This ecstasy had four degrees: the calling, the inspiration, the prophecy, and the gift, or the inspiration in its highest degree. It cannot be doubted that the ecstasies were sincere. They were the first to believe in the spirit, which they said filled them, and obeyed it without reservation, hesitation, or delay, although they went to a certain death.
This spirit, they would say, made them better people. “The persons, who had received the inspiration,” they said, “directly abandoned every kind of licentiousness and vanity. Some who had led a debauched life, first became steady and pious, and every one who frequented their society also became better-behaved, and led an exemplary life. This spirit begot in us a horror of idolatry, a contempt for the world, charity, internal consolation, hope, and an unleavened joy of heart.”[107]
The Camisard chiefs were designated by the spirit. They believed themselves to be filled with it, and this was the source of their courage, their triumphs, and their constancy in the greatest extremities. Whether the necessity of the moment was to collect their scattered bands, to fix the point of attack, to choose the day of combat, to retreat, to advance, to discover traitors and spies, to spare prisoners, or to put them to death, it was the spirit they consulted: everywhere and in all things their persuasion was that they acted under the immediate and sovereign direction of heaven.
One of these Camisards, Elie Marion, thus tells this with great simplicity in his Théâtre Sacré des Cevennes: “We were without strength and without counsel, but our inspirations were our succour and our support. They elected our leaders, and conducted them; they were our military discipline. It is they who raised us, even weakness itself, to put a strong bridle upon an army of more than twenty thousand picked soldiers. It is they who banished sorrow from our hearts in the midst of the greatest peril, as well as in the deserts and the mountain fastnesses, when cold and famine oppressed us. Our heaviest crosses were but lightsome burdens, for this intimate communion that God allowed us to have with Him, bore up and consoled us; it was our safety and our happiness.”[108]
Upon what does the judgment of enlightened, as well as of ignorant men depend? These inspirations, those inner voices recall, trait for trait, the language and the history of Joan of Arc. The religious phenomenon is absolutely the same. But the Maid of Orleans delivered France, and the people of Cevennes were vanquished. The first has been almost worshipped: the others have been for the most part treated as madmen and fanatics. If the English had triumphed in the fifteenth century, the shepherdess of Vaucouleurs would also have been regarded by historians as a poor peasant girl, crazed by silly delusions!
Roland and Cavalier were the two principal leaders of the Cévenoles: the former, more resolute, firm, and inaccessible to seduction, remained to the very last sword in hand, and was the true type of the Camisards, although he has obtained less celebrity; the latter was more skilful, adventurous, and brilliant, brave amongst the brave, [no less than] an epic hero. Both trusted, like Oliver Cromwell, in the authority of inspiration, and never were military commanders better obeyed.
The soldiers called themselves children of God, people of God, the flock of the Lord, and bestowed upon their chieftains the names of brother Roland, brother Cavalier. Thus was equality and fraternity joined to the most rigorous discipline.
They made stern and bloody reprisals upon their persecutors, the priests and the soldiers; yet the spirit they consulted, habitually induced them to set their prisoners free who had not injured them. They punished with the utmost severity those of their number who were guilty of unnecessary slaughter or acts of depredation. There was no quarrelling, swearing, or drunkenness in their ranks. All their provisions were held in common. They have been accused by their enemies of having led a licentious life, because they had women in their camp: these women were the wives, mothers, and daughters of the Camisards, who attended them to prepare their food and to tend the wounded.
Their magazines and hospitals were caverns. They clothed themselves with the spoils of the soldiers of the royal army, and supplied themselves with balls from the church bells and utensils of the presbyteries. They had no money except such as was furnished them by villagers almost as poor as themselves, or such as they picked up on the fields of battle; but they needed it not.