This success encouraged the court to employ the same means of conversion elsewhere; and in less than four months, Languedoc, Guienne, Saintonge, Aunis, Poitou, Vivarais, Dauphiny, Cevennes, Provence, and Gex, were scoured by similar dragonnades. A little later, the system was extended to the centre of the north of France, but with more precaution, lest the cries of the victims should trouble Versailles, where, as Madame de Sévigné relates, brilliant carousals, with promotions of the knights of the Holy Ghost, were held that year.
The most creditable historians are agreed respecting the excesses that accompanied these dragonnades. It was almost the same scene everywhere as at Béarn. Neither sex, age, nor degree was spared. Aged cavaliers, who had shed their blood for their country, had to suffer the same outrages. Even those, who were of high birth, and hoped to find a refuge in Paris or at the court, were maltreated or thrown into prison by lettres de cachet.
If any Huguenots held out against all this torture, they were, after being despoiled and ruined, flung into dungeons, whilst the women were immured in convents! Missionaries for the former, and Sisters of Mercy for the latter, who left their prisoners no single moment of peace until they had promised to abjure, followed upon the heels of the soldiers.
If, sinking under these persecutions, they fell into a state of stupor, imbecility, or insanity, they were made to sign mechanically a piece of paper containing an abjuration, or to pronounce words, of which they no longer knew the meaning, and then they were reputed to be (Roman) Catholics. Or again, they were drawn into an ambush, as happened to the barons de Montbeton, de Meauzac, and de Vicose, and people, posted for the purpose, forced them down upon their knees, that the bishop might give them absolution.
The abjuration of the head of the house was not sufficient; he was not exempt from the billeting of soldiers until he had induced his wife, children, and servants to follow his example; and if any fled, the father of the family was responsible for them until they were recaptured.
The Reformers were summoned to a general meeting, before the arrival of the soldiers; at which, according to the time and the intention, the commanding officer of the troops, the bishop or some other authority, announced that the king would no longer suffer heretics in his dominions, and that all must, willingly or unwillingly, embrace (Roman) Catholicism immediately. Care was always taken to gain over some persons beforehand, who by their station or advice, might help to influence the rest.
When the poor folks answered that they were ready to sacrifice their property and even their life for the king, but not their conscience, then the dragoons were brought on the scene. After a few days, there was a new convocation, a new appeal, and generally all resistance ceased. The terror became at length so great that the mere announcement of the approach of the military, was sufficient to drive the Reformed people, conscious of their helplessness, to pronounce the formula of abjuration. It was the opinion of many that it might be lawful to bend before violence, provided their internal faith remained intact; many also abjured, to secure the opportunity of flight.
It is also to be remarked that the formulas of recantation were often drawn up in such a way that they did not bind the conscience very strictly. What the public officers and the priests were most desirous of, was a large number of proselytes. Many of the Reformers simply said: “I rejoin.” Others were even authorized to frame their act of abjuration in these terms: “I acknowledge and confess the Catholic and Apostolic church of Rome, as it was in the time of the apostles;” or, “conformably to the doctrine of our Lord Jesus Christ;” or, again, “while loving God and Jesus Christ, and adoring Him only with the fitting worship.”
But this was, at least on the part of the priesthood, only a concession for the moment. “They were soon revisited after a few days,” says the pastor Claude in his Plaintes des Protestants de France, “and did not escape until they had signed another formulary, whereby they were entirely committed; and what was most impudent, is, that they were obliged at the same time to acknowledge that they embraced the Romish religion of their own free will, and without any inducement through fear, or other extraneous cause. If, after that, they made any difficulty about going to mass, if they did not communicate, if they were not present at processions, if they did not confess, if they did not tell their beads, if they allowed a sigh or a murmur of complaint to escape them, they were chastised with fines, and with a recommencement of the billeting of soldiers upon them.”[95]
What made a particular impression upon the population was the material fact of the dragonnades. The spiritual circumstance of the compulsory communions could but strike the thinking and the pious man much more forcibly. To open, one may say, the mouths of the heretics with the point of the bayonet, and to thrust the host into them,—that sacred host of which the (Roman) Catholic church teaches that he who receives it unworthily is guilty in the highest degree—[could but do so]; and thus was a crime enjoined even by those who proclaimed [an unworthy communion] to be the greatest of crimes! Is there at this day a bishop, or a priest, who does not recoil with horror from the bottom of his heart from the thought? The Spanish Inquisition had at least the decency to prevent its prisoners from receiving the communion, and being present at mass. There were, indeed, some noble and pious protests [offered] in the era of Louis XIV., in particular by those of the Jansenist party, to whom we shall have to refer; but the majority of the clergy, led on by the Jesuits, compelled the unfortunate beings to take the host, “whose pallor and tremblings,” writes Basnage, “showed that their whole soul revolted from the act.”