to receive a gratuity of eight hundred thousand francs: “I beg of you carefully to use the money you are about to receive. Estates in Poitou may be got for nothing; the desolation of the Huguenots will drive them to sell more. You may easily acquire extensive possessions in Poitou.” (September 2nd, 1681.)
The emigration, suspended in 1669, recommenced upon a vaster scale, and thousands of families quitted France. The Protestant countries, England, Switzerland, Holland, and Denmark, offered them shelter by official declarations. The court became alarmed, above all when the heads of the administration of the navy complained of the desertion of a great number of sailors, who, having readier means of flight, escaped en masse. Marillac was recalled, and the other intendants received orders to act with less severity.
The ordinances, which interdicted departure from the kingdom, were again put in force, with the addition of the penalty of perpetual imprisonment at the galleys against the heads of families, a fine of three thousand livres for those who should encourage them to fly, and the nullification of all contracts of sale made by the Reformed one year before their emigration. This last article overturned all private transactions, and it became necessary to supply a remedy on its execution.
The laws against emigrants and those who relapsed, placed a double-edged sword in the hands of the persecutors. If the new converts re-entered a place of worship, they were stricken with a terrible punishment, and they were equally so if they endeavoured to quit the kingdom. The government would consider them only as (Roman) Catholics in France; on the frontier they were seized as heretics. Rulhières, always led by a desire to justify the memory of Louis XIV., says that “the misfortunes of the Reformed were principally due to the combination of these two laws, of which their originator, Father La Chaise, boasted, as master-pieces of genius.”
The assembly of the clergy, who had to secure the pardon of the Roman See for the temerity of the four propositions of 1682, sent a pastoral notice to all the consistories of France, in which it was said that the bishops looked upon the Huguenots as strayed sheep, and would welcome them with open arms, but that they would be discharged from the care of their souls, if the heretics were not convinced by these charitable words. “This last error,” the prelates wrote, “will be more criminal in you than all the others, and you must expect misfortunes incomparably more dreadful and disastrous than all those your revolt and schism have drawn upon you at present.”
This notice of the clergy was read in the consistories by the express command of the king. It converted nobody; but every one foresaw fresh sufferings; for those who uttered the prediction had influence enough to work its accomplishment.