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.”
XVII.
Troops had been encamped in Béarn, in 1685, to watch the movements of the Spanish army; and as Spain had sought a truce, Louvois, mindful of the plan adopted by Marillac in Poitou, obtained the king’s permission to despatch some regiments to the districts inhabited by the Huguenots.
The Marquis de Boufflers, commander of the troops, and the intendant Foucault received, in July, the order to complete the conversion of the Béarnese. The latter brought a refined and systematic cruelty to his task, and perfected more than one species of torture. This was the recommencement of the dragonnades, which were soon to spread over all France.
Foucault announced that the king commanded all the Huguenots to return to the (Roman) Catholic unity, and to make a beginning of the business, drove some hundreds of Béarnese into a church by force, where the bishop of Lescar officiated. The doors were closed, and the unfortunate people were made to kneel by the force of blows, in order to receive the bishop’s absolution from heresy: they were then admonished that if they returned to the Protestant church, they would be punished for relapsing.
The Reformed fled to the fields, the forests, the wildernesses, and the caverns of the Pyrenees. Foucault ordered them to be pursued like wild beasts; and when they were brought back to their dwellings, he loaded them with military billetings. The horrors committed in Poitou were renewed and even surpassed.
The dragoons or other soldiers (for troops of all kinds were employed), entered the houses of the Reformers with drawn swords, shouting: “Kill! kill! or let them become Catholics!” They wasted provisions, spoiled furniture, and destroyed or sold everything that fell into their hands to the peasants of the neighbourhood. Nor were the persons of the Calvinists spared. “Among other secrets taught them by Foucault,” says the historian of the Edict of Nantes, “he ordered them to keep strict guard over those, who would not succumb to other tortures. The faithful executioners of these furious orders watched in relays, that they might not themselves sink under the torments they inflicted upon others. The sound of drums, blasphemies, shouts; the crashing of furniture, or throwing them one upon another; the agitation in which they kept these poor folks, to compel them to remain standing, and to keep their eyes open, were the means they employed to deprive them of repose. Pinching, pricking, buffeting, and suspending them with ropes, blowing tobacco smoke into their nostrils and mouths, and a hundred other cruelties, were the sport of these ruffians, who by such means reduced their hosts to a condition of not knowing what they did, and of promising everything to rid themselves of such barbarians. The women were forced to suffer indescribable indignities.... The monsters never showed signs of pity until they saw some one ready to die, and fainting with exhaustion. Then, with cruel compassion, they restored the sufferer to sense, in order that renewed strength might preserve their victim for fresh violence. Their whole study and endeavour was to invent torments which should be painful without being mortal, and to afflict these unhappy objects of their fury with every [suffering], which the human body could endure without dying.”[94]
They had been forbidden to kill [their victims]. Alas! how often was even this limit outstepped! How many unfortunates perished under this frightful treatment, not slain, it is true, but more cruelly immolated, than if they had fallen by the blade of the dagger!
Impelled by their fears, the Béarnese hastened to the priests in crowds to abjure. Of twenty-five thousand Reformers that had been counted in this province up to that time, not a thirtieth part remained. The clergy celebrated their triumph by a high mass, at which the Parliament were present in a body, and by general processions, in which the new converts were dragged along.