Such was the forlorn position of that noble country towards the close of the reign of Louis XIV.[517] The misfortunes which embittered the declining years of the king were, indeed, so serious, that they could not fail to excite our sympathy, if we did not know that they were the result of his own turbulent ambition, of his insufferable arrogance, but, above all, of a grasping and restless vanity, which, making him eager to concentrate on his single person all the glory of France, gave rise to that insidious policy, which, with gifts, with honours, and with honied words, began by gaining the admiration of the intellectual classes, then made them courtly and time-serving, and ended by destroying all their boldness, stifling every effort of original thought, and thus postponing for an indefinite period the progress of national civilization.
Footnotes:
[433] On the disgraceful subserviency of the most eminent men of letters, see Capefigue's Louis XIV., vol. i. pp. 41, 42, 116; and on the feeling of the people, Le Vassor, who wrote late in the reign of Louis XIV., bitterly says, ‘mais les Français, accoutumés à l'esclavage, ne sentent plus la pesanteur de leurs chaînes.’ Le Vassor, Hist. de Louis XIII, vol. vi. p. 670. Foreigners were equally amazed at the general, and still more, at the willing servility. Lord Shaftesbury, in a letter dated February 1704–5, passes a glowing eulogy upon liberty; but he adds, that in France ‘you will hardly find this argument understood; for whatever flashes may now and then appear, I never yet knew one single Frenchman a free man.’ Forster's Original Letters of Locke, Sidney, and Shaftesbury, 1830, p. 205. In the same year, De Foe makes a similar remark in regard to the French nobles, Wilson's Life of De Foe, vol. ii. p. 209; and, in 1699, Addison writes from Blois a letter which strikingly illustrates the degradation of the French. Aikin's Life of Addison, vol. i. p. 80. Compare Burnet's Own Time, vol. iv. p. 365, on ‘the gross excess of flattery to which the French have run, beyond the examples of former ages, in honour of their king.’
[434] The terms of this compact between the crown and the church are fairly stated by M. Ranke: ‘Wir sehen, die beiden Gewalten unterstützten einander. Der König ward von den Einwirkungen der weltlichen, der Clerus von der unbedingten Autorität der geistlichen Gewalt des Papstthums freigesprochen.’ Die Päpste, vol. iii. p. 168.
[435] This part of his character is skilfully drawn by Sismondi, Hist. des Français, vol. xxv. p. 43.
[436] Flasson supposes that the first persecuting laws were in 1679: ‘Des l'année 1679 les concessions faites aux protestans avaient été graduellement restreintes.’ Diplomatie Française, vol. iv. p. 92. But the fact is, that these laws began in 1662, the year after the death of Mazarin. See Sismondi, Hist. des Français, vol. xxv. p. 167; Benoist, Edit. de Nantes, vol. iii. pp. 460–462, 481. In 1667, a letter from Thynne to Lord Clarendon (Lister's Life of Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 446) mentions ‘the horrid persecutions the reformed religion undergoes in France;’ and Locke, who travelled in France in 1675 and 1676, states in his Journal (King's Life of Locke, vol. i. p. 110) that the Protestants were losing ‘every day some privilege or other.’
[437] An account of the revocation will be found in all the French historians; but I do not remember that any of them have noticed that there was a rumour of it in Paris twenty years before it occurred. In March 1665 Patin writes, ‘On dit que, pour miner les huguenots, le roi veut supprimer les chambres de l'édit, et abolir l'édit de Nantes.’ Lettres de Patin, vol. iii. p. 516.
[438] Compare Burnet's Own Time, vol. iii. pp. 73–76, with Siècle de Louis XIV, in Œuvres de Voltaire, vol. xx. pp. 377, 378. Voltaire says that the Protestants who persisted in their religion ‘étaient livrés aux soldats, qui eurent toute licence, excepté celle de tuer. Il y eut pourtant plusieurs personnes si cruellement maltraitées qu'elles en moururent.’ And Burnet, who was in France in 1685, says, ‘all men set their thoughts on work to invent new methods of cruelty.’ What some of those methods were, I shall now relate; because the evidence, however painful it may be, is necessary to enable us to understand the reign of Louis XIV. It is necessary that the veil should be rent; and that the squeamish delicacy which would hide such facts, should give way before the obligation which the historian is under of holding up to public opprobrium, and branding with public infamy, the church by which the measures were instigated, the sovereign by whom they were enforced, and the age in which they were permitted.
The two original sources for our knowledge of these events are, Quick's Synodicon in Gallia, 1692, folio; and Benoist, Histoire de l'Edit de Nantes, 1695, 4to. From these works I extract the following accounts of what happened in France in 1685. ‘Afterwards they fall upon the persons of the Protestants; and there was no wickedness, though never so horrid, which they did not put in practice, that they might enforce them to change their religion…. They bound them as criminals are when they be put to the rack; and in that posture, putting a funnel into their mouths, they poured wine down their throats till its fumes had deprived them of their reason, and they had in that condition made them consent to become Catholics. Some they stripped stark naked, and after they had offered them a thousand indignities, they stuck them with pins from head to foot; they cut them with pen-knives, tear them by the noses with red-hot pincers, and dragged them about the rooms till they promised to become Roman Catholics, or that the doleful outcries of these poor tormented creatures, calling upon God for mercy, constrained them to let them go…. In some places they tied fathers and husbands to the bed-posts, and ravished their wives and daughters before their eyes…. From others they pluck off the nails of their hands and toes, which must needs cause an intolerable pain. They burnt the feet of others. They blew up men and women with bellows, till they were ready to burst in pieces. If these horrid usages could not prevail upon them to violate their consciences, and abandon their religion, they did then imprison them in close and noisome dungeons, in which they exercised all kinds of inhumanities upon them.’ Quick's Synodicon, vol. i. pp. cxxx. cxxxi. ‘Cependant les troupes exerçoient partout de cruautez inouies. Tout leur étoit permis, pourveu qu'ils ne fissent pas mourir. Ils faisoient danser quelquefois leurs hôtes, jusqu'à ce qu'ils tombassent en défaillance. Ils bernoient les autres jusqu'à ce qu'ils n'en pouvoient plus…. Il y en eut quelques-uns à qui on versa de l'eau bouillante dans la bouche…. Il y en eut plusieurs à qui on donna des coups de bâton sous les pieds, pour éprouver si ce supplice est aussi cruel que les relations le publient. On arrachoit à d'autres le poil de la barbe…. D'autres brûloient à la chandelle le poil des bras et des jambes de leurs hôtes. D'autres faisoient brûler de la poudre, si près du visage de ceux qui leur resistoient, qu'elle leur grilloit toute la peau. Ils mettoient à d'autres des charbons allumez dans les mains, et les contraignoient de les tenir fermées, jusqu'à ce que les charbons fussent éteints…. On brûla les pieds à plusieurs, tenant les uns long-tems devant un grand feu; appliquant aux autres une pelle ardente sous les pieds; liant les pieds des autres dans des bottines pleines de graisse, qu'on faisoit fondre et chauffer peu à peu devant un brasier ardent.’ Benoist, Hist. de l'Edit de Nantes, vol. v. pp. 887–889. One of the Protestants, named Ryau, they ‘lièrent fort étroitement; lui sevrèrent les doigts des mains; lui fichèrent des épingles sous les ongles; lui firent brûler de la poudre dans les oreilles; lui percèrent les cuisses en plusieurs lieux, et versèrent du vinaigre et du sel dans ses blessures. Par ce tourment ils épuisèrent sa patience en deux jours; et le forcèrent à changer de religion,’ p. 890. ‘Ses dragons étoient les mêmes en tous lieux. Ils battoient, ils étourdissoient, ils brûloient en Bourgogne comme en Poitou, en Champagne comme en Guyenne, en Normandie comme en Languedoc. Mais ils n'avoient pour les femmes ni plus de respect, ni plus de pitié que pour les hommes. Au contraire, ils abusoient de la tendre pudeur qui est une des propriétez de leur sexe; et ils s'en prevaloient pour leur faire de plus sensibles outrages. On leur levoit quelquefois leurs juppes par dessus la tête, et on leur jetoit des seaux d'eau sur le corps. Il y en eut plusieurs que les soldats mirent en chemise, et qu'ils forcèrent de danser avec eux dans cet état…. Deux filles de Calais, nommées le Noble, furent mises toutes nuës sur le pavé, et furent ainsi exposées à la mocquerie et aux outrages des passans…. Des dragons ayant lié la dame de Vezençai à la quenouille de son lit, lui crachoient dans la bouche quand elle l'ouvroit pour parler ou pour soupirer.’ pp. 891, 892. At p. 917 are other details, far more horrible, respecting the treatment of women, and which indignation rather than shame prevents me from transcribing. Indeed, the shame can only light on the church and the government under whose united authority such scandalous outrages could be openly perpetrated, merely for the sake of compelling men to change their religious opinions.
[439] M. Blanqui (Hist. de l'Economie Politique, vol. ii. p. 10) says, that the revocation of the Edict of Nantes cost France ‘cinq cent mille de ses enfants les plus industrieux,’ who carried into other countries ‘les habitudes d'ordre et de travail dont ils étaient imbus.’ See also Siècle de Louis XIV, chap. xxxvi., in Œuvres de Voltaire, vol. xx. pp. 380, 381. Several of them emigrated to North America. Compare Godwin on Population, pp. 388, 389, with Benoist, l'Edit de Nantes, vol. v. pp. 973, 974, and Lyell's Second Visit to the United States, edit. 1849, vol. ii. p. 159. See also, on the effects of the Revocation, Lettres inédites de Voltaire, vol. ii. p. 473.