History of the Protestants of France, from the commencement of the Reformation to the present time

by G. de Félice

The government did not accede on all points to the demands of the bishops; it neither dared nor wished [to do so]. Nevertheless it complied with a great deal, and all the more in that it required to recruit its finances, [which had been] exhausted by the war. The prelates consented to increase their voluntary donations, but under the express condition that the extirpation of heresy should be prosecuted with more rigour.

The Protestants, for their part, did not cease by every peaceable means to petition for the redress of their grievances. Seven pastors of the desert addressed to Louis XV., on the 21st December, 1750, a new and respectful petition, in which, after having stated that they regarded the aggregate worship, baptisms, marriages, and sacraments of their communion as a matter of conscience, they said: “Your troops pursue us in the deserts as if we were wild beasts; our property is confiscated; our children are torn from us; we are condemned to the galleys; and although our ministers continually exhort us to discharge our duty as good citizens and faithful subjects, a price is set upon their heads, and when they are taken, they are cruelly executed.”

Louis XV. and his council gave no heed to this petition any more than they had done to the others. The Protestants were in the depth of the provinces; they had neither voluntary donations to offer to the government, nor powerful protectors to invoke. They were regarded with suspicion from the very fact of their being proscribed, and the injury, which had been inflicted, was the best reason for inflicting greater severity upon them.

These details of the sentiments of the court, and the incessant provocations of the clergy, serve to explain the renewal of the persecutions, which the Protestants endured from 1750 to 1755. The intendant Lenain, who was naturally a rigid man, but had treated the Protestants more mildly, as he had become better acquainted with them, was replaced in Languedoc by the Viscount Guignard de Saint Priest, who, without being either fanatically or cruelly disposed, unhesitatingly executed the most violent measures. The meetings near Cayla, Vigan, and Anduze, were again attacked. In the last of these encounters, three men were killed, others wounded, and many led to prison; whilst the pursuit was carried on with such bitter determination, that it became necessary to renounce religious service on the Sabbath.

The intendant received orders to proceed to a general re-baptism of children, and to a re-benediction of marriages throughout the whole Reformed population. The words [of this order] were as barbarous as the thing itself. With this view, he convoked the notables at Nismes and elsewhere, in 1751, and commanded them to take their children to the parochial churches within a fortnight’s time; in default of which they would be punished with the utmost rigour of the ordinances; and the curates and (Roman) Catholic consuls were directed to prepare lists of the recusants. Guignard de Saint Priest took the trouble, ridiculous under the circumstances, to start a chapter of controversy, like a doctor of the Sorbonne, and to establish that (Roman) Catholic baptism being recognised by the religionists as effective, their rejection of it would be a senseless obstinacy.

The Protestants replied to this military controversialist, that the curates interpreted the question quite differently; that they exacted the promise to rear the children in the Romish faith, that they treated and punished those of the baptized as having relapsed, who did not remain (Roman) Catholics, and that the clergy had made use of the following maxim: “The Church has power over those, who receive baptism, just as the king, neither more nor less, has full right over the coin which he issues from his mint.”

Finding his reasons fail, the Viscount de Saint Priest resumed a part better suited to his character, and pronounced the most fearful threats against the obstinate. The oppressed were terrified. They abandoned their houses, fields, workshops, and factories, and fled for safety to the woods and mountain caverns.

The intendants anger increased; and on the 1st of September, 1751, he wrote to one of his subordinates: “They are mistaken if they hope that the king’s mind will change, or that I shall omit to execute the precise orders which his majesty has given me on the subject. I am willing, however, to grant them a short delay.” But the desertion went on increasing, and Saint Priest had recommenced the dragonnades with billets conceived in these terms: “The Sieur N., cavalier of the maréchaussée, will remain in garrison at the house of * * *, until he has taken his children to the church to undergo the ceremony of baptism by the curate of the place; and he will exact, for his pay, four livres a day, until perfect obedience has been shown, at the same time informing him that the garrison will be reinforced.”

A commandant of the name of Pontuan, or Pontual, shouted in the streets of Cayla: “Let nobody deceive himself; all the Huguenots shall obey or perish, if I die myself!” The soldiers, aided by some of the [Roman] Catholics, and frequently accompanied by the local priests, tracked the children about the country, seized them as if they were malefactors, and dragged them to the church.