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

by G. de Félice

This improved condition was, however, disturbed in a horrible manner by the capital execution of four persons in one case, and of a venerable old man in another. It was the sad privilege of the town of Toulouse, which had erected the first scaffold against the disciples of the Reformation in 1532, to spill the last blood on account of an heretical offence in 1762.

Toulouse, which has made a considerable advance in enlightenment since this period, was at that time almost altogether wanting in intelligence and commercial spirit. It was filled with nobles and Parliament men, who had bent beneath the servile yoke of their traditional prejudices. By their side swarmed legions of priests and monks, more Spanish than French, who kept up an abject superstition by then processions, their relics, and their confraternities. Below them vegetated an ignorant and fanatic people. Every year the Church pompously celebrated at Toulouse the commemoration of the great southern massacre of Saint Bartholomew in 1562; and Toulouse was the stage of the last executions.

François Rochette, a pastor, aged twenty-five years, who performed the service of the numerous churches of Quercy, had gone to recruit his exhausted health by means of the mineral waters of Saint Antonin. He was invited, on the road, to administer baptism, and while crossing the country in the neighbourhood of Caussade, during the night of the 13th of September, 1761, was arrested with the two peasants who were acting as his guides. They were suspected of belonging to a band of robbers who infested the province. The mistake was soon perceived; and as Rochette was not surprised in the exercise of his functions, he might easily have escaped by concealing his profession. Those, who interrogated him went even so far as to point out to him this means of acquittal, but he refused to buy his deliverance by the least disavowal of truth.

The morning spread the news of his arrest with the rapidity of lightning through the whole country. The sorrowing and anxious Protestants assembled together, and urgently solicited the liberation of their pastor. A fair was held that day at Caussade, and the town was crowded with people. The (Roman) Catholics conceived the notion that the Huguenots had flown to arms, and intended a universal massacre. The tocsin was sounded on every side; the villages rose en masse, and the (Roman) Catholic peasantry stuck a white cross in their hats, in imitation of the assassins of Saint Bartholomew. The night of the 14th was spent in casting bullets, preparing cartouches, and many a curate joined in and hastened the arming. The next day, the whole population was on the alert, ready for the direst excesses, and it was with the utmost difficulty the magistrates could restrain them.

Three brothers named Grenier, glass-manufacturers in the county of Foix, happened to be at this time in Montauban. Hearing that the pastor Rochette had been arrested, that the Protestants were threatened with attack, and that a terrible contest was imminent, they hastened to the spot of danger, with the first arms they could snatch up in their haste, a sword and two guns. They were pursued, butchers’ dogs were put upon their track, and at length they were captured and dragged to the prison of Rochette.

The Parliament of Toulouse took cognizance of the matter, as if it were an affair of state, and the trial was conducted with the most glaring partiality. Paul Rabaut and his companions, astounded with a severity so long forgotten, fruitlessly petitioned the Duke de Richelieu, the Duke de Fitz-James, and Marie-Adelaide de France. The accused sent long justificatory memorials to the court in vain. A sentence, passed on the 18th of February, 1762, condemned François Rochette to death, as convicted of having exercised the functions of a Protestant minister, and the three brothers Grenier, as guilty of armed sedition. The other accused, who were poor peasants that had never committed the shadow of a crime, were condemned to the galleys.

When the sentence was read to Rochette and his three fellow-sufferers, they exclaimed with one voice, “Well! since we must die, let us beseech God to accept the sacrifice we offer Him.” The pastor prayed with his friends, and the court wept at the sight.

Four curates came to exhort them to abjure, and one of them threatened the religionists with hell, if they persisted in their heresy. “We are about to appear,” replied the pastor, “before a more equitable judge than you, even before Him who shed His blood for our salvation.”

They spent their time in prayer and pious exhortations, and encouraged each other for the final struggle. All the assistants, sentries, and gaolers, were moved at their calm and noble resignation. Rochette, seeing a soldier more concerned than the rest of his comrades, said to him, “My friend, are you not ready to die for the king; why then should you grieve that I should die for God?”

The curates renewed their efforts to proselytize. “It is for your salvation,” said they, “that we are here.” The answer of one of the prisoners was, “If you were at Geneva, ready to die in your bed (for no one is slain there on account of his religion), would you be pleased if four ministers came, under the pretence of zeal, to persecute you until your last breath? Do not, then, unto others that which you would not wish to be done unto yourselves.”