The Huguenots in France

by Samuel Smiles

Indeed, so far as can be ascertained, the Vaudois of Dauphiny rarely if ever fought battles. They were too few in number, too much scattered among the mountains, and too poor and ill-armed, to be able to contend against the masses of disciplined soldiery that were occasionally sent into the valleys. All that they did was to watch, from their mountain look-outs, their enemies' approach, and hide themselves in caves; or flee up to the foot of the glaciers till they had passed by. The attitude of the French Vaudois was thus for the most part passive; and they very rarely, like the Italian Vaudois, offered any determined or organized resistance to persecution. Hence they have no such heroic story to tell of battles and sieges and victories. Their heroism was displayed in patience, steadfastness, and long-suffering, rather than in resisting force by force; and they were usually ready to endure death in its most frightful forms rather than prove false to their faith.

The ancient people of these valleys formed part of the flock of the Archbishop of Embrun. But history exhibits him as a very cruel shepherd. Thus, in 1335, there appears this remarkable entry in the accounts current of the bailli of Embrun: "Item, for persecuting the Vaudois, eight sols and thirty deniers of gold," as if the persecution of the Vaudois had become a regular department of the public service. What was done with the Vaudois when they were seized and tried at Embrun further appears from the records of the diocese. In 1348, twelve of the inhabitants of Val Louise were strangled at Embrun by the public executioner; and in 1393, a hundred and fifty inhabitants of the same valley were burned alive at the same place by order of the Inquisitor Borelli. But the most fatal of all the events that befell the inhabitants of Val Louise was that which occurred about a century later, in 1488, when nearly the whole of the remaining population of the valley were destroyed in a cavern near the foot of Mont Pelvoux.

This dreadful massacre was perpetrated by a French army, under the direction of Albert Catanée, the papal legate. The army had been sent into Piedmont with the object of subjugating or destroying the Vaudois on the Italian side of the Alps, but had returned discomfited to Briançon, unable to effect their object. The legate then determined to take his revenge by an assault upon the helpless and unarmed French Vaudois, and suddenly directed his soldiers upon the valleys of Fressinières and Louise. The inhabitants of the latter valley, surprised, and unable to resist an army of some twenty thousand men, abandoned their dwellings, and made for the mountains with all haste, accompanied by their families, and driving their flocks before them. On the slope of Mont Pelvoux, about a third of the way up, there was formerly a great cavern, on the combe of Capescure, called La Balme-Chapelle—though now nearly worn away by the disintegration of the mountain-side—in which the poor hunted people contrived to find shelter. They built up the approaches to the cavern, filled the entrance with rocks, and considered themselves to be safe. But their confidence proved fatal to them. The Count La Palud, who was in command of the troops, seeing that it was impossible to force the entrance, sent his men up the mountain provided with ropes; and fixing them so that they should hang over the mouth of the cavern, a number of the soldiers slid down in full equipment, landing on the ledge right in front of the concealed Vaudois. Seized with a sudden panic, and being unarmed, many of them precipitated themselves over the rocks and were killed. The soldiers slaughtered all whom they could reach, after which they proceeded to heap up wood at the cavern mouth which they set on fire, and thus suffocated the remainder. Perrin says four hundred children were afterwards found in the cavern, stifled, in the arms of their dead mothers, and that not fewer than three thousand persons were thus ruthlessly destroyed. The little property of the slaughtered peasants was ordered by the Pope's legate to be divided amongst the vagabonds who had carried out his savage orders. The population having been thus exterminated, the district was settled anew some years later, in the reign of Louis XII., who gave his name to the valley; and a number of "good and true Catholics," including many goitres and idiots,[102] occupied the dwellings and possessed the lands of the slaughtered Vaudois. There is an old saying that "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church," but assuredly it does not apply to Val Louise, where the primitive Christian Church has been completely extinguished.

There were other valleys in the same neighbourhood, whither we are now wending, where the persecution, though equally ferocious, proved less destructive; the inhabitants succeeding in making their escape into comparatively inaccessible places in the mountains before they could be put to the sword. For instance, in Val Fressinières—also opening into the valley of the Durance a little lower down than Val Louise—the Vaudois Church has never ceased to exist, and to this day the majority of the inhabitants belong to it. From the earliest times the people of the valley were distinguished for their "heresy;" and as early as the fourteenth century eighty persons of Fressinières and the neighbouring valley of Argentières,—willing to be martyrs rather than apostates,—were burnt at Embrun because of their religion. In the following century (1483) we find ninety-nine informations laid before John Lord Archbishop of Embrun against supposed heretics of Val Fressinières. The suspected were ordered to wear a cross upon their dress, before and behind, and not to appear at church without displaying such crosses. But it further appears from the records, that, instead of wearing the crosses, most of the persons so informed against fled into the mountains and hid themselves away in caves for the space of five years.

The nest steps taken by the Archbishop are described in a Latin manuscript,[103] of which the following is a translation:—

"Also, that in consequence of the above, the monk Francis Splireti, of the order of Mendicants, Professor in Theology, was deputed in the quality of Inquisitor of the said valleys; and that in the year 1489, on the 1st of January, knowing that those of Freyssinier had relapsed into infamous heresy, and had not obeyed their orders, nor carried the cross on their dress, but on the contrary had received their excommunicated and banished brethren without delivering them over to the Church, sent to them new citation, to which not having appeared, an adjournment of their condemnation as hardened heretics, when their goods would be confiscated, and themselves handed over the secular power, was made to the 28th of June; but they remaining more obstinate than ever, so much so that no hope remains of bringing them back, all persons were forbidden to hold any communication whatsoever with them without permission of the Church, and it was ordered by the Procureur Fiscal that the aforesaid Inquisitor do proceed, without further notice, to the execution of his office."

What the execution of the Inquisitor's office meant, is, alas! but too well known. Bonds and imprisonment, scourgings and burnings at Embrun. The poor people appealed to the King of France for help against their persecutors, but in vain. In 1498 the inhabitants of Fressinières appeared by a procurator at Paris, on the occasion of the new sovereign, Louis XII., ascending the throne. But as the King was then seeking the favour of a divorce from his wife, Anne of Brittany, from Pope Alexander VI., he turned a deaf ear to their petition for mercy. On the contrary, Louis confirmed all the decisions of the clergy, and in return for the divorce which he obtained, he granted to the Pope's son, the infamous Cæsar Borgia, that very part of Dauphiny inhabited by the Vaudois, together with the title of Duke of Valentinois. They had appealed, as it were, to the tiger for mercy, and they were referred to the vulture.

The persecution of the people of the valleys thus suffered no relaxation, and all that remained for them was flight into the mountains, to places where they were most likely to remain unmolested. Hence they fled up to the very edge of the glaciers, and formed their settlements at almost the farthest limits of vegetation. There the barrenness of the soil, the inhospitality of the climate, and the comparative inaccessibility of their villages, proved their security. Of them it might be truly said, that they "wandered about in sheepskins and goat-skins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented (of whom the world was not worthy); they wandered in deserts and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth." Yet the character of these poor peasants was altogether irreproachable. Even Louis XII. said of them, "Would to God that I were as good a Christian as the worst of these people!" The wonder is that, in the face of their long-continued persecutions, extending over so many centuries, any remnant of the original population of the valleys should have been preserved. Long after the time of Louis XII. and Cæsar Borgia, the French historian, De Thou (writing in 1556), thus describes the people of Val Fressinières: "Notwithstanding their squalidness, it is surprising that they are very far from being uncultivated in their morals. They almost all understand Latin; and are able to write fairly enough. They understand also as much of French as will enable them to read the Bible and to sing psalms; nor would you easily find a boy among them who, if he were questioned as to the religious opinions which they hold in common with the Waldenses, would not be able to give from memory a reasonable account of them."[104]

After the promulgation of the Edict of Nantes, the Vaudois enjoyed a brief respite from their sufferings. They then erected temples, appointed ministers, and worshipped openly. This, however, only lasted for a short time, and when the Edict was revoked, and persecution began again, in the reign of Louis XIV., their worship was suppressed wherever practicable. But though the Vaudois temples were pulled down and their ministers banished, the Roman Catholics failed to obtain a footing in the valley. Some of the pastors continued to brave the fury of the persecutors, and wandered about from place to place among the scattered flocks, ministering to them at the peril of their lives. Rewards were offered for their apprehension, and a sort of "Hue and Cry" was issued by the police, describing their age, and height, and features, as if they had been veritable criminals. And when they were apprehended they were invariably hanged. As late as 1767 the parliament of Grenoble condemned their pastor Berenger to death for continuing to preach to congregations in the "Desert."

This religious destitution of the Vaudois continued to exist until a comparatively recent period. The people were without either pastors or teachers, and religion had become a tradition with them rather than an active living faith. Still, though poor and destitute, they held to their traditional belief, and refused to conform to the dominant religion. And so they continued until within the last forty years, when the fact of the existence of these remnants of the ancient Vaudois in the valleys of the High Alps came to the knowledge of Felix Neff, and he determined to go to their help and devote himself to their service.