The Duke of Noailles wrote, “The number of Protestants in the district of Nîsmes is about a hundred and forty thousand. I believe, that, at the end of the month, none will be left.”
Deluded by these reports, Louis XIV., on the 18th of October, 1685, signed the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. In the preamble to this fatal act, he said,—
“We see now, with the just acknowledgment we owe to God, that our measures have secured the end which we ourselves proposed, since the better and greater part of our subjects of the pretended reformed religion have embraced the Catholic faith; and the maintenance of the Edict of Nantes remains, therefore, superfluous.”
By this act it was declared that the Protestant worship should be nowhere tolerated in France. All Protestant pastors were ordered to leave the kingdom within fifteen days, under penalty of being sent to the galleys. Protestant pastors who would abjure their faith were promised a salary one-third more than they had previously enjoyed. Parents were forbiddento instruct their children in the Protestant religion. Every child born in the kingdom was to be baptized and educated by a Catholic priest. All Protestant Frenchmen, out of France, were ordered to return within four months, under penalty of confiscation of property. Any Protestant layman or woman who should attempt to leave France, was, if arrested, doomed to imprisonment for life.
Such were the infamous decrees enacted in France but two hundred years ago. The woes they caused can never be gauged: the calamities they entailed upon France have been awful. Hundreds of thousands, in defiance of poverty, the dungeon, and utter temporal ruin, adhered to their faith: thousands, haggard with want and despair, through all conceivable suffering, effected their escape.
At the time of the Revocation, the Protestant population of France was estimated at between two and three millions. Though the edict was enforced by the government with the utmost severity, many noble-hearted Catholics sympathized with the Protestants, befriended them in various ways, and aided them to escape. Though guards were placed upon every road leading to the frontiers, and thousands of fugitives were arrested, still thousands escaped. Some, in armed bands, fought their way with drawn swords; some obtained passports from kind-hearted Catholic governors; some bribed their guards; some travelled by night from hiding-place to hiding-place; some assumed the disguise of peddlers selling Catholic relics. It is estimated by Catholic writers that about two hundred and thirty thousand escaped. Antoine Court, one of the Protestant pastors, places the number as high as eight hundred thousand. M. Sismondi thinks that as many perished as escaped: he places the number of each at between three and four hundred thousand.
The suffering was awful. Multitudes perished of cold, hunger, and exhaustion. Thousands were shot by the soldiery. So many were arrested, that the prisons and galleys of France were crowded with victims. Among these were many men illustrious in rank and culture. The arrival of the fugitives,emaciate and woe-stricken, upon the soil of Protestant countries, created intense sensation. From every Protestant court in Europe a cry of indignation arose. England, Switzerland, Holland, Prussia, Denmark, Sweden, received the sufferers with warm demonstrations of hospitality and sympathy.
The loss to France was irreparable. Only one year after the Revocation, Marshal Vauban wrote,—
“France has lost a hundred thousand inhabitants, sixty millions of coined money, nine thousand sailors, twelve thousand disciplined soldiers, six hundred officers, and her most flourishing manufactures.”
The fanatic king, instead of being softened by these woes, became more unrelenting. He issued an ordinance requiring that all the children between five and sixteen years of age, of parents suspected of Protestantism, should be taken from their homes, and placed in Catholic families. All books which it was thought in any way favored the Protestant faith were seized and burned.“The Bible itself, the Bible above all, was confiscated and burned with persevering animosity.”[214]