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

by G. de Félice

The first acts of the restoration were dictated by a spirit of impartiality and prudence. The Count d’Artois, afterwards Charles X., having gone to Nismes in 1814, gave a very gracious reception to the Reformed, and distributed several decorations of the Legion of Honour among them. Policy, perhaps, had as much to do with this as confidence; but the Protestants, satisfied with the protection promised to them, might refrain from scrutinizing intentions.

The charter given by Louis XVIII. said, in its 5th article, “Every one professes his religion with equal liberty, and obtains the same protection for his form of worship.” It is true, it added in the 6th article, that the Catholic, Roman, and Apostolic religion was the religion of the state. Nevertheless, the equality between creeds having been proclaimed first and formally, the distinction granted to (Roman) Catholicism would be, according to the terms of the Constitution, nothing more than a simple privilege of honour, without any hurtful or oppressive privilege, and the Protestants were all disposed to concede the honour of the first place to the Romish church, provided their rights were as much respected as those of the (Roman) Catholics.

If the charter, therefore, had been well understood by the masses of the (Roman) Catholics, duly carried out by people in power, and sincerely admitted by the members of the ancient privileged orders, there would have been no Protestant party, in the political sense of the word, nor collision of any kind. But the first were wanting in intelligence; there was no spirit of justice in the next, or love of liberal institutions in the last.

In the south, particularly, the workmen and the peasants, who belonged to the Romish church, openly threatened the Reformed with new persecutions, and were not sufficiently contradicted and repressed by the local authorities. Sinister reports were spread abroad. It was rumoured that the places of worship would be closed, and the public services of the Reformed interdicted. (Roman) Catholics of the lower order, when they met Protestants in the streets, shouted out: Vive le roi! (long live the king), as if they were the only royalists. Those of the highest classes, who called themselves respectable people, openly insulted the most honourable men of the Reformed communion.

The emigrants, who had returned with the Bourbons, and others of the nobility, who, shut up for five-and-twenty years in their castles, had only learned to curse the Revolution, were indignant at the liberties granted by Louis XVIII., and, ignorant of any direct means to abolish the charter, they fell into the old plans of the conspirators of 1790. A religious contest, which should make a second Vendée of the southern provinces, might bring the fundamental law into question; and the occult government, so frequently denounced by the sincerest friends of the Bourbons in the two legislative chambers, began its secret work. It has been said that these men were more inveterate royalists than the king himself. But it was not so: they had interests wholly different from those of the king, interests of position and caste, and their aim was to satisfy and secure them at any price, were it at the expense of the kingly office itself.

Fresh addresses were signed, as in 1790, demanding that there should be only one religion in France. Handbills were distributed in many of the churches, with these words: “The faithful are requested to say five Paters and five Aves every day, for the prosperity of the kingdom and the re-establishment of the Jesuits.” The anti-Protestant controversy reappeared in many of the pulpits under the most bitter and violent forms, denouncing heresy as a public calamity; and the Reformed, pursued with as many provocations, were in a manner forced to adopt political opinions in unison with their religious convictions.

We wish to do justice without delay to those, to whom justice is due. The fault of the attempt, which we are about to narrate, is not chargeable to the majority of the (Roman) Catholics; on the contrary, they were as indignant against them, and regretted them as much as the Protestants. Nor must it be allowed to fall on the majority of the priests. They were no longer to be seen in the foremost ranks of persecution, as they had been in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The populace, excited by some of the secret leaders, acted without the priests, and often in spite of the priests. Many of the Roman ecclesiastics courageously interposed to shield the victims. We shall have occasion to cite an admirable instance of this.

Such was the situation of the south when the emperor disembarked upon the coasts of France. The Protestants of Nismes offered the Duke d’Angoulême their services as royal volunteers. The prince was ready to accept them, when the fanatics repulsed them with this insult: “We will not endure these rascally Protestants!” Their purses were, however, taken, if not their persons.

On Napoleon’s re-entry into Paris, the Protestants resumed the places and the legitimate influence, of which they had been deprived. They could count upon the protection of the laws, and testified a satisfaction that may be easily comprehended. But they were far from committing the excesses with which they have been reproached. The faction of 1815 felt it necessary to accuse them with expressly invented crimes, in order to extenuate their own. All the massacres of the Hundred Days, which have been ascribed to them, are confined, as the official documents attest, to the death of two royal volunteers, who were killed at Arpillargues (Gard), in a disturbance they had themselves provoked, by obstinately persisting in marching through the village with fifty of their companions, sword in hand.

As soon as the defeat of Waterloo was known at Nismes, the royalist bands were reorganized, and ordered the municipal council to declare immediately for the government of Louis XVIII., although no order of any kind had arrived from Paris. The council replied that it was necessary to wait for official instructions, and published a proclamation, in which it said: “Fellow-countrymen of every opinion, for whom we have equal solicitude, in the name of the efforts we have made to avert the disasters which threaten our country, in the name of your dearest interests, in the name of God, who enjoins upon you clemency and concord, do not be deaf to our voice.” (18th July, 1815.)