This emigration has been sometimes compared with that of the year 1792; but the difference is much greater than the resemblance. The emigrants of the Revolution had only lost aristocratic privileges; the refugees of the Revocation had been despoiled of their very means of religious and civil existence. The first, at least those who emigrated at the beginning, left their country, because they would not accept the common law of equal rights; the latter, because they were deprived of that common law. The emigration of 1792 was composed of only one class of individuals, who had no other profession than that of arms; the emigration of 1685 comprised all the constituent elements of a people—merchants, manufacturers, mechanics, labourers. Moreover, the refugees founded numerous and useful establishments, of which many yet still remain, while the later emigrants have nowhere left enduring traces of their passage.
It is equally difficult to calculate the number of emigrants, who perished in the attempts to escape, in party fights, in prison, on the scaffold, and at the galleys, from the Edict of Revocation to the Edict of Toleration of Louis XVI. Sismondi thinks that the number of those who perished is equal to that of the emigrants; that is to say, according to his calculations, three or four hundred thousand. This amount would seem to be too high. Yet Boulainvillers assures us that, under the intendancy of Lamoignon de Bâville, in the single province of Languedoc, a hundred thousand persons fell victims to a premature death, and that a tenth perished by fire, strangulation, or the wheel. Probably a hundred thousand should be added for the rest of the kingdom in the eighteenth century. Thus two hundred thousand Frenchmen were sacrificed after an edict of pacification, which had lasted nearly ninety years! Such were the new and bloody hecatombs, that were immolated upon the altars of intolerance!
II.
The Protestants—we may now employ this name, as its use became general even in ecclesiastical documents—the Protestants, who had remained in the kingdom, were still the prey of the dragonnades, after the Edict of Revocation, each time they endeavoured to raise themselves. Those of the principality of Orange and the Messin country, who had hoped to find in their privileged position a guarantee against violence, were compelled to submit to that [which had been inflicted upon others]. The Lutherans of Alsace alone were spared, on account of their numbers and the recent diplomatic conventions, which protected them.
At Paris, some little moderation was observed, for fear of disturbing, as we have already remarked, the fêtes and the repose of Louis. Nevertheless, four days after the Revocation, the place of worship at Charenton was demolished to the last stone, and the members of the flock were ordered to join the religion of the king without delay.
As they showed no alacrity in obeying, the principal elders were imprisoned by means of lettres de cachet. Next, the Marquis de Seignelay summoned a hundred of the Notables to his mansion, and desired them, in the presence of the procurator-general and the lieutenant of police La Reynie, immediately to sign an act of union. On several exclaiming against this brutal conduct, the doors were immediately shut, and they were told with vehement threats that they would not be permitted to return until they had signed—an unworthy ambush, an act of violence and extortion more characteristic of a bandit of Calabria, than of a secretary of state, and the grandson of the great Colbert.
All the Protestants of France were required, according to the terms of the edict, to send their children to (Roman) Catholic schools, and to have them taught the (Roman) Catholic catechism. A new ordinance directed that the children, from five to six years old, of those who were suspected of still adhering to the Reformed religion, should be taken away from them and confided to (Roman) Catholic relations, or be placed elsewhere. But this measure overstepped the possibility of execution. There were not sufficient colleges, convents, or hospitals in France to hold so many victims. The administrators of the laws were obliged to confine themselves to the children of the rich, who could afford to pay an alimentary pension, and in particular to girls of tender age. This detestable kidnapping continued during a great part of the century, and many families still preserve a painful remembrance of the losses they experienced by such abductions.
War was declared against books as well as individuals. The district commanders received orders to visit the houses of the Reformed with the index of the archbishop of Paris, already mentioned, and to seize all suspected writings. These domiciliary visits, which were repeated at intervals, have destroyed to the very last copy, a great number of previous works. The Bible even, was especially confiscated and burned with implacable hatred.
The priests were not able to give regular instruction to this multitude of pretended converts. Capuchin friars and the like were employed, who were gross, impudent, unlettered, and, in many cases, most immoral men. They filled the Protestants with disgust and contempt. Children stopped their mouths with their objections, and persons of mature age imbibed a deeper aversion for a church that employed ministers of such a character.
Recourse was had to new measures of rigour to drag from the reluctant acts of Catholicity. The curates made a roll-call of “the re-united brethren” who were placed upon benches apart from the true Catholics; and those who were so unfortunate as not to be present at the service, or the communion, were exposed to severe punishment. The military supported this inquisition to the utmost, and some intendants, who were desirous of avoiding restitution of the property of which the Reformers had been deprived, established an inspector in each parish, whose business it was to examine whether the new converts went regularly to mass, how they behaved there, whether they attended the Paschal communion, and faithfully observed the commandments of the Church. The régime, in fine, of the ninth and tenth centuries was restored, and Frenchmen were treated in the same manner as the savages of Paraguay had been by the Jesuits. The king perceived that matters had been carried too far, and secretly wrote to the intendants not to interfere any further to such an extent in the transactions of private life.