Rabaut Saint Etienne published other discourses, and a book entitled: Amboise Borély, or the Old Cévenole. In this last work he painted, under a dramatic form, the sufferings of the French Protestants at the period of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and during the eighteenth century.
Chosen by the seneschalry of Nismes first among the eight deputies of the Third Estate, his noble character, his oratorical talents, and his devotion to the public good, immediately obtained for him great influence in the Constituent Assembly, over which he was elected to preside on several occasions.
Having been sent to the National Convention by the department of Aude, Rabaut Saint Etienne brought to his place in the Assembly a wise moderation, as well as a generous love of liberty. He sided with the party of the Girondists, and boldly confronted the popular passions, by refusing to vote for the death of Louis XVI. “The nation,” he said, “has sent you to delegate its powers, not to exercise them all at once; for it is impossible that it should have desired only to change its masters. As for myself, I avow it, I am weary of my part in despotism; I am fatigued and harassed with it, and loathe the tyranny which I share in exercising; I sigh for the moment when you shall have created a national tribunal that will divest me of the features and the aspect of a tyrant.”
At the sitting of the 3rd of May, he presented the report of the Commission of Twelve who represented the party of the Gironde, and maintained an obstinate struggle against the violence of the Mountain. Its doom awaited so firm a courage. His arrest was decreed, and his retreat having been discovered, he was dragged before the Revolutionary tribunal, who ordered, upon his simple identification, that he should be executed within twenty-four hours. Rabaut Saint Etienne perished on the scaffold on the 3rd of December, 1793.
Let us return to the Constituent Assembly. A member of the Left, the Carthusian Don Gerle, a man of singular, but unsettled ideas, who had begun to experience some disquietude about the course he was following with his new associates, suddenly proposed, on the 12th of April, 1790, that (Roman) Catholicism should be declared the religion of the State, and that no other religious worship than the Romish should be authorized. The Right and a few Jansenists hailed this unexpected motion with transport. The bishop of Clermont even asked that it should be voted by acclamation, as a homage paid to the (Roman) Catholic religion.
The majority seemed for a moment to be undecided, and the sitting was adjourned until the following day. In the interval, the defenders of religious liberty had time to combine. Charles Lameth had already appealed to the maxims of the Gospel in favour of the dissenting communions. Public opinion, in the meanwhile, became agitated; tumultuous crowds gathered round the building occupied by the legislative body; Mirabeau recalled to mind the horrible recollections of the Saint Bartholomew massacre; and Don Gerle, by this time aware of the dangers of his proposition, withdrew it.
The Constituent Assembly hastened to give the Protestants new proof of its good-will. It ordered the restitution of property confiscated on account of religion, which was still in the possession of the State, to the heirs of the lawful proprietors. By another decree, it restored all the rights of French citizens to the descendants of the refugees, on the sole condition that they should return to France and take the civic oath. Finally, the constitution of 1791 sanctioned the liberty of religious creeds in these terms: “The Constitution guarantees to every man the exercise of the religious worship to which he is attached.”
The legislature had fulfilled its task by proclaiming true principles; the people had next to fulfil their duty. But if, in former periods, the manners of the nation were in advance of the laws, the laws were at this epoch in advance of popular manners, at least in the southern districts, where there existed greater ignorance and stronger religious passions in combination.
The province of Vendée did not rise until 1793, because it contained scarcely any Protestants within its territory. In the south, on the contrary, where they were very numerous, the old antipathies between the two communions began to explode from the year 1790. These facts were accompanied by results of grave importance, which require illustration.